Peddling his “new diplomacy” to business leaders from across the globe in Davos, Switzerland, the other day, Secretary of State John Kerry said there is no term to accurately describe it, although something like “doubling down” might do.
In fact, there is a perfect phrase to describe what Kerry is doing, and not doing, as he jets around the world from one photo-op to another: “Potemkin diplomacy.”
Grigori Potemkin, a minister of Russian Empress Catherine II, drew a world of make-believe for the gullible tsarina. He would employ experts in stage sets to create ideal villages on the routes chosen for her provincial tours, populated by extras shipped from Moscow dressed up as happy peasants to cheer the imperial party. The extras earned good money, the empress was happy and Potemkin was able to pose as a statesman.
This is what Kerry, presumably cued by President Obama, is doing with US foreign policy.
In Davos, Kerry presented three diplomatic Potemkin villages. The first was what he labeled “the historic accord” with Iran over its nuclear project.
Hmm: The Iranians say there is no such accord. Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi says, “We signed nothing. . . All we have is a joint action plan on a voluntary basis.” The regime refuses to publish the text of the “accord” or even to let members of the parliament have a look at it.
The best account of it has come from Ali-Akbar Salehi, who heads Iran’s nuclear project. “There is not the slightest change in our nuclear program,” he told the official news agency IRNA last Thursday. “We have agreed to switch off two centrifuge cascades in Natanz and four in Frodo. But we have 19,000 centrifuges that will continue to work.”
As for the Arak project, Salehi says the heavy-water plant there is working and won’t stop, while construction will continue on the 40-megawatt reactor nearby. “We have all the high-grade enriched uranium we need for three to four years,” he says.
What Iran gets in return is clear. America and its allies will be locked into endless negotiations (next round in New York in February), as the mullahs always wanted, while Iran pursues its nuclear project. Meanwhile, Obama has promised to prevent Congress from imposing new sanctions and is easing existing sanctions.
In Davos, Kerry also boasted of his “success” in convening the Geneva II gathering on Syria. Yet this looks like a step toward repeating a tragedy witnessed in Bosnia.
Bashar al-Assad’s regime is promising to let women and children leave a number of besieged cities, starting with Homs, under UN supervision. A similar scenario played out in Bosnia in July 1995 when women and children in Srebrenica, under UN protection since 1993, were allowed to leave — and then Serb death squads moved in to massacre the 8,000 men and boys left in the besieged city. The UN “protection force” looked the other way while the mass killings, later described by the Security Council as “genocide,” continued 200 yards away.
After the massacre, the US diplomat Richard Holbrooke let the Serbs reap the benefits of ethnic cleansing by establishing their “republic” in the third of Bosnia-Herzegovina they’d captured.
Originally, the Geneva discussions were a Russian ploy to hook America into endless talks while Moscow and Tehran helped Assad crush his opponents with superior military force. The net result of Kerry’s “Potemkin diplomacy” could be a Russo-Iranian victory to regain control of Syria through genocide. They may even replace Assad with another murderous poltroon, a scenario that Vladimir Putin used in Chechnya when he promoted Ramzan Kadyrov as that unhappy land’s new “president.”
Kerry’s third Davos boast was a claim to have restarted the Middle East peace process. Yet all those familiar with the issue would know that the Obama-Kerry “initiative” has reduced chances of a peaceful settlement.
The reason is clear. The Palestinians believe that Obama has abandoned Washington’s traditional “full support” for the Jewish state and thus their best option is to go slow motion waiting for further strategic erosion in the Israeli position. For their part, the Israelis are less prepared to take risks with peace when they are no longer sure about their principal ally.
Israel always accepted the peace option, including Camp David, when sure of American support. President George W. Bush’s unfailing support persuaded then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to accept the two-state solution, reversing his lifelong opposition to Palestinian statehood.
Frankly, it would be better if Kerry and Obama stopped getting involved in matters that they neither understand nor are really interested in. Their “Potemkin diplomacy” strengthens the mullahs who believe Iran can become a nuclear power without paying a price and comforts the hard-liners in Damascus who think they can regain control through genocide.
And it could prove the prelude to a new round of violence between Israel and the Palestinians. Next month, Tehran hosts a gathering on what the state media call “The Third Intifada.”