Palin Foreign Policy: Eyes Wide Shut?

We knew Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin knew little about foreign affairs, but after her media debut on ABC yesterday, now we know how little.

The one saving grace about Palin's zero experience is the hope that as an outsider, Vice President Palin could inject some fresh, innovative perspectives on issues like the Middle East. She had me going for a minute when she responded to Charlie Gibson's question about whether she had ever even met a foreign head of state (answer: no) with a tirade against the Beltway elite's business as usual.

It is for no more politics as usual and somebody's big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they've had opportunities to meet heads of state ... these last couple of weeks ... it has been overwhelming to me that confirmation of the message that Americans are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing and kind of that closed door, good old boy network that has been the Washington elite.

Yet, American policies as usual seem to be Palin's inclination when it comes to the Middle East. The ABC interview as a whole revealed that not only is Palin ignorant about world affairs, what she has learned is pretty identical to the discredited views of the Washington elites running Bush's foreign policy during the last two presidential terms.

Here's what the ABC interview told me about Palin's Middle East/foreign policy views:

Palin's inexperience shows.

Other vice presidents and even presidents have been relatively inexperienced in foreign affairs, but Palin's limitations are laughable for someone seeking the second highest office in the free world. She said that until she traveled to Kuwait and Germany to visit Alaska national guardsmen last year, her previous foreign travels were only to Canada and Mexico. Until recently, Americans were not even required to obtain a passport to visit those bordering countries. In an awkward exchange with Gibson, Palin had obviously never heard of the "Bush Doctrine"--the justification for launching unilateral, preemptive wars. You'd expect even an ordinary hockey mom would know about that, especially if, as Palin proudly noted in the interview, that very day she was sending "my first born, my teenage son" to the war in Iraq launched under the self-same Bush Doctrine. She committed a faux pas concerning the Cold War in claiming that America had defeated Communism "without a shot fired." The prospective vice president seems unaware that the Cold War involved hot proxy wars throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Latin America during a span of 45 long years. The U.S. alone lost 58,000 troops in Vietnam, and the Cold War nearly led to nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What I find more worrying than Palin's lack of experience is her lack of humility about it. "I'm ready," she declared, after Gibson challenged her to "look the country in the eye and say 'I have the experience and I have the ability'." You might be able to get away substituting self confidence for knowledge in a high school history debate, but it isn't a good mindset for a leader who may have her finger on the nuclear trigger. Palin had duly rehearsed the pronunciations of difficult foreign names like Ahmadinejad and Saakashvili. Very good! Then she sounded sophomoric, as McCain has done, in straining to argue that Alaska's close geographical proximity to Russia was tantamount to providing her with foreign policy expertise. When Gibson asked her what insights into Russia the proximity gave her, she replied, "You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska." (I wonder if she can look inside Putin's soul from that distance--Bush didn't do so well in that regard, and he was standing right next to the Russian president.) Nearly as bad, Palin argued that her support for developing Alaska's oil and gas reserves was another foreign policy "credential." Maybe we should ask Bill Gates: does owning a computer, or even having seen one once, while shopping at Best Buy, qualify someone to be the next vice president of Microsoft?

Palin believes in an activist, idealistic, power-leveraging foreign policy, akin to the Bush's administration's neo-conservative grand strategists who took us into the Iraq war.

Not blinking is high on the list of Palin's foreign policy tools. Four times in an ABC interview focused on national security issues Palin said "You can't blink." Also four times Palin said America has to "keep an eye on Russia." Regarding Iraq, she said that "this war against extreme Islamic terrorists is the right thing... We end war when we see victory, and we do see victory in sight in Iraq." When it comes to Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, she said, "No way, not Americans. We do not have to stand for that." Palin did emphasize the need for diplomatic and economic pressure when it came to changing Iranian or Russian behavior. But she was ready to give Israeli military strength a blank check if Israelis wanted to take out Iran's nuclear program on their own. Three times Gibson asked her what the U.S. should do if Israel attacked Iran, and each time she answered, "We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself." Even though she didn't know what it was, Palin seemed to support the concept of the Bush Doctrine. When Gibson pressed her on whether the U.S. had the right to launch unilateral attacks in Pakistan, she replied, "We must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target."

Would-be Vice President Palin reveals a simplistic view of the world.

Like too many in Washington, Palin approaches complex issues with slogans and easy solutions. In Iraq, she explains, Americans are fighting "for democracy, for our freedoms." That may have been one of the fantasies Bush imagined when he gave the invasion order, but it's more far-fetched than ever that Iraq will become an American-style democracy or that the U.S. will ever achieve "victory" in Iraq. Palin stoops down to the challenge of demonizing Iran, focusing on Ahmadinejad's hateful remarks about Israel and claiming that Iran would give nuclear weapons to terrorists. Palin showed an inclination to be somewhat nuanced when it came to Russia, pointing out the undesirability of returning to the Cold War, but showed no such shade of gray concerning Middle East issues.

On Iraq, for example, it is nobler to our country and our troops in Iraq to talk clearly and honestly about what we have and have not achieved in Iraq and what we can and cannot achieve in the future. Better that a candidate talks about doing the best for Iraq and the region going forward, than repeating empty slogans about "victory" and "freedom." Regarding Iran, rather than echoing Ahmadinejad's scare-mongering, I'd rather see a candidate showing understanding for the myriad of forces in Iran and speaking intelligently about how U.S. policy can produce the best outcome for Iranians as a whole as well as the region and the U.S. Why the blind support for Israel from a prospective vice president who claims she'll keep her eyes wide open? Why not say something like, "We are an ally of Israel and Israel has the right to defend itself" and leave it at that? It's absurd to suggest that the U.S. government doesn't have the right to give sound advice to a U.S. ally, especially one that receives its armaments from the U.S. For goodness sake, if U.S. administrations had done that in 1982 and again in 2006, when Israeli forces launched ill-fated invasions of Lebanon, Americans and especially Israelis would have been far better off.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo