People of many political stripes are excited that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is working today with the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese to craft a package of “carrots and sticks” to offer Iran — and that she has offered to negotiate directly with Iran if the Iranians first suspend all nuclear enrichment. Some cheer because they advocate diplomacy as the principal tool of American foreign policy (at least we’re talking); others celebrate the turn towards working with allies (multilateralism rather than presumably arrogant and fruitless unilateralism). But unless you’re most concerned about process rather than outcomes, I’m skeptical that this news is anything to celebrate.

Two blogs illustrate some of the reaction. Dan Drezner is opimistic: in line with his academic writing about international institutions and economic sanctions, he hopes that working with allies will give our threats more teeth, and he also suspects that diplomats talking in the right forum can find mutual agreement. Bruce Jentleson is wary that the diplomatic initiative is just a ploy — that the U.S. isn’t serious about looking for a solution — but his underlying view is that a diplomatic solution is possible or even likely, if we make a good faith effort.

But think about what diplomacy as a tool of statecraft can hope to achieve.

Sometimes, different countries have shared interests that can be better achieved through cooperation — burden-sharing, collective restraint to prevent a “tragedy of the commons” when the various parties don’t consider each others’ incentives to overuse resources, etc. In those circumstances, diplomacy (especially in the context of international institutions) can help the two sides to realize that they have shared goals, to reach agreement on how to share the costs of achieving them, and to monitor each others’ compliance with the deal. Drezner has written some good academic articles about how these mechanics might work.

On other occasions, though, countries have opposing interests: they cannot both achieve their goals at the same time. Diplomacy can help clarify the differences in their goals, but talking about what the two sides want cannot by itself reconcile the conflict (unless one state tricks the other into adopting a policy that deviates from its true interests — and that result is unlikely to prove sustainable). What diplomacy offers in these situations is the opportunity to clarify intentions and the intensity of the adversary’s desires. Diplomacy helps answer the question, “is there a compensation package that we can offer our adversary to make it worth their while not to do the thing that they want to do that is contrary to our interests?” Alternatively, diplomats might learn how much the other side cares about the issue in question, helping to settle “how big a sanction would we need to impose — that is, how much would we need to hurt them — to get them to prefer to do what we want rather than what they want?”

So what about the situation in Iran? Drezner’s blog suggests that we have “room to negotiate.” Specifically,

THe U.S. acknowledges that Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear energy program, which could obviously include enrichment. However, the Iranians, if they’re serious about talks, can acknowledge that recognition without actually engaging in enrichment activities while talks proceed.

But that just points up the real problem: the U.S. and Iran don’t have similar interests here. In fact, by the letter of international treaties, Iran clearly has “the right” to enrich uranium as part of a civilian nuclear fuel cycle. The U.S. suspects that the Iranians want to learn to enrich uranium for military purposes. Perhaps so, and diversion of civilian nuclear fuel to a nuclear weapons program would, in fact, violate the non-proliferation treaty regime. But the Iranians are committed to their (reasonable) argument that they haven’t done anything wrong just by enriching (although international organizations and various governments have caught them circumventing some rules and violating some disclosure agreements in the past). The U.S., on the other hand, is committed to its view that it’s just too risky to let the Iranians do what the treaty says they are entitled to do.

And each side understands its adversary’s position. There is no confusion about the Iranians’ claim that they should be allowed to enrich. And there is no confusion about the American view of the risk of allowing that. Moreover, both sides already understand quite well that their incompatible interests are quite strong: the compensation or sanctions package to change Iranian incentives would have to be too large to be practical.

The real lesson for U.S. foreign policy — one that is often forgotten by everyone, including the leaders of both political parties — is that you can’t always get what you want in international affairs. Even if you are the biggest kid on the block.

Domestic policy is hard enough, but within the U.S., federal government decisions are the last word. What we want to do in this case, though, is change the policy of another government, and we have few levers with which to influence other governments, notably including the Iranian government.

Maybe diplomacy will give us another lever: smooth-talking diplomats that can “trick” the Iranians (or, I guess I mean “persuade” them). But the Iranians probably understand their goals far better than we understand them, and they are smart enough to see through even our best diplomats’ patter.

Let’s focus our policy discussion on things that we can control, initiatives where we can make a difference. If Iran ultimately wants nuclear weapons, we should make sure we have robust deterrent capabilities. The good news is that we do. And we should deal with the direct concerns that we control: what happens to American soldiers on a day-to-day basis in Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps diplomatic initiatives in areas where we have shared interests with our foreign counterparts — areas where we have reason to believe in a “win-win” outcome if the negotiations go well.

Related posts:

1. The United States Got What It Asked For: Oh, the Horror!
2. Will arming the Gulf solve the Iranian problem?
3. Next Steps on Iran
4. Should We Engage Iran Out of the NPT?
5. Russia: whose strategic partner?