Impact turns + answers – bfhmrs russia War Good

2AC---Diplo Solves

Diplomacy is more effective than strikes – they escalate into large cycles of conflict

Many Iran hawks have been critical of Trump’s unfulfilled strikes, warning that “weakness is provocative” or claiming that this tough talk combined with a reluctance to follow through hurts U.S. “credibility.” But recent history suggests that a limited tit-for-tat cycle of conflict against Iran would not restore deterrence credibility for the United States. The overthrow and killing of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi didn’t stop Syria’s Bashar al-Assad from dropping barrel bombs and committing other atrocities in Syria. In fact, the United States, twice under Donald Trump, has lobbed cruise missiles at Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons. These strikes have not deterred the Iranians from standing up to the United States today.

Strength, Independence, and Local Politics

Other leaders also worry about looking tough and hold core interests that they are willing to defend with force. In every geopolitical competition in history—and the U.S.-Iran conflict is certainly one—rivals have found ways to disregard rules, twist their own principles, and sacrifice loyal populations—but they have also made bargains and compromised when it suited them. Repeating ahistorical hymns of us (good) vs. them (bad) won’t make these facts go away.

Khamenei has expressed his philosophy that the “only way to confront the brazen enemy is by firm determination, not passiveness.” He has also noted that “our enemies still do not know Iranian people, Iranian officials. This is why they are bullying us. The nation and the government that emerged from it will not yield to bullying demands.” If anything, the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and violations of the agreement—while insisting that Iran stick to the same—have helped to underscore Khamenei’s rhetoric. It’s an old rule of deterrence: don’t give in to bullies. Compromises and concessions made under duress and coercion will simply encourage more demands by both the aggressor as well as any third-parties.

The Potentials of Maximal Diplomacy

Various issues critical to U.S. national security interests—Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, energy, security, non-proliferation cannot be solved without Iranian participation. The United States has tried to solve these over the past 10 to 15 years without the Iranians, but with limited success. The only thing Washington has not tried is sustained talks with, and not at, Iranians. With the signing of the JCPOA, the Iranians arguably demonstrated that they were willing to give up something significant up front to get what they really wanted, which is to talk about all of the other issues beyond Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Unfortunately, since 1979, missed opportunities and reciprocal belligerence seem to be the persistent conditions in Iran-U.S. relations. When one side has been willing to pursue dialogue, the other has proved evasive, while both have shown an appetite for escalation. As early as 1986, Iranians looked for possibilities of a reconciliation with the United States, exploring covert channels arranged and facilitated by Israel. They hoped to be able to exchange badly needed arms in the war started by Iraq, and were willing to fund U.S.-backed Contras who were not getting the congressional support that Reagan wanted. This is why National Security Advisor Robert MacFarland made the trip to Tehran. But, of course, details of the “Iran-Contra affair” were in time leaked to the public, temporarily embarrassing those involved.

The U.S.-Iran conflict is not so much a “clash of civilizations” or competing ideologies as much as a crash of core national interests. It involves Iran, a regional power, attempting to remove itself from a patron-client relationship with the United States, a superpower. Iran’s foreign polices might at times be provocative, but the country’s leaders are not irrational. More to the point, they are predictable from the standpoint of the overlap between foreign policy and domestic politics. In this way, even a secular, democratic Iran would have areas of mutual interest (a stable Iraq or Afghanistan, for instance) and disagreements (Iran’s role in the global energy market) with the United States. Unless the United States is truly interested in no longer being the global anchor for regional stability and instead favors more regional anchors stabilizing their own regions, these factors will not change.

A Way Forward

Large-scale intractable conflicts are complex, not complicated problems, meaning that they are more difficult to understand, predict, or influence. Many traditional and conventional conflict-resolution strategies are predicated on the idea of complicated systems where actors behave in predictable, interest-based ways with the expectation that a win-win resolution is possible. Proxies and client-states behave as puppets, never seeking a goal that is at odds with their patron’s. So, if the process doesn’t work, it’s wrongly understood that one or more actors were not acting rationally. In this way, negotiators encourage (or force) actors to put aside emotions and focus on the utilitarian value of the offers (as determined by negotiators).

The domestic politics of Iran prove crucial to understanding its foreign policy in the same way as the local politics of the United States affect and overlap with its foreign policy. In this way, Iran may have far less wiggle room than most assume when it comes to the United States (especially compared to, say, the Kim Jong Un regime). Likewise, the United States may also have less wiggle room than many might imagine, given the lack of both congressional and popular appetite for war.

Second, participants should go after obvious areas of common agreement, such as an end to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, continued vigilance against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, countering narcotics from Afghanistan, and a stable government in Iraq. Because diplomacy rarely yields any immediate or lasting results, both sides must return home with some small, but tangible deliverables to counteract the many spoilers who will be lying in wait both at home and abroad. Only by building such impetus can the negotiators aspire to tackle the truly complex problems, such as oil sanctions or the possible military potential of Iran’s nuclear program.

Very tough challenges lie ahead, but this process could succeed (not that it will succeed). Otherwise, what’s the point of diplomacy? As Moshe Dayan, a former Israeli defense minister once quipped, “If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” Similarly, no one ever says that “we should give war one day and if that doesn’t work, wage full-scale diplomacy no matter how long it takes.” But maybe it is time to try.