Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Charles W. Maynes, former editor of Foreign Policy:
A colleague who spent his teenage years in Baghdad during the 1960s recalls his experience with Iraqi nationalism: He would go horseback riding along the Euphrates, and young Iraqi children, holding rocks, would demand to know if he was British. When he said, "American," he could pass unharmed.
The number of places in the Islamic world where an American can prudently venture out alone is fast dwindling. Beyond political and economic concerns, such a shift in attitudes poses a strategic concern: Today thousands of terrorists violently opposed to U.S. policies in the Middle East find shelter within the Islamic world, much of which strongly disapproves of U.S. policy. A recent poll by the Pew Global Attitudes survey foud that "True dislike, if not hatred, of America is concentrated in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and in Central Asia, today's areas of greatest conflict."
Kerry-Edwards must make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a priority. The principal reason cited for growing antipathy against the U.S. is its support for Israeli policy in the occupied territories. A close second is a backlash against the U.S.-led war on terror. Unless we change attitudes held by so many in the Islamic world, the United States stands little chance of eliminating the strategic threat posed by terrorist groups determined to strike the United States. We cannot find isolated enemies hiding among a billion people.
It is delusional to believe the U.S. can change these attitudes through better public relations alone -- policy must shift. The U.S. should take up the offer of Jordan and Yemen to send troops to Iraq and encourage other Arab states to follow suit. It should realize that NATO is unlikely to play a positive role in a nationalistic Iraq and think of other ways that NATO could be useful. One would be a NATO security pledge for Israel within its 1967 borders. Once that commitment to Israel is firm, the West must strongly discourage Israel from further colonization of the West Bank. Each new step there only places another obstacle in the path of U.S. efforts to control and eliminate Islamic terrorism, and thus to reduce a direct danger to the United States.
Sherle Schwenninger, senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at New School University:
John Kerry's allegiance to the "multilateralism-if-we-can, unilateralism-if-we must" school of American foreign policy will clearly improve the atmospherics of America's relations with the world. But this alone will not restore American respect or regain American influence, which has suffered greatly under the Bush administration. In fact, the causes of America's loss of respect and influence go much deeper -- to changed perceptions of American power and virtue and to the direction of American policy, particularly as it relates to the war on terrorism and the Middle East.
For much of the past decade and half, we have benefited from an inflated sense of our power and influence -- a foreign policy bubble, if you will -- which much of the rest of the world bought into. So it has been especially damaging to our position for other major countries to see just how recklessly we can use that power and just how limited it can be in achieving declared American policy objectives. The Bush administration's inability to stabilize Afghanistan and to subdue the insurgency in Iraq has revealed the limits of American military force. Even these limited military engagements have stretched American forces thin, thus making any threats against North Korea, Iran and Syria look increasingly hollow.
This bursting of our military supremacy bubble comes on the heels of a similar decline in America's international economic influence. Against their better judgment, emerging economies in Asia and Latin America went along with the Robert Rubin-Larry Summers program of financial liberalization, which contributed to the Asian financial crisis. Now American policy advice is suspect in much of the world, and the American economy is even more dependent on mercantilist China and Japan, to buy U.S. treasuries to fund our war in Iraq.
Washington's self-declared war on terrorism has also contributed to the loss of influence because it has changed the balance of interest and influence between the United States and its allies, most of which do not share Washington's obsession with the terrorist threat or with rogue states like Iran. Because of this obsession, we now need our partners in Europe and Asia much more than they need us. It does not help that they also believe that our policies in the Middle East are misguided, and that we are too indulgent toward Israel's destructive approach to the Palestinians and have made ourselves hostage to the backward-looking Saudi monarchy to control the price of world oil, both of which are seen as the cause for much of the Islamic extremism gathering force in the Greater Middle East.
James Chace, director of the Globalization and International Affairs Program at Bard College; author of "1912: The Election That Changed the Country":
The United States must pursue a solvent foreign policy that responds to the vital interests of the nation. Rather than embracing the idea that a democratic Iraq can become a model for other Middle Eastern countries, John Kerry should put greater efforts into distancing the United States from autocratic regimes. The White House can press for reform in those countries by cutting back on military sales and economic aid. Egypt, for example, ranks second to Israel as a recipient of U.S. aid.
Conversely, a Kerry administration can reward countries for liberalizing their economies and their political institutions. The United States simply cannot go on binding itself to reactionary regimes out of fear of instability in the region. If the White House chooses to pursue the path of democratic imperialism, the consequences will be endless wars.
Messianic efforts to imprint an American model of democracy on a global scale should not be the centerpiece of American foreign policy. Nonetheless, Washington cannot pursue a successful foreign policy without a moral component. A strategic rather than an ideological approach, however, not only advances the nation's interests but also seeks allies among governments and peoples who share those interests and values. The goal of a Kerry administration therefore should be to have a solvent foreign policy. Solvency in this respect means bringing our ends -- moral as well as physical -- to be compatible with our means.
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