Holbrooke holds forth

During my freshman year of college, I had the opportunity to go to dinner with Richard Holbrooke, one of the Clinton Administration's foreign policy specialists. As you might predict, I basically monopolized his time at the dinner table. He's a serious man, realist, apolitical, and a keen student of history. He's a straightforward, unsubtle thinker, and he definitely has his prejudices - for example, he called Europeans "the most difficult people to deal with in the entire world." But a more dedicated, nonpartisan public servant you most likely will not find.

So when he writes an 8-page article in Foreign Affairs on the challenges facing the next president, in which he assesses the two candidates' strengths and weaknesses, I tend to take him seriously. Here's some of what he has to say.

On diplomacy and trade:

[T]he differences between Obama and McCain...are truly revealing, and...offer important insights into the values and styles of the two men, their profoundly divergent attitudes toward the role of diplomacy, and their contrasting visions for the United States. Obama's policy proposals -- whether on climate change, energy, Africa, Cuba, or Iran -- are forward-leaning; he proposes adjusting old and static policies to new and evolving realities. He emphasizes the need for diplomacy as the best way of enhancing U.S. power and influence. On trade, although McCain accuses Obama of neoprotectionism, in fact Obama argues for improving trade agreements to take into account elements such as labor and environmental standards -- improvements that would give them more domestic support.

In contrast, McCain's boldest proposals are neither new nor original: his vague "League of Democracies," for example, sounds like an expansion of an organization, the Community of Democracies, created by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that still exists but is virtually ignored by the current administration. Although McCain says his league "would not supplant the United Nations," he explicitly proposes that it take collective action when the UN does not...his "League," unlike the forum created by Albright, would be viewed by everyone as an attempt to create a rival to the UN. Recent conversations I have had with senior officials in many of the world's leading democracies confirm that not even the United States' closest allies -- let alone the world's largest democracy, India -- would support a new organization with such a mandate...

On most issues, with the important exception of climate change, McCain supports or takes harder-line positions than the Bush administration. (For example, he expressed deep skepticism about the partial agreement President Bush announced in late June on the halting of North Korea's nuclear weapons development.) Although McCain prefers to describe himself as a "realist" or, more recently, a "realistic idealist," looking broadly at his positions, it is impossible to ignore the many striking parallels between him and the so-called neoconservatives (many of whom are vocal and visible supporters of his candidacy).

On Iran:

Obama has said repeatedly that he is ready to have direct contacts with Iran at whatever level he thinks would be productive, not only on nuclear issues but also on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran's support for terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah (which Iran has equipped with tens of thousands of rockets aimed directly at Israel's heartland). McCain not only opposes such direct talks but also has famously said that the only thing worse than a war with Iran would be a nuclear Iran. Obama's forthright approach has been met with cries of alarm from McCain and his supporters, as though the very thought of talking to one's adversaries were in and of itself a sign of weakness, foreshadowing another Munich. This position is contradicted by decades of U.S. diplomacy with adversaries, through which U.S. leaders, backed by strength and power, reached agreements without weakening U.S. national security. Diplomacy is not appeasement. Winston Churchill knew this, Dwight Eisenhower knew it, and so did John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush...

Although McCain and his advisers have sometimes looked for ways to distance him from Bush, his position on Iran..is tougher than that of the Bush administration...Although both Bush and McCain attack Obama as weak, Obama's position is in fact closer to the traditional default position of almost everyone who has ever practiced or studied diplomacy or foreign policy. Even loyal pro-McCain Republicans, such as James Baker, Robert Gates (before he became secretary of defense), Henry Kissinger, and Brent Scowcroft have disagreed with the McCain position on Iran and Russia.

Holbrooke's position is pretty clear: Obama shows some signs of being reasonable on foreign policy, while McCain shows every possible sign of being unreasonable. I agree completely with this assessment.

Of course, conservatives - especially "neoconservatives" - will simply label Holbrooke a "liberal" (after all, he worked for Clinton) and use that as an excuse to completely ignore what he says. But anyone who addressed the man's points would find them extremely difficult to refute. McCain may have more foreign-policy experience than Obama, but that experience has apparently led McCain to take an unproductive approach toward almost every foreign-policy issue. McCain is also constrained by the unproductive approaches embraced by the Republican party. Either way, Obama's inexperience would clearly be less of a liability than McCain's combination of arrogance and xenophobia.

Update: Here is an article about Obama's little-noticed policy regarding Asian allies:

America’s Democrats who are gathering here to formally nominate Barack Obama as their presidential candidate for 2008 will vote on Tuesday to approve a document that will mandate him to go beyond cosmetic “bilateral agreements, occasional summits and ad hoc diplomatic arrangements” in engaging India if he is elected President...

The platform seeks to bring the US, India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines in a closely-knit relationship “in order to create a stable and prosperous Asia”.

The platform will be voted on at the Democratic national convention here on Tuesday as the third most important item on the convention agenda.

It is clear from the paragraphs on India in the document that there is now a consensus in America that “as two of the world’s great multi-ethnic democracies, the US and India are natural strategic allies and we must work together to advance our common interests and to combat the common threats of the 21st century”...

[That]is a signal that most Americans now see India as a global strategic partner irrespective of who is in the White House...

[The platform] goes on to assure the world that an Obama presidency is “committed to US engagement in Asia. This begins with maintaining strong relationships with allies like Japan, Australia, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines and deepening our ties to vital democratic partners, like India”.

That is EXACTLY what I like to hear!!