Condi the Mutant

THE X-MEN HAVE taken over Washington. One minute we thought we had an incompetent bunch of neoconservative fantasists and big spenders running the United States into the ground. The next thing you know, the Bush administration has mutated into a bunch of superheroes. The president has become Regreto. The Treasury secretary has morphed into Gold Man (Sachs). And the secretary of State has become Realistique.

First, the president himself came over all contrite at his news conference with Tony Blair, acknowledging that his “kind of tough talk” at the time of the invasion of Iraq had “sent the wrong signal to people.” Hold the presses. He made mistakes!

Then -- a real coup -- Bush was able to announce the appointment of Henry Paulson, head honcho at Goldman Sachs, as his new Treasury secretary. After five years of drift at that department, this may signal a return to the financially savvy policies of the Clinton era, when Paulson’s predecessor at Goldman, Robert Rubin, made the same move from Wall Street to Washington.

But even more remarkable has been the metamorphosis of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of State into Realistique -- a foreign policy realist in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Having once branded Iran a member of the “axis of evil,” this administration looked incapable of dealing diplomatically with the threat posed by that country’s ill-concealed nuclear ambitions. Only last month, the president all but tore up a letter addressed directly to him by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

On Wednesday, however, Rice suddenly morphed, announcing that the United States would join forces with “our European partners” (Britain, France and Germany) to offer Iran a diplomatic deal. The next day, she finalized the terms of this deal not only with her European counterparts but with the foreign ministers of Russia and China.

It’s been the best week for American diplomacy since Bush entered the White House.

Of course, we don’t know the small print of the document that has been sent to Tehran. But it clearly offers the Iranians a choice. Abandon your plans for nukes and you will take delivery of some real carrots -- including assistance with building light-water nuclear facilities. Alternatively, press on with your illicit program and you can expect some painful sticks.

I am strongly tempted to take my hat off to Rice. Like Kissinger before her, she has shown how much can be achieved by persistence and persuasion, even from a position of weakness.

There is, however, a catch. Could the U.S. now be repeating with Iran the mistake that it has already made with North Korea? In 2002, the North Koreans re-started their nuclear facilities at Yongbyon (which had been closed under the U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework of 1994) with the clear intention of enriching uranium. Since then, they have also been busy producing weapons-grade plutonium.

As with Iran, the American response has been to participate in multiparty talks. And, as with Iran, the transgressor has been offered both carrots and sticks.

The carrots have taken the form of generous aid to North Korea’s basket-case economy. The sticks have included a crackdown on North Korea’s illicit traffic in fake drugs, counterfeit currency, endangered species and conventional weaponry.

The result? Nothing. The North Koreans turn up to the talks only when they feel like it and show no sign of renouncing their nuclear ambitions. The reason is clear. Perhaps not surprisingly, Kim Jong Il long ago figured out that the best use for a nuclear missile program is, in fact, blackmail. “Give me the money,” he screams, “or this thing goes off.”

Could the same thing happen with the Iranians? It could -- but only if they are allowed to acquire, or can credibly claim to have acquired, one or more nuclear bombs. No bombs, no blackmail. And they will be able to get bombs only if we rule out the possibility that, if diplomacy does not deliver, carrots and sticks could give way to military strikes. For in foreign affairs, diplomacy can never be regarded as an end in itself. As the great German strategist Carl von Clausewitz observed, war is the continuation of foreign policy by other means. By the same token, a foreign policy that rules out war as a last resort lacks the credibility to achieve its ends. That is the very essence of realism.

The best line in “X-Men: The Last Stand” is uttered by Ian McKellen, as Magneto. “They wish to cure us,” he thunders, “but I say we are the cure.”

Many people around the world have wanted to cure the Bush administration of its belief in armed force as a legitimate instrument of policy. But if Iran spurns Rice’s carrots and sticks, then the old, pre-mutant Bush will indeed be the only cure.