Good Versus Evil Isn't a Strategy by Madeleine Albright

The Bush administration's newly unveiled National Security Strategy might well be subtitled "The Irony of Iran." Three years after the invasion of Iraq and the invention of the phrase "axis of evil," the administration now highlights the threat posed by Iran - whose radical government has been vastly strengthened by the invasion of Iraq. This is more tragedy than strategy, and it reflects the Manichean approach this administration has taken to the world.

It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction. The administration's penchant for painting its perceived adversaries with the same sweeping brush has led to a series of unintended consequences.

For years, the president has acted as if Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein's followers and Iran's mullahs were parts of the same problem. Yet, in the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq and Iran fought a brutal war. In the 1990s, Al Qaeda's allies murdered a group of Iranian diplomats. For years, Osama bin Laden ridiculed Hussein, who persecuted Sunni and Shiite religious leaders alike. When Al Qaeda struck the US on 9/11, Iran condemned the attacks and later participated constructively in talks on Afghanistan. The top leaders in the new Iraq - chosen in elections that George W. Bush called "a magic moment in the history of liberty" - are friends of Iran. When the US invaded Iraq, Bush may have thought he was striking a blow for good over evil, but the forces unleashed were considerably more complex.

I've never been a fan of Madeleine Albright's, not since she was asked if she thought the deaths of half a million Iraqi babies through sanctions was a price worth paying. She demurred but eventually conceded that it was difficult but, "Yes, it was a price worth paying".

That aside, she has written an interesting piece here. What's fascinating is to be reminded that it used to be okay - in the heady days of Clinton's Presidency - to acknowledge that foreign policy is multi-layered and complex; that there is cause and effect , and that one must always remember that no nation stands in isolation. Each has allies and trading partners and they have their interests and concerns which must be bourne in mind in a country's dealings with them.

The very fact that the Bush camp are now making the sort noises regarding Iran that were once preserved solely for Iraq, seems to suggest that Bush and his gang have stumbled into the Middle East without taking the time to even ask themselves who's related to who.

How can you seriously propose action against Iran when you currently occupy a country whose population is 60% Shia?

It's Bush's insistence on seeing the word in such a bizarre, polarised manner - good versus evil - that makes him uniquely unqualified to get involved in the Middle East, of all places.

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