In these waning months of the Bush administration, with the country bogged down and preoccupied in Iraq, the US faces the unpalatable choice posed by the "Siberian dilemma."
Just what is the Siberian dilemma and how does it apply to the unforgiving urban battlefields of Iraq? The fisherman of northernmost Russia go out onto the frozen lakes of Siberia in temperatures at times approaching minus 60oC to fill their catch. They know from experience that the biggest fish congregate at the center of lakes where the ice is the thinnest.
They slowly make their way out across the ice listening carefully for the telltale signs of cracking.
If a fisherman is unlucky enough to fall through the ice into the freezing water, he is confronted immediately with what is known as the Siberian dilemma.
If he pulls himself out of the water onto the ice, his body will freeze immediately in the cold air and the fisherman will die of shock. If, however, he chooses to take his chances in the water, the fisherman will inevitably perish of hypothermia. Such is the stark choice presented by the Siberian dilemma.
With sand instead of ice, US President George W. Bush faces a kind of Siberian dilemma of his own making when it comes to his political and diplomatic efforts in Iraq. We are now entering the most consequential phase of the unpopular war and the US' power and prestige (as well as Bush's legacy), hang in the balance.
Some of the president's closest advisors have told him to spend all his waking hours on selling to an increasingly skeptical American populace the necessity of continuing with the war -- a war that many expect to end badly despite all the effort, attention and sacrifices of those engaged in the conflict.
The argument goes that if people see the president engaged in anything else, then clearly Iraq is not a life and death situation where the US' power and Bush's place in history are at stake.
Another set of advisors argue that the US must begin to put Iraq in a larger context and focus on other issues of importance, such as the drama playing out in Asia.
If the US does not begin to engage more seriously on other critical global issues -- these policy savants claim -- the US risks not only a major setback in Iraq but on other consequential global playing fields spanning Asia, Africa, Latin America and even Europe. The risk of this course of action is that the US inadvertently sends the message that it is giving up on Iraq at such a critical juncture.
This set of very bad choices approximates a veritable Siberian dilemma for the US and it is what the Bush administration currently faces in its diplomacy on the global stage.
To date, the Bush administration has chosen to stay in the sands of Iraq -- and basically hope for the best elsewhere.
While the Bush team has tried gamely to focus on and participate in the drama playing out in other parts of the world (in no place more consequential than Asia), these efforts often feel half hearted and partial.
For instance, it was commendable that the president managed to make it to the APEC leaders summit in Australia at all (after venturing to Iraq), but unfortunately he chose to depart a day before the meeting formally concluded.
On the last day, the chair reserved for the US president was conspicuously empty as the other powers of the Asia-Pacific region -- China, India, Japan and others looked on.
This absence is compounded by the numerous cancelations in recent years of US officials -- including the secretary of state -- from other region wide sessions such as the ASEAN regional forum.
While it is true that nothing much gets done in these large and unwieldy sessions, in this case attending the meetings themselves sends the requisite message of engagement.
It used to be that the US needed strong bilateral relationships before venturing into the territory of multilateral forums. Increasingly however it is the reverse.
This general preoccupation is occurring during a period of dramatic uncertainties and potential tipping points in Asia.
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party government and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hover perilously close to public ruin, relations between South Korea and the US have reached a new low, North Korea is contemplating doing away with its nukes, India is fretting over whether to accept the nuclear deal with the US and tensions are rising across the Taiwan Strait over the UN dispute.
The Bush administration may indeed have decided to take the risk of focusing almost exclusively on Iraq, but there are growing anxieties not only of failure there but of mounting problems elsewhere where the US has chosen to scale back its engagement, notably in Asia.
Kurt Campbell is the chief executive officer and cofounder of Center for a New American Security in Washington.
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