Debating Detente in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

“T and Iran are the only Muslim countries in the Middle East where democracy is deeply rooted. This makes their future bright. It also makes them America’s logical partners.”1 With this sweeping proclamation, veteran journalist and award-winning author Stephen Kinzer cleans out America’s foreign policy closet. He advocates nothing less than a radical rebalancing of United States-Middle East alliances in his latest book Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future. The United States should tilt away from Israel and Saudi Arabia, toward Turkey and Iran, to improve regional and national security because Cold Warera politics is long dead, argues Kinzer. Kinzer’s professional role is that of an expert-outsider to the American foreign policy establishment, having served as bureau chief for the New York Times in multiple continents over the course of two decades. Though not an academic or policymaker, he does not hesitate to put on these hats and deconstruct American strategic thinking. In Reset, we learn how the masses, and sometimes governments, in Turkey and Iran have strived to see the “American project”—meaning modern notions of liberty and democracy promotion—in a bright light. The two nations’ republican founders, Kemal Ataturk in Turkey and Reza Shah in Iran, threw off the yoke of the Caliphate and Islam’s Shia clergy respectively to radically reform their countries. Their goal was to bring their nation’s culture and political climate up to speed with the West, which entailed emancipating women, implementing new legal codes, banning religious garb in public, sending unprecedented numbers of children to school, and giving voice to public opinion, rich and poor. Despite the autocratic ruling styles, these men were quite progressive in implementing most of their policies. In his fairly straightforward storytelling Kinzer succeeds in explaining these histories, though one does not walk away with a full understanding of what would happen if his grand recommendation—which would amount to a major recalibration of American foreign policy in the Middle East—is implemented. One does however sense the gravity of the political earthquake Kinzer proposes—one ironically designed to solve a Middle East set-up (i.e., U.S.-Iran tensions and the Israel-Palestine conflict) already on shaky ground. The first