The Two Ps
| Mon Oct. 27, 2008 9:13 AM PDT
THE TWO Ps....Nicholas Burns makes the case for quiet, persistent diplomacy:
Talking to our adversaries is no one's idea of fun, and it is not a sure prescription for success in every crisis. But it is crude, simplistic and wrong to charge that negotiations reflect weakness or appeasement. More often than not, they are evidence of a strong and self-confident country. One of America's greatest but often neglected strengths is, in fact, our diplomatic power. Condoleezza Rice's visit to Libya in September—the first by a U.S. secretary of state in five decades—was the culmination of years of careful, deliberate diplomacy to maneuver the Libyan leadership to give up its weapons of mass destruction and renounce terrorism. She would not have achieved that victory had she refused to talk to the Libyans.
Burns, of course, has no time for campaign claptrap about "preconditions" being the same thing as "preparation." In fact, he doesn't even mention it, saying only this about Iran: "I'm not saying the next president should sit down immediately with Ahmadinejad. We should initiate contact at a lower level to investigate whether it's worth putting the president's prestige on the line."
Of course. That's preparation. A precondition, by contrast, would be a demand that Iran agree to halt its nuclear program before we even sit down to talk, even though their nuclear program is supposedly one of the very reasons for the talks in the first place. It's just a backhanded way of ensuring that no talks will ever take place.
Unlike John McCain, Barack Obama favors preparation but generally opposes preconditions. That's the right attitude.
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A precondition, by contrast, would be a demand that Iran agree to halt its nuclear program before we even sit down to talk, even though their nuclear program is supposedly one of the very reasons for the talks in the first place.
The GOP inhabits this mad fantasy world where our enemies will bend to our will simply for the privilege of low-level diplomatic exchanges, and any diplomatic process on our part is inevitably going to lead to us giving the entire country away.
One can almost sympathize with Hon. Sen. McCain's incomprehension of why his stance on negotiations hasn't gotten any traction: I've yet to see evidence that the man has prepared for anything in any meaningful way; he probably honestly cannot tell make the distinction illustrated by this post.
Glad to see that Burns has finally decompressed from being the administration's front man, because the last time I saw him after resigning the State Department he was still spouting the Bush line.
Of course he is a career diplomat. He's tested the wind and knows he has to make the jump before the election to be credible.
Still, nice of him to be stating the obvious.
OK, so perhaps it's not such
Submitted by tiffany jewelry (not verified) on Sat Aug. 15, 2009 8:09 AM PDT.
OK, so perhaps it's not such a good idea...but I want *someone* to give *somebody* more regulatory power, and SOON! Or use the regulatory power that is already there, but it's my understanding that the hundreds of regulators already in place have been prevented from exercising their authority, so take these folks off the leashes!
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