The Belligerent vs. the Naif?
By Fred Hiatt
Monday, May 26, 2008; A17
On one level, the Obama-McCain smackdown over talking to dictators seems overblown.
John McCain knows that as president he would at times engage with adversaries. Barack Obama has now made clear that he would meet with dictators such as Raúl Castro only after "careful preparation" and with a "clear agenda" and "at a time and place of my choosing" and "only when we have an opportunity to advance the interests of the United States." So what's the big deal?
In fact, this argument is something of a teacup in a much larger tempest. It's a proxy, and it won't be the last, that allows the candidates to imply much bigger differences in worldview that they can't always state directly.
If Democratic foreign policy advisers were to speak honestly about McCain, they would call him bellicose and uncompromising, by philosophy and nature. His unwillingness to engage with Castro or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they would say, bespeaks an inflexibility unsuited to a complex world. His proposed League of Democracies proves he doesn't believe in the United Nations or other existing international institutions, insists on playing on his field and by his rules, and can't come to terms with regimes he does not like or with the transnational threats of the 21st century. His strong moralistic streak, they might say, blinded him to the risks of invading Iraq and will get the country in trouble again. His age, his record and his party all make it impossible for him to give the United States the fresh start in the world that it so desperately needs.
Republican advisers, by contrast, would call Obama naive and overconfident, a dangerous combination in international affairs. With his initial insouciance about talking with dictators, they might say, he overvalued his own charm and the power of reason and undervalued economic and military might and other forms of leverage. His insistence that Afghanistan is more vital than Iraq, a large, oil-rich Arab nation at the heart of the Middle East, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of national interest. And, they might say, he emerged from Hyde Park and academe with a sense that the United States on balance has done more harm than good in the world -- and that international laws and organizations that constrain American power therefore should be welcomed.
These are caricatures, of course. McCain is no warmonger, and Obama would not renounce American supremacy. Moreover, despite real differences, the imperatives and constraints of leadership would push them toward converging policies. It's striking that after seven years of trying to repudiate the foreign policy of the past, President Bush finds himself echoing President Bill Clinton's final year in so many ways: straining to bring the Israelis and Palestinians together; imploring the evil North Korean regime to honor a nuclear deal; regretting an unchecked genocide in Africa, this time in Darfur, not Rwanda; knowingly tolerating al-Qaeda redoubts that directly threaten the West -- only this time in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
Even campaigning, the candidates have reasons to move toward common ground. McCain will emphasize the importance of alliances and Obama will not be outflanked on his support for a strong military because Americans want both diplomacy and strength. Both will talk about promoting democracy and human rights because Americans want that, too. Neither candidate may deem it in his interest to focus on Iraq, which once looked certain to be the central issue of this campaign, since McCain supported a war that has taken more than 4,000 American lives and is now seen by most Americans as a terrible mistake, while Obama was wrong about the surge and is now committed to withdrawing troops just as they may be succeeding. Neither has a convincing formula for keeping Iran from going nuclear, but it would not be politically wise for either to talk about post-nuclear containment. So, at least for now, it may be difficult for them to engage on the big questions.
Moreover, the differences, real and caricatured, are also about instinct, character and experience, about how a president will react in a crisis, about the way he will come down on the closest calls. These are hard to debate, too. But voters, having watched a president evolve from a campaign pledge of humility in foreign affairs to a second inaugural promise to end tyranny on the planet, may have a sense of how vital those instincts are, as well as how difficult to predict.
So each candidate will keep looking for the slips he believes reveal his rival's true face behind the mask of consensus -- McCain's 100-years-in-Iraq comment, Obama's promise to meet with Ahmadinejad -- and will mine them for all they are worth, and then some. |
