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August 24, 2007
Open policy
Over the past few weeks, amid of the summer's political doldrums, the 2008 presidential campaign has heated up. On the Democratic side, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has found his foreign policy views placed under increasing scrutiny by his competitors and by electorates in the early-voting primary states. First, during a Democratic debate, Obama expressed his willingness to meet with unfriendly foreign leaders. The next week, Obama gave a speech in which he suggested that he would strike high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan as president. Finally, a few days later, he let slip his objection to using nuclear weapons against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Critics interpreted these episodes as evidence that Obama was naïve, irresponsible, or just plain unprepared. But taken together, Obama's pronouncements can be seen as constituting a broad critique of the largely opaque manner in which the Untied States has conducted its foreign policy for decades. His campaign is mining this critique for all its political value, framing it as a debate between “common sense” and “conventional Washington thinking.” Says Obama, “It's time to turn the page on conventional foreign policy thinking.” Perhaps the more relevant question, however, is whether the critique has any practical value.
“Conventional Washington thinking,” as defined by Obama, is manifested through a time-tested means of conducting foreign policy. Such an approach has a long history, but really came into its own during the Cold War, when slight diplomatic miscues could upset the delicate balance of power between the United States and Soviet Union. In the dawn of the nuclear age, an entire vocabulary was developed to manage a foreign policy increasingly fraught with risks and consequences. In the diplomatic world, this vocabulary became familiar. The foreign policy establishment in government, business, and academia spoke mutually intelligible languages, and countries conducted business with each other in a well-orchestrated charade of communiqués, joint declarations, and multilateral resolutions.
This specialized, nuanced manner of conducting foreign policy essentially created an elite class of foreign policy practitioners that reigns to this day. Such foreign policy elitism possesses many inherent advantages. All the key players know the rough parameters of the debate and can easily self-regulate their diplomatic discourse. The opacity that comes from foreign policy elitism allows for a great degree of discretion; certain goals or objectives that are best kept secret can be obscured through the complexity of foreign policy discourse. Even when broad objectives are clear, diplomatic opacity can keep adversaries guessing regarding preferred methods or approaches—for example, an unfriendly regime is not sure if the United States will confront it with sanctions or with force.
When dealing with allies, too, foreign policy elitism has its advantages. The specialized vocabulary and expertise that define the foreign policy elite provides a venue and a means to communicate quickly and efficiently across international borders. Such elitism offers domestic political advantages, as well. It provides politicians with a ready-made means to control their foreign policy message and allows them to offer stock platitudes to describe their foreign policy views in a consistent manner. Once accepted by the electorate—which historically has viewed foreign policy as secondary to domestic concerns—such consistent salesmanship allows policymakers the freedom of maneuver on the international stage that they require.
Foreign policy elitism also has a negative side. In a republic, political transparency is more than just a virtue. It is an indispensable prerequisite of an honest government that is responsible to its constituents. To be sure, the complexity of modern public policy precludes absolute transparency—not all information can be made available to all citizens, and not all citizens would be able to evaluate policy information in a substantive manner. But the aphorism that “politics stops at the water's edge”—a reference to the supposed nonpartisan continuity of U.S. foreign policy—is easily abused. To make informed political decisions, citizens must engage (and be engaged) in an open and transparent debate about the foundations of U.S. foreign policymaking. Such a debate surely would highlight differences between political candidates and parties. But the argument that an open airing of such differences would severely harm U.S. interests overseas is difficult to support. The expertise offered by the foreign policy elite is surely required at the level of policy implementation, in much the same way that government requires a technocratic and bureaucratic class to manage complex domestic programs such as Social Security and Medicare. But at the point of policy formulation, republican government requires transparent, honest debate. To suggest that foreign policy should be immune from such a requirement strains credulity.
For example, when a presidential candidate is faced with a question about meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran or Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, the safe answer prescribed by the foreign policy elite would be a resounding “no.” Certainly, the foreign policy elite allows for some modest variation of that answer, to account for partisan politics. But the ultimate answer will always be the same, and for more or less the same reason: U.S. enemies could use diplomatic meetings as propaganda tools. The validity of this claim is never really tested—it is simply taken at face value. So when Obama provided an answer that contradicts the established views of the foreign policy elite, he presented a challenge that extended beyond partisan, presidential politics. The merits of his statement became obscured in the process.
The same is true with Obama's comments on U.S. nuclear policy, which has always been a particularly sacred issue with the foreign policy elite, and for good reason. The standard, public response to questions concerning U.S. nuclear posture has been to avoid addressing specific hypothetical scenarios. As with much of the foreign policy elite's thinking, the premise of this response is actually quite sound. A reliable nuclear deterrent is dependent upon U.S. adversaries believing that the United States would be willing to use nuclear weapons. If a nuclear-armed adversary doubted U.S. will in this regard, an attack on the United States could become much more plausible. But this traditional response to questions of U.S. nuclear policy needlessly stifles nuance for the sake of absolute consistency. For his part, Obama noted that he would not use nuclear weapons to attack al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On a gut level, Obama was right—the use of nuclear weapons in any setting is difficult to contemplate. And on a substantive, rational level, Obama was also right—nuclear weapons would be the wrong tool for the hypothetical job presented. But his response contradicted the traditions of the foreign policy elite, and for that reason alone, Obama's comments became controversial.
Obama's critics, and defenders of the foreign policy elite, suggest that international relations is a field that requires immense delicacy. Essentially, tone matters as much as substance, and words uttered in a domestic political campaign can easily be disseminated around the world and mistaken as quasi-official pronouncements of U.S. policy. This is surely a valid critique. Obama's expressed willingness to attack al Qaeda targets in Pakistan stirred protests in that country and earned pointed denunciations from its government. “It's a very irresponsible statement, that's all I can say," said Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khusheed Kasuri. "As the election campaign in America is heating up we would not like American candidates to fight their elections and contest elections at our expense." It's unclear if this suggests that U.S. political candidates should censor their thoughts on foreign policy when they contradict those of the Washington elite. But it does demonstrate that the United States faces a unique level of scrutiny that derives from its global standing. Local issues in this country can have consequences around the world, and politicians of all stripes need to be mindful of this reality.
The question of tone is also relevant in the domestic sense, amid the battlefields of presidential politics. Upon close inspection, it becomes clear that Obama's Democratic rivals do not disagree much with the substance of his positions. Seeking an opportunity for political gain, their critiques of his foreign policy pronouncements largely boil down to questions of tone: They don't disagree on the value of greater diplomacy, but on how open the United States should be in pursuing it; they don't disagree on the use of military force or nuclear weapons to fight al Qaeda, but on how clearly U.S. policy should be articulated. In one sense, this minimizes the recent debate surrounding Obama's foreign policy by placing it firmly within the realm of electoral politics. But tone matters in international relations, too, and as events in Pakistan demonstrated, allies and adversaries around the world are not ignorant about U.S. domestic politics. As the presidential campaign continues to unfold, and as the political bickering rises to a fever pitch, domestic and foreign audiences alike will be watching with a keen eye.
Foreign Policy Association, 24 August 2007
Posted by Daniel Widome at 02:25 PM to Trans-geographical, U. S. Politics
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