Word: gelb
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...Power is getting people or groups to do something they don't want to do," writes Leslie H. Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, in his new book, Power Rules. It seems an aggressively simplistic thought for a member of the foreign policy priesthood. But Gelb doesn't define power merely as the use or threat of force. (In fact, he argues, wars usually occur when the creative use of power has failed.) Power is a combination of factors - military, diplomatic, economic, moral - that give a country the ability to make its way in the world. Gelb...
...avoidable. They tend to be written in an abstruse language that occasionally approaches English. The most commercial of them promise a new theory of the world: it is flat (economically), America's influence is waning (or waxing), the nature of power is changing, growing softer, more multilateral (or unilateral). Gelb takes a defiant step in the opposite direction, away from gimmicks and grand theories, toward a re-examination of the most basic and eternal tool in the game of nations. He does not dispute that the world has changed: globalization exists, as do Osama bin Laden and dirty weapons...
...Gelb is at his best describing the three "demons" that render America's politicians congenitally foolish and unable to project power creatively - our tendency to turn principles into dogma, domestic political pressures, and the delusion that America can do anything. George W. Bush was badly boggled by all three. His "Freedom Agenda," which wantonly promoted democracy, led to disasters like the rise of Hamas in Gaza (after Bush forced elections that neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority wanted). Bush also played domestic tough-guy politics disgracefully: his opponents were inevitably "soft on terrorism." And he played the darker avenues...
...Obama is a big improvement on Bush across the board, but he hasn't faced any test that measures his ability to use power," Gelb says. Indeed, Obama's approach to Iran comes straight out of Gelb's chapter on "stage-setting" - preparing the field for successful diplomacy. Obama has worked the Iran account obliquely - beginning negotiations that might make the Russians a less willing enabler of Iran's nuclear program, approaching Syria in a way that might entice that country away from so close an alliance with Iran. He also made a direct approach to the Iranian people, taping...
...Gelb, who believes the proper reaction to an Iranian bomb is containment and deterrence, not force, may be reacting to past American arrogance with undue humility. "If you try for the perfect solution, you're asking for failure," he says. We have to tolerate a world that isn't quite as we'd want it to be. It will be interesting to see if Barack Obama, who has pretty much gotten his way at every turn, will be able to handle that...