What They Really Said

THE WASHINGTON POST, 27/09/08:

Foreign policy analysts and others share their assessments of the first presidential debate. Here are contributions from: Henry A. Kissinger, Michael O’Hanlon, Michael Rubin, Nancy Soderberg, Stephen P. Cohen and Michael J. Green.

Henry A. Kissinger, former secretary of state and national security adviser.

Iranian nuclear military capability is unacceptable for the following reasons: It would stimulate a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, the most dangerous region in the world. It would strengthen Iran’s capability to encourage and support jihadism. It would undermine the credibility of the international community, which has demanded that Iran not develop nuclear weapons.

To avoid this, we must determine how much time is available for diplomacy — in other words, how close Iran is to developing nuclear weapons, and what sanctions are appropriate if diplomacy fails.

I favor strong sanctions, but before strong sanctions are invoked a diplomatic phase is important. It should be conducted on the working level including, if necessary, the secretary of state. It should not start at the presidential level. Sen. McCain accurately reflected my views on the subject of negotiations.

Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of Opportunity ‘08, a bipartisan effort to raise awareness about policy issues.

The discussion of North Korea was factually accurate but unsatisfying. Obama was right that a lack of attention by the Bush administration contributed to the crisis of 2002-03 and the ensuing quadrupling of North Korea’s estimated nuclear arsenal. McCain was correct that high-level engagement was tried by the United States to little avail with Secretary Albright in the 1990s, not to mention former secretary Bill Perry about the same time. He was also right that we should “trust but verify” any deal with North Korea. However, the conundrum remains: How do we get North Korea to give up its bombs and, ideally, begin to reform its political and economic system (as fellow Asian communist states Vietnam and China have done)? Either we need more leverage or a greater willingness to offer incentives (assuming that military options are off the table, as both candidates seem to understand that they should be. Either we need more sticks or more carrots — or both. I heard little along these lines from either.

I believe the right approach is to offer North Korea a much better relationship, and lots of international help to get there, if it makes necessary reforms and denuclearizes. But if Pyongyang refuses such a deal, we should try to argue to Seoul, Beijing and Moscow that tougher measures, including more restrictions on aid and investment, are required in response. Those tougher multilateral measures could in turn lead North Korea to reassess its recalcitrant, hard-line stance (as it did after the North Korean nuclear test of 2006). Other basic concepts and strategies are plausible as well, but — to paraphrase a different part of the debate — a strategy built on just tactics and process is not promising, and that is all we really heard from either candidate on this subject.

Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Obama’s view of diplomacy appears both utopian and dangerous. Neither the Iranian nor North Korean nuclear programs are the result of too little talk; they are the result of too much. Iran built its covert enrichment program during its so-called dialogue of civilizations, a deception about which former Iranian president ’s spokesman now brags. Partisanship is counterproductive. Democrats and Republicans blame each other for North Korean nuclear development, but the fault lies with the North Korean regime. Like Khatami, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-Il set out to cheat. Desperation for diplomacy let him succeed.

Here, Washington navel-gazing hurts national security, for it transposes responsibility from Tehran and Pyongyang and assumes that blame lies in U.S. intransigence. Take Obama’s identification of preconditions as a hindrance to diplomacy: Three U.N. Security Council resolutions demanded that the Islamic Republic suspend its enrichment. To waive this requirement would, in effect, cast aside these resolutions unilaterally, predetermine the outcome of negotiations and ruin the prospect that Tehran (or Pyongyang) would ever again take U.N. resolutions seriously.

Unfortunately, the American people’s desire for peace is not shared by many dictators. In such a world, coercion matters as much as engagement. President Theodore Roosevelt sought to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” When candidates seek, a century later, to speak softly and carry a big carrot, it is not diplomacy; it is naivete.

Nancy Sodeberg, White House deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs in the Clinton administration, co-author of The Prosperity Agenda: What the World Wants From America and What We Need in Return.

John McCain’s repeated invocations of Ronald Reagan and Henry Kissinger reflect an odd insecurity on national security issues and demonstrate how off-base he is. Whether or not Reagan and Kissinger had the right answers to the issues of the 1970s and ’80s, they certainly do not offer the right solutions to today’s global challenges.

In attacking Obama’s policies, McCain’s lines fell seriously short. The Republican nominee faulted Obama’s position that we should negotiate with our adversaries — in fact, the Bush administration has done just that with Iran and North Korea. McCain said Obama was naive to call for a timetable for our troops to withdraw from Iraq — President Bush has now set such a timetable. McCain tried to challenge Obama’s position that he would attack Osama bin Laden if we had the chance — just last week we learned the administration has decided to do exactly that.

McCain proved that he can pronounce difficult names of foreign leaders, but are we really going to vote for him because he can name both Ukrainian leaders Tymoshenko and Yushchenko? (It took him three tries to get the president of Iran right.)

Even though foreign policy is a supposed McCain strength, Obama won this debate hands down.

Stephen P. Cohen, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, author of The Idea of Pakistan.

When they finally got around to Pakistan — it took over an hour — it was by way of Afghanistan. McCain has been badly advised on Pakistan: He got some facts wrong. He also missed the irony that Obama’s earlier suggestion that we attack camps in Pakistan has actually been adopted by the Bush administration. This has led to the situation where we are attacking a nuclear-armed state (and it is now shooting back), a far graver proposition than anyone would have imagined a year ago. Was Obama’s argument that we needed more resources in Afghanistan trumped by McCain’s declaration that we need “victory” in Iraq first? That didn’t work for me.

On substance, Obama won the debate as far as Afghanistan and Pakistan were concerned, but McCain’s discussion of his visits to the federally administered tribal areas and Pakistan probably carried more weight with the average viewer. This was not quite Stevenson vs. Eisenhower, but close.

Michael J. Green, senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council from January 2004 to December 2005 and an adviser to the McCain campaign.

In a 90-minute debate it is perhaps not surprising that Asia and the rise of China — a tectonic shift in the international system — received only elliptical attention. Still, North Korea was discussed and John McCain reminded the American people that Pyongyang has cheated on every agreement it has signed on its nuclear weapons. He made clear that while he supports diplomacy with North Korea, it would be naive for the president of the United States to sit down with Kim Jong Il without preconditions — particularly after the North Koreans have tested nuclear weapons, transferred nuclear technology and once again begun cheating on their agreement to denuclearize.

Obama mentioned at the end of the debate that he would seek to restore our standing in the world, but his opposition to the U.S.-Korea free-trade agreement and the U.S.-India nuclear deal have threatened to undercut our standing with two of the most important democracies in Asia. America’s standing in the world rests on our credibility as an ally. If we do not make the hard calls to keep our alliances strong, we will not restore our standing in the world, nor will we be positioned to deal with challenges such as North Korea.