No Nonsense
Obama's foreign policy stance
EVEN though Senator Barack Obama is not yet the official presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, he is already in a fierce debate with President George Bush and his possible successor Republican Party's presumptive nominee Senator John McCain about diplomacy versus confrontation with countries such as Iran and North Korea. John McCain has already accused former president Clinton of "appeasement" for engaging North Korea, instead calling for "rogue state rollback." The heated controversy about terming "negotiation as appeasement" sparked up on May 15 immediately after President Bush's address before Israel's parliament. He said that leaders who sought to "negotiate with the terrorists and radicals" were making the same mistake British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and other European leaders made by trying to negotiate with Adolph Hitler in the 1930s. He added: "We have an obligation to call this what it is the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." These comments were widely perceived as an attack on Senator Obama, whose negotiating stance with rogue state leaders is premised on former President John F. Kennedy's off quoted statement: "We shall never negotiate out of fear, and we shall never fear to negotiate." Last July, when asked whether he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea "without precondition," Senator Obama answered: "I would. And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration is ridiculous." Peter Scoblic, editor of the New Republic argues: "But if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight." There is "solid ground for debate," said USA Today in an editorial, about whether the US president should meet with "leaders of renegade nations such as Iran and North Korea." But Bush's confrontational rhetoric "to demonise the whole concept of talking to enemies is preposterous," added the editorial. Hard diplomacy helped avert a "nuclear holocaust" during the Cold War, among other "notable successes," and even Bush is now negotiating with North Korea over dismantling its nuclear weapons program. "Negotiation is not a policy," said former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton in The Wall Street Journal. "It is a technique"one whose outcome is a function of many minute details, like goals and preconditions. Bolton thinks negotiating with leaders like Iran's President Ahmadinejad confers "legitimacy and international acceptability," both "qualities terrorists crave." Differing with Bolton and other conservatives, influential conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan in Real Clear Poitics.com said: "Chamberlain-Hitler summit at Munich (1938) proved a disaster," but other face-to-face negotiations by Reagan, Kennedy, Nixon, Eisenhower, and Bush Sr. produced positive outcomes. "Those presidents are all deluded fools? Meanwhile, what has Bush's refusal to talk to Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and others done to make either Israel or America more secure?" Buchanan wondered. "He's made both the US and Israel less secure, and that's why Bush is more a Chamberlain than a Winston Churchill," said Matthew Duss in the British daily The Guardian. The modern conservative movement in its simplest manifestation is rooted in the belief of isolating and punishing those in disagreement with it, and challenges their views of the world and events instead of engaging in dialogue and diplomacy for reconciliation and peaceful co-existence. If the conservatives had their way, the world would have witnessed a nuclear holocaust propelled by the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 15 -- October 28, 1962). We may not forget that it was the Cuban missile crisis, which spurred the creation of the Moscow-Washington hot linea direct communications link to resolve crisis before war like specters arise. The conservatives would have liked to seen an accelerated arms race with the Soviets rather than signing of the two Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties SALT-1 (1972) and SALT -11 (1979), which they dubbed as appeasing the Soviets. The Bush administration's sanctions, bellicose posture, and name calling (axis of evil) neither deterred N. Korea from developing and successfully testing it's nuclear weapon nor diminished Iran's resolve to strengthen its uranium enrichment program. On the other hand, negotiation with Tripoli made Libya's Muammar Gaddafi dismantle its nuclear ambition. The dropped-out contender for the Republican Party's presidential nominee, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, said that the next US president would face three key foreign policy challenges. Setting a course for victory in the terrorists' war on global order. Strengthening the international system that the terrorists seek to destroy. Extending the benefits of the international system in an ever-widening arc of security and stability across the globe. He suggested that the most effective means for achieving these goals were building a stronger defence, developing a determined diplomacy, and expanding economic and cultural influence. For the past half century, conservatives have branded every enemy as a Hitler, and those who refuse to see the dangers through their eyes are cast as Chamberlains. But by invading Iraq, Bush has eliminated Iran's archenemy and made her an influential power, while diminishing US influence and credibility in the region. Anne Applebaum in the influential blog Slate.com said all that could be said. Everyone, from Bush to Vladimir Putin to Bill Clinton (and now Bush), dragged the Nazis into current political debate, whether they belonged there or not. Such incendiary invocations, including calling "Bush a Hitler," haven't achieved anything, and equating people who want to negotiate with Iran "the moral equivalent of Vichy collaborators is ridiculous." It's been 70 years. Let's finally put the "ghosts" of Chamberlain and company "to rest." Records show that conservatism's historical performance is nothing but dismal and destructive. Senator Obama's stance, and penchant to give negotiation a chance to resolve conflicts, seems only sensible. Conservative war hawks must realise that it is 2008 -- not 1938. We hope that the chilling effect of the Bush years will come to an end in November. Senator Obama's presidential victory is expected to provide the US an opening for a fresh starta reason for nations that not long ago cherished America's goodness as the world's lone remaining superpower.
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