The New York Sun  |  June 11, 2008

Talking To Tyrants

By Nicholas Wapshott

The clearest contrast between an America led by Senator McCain and one led by Senator Obama can be found in the foreign and security goals they have set themselves for their first year in office.

In Charleston, S.C., in July Mr. Obama was asked whether he would in his first year hold face-to-face meetings "without preconditions" with the tyrants running Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea. 

He replied, "I would. And the reason is this: the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous."

"He claimed, though it is a curious reading of events, that President Reagan "constantly spoke to the Soviet Union at a time when he called them an evil empire." As for today's dictators, Mr. Obama said, "I think that it is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them."

Mr. Obama has wriggled around the topic since, claiming that all along he meant that his meetings would be presaged by intense "preparations," but his approach remains riddled with contradictions. While he is willing to talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar al-Assad, who finance and harbor terrorists and wish the state of Israel to be destroyed, he says will not meet with the Hamas leadership until they renounce terrorism and accept the right of Israel to exist.

Meanwhile, last month Mr. McCain addressed the fellows of the Hoover Institution, telling them he would in his first year "call a summit of the world's democracies" to "start bringing democratic peoples and nations from around the world into one common organization, a worldwide League of Democracies."

Mr. McCain's idea stems from an understanding that the utopian principles of the United Nations, forged by Franklin Roosevelt in the dying days of World War II, have been persistently betrayed by its nation members and its bureaucracy, leaving it in a state of discredited, sclerotic impotence.

Mr. McCain is an old man in a hurry. He acknowledges that the U.N. cannot be supplanted, but he has no time to wait for it to be reformed, nor is he willing to tolerate the current inertia. Instead, carefully avoiding the fashionable term "Anglosphere" and its unfortunate racial and colonial connotations, he suggests working with countries who share America's sense of responsibility for guiding the fate of the world.

The thought of yet another international diplomatic organization hardly causes the heart to race and the prospect of Mr. McCain's League coming to fruition is remote. President Bush discovered the difficulty of rallying a coalition of the willing to oust Saddam Hussein, even though many leaders, including those of France and Germany, believed he held weapons of mass destruction.

In the wake of the unpopularity of the Iraq War in Europe and elsewhere, many countries are likely to continue to be wary of joining a standing American led alliance.

But beyond Mr. McCain's big idea is robust language that shows Mr. Obama will find it difficult to implement his core strategy against his rival: to paint him as a mere clone of President Bush. The Arizona senator is determined to distance himself from the president's diplomatic and military unilateralism.

"The war on terror cannot be the only organizing principle of American foreign policy," Mr. McCain declared. "We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves. Nor do we want to," he said, adding, "We Americans must be willing to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies," and, "Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want."

He considers the abandonment of the Geneva Conventions and the resort to torture by the Bush administration to be profound errors. "We must champion the Geneva Conventions. ... It is profoundly in our interest to do so, since our failure to abide by these rules puts our own soldiers at risk." And, in a flick to his early advocacy of the surge in Iraq, "We must never again launch a military operation with too few troops to complete the mission."

He hinted at greater emphasis on public diplomacy, an overall reform of America's intelligence communities, "a diplomatic corps that understands stability does not mean supporting dictatorships," foreign aid provided only in exchange for good governance, "transparent, accountable and effective" defense procurement replacing no-bid contracts, and, in a clear reference to the failures of the Katrina rescue, "civilian defense leadership that is held accountable for results and provides the resources necessary to achieve results."

Which approach to the first year in office is more likely to produce results? Both the rush to embrace foreign despots and the appeal to form a new club of democratic countries to fix the world's problems seem out of touch with reality. Both run the risk of inviting disappointment and embarrassment early in the life of the new presidency. But the plans reveal an important difference between the two men.

Mr. Obama has enormous powers of charm and persuasion, yet he knows already he will never be able to make Presidents Ahmadinejad and Assad abandon their anti-Semitism or their desire to eradicate the state of Israel, nor will he be able to budge Hugo Chávez, Raúl Castro, and Kim Jong-il from their devotion to authoritarian communism. His theatrical proposal, then, is little more than posturing.

Mr. McCain may suspect that his League of Democracies is unlikely to come about, but his invitation to work together rather than do nothing will stand as a public rebuke to those leaders who wring their hands while thousands of people of Darfur and Burma die or while Iran continues to build a nuclear weapon. It is, perhaps, better to try to cajole reluctant democratic leaders into action than to waste time flattering tyrants under the glare of the television lights.

Original article here.