Obama: Appeasement, or Engagement?

As I see it from my perch here in the Middle East, American voters certainly have a choice now: the flap over President Bush's apparent "appeasement" attack on Barack Obama crystalizes the different foreign policy approaches that would be taken by a President Obama compared to a President McCain. The choice that McCain and Obama offer is more American unilateralism versus renewed American engagement.

McCain sees the Middle East in the same black and white, with-us-or-against-us framework as Bush does. The Middle East is a contest that American must "win." America and its ally Israel selflessly stand for freedom, democracy and peace. The enemies of the U.S. and Israel must be vanquished. They are evil promoters of hatred and practitioners of murder. McCain's emphasis is on America's military power. Obama sees the Middle East in more complex terms. He has stated his intention to engage in "aggressive personal diplomacy" with Iran's leaders to seek Iran's cooperation on issues including Iraq, terrorism and Iran's nuclear ambitions. He's also said he would negotiate with Syrian leaders. His combined willingness to negotiate with two countries that support Hamas and Hizballah indicates that Obama is ready to initiate a comprehensive diplomatic engagement rather than rely largely on American military force to resolve the conflicts in the Middle East. That's the reason that Bush seemed to be attacking Obama during his speech to the Israeli Knesset on Thursday. He ridiculed those who would "negotiate with terrorists and radicals" as promoters of "the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

The stark differences in approach should be given a full airing during the presidential campaign if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee. Obama will be put in an extraordinarily uncomfortable position, being made to appear that he is weak, naive, somehow sympathetic to anti-American groups and supporters of terrorism, or all of the above. To his credit, he seems to be sticking to his diplomacy-first beliefs, telling the New York Times this week: "I constantly reject this notion that any hint of strategies involving diplomacy are somehow soft or indicate surrender or means that you are not going to crack down on terrorism."

It is far from clear that Obama's diplomatic approach to the Middle East will work. But there's an unreal quality about what Bush and McCain said this week that they must be called on.

Is it Obama who is weak, naive and giving succor to America's enemies, or is it Bush and by extension McCain? By unilaterally invading Iraq and bungling the occupation, Bush severely undermined America's global standing, our credibility even with close allies and the U.S. economy. Iran has benefitted enormously from Bush's foul-ups, and al-Qaeda has not been cowed much less defeated by U.S. military firepower. For his part, McCain has suggested the U.S. military--this is a former POW in Vietnam speaking--might have to stay in Iraq for 100 years. In a speech in Columbus, Ohio this week, McCain predicted that America could declare itself the winner of the Iraq war during his first presidential term, and that Osama bin Laden would be killed or captured as well.

Actually, as it happens, there is a glaring inconsistency in Bush's rhetoric about negotiating with terrorists. Leaving aside his negotiations with "evil" North Korea, Bush's only tangible accomplishment in the Middle East is the U.S. breakthrough with Libya. Bush's people secretly negotiated with Colonel Gadhafy--a long-standing state-sponsor of terrorism--and convinced him to abandon Libya's nuclear weapons program. This is a matter of public record--I've heard the full story myself in detail from the mouth of Gadhafy's son, Seif al-Islam. An American embassy is open again in Tripoli. Gadhafy is busy building luxury vacation resorts rather than nuclear bombs. If that's appeasement, maybe we need more of it.

Another case is the one that concerns the Palestinian group Fatah and its late leader, Yasser Arafat. When Bush took office in 2001, he chose to abandon Clinton's policy of mediating the Israeli-Palestinian dispute or dealing with Arafat. The next six years saw some of the worst violence in the history of the conflict and the rise of the Islamist group Hamas. After all that damage was done, Bush decided to engage Fatah once again--launching the intensive last-ditch Annapolis peace process. After all the tragic dead-ends, it seems Bush decided that negotiations were worth pursing after all. For his part, McCain is eager to show his disdain for including Hamas in talks. He ridicules Obama for having been "endorsed" by Hamas--an unworthy cheap shot distorting sympathetic comments expressed by a Hamas official. Yet the idea is a far cry from appeasement. In a Haaretz poll in February, 64% of Israelis themselves said they favored talking to Hamas.

Then there's the case of Iran. Bush calls Iran's leaders part of the "axis of evil" and with McCain's chiming in with support suggests that Obama is another Neville Chamberlain for indicating that he would talk with them. Maybe Bush forgot that he has sent State Department envoys to negotiate with Iranian counterparts on several occasions, related to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, Condi Rice has officially offered Iran high-level negotiations with the U.S. on one condition: it halts its uranium-enrichment program. The main difference between what Obama says and what Rice has actually proposed is that Obama does not place a pre-condition on negotiations. Yet, McCain this weak again wondered why Obama would want to talk with Iran's leaders. "Senator Obama ought to explain to the American people," he said.

Strip away the rhetoric--with its jingoism, silliness and contradictions--and simply ask, Which approach works, unilateralism or engagement? Did America "win" the Iraq war? Did the invasion advance American influence and interests? Did the war in Afghanistan destroy al-Qaeda and its extremist ideology and make the U.S. more secure? Did abandoning the Middle East peace process for six years help end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute or increase America's standing in the region or the world? Did designating Iran's leaders as "evil" rather than negotiating with them make it more or less likely that Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon. In Columbus, McCain said he will look back after his first presidential term and be satisfied that "the Iraq war has been won," and that U.S. counterinsurgency efforts "led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden." As if just saying that will make it so. How marvelous if solving the Middle East's problems was only that simple.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo