The year of the agreement
The most remarkable thing about 2015 is the astounding number of international agreements reached, each of which provides more than a ray of hope that disputes—from several decades-long conflicts to some that have arisen only within the last decade—may be moving toward resolution.
We are a long way from achieving the Utopian dream of peace and harmony among all peoples and countries, or even Kant’s ideal state of perpetual peace. But the geopolitical environment clearly looks more hopeful than it did at this time last year.
From the standpoint of big power politics, most consequential is the agreement reached with Iran by leading Western countries (including the United States) to ensure the former nation does not move toward the development of a nuclear weapon for at least a decade and probably much longer, if ever.
Consider the stakes involved. In the absence of an agreement, the most likely scenario would have been an Israeli or an Israeli/U.S. air strike against Iran. The Iranian response would almost surely have involved a series of retaliatory actions creating a situation that easily might have spun out of control.
It’s a minor miracle that the Obama administration was able to push through the Iran agreement at all. The blitz of opposition came from many quarters, including the entire Republican Congress, some very powerful Democrats, and the hardline pro-Israel lobby.
Even Israel’s Prime Minister, in an unprecedented action, forcefully inserted himself into the U.S. political debate about the issue, going as far as addressing Congress, in the absence of a presidential invitation, openly siding with the Republicans against the Obama administration. That’s a hostile act and a brazen breach of diplomatic etiquette. Despite the fierce campaign, the attack on the agreement was defeated without President Obama even being forced to exercise his veto.
Taking the broadest and longest view, however, the most important agreement struck this year was the climate change accord reached in Paris recently. The fate of humanity and the planet itself for centuries to come hang in the balance. For the first time ever, developed and under-developed nations vowed to work together to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.
While the deal is not perfect—there is no enforcement mechanism, a great deal of irreversible damage has already been done—it nevertheless represents a major breakthrough signaling a new consciousness that global climate change is everybody’s problem.
A year ago, the reestablishment of U.S.-Cuba relations and the real prospect of the end of the U.S. embargo seemed as improbable as achieving a broad-based international consensus on climate change. In this case, the Obama administration would have faced hardline Cuban exile opposition nearly as formidable as in the Iran case. Except for the fact that Obama, the Cuban government and the Vatican carried out a diplomatic tour-de-force requiring the extraordinary discretion needed to catch the naysayers by surprise. Renewed relations were presented as a fait accompli. The administration established momentum and opponents got no traction. Since the announcements, there have been myriad steps forward, from looser restrictions on travel to the resumption of direct mail delivery. There is more to come.
More recently, parties to the bloody Syrian civil war have agreed to conduct talks in hopes of finding a peaceful solution. The many-sided Syrian conflict has resulted in hundreds of thousands killed and set off and exodus that has vexed and divided the European Union and provoked a massive amount of political demagoguery in the United States.
Most recently, negotiations between the Colombian government and the guerrilla movement known as the FARC, in talks held in Havana hosted by the Cuban government, succeeded in resolving the knottiest remaining issue blocking a final settlement. This probably means that ythe longest-standing of all the conflicts may be over for good.
None of these new agreements are perfect or set in stone. They are works in progress dependent for their success on the good will of the parties and the gradual buildup of trust. They all are fragile, some more than others. But the greatest peril would come with a change in the political party in the White House. Republicans have vowed to scuttle the Iran deal on their first day in office. They would probably also move to break diplomatic relations with Cuba—again.
They might not find that as easy as they think. These processes are acquiring a life of their own. “Facts on the ground” are being created every day. Recent polling indicates most Cubans in the United States support Obama’s policy including the lifting the embargo. Most Americans not of Cuban descent feel the same way, only more strongly. What is the constituency for reversing course?
The question remains, what created this unexpected but welcome outbreak of reason in 2015? There is no single or simple explanation. In some cases, as in the case of U.S. policy toward Cuba, the whole thing had long since become embarrassingly anachronistic and profoundly counterproductive.
In the case of Syria, not only had the conflict become so brutal as to cause popular revulsion, there are more winners than losers. The chaos opened a space for ISIS, which seems to be closing to some extent lately. But the list of the enemies of ISIS is long and includes an improbable convergence of countries and movements that almost never agree on anything: Iran, Iraq, the Syrian government and a good portion of the opposition, Russia, the United States, France, Hezbollah, the Kurds. It’s not in any of these parties’ interests to enable ISIS to regroup and grow by spending all their resources fighting each other.
In the waning days of his presidency, you have to give credit to Barack Obama for the skill and courage to take on daunting adversaries—the Republican Congress, Netanyahu, the Cuba and Israeli lobbies and hand them resounding defeats.
