President Obama will have a hard time achieving his foreign policy goals until he masters some key terms and better manages the expectations they convey. Given the furor that will surround the news of America’s readiness to hold talks with Iran, he could start with “engagement” — one of the trickiest terms in the policy lexicon.
The Obama administration has used this term to contrast its approach with its predecessor’s resistance to talking with adversaries and troublemakers. His critics show that they misunderstand the concept of engagement when they ridicule it as making nice with nasty or hostile regimes.
Let’s get a few things straight. Engagement in statecraft is not about sweet talk. Nor is it based on the illusion that our problems with rogue regimes can be solved if only we would talk to them. Engagement is not normalization, and its goal is not improved relations. It is not akin to détente, working for rapprochement, or appeasement.
So how do you define an engagement strategy? It does require direct talks. There is simply no better way to convey authoritative statements of position or to hear responses. But establishing talks is just a first step. The goal of engagement is to change the other country’s perception of its own interests and realistic options and, hence, to modify its policies and its behavior.
Diplomatic engagement is proven to work — in the right circumstances. American diplomats have used it to change the calculations and behavior of regimes as varied as the Soviet Union, South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Cuba, China, Libya and, intermittently, Syria.
There is no cookie-cutter formula for making it work, however. In southern Africa in the 1980s, we directed our focus toward stemming violence between white-ruled South Africa and its black-ruled neighbors. This strategy put a priority on regional conflict management in order to stop cross-border attacks and create better conditions for internal political change. The United States also engaged with the Cubans in an effort aimed at achieving independence for Namibia (from South Africa) and at the removal of Cuban troops from Angola. In Mozambique, engagement meant building a constructive relationship with the United States, restraining South African interference in Mozambique’s internal conflicts and weaning the country from its Soviet alignment.
More recently, the Bush administration’s strategy for engagement with Libya ultimately led to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the elimination of that country’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.
While the details differ, each case of engagement has common elements. Engagement is a process, not a destination. It involves exerting pressure, by raising questions and hypothetical possibilities, and by probing the other country’s assumptions and thinking. Above all, it involves testing how far the other country might be willing to go. Properly understood, the diplomacy of engagement means raising questions that the other country may wish to avoid or be politically unable to answer. It places the ball in the other country’s court.
Engagement, of course, comes with risks. One is that domestic opponents will intentionally distort the purposes of engagement. Another risk is that each side may try to impose preconditions for agreeing to meet and talk — and ultimately negotiate. But we will not get far with the Iranians, for example, if we (and they) insist on starting by establishing the other side’s intentions.
Another risk is that, no matter what we say, the rogue regime may claim that engagement confers legitimacy. A more consequential danger is that a successful engagement strategy may leave the target regime in place and even strengthened, an issue that troubled some critics of the Bush administration’s 2003 breakthrough that led to the normalizing of relations between the United States and Libya.
But by far the greatest risk of engagement is that it may succeed. If we succeed in changing the position of the other country’s decision-makers, we then must decide whether we will take yes for an answer and reciprocate their moves with steps of our own. If talk is fruitful, a negotiation will begin about taking reciprocal steps down a jointly defined road. Engagement diplomacy forces us to make choices. Perhaps this is what frightens its critics the most.
As the Obama team works to fend off accusations that it is rushing into Russian, Iranian, Syrian or even North Korean arms, it will need to get the logic and definition of engagement right. In each case, we will need a clear-eyed assessment of what we are willing to offer in return for the changed behavior we seek. Engagement diplomacy may be easier to understand if the Obama administration speaks clearly at home about what it really requires.
Chester A. Crocker, a professor of strategic studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and an assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1981 to 1989.