Resetting The Foreign Policy Debate

I thought Barack Obama had a pretty good appearance on Meet The Press today, and he apparently excelled at yesterday's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Des Moines, which I didn't see but followed on MyDD. (UPDATE: here's video of it:)



Apparently Obama is embracing the "fight back" strategy in far different ways that we normally see in political circles. He is hitting back on ideas, running an aggressive campaign based on drawing differences instead of the play-it-safe policies that characterized the early part of the race. This is most evident in his Iran strategy, which really represents a break with the foreign policy thinking of the past.

Senator Barack Obama says he would “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran if elected president and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek “regime change” if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues.

In an hourlong interview on Wednesday, Mr. Obama made clear that forging a new relationship with Iran would be a major element of a broad effort to stabilize Iraq as he executed a speedy timetable for the withdrawal of American combat troops.

Mr. Obama said that Iran had been “acting irresponsibly” by supporting Shiite militant groups in Iraq. He also emphasized that Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program and its support for “terrorist activities” were serious concerns.

But he asserted that Iran’s support for militant groups in Iraq reflected its anxiety over the Bush administration’s policies in the region, including talk of a possible American military strike on Iranian nuclear installations.

Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that “changes in behavior” by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees.

You're not going to effectively deal with Iran through belligerence, and you're not going to effectively deal with them by "leaving them alone." I think there's a pervasive isolationist streak in Americans, of the liberal left and the paleoconservative right, that is powering Ron Paul's successes online, for example, but it's an unrealistic scenario. Engaging in aggressive diplomacy and communication is the only way to bring about peace in an interconnected world. A few of the Democratic Presidential candidates understand this, but Obama has gone further than most in terms of how he would upset the prevailing foreign policy conversation.

The great project of the foreign-policy world in the last few years has been to think through a “post-post-9/11 strategy,” in the words of the Princeton Project on National Security, a study that brought together many of the foreign-policy thinkers of both parties. Such a strategy, the experts concluded, must, like “a Swiss Army knife,” offer different tools for different situations, rather than only the sharp edge of a blade; must pay close attention to “how others may perceive us differently than we perceive ourselves, no matter how good our intentions”; must recognize that other nations may legitimately care more about their neighbors or their access to resources than about terrorism; and must be “grounded in hope, not fear.” A post-post-9/11 strategy must harness the forces of globalization while honestly addressing the growing “perception of unfairness” around the world; must actively promote, not just democracy, but “a world of liberty under law”; and must renew multilateral instruments like the United Nations.

In mainstream foreign-policy circles, Barack Obama is seen as the true bearer of this vision. “There are maybe 200 people on the Democratic side who think about foreign policy for a living,” as one such figure, himself unaffiliated with a campaign, estimates. “The vast majority have thrown in their lot with Obama.” Hillary Clinton’s inner circle consists of the senior-most figures from her husband’s second term in office — the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the former national security adviser Sandy Berger and the former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke. But drill down into one of Washington’s foreign-policy hives, whether the Carnegie Endowment or the Brookings Institution or Georgetown University, and you’re bound to hit Obama supporters. Most of them served in the Clinton administration, too, and thus might be expected to support Hillary Clinton. But many of these younger and generally more liberal figures have decamped to Obama. And they are ardent. As Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council official under President Clinton who now heads up a team advising Obama on nonproliferation issues, puts it, “There’s a feeling that this is a guy who’s going to help us transform the way America deals with the world.” Ex-Clintonites in Obama’s inner circle also include the president’s former lawyer, Greg Craig, and Richard Danzig, his Navy secretary.

This idea that Obama, or any candidate not named Clinton, would lack experience and needs to "hit the ground running" as President is a little daft. We would see many of the same players in top diplomatic and foreign policy posts no matter who the Democrats select. The difference is that under Obama, there would be a freshness of thinking, a game-changing step out of the silly battles of the 1960s and into a multilateral, multiracial, globalized world. That has important ramifications for American security, and positive ones.

I don't want to leave out what are some of the other potentially transformative signals that Democratic candidates have made, particularly on the doctrine of pre-emption. This is from a John Edwards speech:

But there is a difference between doing everything in our power to keep America safe and a reckless, belligerent policy that actually makes us less safe. The preventive war doctrine was a stunning departure from the policy that had kept America safe during both world wars and during the Cold War. It is wrong on the merits, wrong on the morals, and wrong for America.

This goes beyond merely invalidating pre-emption. It resets the idea of looking at the world from a position of weakness versus a position of strength, assuming hope rather than fear. The facts are not as fearful about Iran, for example, as those who want to exploit the crisis make them appear. Iran still shows no evidence of a nuclear weapons program, at least according to experts. It is not providing weapons on the border, certainly not to the degree that the US military has claimed, if at all. It has in the recent past sought a negotiated settlement to its differences with the United States, and helped the coalition effort in Afghanistan in 2002 prior to being labeled part of the "axis of evil." A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is being withheld for nakedly political reasons, because the truth of them not being that much of a threat doesn't serve the hawkish interests of the Vice President.

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers [...]

According to IPS, the draft Iran NIE was reportedly completed a year ago, but the White House rejected it because it contained dissenting views. A former intelligence officer said, “They refused to come out with a version that had dissenting views in it.” [...]

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi told IPS that “intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.” The draft Iran NIE, for example, did not conclude that there was confirming evidence that Iran was arming the Shiite insurgents in Iraq, according to Giraldi.

That's obviously a position of weakness. If you have to spend that many drafts to make your case, if you have to elbow out dissenting opinion, you don't really have an argument. By resetting that to focus on areas of agreement and mutual beneficial relationships instead of areas of disagreement as pretexts for war, you change completely the situation with regard to Iraq, and with regard to our allies in the world. You foster trust and mutual understanding. Unilateral military action to deal with threats that could be negotiated or contained has been a FAILURE, completely and totally. Obama (and to a lesser extent Edwards) would invalidate this way of looking at national security, which is backwards and makes us less secure.