Albright and Brzezinski Paint a Picture of What a Democratic Foreign Policy Will Look Like
A useful review of two books by Democratic foreign policy elites. Madeline Albright was President Clinton's Secretary of State during his second term and Zbigniew Brezinski was President Carter's National Security Advisor. I largely agree with the negative critique offered by this review (in candor, I have only read the Brzezinski book and not the Albright one).
Essentially, both policymakers want America to "rebuild" its reservoir of global goodwill by being more deferential to global public opinion. They also indicate that Democrats really do see the terrorism threat post September 11 as hyped.
While I think it is clearly the case that President Bush's diplomacy has often been ham handed, especially in the first term, how can anyone say we haven't been deferential when it comes to negotiating with North Korea or the Europeans regarding Iran? Bush's second term bears remarkable similarities to the very policies Albright and Brzezinski seem to promote and to be explicit, this diplomacy has been an abject failure just as much as the previous policy of "isolating" rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran. Iran is going to soon be nuclear and North Korea has grown (albeit by a small number) its nuclear arsenal. Yet we have been nothing if not "multilateral" since the inception of Bush's second term.
Perhaps, as I have argued elsewhere, "democratization" is a bad policy to have at the core of our international efforts. However, that is not really at the core of the pressing issues related to North Korea and Iran.
In large measure, Democrats seem to think that if we are "nice enough" and "listen enough" the world will appreciate us again. We will regain our moral high ground.
The truth is they won't. States listen when they share interests. When those interests diverge, policy differences are inevitable. You might be able to soften some impacts by utilizing tact and finesse, but all the tact in the world can't change underlying strategic realities. To assume otherwise is almost as naive as they accuse President Bush of being by embracing "gun boat democratization." A velvet glove on an iron fist is better than just an iron fist, but a velvet glove with no fist is much worse.
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