working for peace!
Posted on 05/21/2008 1:19:47 PM PDT by knighthawk
Recently, Sen. Barack Obama reiterated his pledge to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, among other rogue leaders, without preconditions, suggesting his approach would be consistent with the best, and strongest, American foreign policy of the past century.
"Strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries," said Obama. "That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao."
Not so fast. I was in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, and I can attest that those Presidents understood the danger of prematurely forcing top-level meetings without sufficient preconditions. Neither Richard Nixon nor Ronald Reagan would sit down for face-to-face meetings with their counterparts in enemy nations until America hadsome realistic - and playable - bargaining chips. They recognized that negotiating without leverage isn't negotiating, it's begging.
Nixon and his brilliant national security adviser Henry Kissinger knew that to end the Vietnam War, they would have to cut off North Vietnam's supply chain, which came from the Soviet Union through China. What leverage could Nixon get with the Soviets and the Chinese? China needed training and technology to enter the modern world - as well as breathing space from foreign threats in order to modernize its economy. Nixon calculated that, taken together, these were more important to China than fighting a proxy war in Vietnam.
Nixon also recognized the Sino-Soviet Communist alliance was cracking, and we could exploit it by being China's great power counterweight to the Soviet Union. The threat of a loose Sino-American alliance gave us the leverage we needed to get the Soviets to the negotiating table on arms control. Nixon met with Mao Zedong only after he had the leverage needed to negotiate.
Similarly, Reagan waited until his second term to deal with the Soviets. He used the first term to line up the leverage necessary to negotiate from a position of strength. He rebuilt America's defenses, which had atrophied after Vietnam. He reached out to allies in Europe and strengthened our alliances worldwide. He knew the Soviet economy was a sham; the Kremlin was heavily dependent on hard currency from selling oil abroad. So Reagan worked to drive down the international price of oil, which weakened the Soviet economy from within.
And when all those elements had been put in place, Reagan delivered the coup de grace and introduced his Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense plan that challenged the Soviets to a nuclear arms race Reagan knew they could neither afford nor win.
Obama said recently that Reagan's negotiations with Gorbachev "led to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war, and over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall."
He's got it turned around. Reagan built up the leverage first, and then negotiated. He didn't believe we could talk the Soviets into anything they didn't want to do, nor trust them without verification. Reagan was a man of considerable persuasive powers, but he didn't defeat communism and win the Cold War because he was able to charm and cajole Gorbachev during direct negotiations. He won it because by the time he sat down to negotiate, America held all the cards.
I don't disagree that the next President needs to talk to the Iranians. Dealing with them will be an essential step in ending the war in Iraq, stabilizing the Middle East and pressing Iran to dismantle its nuclear program.
The question is who, when and how. We all have the right - indeed, the obligation - to ask exactly what leverage a President Obama would carry with him to the negotiating table, and how he plans to get it.
K.T. McFarland was Henry Kissinger's research assistant on the National Security Counsel staff during the Nixon and Ford administrations, and deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs during the Reagan administration.
Ping
bkmk
Awesome video:
The same kind of terrorists who support Obama did this:
http://www.frugalsites.net/911/attack/
Never apologize for them.
Never appease them.
Never forget.
Listening to Barry, I thought he said it was Gorby’s genius that brought down the Wall.
The dirty little secret of the Obama campaign is...Barry isn’t very bright. Oh, he’s a good-enough speaker, he can read a Q-card with proper emphasis...but he just doesn’t know very much.
He affirmative-actioned his way through school...all the way. He makes basic mistakes in geography, math, and history. Not that our vaunted MSM would notice...too busy cooking up documents on Bush.
Barry is going to have a very tough time unless the press continues to protect him the rest of the way...my guess is that in at least one debate with McLame, he screws the pooch bigtime.
Diplomacy? That's Demspeak for "Capitulation."
Obama is in way over his head. He lacks the knowledge, experience and wisdom to make the right judgments.
“I don’t disagree that the next President needs to talk to the Iranians. Dealing with them will be an essential step in ending the war in Iraq, stabilizing the Middle East and pressing Iran to dismantle its nuclear program.”
Talk with lunatics? To what end? The Soviets were never crazy.
Unfortnately, the term “moron” has been used so often as an insult, its clinical definition is overlooked. A moron is someone with an intellectual capacity between an eight year old and a twelve year old. I will not chance insulting Barack Hussein by asserting he is moron, as I think he weighs in closer to a fifteen year old. Wifey Michelle, however is one sweety of a moron in every sense of the word.
He needs more than a “quick lesson.”
More like a Ph.D in World History.
The only thing Barack Hussein Obama wants to win is the fight against the white man who has treated B and M with so much hatred that they were hardly able to become wealthy.
Ann Coulter weighs in...
working for peace!
“Sometime soon somebody better wake up the general populace about this empty suit, or we’re going to end up with a bumbling imbecile for a president.”
Charisma: Obama has it. McCain doesn’t
Obama will slaughter McCain, because for 80% of the voters, the election is just like voting for your favorite person on American Idol.
At the moment I can’t remember a much more uninspiring candidate than McCain that has run for president in my lifetime.
Bob Dole was more inspiring!
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