Pompeo Pushes ‘Big Stick’ Diplomacy at Stanford University

Jan. 15, 2020 (EIRNS)—U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a bombastic address to foreign service student “future policymakers” at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Jan. 13, entitled “The Restoration of Deterrence: The Iranian Example.” Former George W. Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, another war party leader and Hoover senior fellow, presided.

Pompeo began his remarks to the poor students by stating that America had never done “enough against Iran to get the deterrence that is necessary to keep us all safe. The JCPOA itself—the nuclear deal—made things worse.” Now we have cut off roughly 80% of Iran’s revenues. And “We are determined to get that last 20% too.” He added, “If Iran escalates, we will end it on our terms. ... And our sanctions will continue until the regime stops its terrorist activity and commits to never having nuclear weapons and permits a verification regime,” he said.

He cited instances in which U.S. deterrence had been weak, which he said, the Trump Administration had “re-established deterrence”: Russia’s 2014 so-called occupation of Crimea; China’s “island-building” in the South China Sea, and Russia’s alleged violation of the INF Treaty.

Pompeo attacked China for restricting access to U.S. products in its markets, and stated that it “had stolen massive quantities of American innovation ... created at campuses right like this one I’m standing on.”

In the Q&A, Rice plugged Stanford faculty member Alexander George, who developed the practice of “coercive diplomacy,” the idea that “you set deterrence, and you set the terms of what’s not acceptable, but then you open pathways for diplomacy.” Pompeo warned of going into a meeting where the participants “lie to each other,” instead “We’ve tried to just be candid. We’ve said, ‘Hey look, the deals that we had with China for an awful long time, it’s on us. We allowed this to take place. No more....’ That fails ... when they move past a boundary that you’ve set, it requires you to respond to that in a way that convinces them that you actually meant what you said.”