My Foreign Policy Plan

To avoid the accusation that I can only criticize the leadership of my party and have no real ideas of my own, I am finally presenting the first of my foreign policy papers. I do not act like these are new or creative. But I do think they match with Democratic principles in most cases, although they might be a little hawkish.

One of my main concerns is how the Muslim world views us. What President Bush correctly realizes is that we have enemies out there whose only goal is our destruction. Many of these enemies do not need an excuse and will attack us no matter what we do. But there are some who turn to terrorism and violence because of a humiliation that our policies cause. Issues in Palestine and Lebanon, which stem from our unwavering support of Israel, are easy enough to change in the future and have major impacts on hatred for the US and the West. There is also the issue in Iraq, where an apparent casual disregard for Iraqi civilians both in military battles with Saddam’s military at first and then insurgents, as well as our inability to prevent the looting, have also harmed our image.

So there are some serious steps we can take in the future. First of all, and I am appalled that Democrats didn’t stand up when it was happening (note, when I say Democrats, I mean the leadership), we need to control Israel. I am not the type that excuses Palestinian violence on Israel. But conversely, that doesn’t mean Israel should be given free reign to “defend itself” either. The war in Lebanon was disgusting and definitely unprovoked (kidnapping an Israeli soldier in that war isn’t as bad as it sounds – it is a common tactic, implicitly tolerated, to get Hezbollah soldiers out of prison through prisoner exchanges). I have never before understood why Muslims would think we value their lives so much less until I watched that war unfold. Countless innocent civilians were killed as we talked about Israel’s precision bombing. I do have to recognize though that we made the same claims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in one of those situations I still supported our attacks. It is a little hypocritical of me, and I don’t exactly know how to reconcile that, except to say the war in Afghanistan was justified and this was not.

The biggest tragedy, and foreign policy mistake, was that Lebanon is one of two legitimate examples of democracy in the Middle East (along with Turkey) that could serve as role models if only we nourished them. What this means is that we need to prevent, at all costs, any thing that would destabilize these countries. To protect Lebanon, we need to tell Israel not to invade and destroy half of Beirut (and we can tell them that, we give them more per capita aid than we do any other country).

While we are at it, we need to get much more invested in the situation in Palestine. President Clinton got involved and made big strides – which were quickly erased as soon as both sides realized they didn’t actually have to stick to their end of the bargain (Israel continued to build settlements and Palestine continued bombings). With the right amount of pressure we might again be able to make progress, while also showing that we care about the plight of the Palestinian people.

To ensure Turkey’s stability, we need to prevent civil war in Iraq because it would turn into a regional war. Turkey has long said that it will prevent its Kurdish population form seceding to join an independent Kurdistan, which is only a likely possibility if Iraq falls apart. While I understand the desire to make plans to leave Iraq, it bothers me that Democrats are in such a hurry to leave. I don’t like Bush’s mantra of staying the course, but I think patience is extremely wise. The violence right now is only a glimpse of what it could be. Shiite militias, those loyal to Iran as well as those loyal to Sadr, have been biding their time waiting for the US to leave. They have very strong military capabilities, and a premature departure could make them more willing to exercise that to gain power or even separation. The best thing we can do now is to continue to make it clear that we will leave soon, while not making a mad dash for the door without care to who runs the house.

Another major issue that is approaching us is Iran’s nuclear ambitions. While they claim they only want the technology, it is pretty clear that is a lie. And while everyone agrees that they shouldn’t be allowed to have nuclear weapons, we need to decide what to do if they don’t listen to us and how soon to do it. There are already plenty of conservatives who want to use missile strikes to take out their processing facilities. This worked on Saddam before the Bush invasion, but Iran can do much more damage to us than he could. While we are still in Iraq, Iran can choose to be more involved and create a much more violent situation there. They have real power over us, and we need to acknowledge that as we decide how to deal with them.

This is the main reason why I am disappointed over the Iraq debate. We need to be prepared to talk about containment or we risk being left out when the administration makes the decision to attack. Containment should be tried with Iran as best as possible. As part of this strategy, we should be willing to talk with them to see if they really want to be a partner with the West, but we should be ready to use sanctions.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions are a very difficult situation, and every time we think about calling a hearing to talk about pre-war intelligence we risk looking back when we need to be looking forward. One of the main obstacles to containment is that sanctions will not be as powerful. Iran is overflowing with oil revenue, which will make them better able to deal with sanctions. In the end, we might need to decide which is worse, a nuclear Iran, or the conflict that could ensue if we do launch an attack on them. After all, North Korea and China are both nuclear, and we didn’t risk attacking them.

After Iraq

While I strongly advocate for patience in Iraq, I realize that there will most likely be significant troop reductions over the next two to three years at the longest. This begs the question about what is to be done with our military in the future. Hopefully we have learned that nation-building (which Governor George W. Bush opposed when he was running for president in 2000) is much more difficult than we thought. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon it altogether. In fact, my main reason for opposing the War in Iraq was that I thought we needed to maintain troop presence in Afghanistan to help guide it to democracy. That may be a lost cause now, but I believe it would have worked had we stayed. After Iraq, maybe we will need to redeploy some troops to Afghanistan to see if we can get more control over the country (a bigger goal than just eliminating Bin Laden).

We also need to be prepared to use our military in other major conflicts around the world, something we are not capable of right now. If we were not tied up in Iraq, we might be able to be providing a much bigger presence in Lebanon, helping them disarm Hezbollah. More importantly, we could be in Darfur. I believe that Bush really does want to do the right think in Darfur. He has done more than Clinton did in Rwanda (which doesn’t say much) by actually talking about it as well as acknowledging that it is a genocide. But while we are in Iraq, we don’t have the troops to send there. Instead we have to rely on the other NATO countries or the UN to get around to sending troops. There is hope that they might go within a month or so, but they are long overdue.

When we have our troops freed up again, we can lead the way into these countries instead of waiting for the UN to move. To find precedent for this we need only look to Bosnia. One thing we need to do though is drop the rhetoric that we need UN support for any move we make. As the conservatives pointed out before Iraq, the UN does not always act in our best interests, or the best interests of people in the middle of a humanitarian crisis. For the right reasons, we should be willing to ignore the UN.

Right now, Sudan is saying they will not admit UN troops to their country. As of right now, the UN is unwilling to violate a nation’s sovereignty to protect people of that country. Kofi Annan might be willing to move in that direction, but we must not even hesitate. Sudan has no right to prevent us from getting involved, and the threat should be that if they try to stop us, we will do more than protect their citizens, but we will attack them and their gun-ships that have supported the janjaweed.

The more I learn about the many crises in the world, the more I think we need to get involved, militarily if necessary. While Donald Rumsfeld thinks our military needs to be smaller and more agile (which was a miserable failure in Iraq), I see the future of military conflict as peacekeeping missions which will require more troops not less. Some conflicts will clearly be in our best interest, as peacekeeping in Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and even Palestine would be. But others won’t, like Darfur and other African conflicts. I hope that we can advocate for all of these though, because the countries we hope will grow out of their third-world status can only do so if security exists.

I focused this post on military foreign policy only because I think we need to have a strong position on what we want our military to do. In another post I hope to lay out what our aid and economic efforts should do. I hope that just because I am not including them in this post, I don’t give the impression that I think that is less important. In fact, as Truman rightly understood, improved economic status where people can raise a family in comfort will dramatically work to fight the embarrassment and anger that is often so easily turned on the West.