| No Better than Bush |
22 December 2003
|
Dean's Foreign Policy Just Lacks Policy
Having had Al Gore's endorsement overshadowed by the capture of Saddam Hussein, Governor Howard Dean tried to put out a "major" foreign policy speech before the Pacific Council in LA. The Governor believes in the traditional multi-lateralist approach that is mainstream for Democrats, and he believes in better intelligence. Fewer ex-Soviet nukes and more AIDS spending in Africa are nice ideas, too. Once again, dealing with foreign affairs is misconstrued as foreign policy.
One can get by merely dealing with foreign affairs -- Mr. Clinton certainly did. But a policy suggests that there is some set of over-arching principles that guides these actions. Governor Dean and the rest of the Democrats don't have a foreign policy. To have such would require them to define American national interests, prioritize objectives, and sometimes, annoy the French. Doing this, however, loses votes from those whom one has not favored.
This is not to say that the neo-con messianism that parades around the White House is a good foreign policy. Turning all the world into an American suburb is not a noble objective, or even a realistic one, but it does give an intellectual cohesion to what Mr. Rumsfeld and the rest are offering. That is, it is a policy -- a bad one, but a policy nonetheless.
What Governor Dean needs is the equivalent of Russia's perennial policy goal of a warm water port, a polestar by which to guide future actions. His future policy must acknowledge that the US will be forever engaged in foreign wars, low-intensity affairs, and that retreat is not possible because there are so many people with guns in the world who blame America for things about which America's leaders have never even thought. Thus, it must be interventionist, and it must be prepared to make ugly moral compromises. In short, he's going to have to convince the party of McGovern that Truman was right.
Fortunately, it isn't too late for Governor Dean to create a real foreign policy. Nor is it too late for him to lose the nomination since no votes have been cast yet. The neo-conservatives in the Bush administration could lose the intellectual argument if there was some sort of opposition to their view. But a bad policy will beat no policy every time. And that's where things currently stand.
Home