Foreign policy realism

If you're a liberal, and if you read this editorial by Robert Kagan in the Washington Post, and you're pissed off, I feel your pain. After all, the editorial's premise seems to contradict one of the major rationales for tossing the Republicans out of office - namely, that Democrats could get us out of the foreign policy mess in which we are currently mired.

Kagan asserts that, apart from differences in tone and differences in implementation, a Democratic foreign policy would not be radically different from Bush's:

Since the only post-Sept. 11 foreign policy Americans know is Bush's, many believe -- especially many Democrats -- that if only Bush weren't president, the world would be manageable again. Allies could be easily summoned for the struggle against al-Qaeda or to bring pressure on Iran or to replace American troops in Iraq. Threats could be addressed without force, through skillful diplomacy and soft power. Maybe some of the threats would disappear.
This is fantasy. The next president, whether Democrat or Republican, may work better with allies and may be more clever in negotiating with adversaries. But the realities of the world are what they are, and the imperatives of U.S. foreign policy are what they are. The diffuse threats of the post-Cold War world simply don't unite and energize our European allies as the Soviet Union did, and even a dedicated "multilateralist" won't be able to get them to spend more money on defense or stop buying oil from Iran. A smarter negotiating strategy toward Iran might or might not make a difference in stopping its weapons program. Soft power will go only so far in dealing with problems such as North Korea and Sudan.
In fact, the options open to any new administration are never as broad as its supporters imagine, which is why, historically, there is more continuity than discontinuity in American foreign policy. If the Democrats did take office in 2009, their approach to the post-Sept. 11 world would be marginally different but not stunningly different from Bush's.

If you read that and yelled "What the [deleted]?!!!", you're probably not alone. After all, since it's Bush's disastrous incompetence that got us where we are today, it stands to reason that a less incompetent Democrat would be able to turn things around 180 degrees, right?

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. I hate to say it, but Kagan's pretty much right.

Note: I'm not claiming that a Democratic foreign policy would have been similar to Bush's over the last six years. If Al Gore had been elected, he would have almost certainly not gone to war in Iraq (though he might have gone to war in Korea, as Clinton almost did in 1994). Iraq has been far and away our biggest blunder, and I don't think a Democrat would have made it. I also think a Democrat wouldn't have pulled out of the ABM Treaty - a smaller but noticeable Bush mistake.

But 2006 is not 2003. Kerry's near-victory in 2004 spurred Bush to put his foreign policy in the hands of Condoleeza Rice. In the last two years, she has pushed American foreign-policy back toward its traditional default course, the "realist"/"pragmatist" approach. Under Rice, we have made steps toward mending our relations with Europe - note how much they're helping us on Iran. We've courted democratic Muslim allies like Indonesia, and made Southeast Asia much more of a focus than before.

So, when I examine the U.S.' foreign policy challenges one by one, I have to conclude that a Democratic president wouldn't radically alter Bush's current approach to any of our main foreign policy challenges. A Democrat in the White House would probably:

1. Initiate a slow withdrawal from Iraq
2. Stay the course in Afghanistan
3. Continue to encourage nations of the Former Soviet Union to go democratic
4. Continue to engage but warily hedge against China
5. Try to mend fences with Western Europe and improve our image in those countries
6. Engage in negotiations with Iran but use airstrikes if they won't give up their nuclear program
7. Push for a peace treaty to diffuse tensions with North Korea
8. Expand and deepend the U.S.' alliances and involvement in Asia
9. Pressure China to loosen its exchange rate
10. Push global institutions like the UN and World Bank to reform themselves

These are all things that the Bush Administration is currently trying to do. I didn't say Bush is doing these things well, or even using the right tactics, but this is the general shape of American foreign policy, and would remain largely intact under a Democratic administration.

The only major change that I can contemplate would be a much more rapid withdrawal from Iraq. Prominent Democrats like John Murtha and Russ Feingold have certainly called for just that, and the "netroots" blogosphere almost monomaniacally supports full immediate withdrawal. But I doubt that Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or any other realistic Democratic presidential candidate would take such a risky approach. Democrats would never have gotten us into the Iraq mess, but most believe that a too-abrupt pullout would compound the mistake.

But suppose that Kagan and I are right, and that a Democratic president won't pull any sharp turns on foreign policy. Does that mean that there's no foreign-policy rationale for voting Democratic in 2006 and 2008? [Deleted] no!!

The biggest differences between a Democrat and Bush would be tone and implementation. These sound cosmetic, but they actually can be far more important to foreign policy than overall direction. Bush's unilateral Iraq attack did inflame anti-American sentiment, but some of that sentiment has been due to Bush's arrogant "I-know-better-than-you" posturing, Rumsfeld's dismissal of "Old Europe," and a general failure of the U.S. to promote its image in the world. Clinton's unilateral bombings of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sudan didn't arouse the world's hatred, nor did his interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. A Democratic president, by substituting public humility for Bush's smirking arrogance, would reduce anti-Americanism over time.

Implementation is even more important than tone. Bush has precisely one semi-competent employee working on foreign policy, and that's Condi Rice; a Democrat, drawing on Clinton's uber-competent (i.e. non-hack) policy teams, would be in a much better position to actually realize our goals. I'm not an expert, but evidence of the blundering incompetence, gaffes, misestimations, corruption, and general awfulness of the Bush team is legendary.

Better policy requires better policies - to draw down anti-American sentiment in Europe, Asia, and Latin America faster and better, to stabilize Afghanistan, to build a framework of alliances in Asia, to encourage moderate Islam all over the world, and to bring down oil prices. Bush seems to want to do a lot of these things, but he seems to be flat-out unable to do any of them; that's what a Democrat would (hopefully) change.

So, the upshot is: Vote Democrat, and keep voting Democrat. America doesn't need a total course correction so much as we need someone at the wheel who actually has two hands to steer.


PS - One of the most significant, and underrated, elements of Bush's foreign policy has been the India nuclear deal. This is one thing that I'm not sure Gore would have done in Bush's place, but it's a very good and important step toward keeping the world balance of power firmly in the hands of democracy, as well as keeping the nuclear nonproliferation regime viable. Any Democratic President and Congress should continue to push this deal, or a very close equivalent. Fortunately, as Wesley Clark notes, it looks like Congress is warming to the idea.