The worldview of President Jimmy Carter– which was resoundingly rejected by President Clinton during the 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns – has been resuscitated throughout the lengthy negotiations – and the July 2015 agreement – with Iran.
Consistent with Carter’s worldview, the negotiation process and the agreement with Iran have highlighted the sacrifice of America’s independent unilateral national security action on the altar of multilateralism (which has rarely been a US home court); the erosion of US confidence in its own (well-established) moral and geo-strategic high-ground and capabilities; underestimation of the intensifying threats, by rogue regimes, to the US national and homeland security; the assumption (which defies precedents) that rogue regimes respond constructively to diplomatic engagement rather than to surgical military threat to vital installations (with no troops on the ground); the voluntary abdication of pro-active US global leadership (at a time when the US and global sanity need it desperately); and the collapse of the US power-projection and posture of deterrence (lower than its breakdown during the Carter era).