Sustainable Diplomacy and the US-Iranian Conflict - The Value of Talk and a Predisposition to Appease

This paper proceeds from the assumption that, no matter who wins the American presidential election in November, the US and Iran are on a collision course regarding the latter's nuclear energy program. The most likely result will be a series of airstrikes undertaken by the US or Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities. The prospect of these strikes being successful is very uncertain while the costs of such an attack in political and human terms are clear for all to see. Accordingly, the paper examines the contribution which diplomacy can make to avoiding such a collision. It argues that failure to date is the result of diplomacy being too closely linked to foreign policy objectives and domestic political considerations in both countries, so much so that each country is not even sure it should talk to the other. The paper then makes the case for two old diplomatic values: being willing to talk to anyone without preconditions; and being willing to appease the other party by expressing a willingness to let them have what they want. The United States should declare a willingness to accept a nuclear-armed Iran, and Iran should declare a willingness to accept an extensive and intrusive US regional presence for the foreseeable future.

Paul Sharp is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Clingendael Institute and Professor and Head of Political Science at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He is also Co-Editor of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy. Two of his co-edited books are The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society and The International Thought of Herbert Butterfield published by Palgrave in 2007-8. His Diplomatic Theory of International Relations is in press with Cambridge University Press, and he is currently working on the ideas of outlaw diplomacy and appeasement.

The Hague, Clingendael Institute, August 2008 ISBN: 978-90-5031-129-8