THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 97, April 14, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ROSE-COLORED FOREIGN POLICY
By Dr. Michael Rubin
OPTIMISM VERSUS REALISM IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY: DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERS' DISMISSAL OF REALISM &
THEIR ADOPTION OF THE MOST OPTIMISTIC ASSESSMENTS OF AMERICA'S ADVERSARIES IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS --
THE GREAT DANGER OF BIUILDING U.S. FOREIGN & NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY ON THE ASSUMPTION OF AN ADVERSARY'S
SINCERITY & GOOD WILL -- THE NEED FOR THE U.S.A. TO PREPARE FOR THE WORST & CONDUCT BOTH DIPLOMACY &
MILITARY PLANNING SIMULTANEOUSLY -- HOW THE DEMOCRATS CONFLATE FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS WITH
ADVOCACY & LIBERAL IDEOLOGY, SHORTCHANGE MILITARY PREPARATIONS, & UNDERMINE CONTAINMENT &
DETERRENCE OF U.S. ENEMIES
FULL STORY:
As Iraqis marked five years since Baghdad's fall on April 9, 2008, Democrats – including Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama – grilled General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Before the testimony, House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi warned General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker to avoid undue optimism: "We have to know the real ground truths
of what is happening there [in Iraq], not put a shine on events."
Among Democrats, it is conventional wisdom that the Bush administration rushed to war, botched planning and
ignored dissent. "Whether out of hubris or incompetence," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid explained, "the
President and his men willfully ignored the experts and sent our troops to battle unprepared for the consequences."
Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid have a point. When it comes to national security, it behooves us all to plan for the worst even
as we hope for the best. But now it appears that it is Democrats who are making the mistake of being too optimistic. On
Iran, North Korea, China, Russia and Venezuela, they dismiss realism and embrace the most optimistic assessments of
our adversaries.
In regards to Iran, they exculpate Tehran for shipping shaped charges to Iraq, sending weapons to the Taliban, and
harassing U.S. ships in international waters. Mr. Obama – embodying his party's naïve optimism – assumes Iran's good
faith on just about everything. Last week, he called for a "diplomatic surge" against Iran on the same day that Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted that Iran's nuclear advance marked "the beginning of the collapse of the
great powers."
In regards to North Korea, 15 years of good-faith diplomacy has destabilized East Asia. And now South Korea and
Japan live under a nuclear shadow. The problem is not a lack of diplomacy, but refusing to consider objective
assessments. In January, 2008, U.S. Special Envoy for Human rights in North Korea, Jay Lefkowitz, questioned
Pyongyang's adherence to nuclear agreements it has made with Washington. In response, U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice had his remarks erased from the State Department's Web site.
Not that policymakers should rush to embrace military action. Attacking Iran isn't a viable option because it would likely
only delay, not eliminate, Tehran's nuclear program. Risking the blowback from an attack would only be productive if
there was a strategy to use the interim period to end the threat posed by the regime's ideology. Until there is a
regime-change strategy, a military strike would merely allow politicians to put off conducting a serious national security
debate. An attack on North Korea would likely achieve little even while risking the loss of Seoul in a counterattack.
But, if military action is risky, the idea that planners should build policy on the assumption of an adversary's sincerity is
more dangerous. Even if the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is correct and that country halted its nuclear
program in recent years, it's still clear that socalled "reformist" governments in Iran invested billions of dollars in a covert
military nuclear program. And they did so at the very time when Europeans and the U.S. officials were engaging the
country in diplomacy and easing trade barriers.
Failing to prepare for the worst leads Western officials to sequence diplomacy and military planning, rather than conduct
both simultaneously, which adversaries exploit. As national security adviser in the run-up to the Iraq war, Ms. Rice
blocked postoccupation planning from occurring alongside prewar diplomacy. This hampered efforts to organize Iraq
immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Tehran had no such qualms, and broadcast Arabic-language television in
Iraq months before the U.S. did.
Ideally, diplomatic and economic coercion will force Iran and North Korea to comply with international norms. But, as
Democrats conflate analysis with advocacy, they shortchange military preparations, a stick that would make it more likely
that diplomacy will succeed.
By projecting good will onto our adversaries, Democrats also undermine containment and deterrence, the very strategies
necessary to prevent war. After all, both are military strategies, consisting of deployments, arms sales to allies, and the
longterm basing of U.S. troops abroad. Deterrence, as in the Cold War, requires that an adversary know beyond any
doubt that using a nuclear weapon will result in a nuclear counterattack.
Containing Iran requires military outreach to the moderate Arab states as well as to Israel and Azerbaijan. Containing China and
deterring North Korea requires embracing – militarily, economically, and diplomatically – Japan, Taiwan, India, and
Australia. Countering a resurgent Russia will require providing Poland, Romania, and the Baltics the same support once
given to West Germany. Realism requires embracing Colombia's recognition that Venezuela strongman Hugo Chávez's
bark may foreshadow his bite.
Democrats may be right to criticize the Bush administration for being too optimistic in setting its foreign policy. The irony
is that many Democrats in Congress are now making that very mistake themselves.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
The Far East & U.S. Foreign Policy
Russia & Other Former Soviet Republics
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in the Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2008, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/1881)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
April 14, 2008
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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