A VIEW FROM UTOPIA: IMAGINING OBAMA’S FOREIGN POLICY
Victor Davis Hanson
Jewish Press, NY
April 30 2008
We know the critique of present American foreign policy under George
W. Bush – unilateralist and preemptive – and to some extent we know
Sen. Obama’s promised corrective – multilateral and reflective. So
let’s take a serious look at what exactly is wrong with the former,
and how things would substantially improve under the latter.
Let’s start with India. Indians poll pro-American by wide margins,
due no doubt to America’s unnecessary coddling of the world’s largest
democracy. If Sen. Obama acts on his complaints about the outsourcing
of U.S. jobs to India and institutes his anti-NAFTA preferences in
U.S. trade relations, India may finally receive the tough love it’s
been needing.
After all, didn’t President Bush give away the nuclear game with
India? Perhaps a President Obama will back out of existing agreements
in order to ensure that India does not receive advanced nuclear
technology. (In recompense, they’ll have little reason to complain,
relatively speaking: Sen. Obama has suggested the U.S. should
preemptively invade our ally Pakistan in order to hunt down Osama
bin Laden.)
And China – what are we doing wrong there? Its increasing appetite for
world resources means it cares not a whit what happens in the Sudan,
as long as it gets its oil. Some Chinese products, as Sen. Obama
reminds us, are shoddy and sometimes dangerous, no doubt a result of
our indiscriminate free-trade policy. The way China treats Tibetans
and Uyghur Muslims violates canons of human decency.
Will a President Obama protect American jobs, champion human rights,
and ensure fair and safe trade by redefining our relationship with
China, which holds a trillion dollars in U.S. government bonds?
Anti-Americanism runs rampant in Europe. Under an Obama administration,
should we expect friendlier governments than Sarkozy’s France
or Merkel’s Germany? Perhaps Obama might cancel that provocative
missile-defense system in Eastern Europe designed to stop an Iranian
nuclear guided missile.
Or will Sen. Obama try to save American jobs by nullifying contracts
with the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. to provide refueling
tankers to the U.S. Air Force? We can be sure he will embrace the
emissions-reduction targets set in the Kyoto accords; in that way,
he will encourage Europeans to do the same, since their repeated
failures in meeting their promised reductions must surely be laid at
Mr. Bush’s feet. The EU has been waiting for America to show the way.
Then there is Russia. Surely Obama will do something about Putin,
who seemed too cozy with Bush while he hijacked Russian democracy and
used his oil to bully Europe. Perhaps Obama can craft an ingenious
speech that will persuade the Kremlin’s ex-KGB kleptocrats to act
more civilly in the world, especially concerning their trafficking
with the likes of Iran and Syria.
Speaking of the Middle East, how will Obama restore American prestige
there and ameliorate the damage done in the Bush years? Perhaps he
could send Nancy Pelosi back to Syria to engage Mr. Assad? Or ask
the Democratic Congress to condemn Turkey for the Armenian genocide?
Will Obama’s fast-track pullout of Iraq, and his willingness to sit
down, without preconditions, with the mullahs of Iran, assure stability
in the region, and win the confidence of our Arab allies? Sens. Obama
and Clinton have both written epitaphs for the surge: why, then,
continue a failed policy?
Once Americans are out of Iraq by mid-2009, Iraqis themselves,
as Afghans, Cambodians, Somalis, Rwandans, and Yugoslavs have done
before them, can work out their differences on their own. And since we
were always the gratuitous targets that created terrorists ex nihilo,
no doubt Dr. Zawahiri and President Ahmadinejad will move on to other
Great Satans, once they see that those provocative American GIs have
turned tail and fled their neighborhoods.
Since it is self-evident that the absence of another 9/11-like
attack here at home was a fluke – and had nothing to do either with
Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, wiretaps, the destruction of Al Qaeda
bases in Afghanistan, or the annihilation of Wahhabi terrorists in
Iraq – President Obama will be free to shut down all such legally
dubious homeland-security measures. This will reassure Americans and
Europeans that those efforts were both unnecessary and antithetical to
our values. There never was, and won’t be, any danger of another 9/11.
Since NAFTA was a sellout of American workers, President Obama can,
as he seems to promise, withdraw from the association and restore
tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods, while ending our xenophobic
paranoia about "secure borders" – especially silly ideas like fences
and walls. There would be no need to extend NAFTA-like accords
to Colombia, and we should also reexamine sweetheart deals with
Middle-Eastern countries like Jordan.
The world between 1992-2000 is the model we are to emulate,
it seems. The world was much safer then before George W. Bush’s
indiscriminate wars and it can be so again. In those golden days,
the U.S. rightly contextualized "random" terrorist acts – making the
proper distinctions between war and "police matters."
Yes, it’s true that thousands of American soldiers died in those
peaceful days – about 7,500 between 1993-2000 – but they did so in
noncombatant-related operations. Back then, our experts appreciated
the hard lines and firewalls that separated Hizbullah from Iran,
Sunni terrorists from Shiite killers, and were always careful not to
overreact and turn mere responses into needless wars.
In extremis, we can employ tried-and-true tools like no-fly zones,
oil-for-food embargoes, UN sanctions, and the occasional cruise
missile, avoiding the mess of President Karzai’s Afghanistan or
President Maliki’s Iraq, and the peripheral blowback involving a
jittery Libya, Syria, and Pakistan’s Dr. A. Q. Khan.
Presently the United States does the world’s heavy lifting under
a Texan who says "nucular." But soon it may well be charmed and
mesmerized by a smooth-talking icon who raises trade barriers,
leaves the Middle East to the Middle East, gets tough on China and
India, relaxes relations with Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela,
while redefining existing ones with Pakistan – and says to Europe,
"We’re right behind you!"
Let’s hope it will be as pleasant to see the results as it has been
to listen to the utopian rhetoric.
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution,
the author of several bestselling works of nonfiction including,
most recently, "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans
Fought the Peloponnesian War," and a regular contributor to National
Review Online, where this essay first appeared.