Talking to the Enemy

One of the most refreshing prospects for this year's election is that the two major candidates offer strikingly different views on a number of issues. This promises to give voters a clear choice in November. One of the issues that has been in the news lately is whether the United States should engage in diplomatic talks with international adversaries. John McCain seems to want to give the silent treatment to international rivals and Barack Obama wants to talk with them.

The item first got on the national radar screen in a Democratic debate. Obama said he would have face to face talks with leaders of countries like Iran, and without preconditions. Hillary Clinton jumped on that one right away, calling Obama naive. Since then, Obama has refined his stance a bit, admitting that preparatory work would first need to be done at lower levels of officials below the president. But he has stuck to his guns on this one.

The issue was rejoined when President Bush was in Israel. He likened speaking to enemies as appeasement and explicitly mentioned the Nazis to his Jewish audience. McCain joined in the attack so quickly there is little doubt he and the Prez had planned this as a one-two punch together. Due to a couple of factors, though, it did not have the effect they expected.

First of all, Bush is practically without credibility at this point of his tenure. With approval numbers around 30% for two years, no one but the already-committeed diehard core of the Republican base even listens to the man anymore. Nothing helps a Democrat more these days than to be able to directly engage Bush on an issue.

Second, Obama held his ground, offered historical examples and caught McCain advocating the practice himself. Kennedy stared down Khruschev. Nixon went to China. Reagan talked with Gorbachev. McCain himself was shown in a two-year old tape saying we would sooner or later have to deal with the Palestinian organization Hamas.

Obama dug in further with recent remarks in Florida about the issue of relations with Cuba. He called for "direct diplomacy with friend and foe alike," to "turn the page," to allow unlimited visits to relatives on the island and the sending of remittances to relatives there. His appeal is similar in some ways to part of the detente approach of the 1970s in that an increase in personal contacts between Americans and citizens of the adversary regime was welcomed and even pushed as a way to undermine support for the other nation's system. Older Cuban exiles are highly skeptical of Obama's idea, but many of the younger generations appear much more open to it.

How has the diplomatic cold shoulder policy been working these past fifty years? Well, the Castros are still in power. Meanwhile, 10 U.S. Presidents have come and gone. The rest of the world trades with Cuba, so the U.S. embargo has very little effect. The embargo policy stands actually as evidence of its own impotence.

Meanwhile, diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe hastened the day when those regimes fell. Relations with China have eased that nation's entry into the capitalist world economy and given it a stake in the global system. Engagement with Libya has been successful in weaning that country from the terrorist orbit.

Will constructive engagement always result in success? Certainly not, but the alternative idea that rogue regimes are "punished" and brought to reasonability if we refuse to talk to them is silly. The key is to understand that negotiation and appeasement are not the same thing. Negotiation is talks; appeasement is giving countries to the enemy. McCain's narrative of Obama the naif, with whom talks can only lead to capitulation, is of course nothing but a cartoon caricature meant to define his opponent unfavorably for the election. Just as is McCain's own image of himself as one who will not treat with the bad guys at all. He has shown he will when the opportunity appears worth it.