McCain advisors: No to Syria talks, little interest in ME peace process [BO-Blair US envoy?]

LEESBURG, Va. (JTA)—A McCain administration would discourage Israeli-Syrian peace talks and refrain from actively engaging in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

That was the message delivered over the weekend by two McCain advisers—Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Richard Williamson, the Bush administration’s special envoy to Sudan—during a retreat hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy at the Lansdowne Resort in rural Virginia.

One of Barack Obama’s representatives—Richard Danzig, a Clinton administration Navy secretary—said the Democratic presidential candidate would take the opposite approach on both issues.

In an interview with the Atlantic magazine over the summer, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) insisted that in his presidency he would serve as the chief negotiator in the peace process. But at the retreat, Boot said pursuing an Israeli-Palestinian deal would not be a top priority in a McCain administration, adding that as many as 30 crises across the globe require more urgent attention.

Boot called the Bush administration’s renewed efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian talks a mistake. He also cast Israel’s talks with Syria as betraying the stake that the United States has invested in Lebanon’s fragile democracy.

“John McCain is not going to betray the lawfully elected government of Lebanon,” Boot said.

Williamson was slightly more nuanced in addressing the issue of how the message would be sent.

“Israel should not be dictated to in dealing with Syria or dealing with Lebanon,” he said, addressing Israeli and some pro-Israel resentment in recent years at pressure by the Bush administration to stifle such negotiations. “Hopefully as friends they will listen to us.”

That Williamson was endorsing such views at all signified how closely the McCain campaign has allied itself with neo-conservatives. A veteran of the Reagan and first Bush administrations, Williamson in other circumstances would be more closely identified with Republican “realists” who have vociferously eschewed the grand claims of neo-conservatives to a new American empire.

McCain until the last year or so has kept feet in both the realist and neo-conservative camps. The session at Lansdowne appeared to suggest that the Republican presidential nominee has chosen sides, opting for policies backed by the outgoing Bush administration and its neo-conservative foreign policy architects.

Both McCain advisers insisted, however, that their candidate was synthesizing the two camps as a “realistic idealist.”

McCain would be a “leader who will press for more liberal democratic change “ and “is realistic about the prospects of diplomacy and just as importantly its limits,” said Boot, echoing what has become the twin walking and talking points of neo-conservatism: a muscular foreign policy and an affinity for promoting democracy.

Surrogates for Obama, an Illinois senator, re-emphasized their commitment to stepping up U.S. diplomatic efforts. Danzig said an Obama administration would revive the idea of a special envoy for pursuing a peace deal.

The “appropriate level of presidential engagement requires that the United States designate someone whose energies are predominantly allocated to this,” Danzig said.

Someone like Tony Blair, the former British prime minister now leading efforts to build a Palestinian civil society, might fit the bill, he added.

Surrogates from both campaigns appeared to agree on the need to further isolate Iran until it stands down from its suspected nuclear weapons program. Each side emphasized that it would keep the military option on the table and enhance sanctions.

It was clear that each campaign had devoted a great deal of attention to the issue. Officials from both campaigns signed on to a Washington Institute for Near East Policy policy paper this summer that called for closer U.S.-Israel coordination on Iran, borne out of concerns that Israel’s leadership was getting closer to contemplating the option of a strike.

Williamson and Richard Clarke, the former top anti-terrorism official in both the Clinton and current Bush administrations who spoke for Obama, described the near impossibility of taking out a weapons program that is believed to be diffuse and hidden in population centers. Clarke added the possibility of covert action against Iran, without details—a first for either campaign.

The sole difference was over Obama’s pledge not to count out a meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president who has denied the Holocaust and rejected the legitimacy of Israel’s existence.

Danzig replied that it would make it easier for Obama to rally worldwide support for sanctions.

Danzig cast Obama’s emphasis on sanctions and diplomacy in terms of Israel’s security, a pitch tuned to the Washington Institute’s pro-Israel orientation.

“The threats and dangers are more substantial than they were eight years ago,” he said.

McCain’s advisers attempted to deflect comparisons between McCain and Bush. In trying to turn such comparisons against the Obama campaign, Boot noted that eight years ago he favored “another presidential candidate with not much experience in national security policy”—George W. Bush—“and we’ve seen the implications.”

The Washington Institute crowd, hawkish in its predilections and likelier to favor McCain’s foreign policy, would nonetheless only allow the McCain surrogates to take the character and experience issue so far.

Fred Lafer, the institute’s president emeritus, pressed Boot on why McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a foreign policy novice, as his running mate if he was committed to national security.

Boot said “she has as much” foreign policy experience as Obama, prompting cries of “No!” and “what?”

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Seems like a reasonable policy. Someone tell Obama that while legal, it's not such a good idea to have a British Prime Minister negotiating American interests.

The “appropriate level of presidential engagement requires that the United States designate someone whose energies are predominantly allocated to this,” Danzig said.
Someone like Tony Blair, the former British prime minister now leading efforts to build a Palestinian civil society, might fit the bill, he added.

Speaking of Condi Rice, found this gem earlier with her quotes and the connection to Madeleine Albright:

April 16, 2008, 11:48 am
Madeleine Albright Is a Uniter
By The Editorial Board

Who says there’s no bipartisanship in Washington — either between Republicans and Democrats, or between the Clinton and Obama camps?

There was a pretty good (if temporary) display of it on Monday when the portrait of Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, was formally unveiled at a crowded reception in the State Department’s elegant Benjamin Franklin room.

Hosted by the current occupant of that office, Condoleezza Rice, the event was historic. Here were the only two female secretaries of state in America’s 200-plus year history. Both traced their intellectual roots (improbably) to the same man — the late Josef Korbel, a Czech emigre who just happens to be Ms. Albright’s father and Ms. Rice’s professor of international relations at the University of Denver.
But that shared experience took the women in very directions — Ms. Albright to Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration, where she successfully pressed for NATO intervention to reverse ethnic cleansing in Kosovo (which is now independent) and Ms. Rice to George W. Bush’s Republican administration, where she was instrumental in the decision to invade Iraq (which is under heavy American military presence and will be for the foreseeable future.)
On this occasion, they were gracious and focused more on where they converged, including on the transformative power of Mr. Korbel’s tutelage, than where they didn’t.

Ms. Rice commended Ms. Albright for serving “admirably” as secretary of state and said they share “a belief that democratic values are at the heart of peace and stability in the world.” Ms. Albright lauded Ms. Rice for doing a “remarkable job in a difficult era” and said her father would be proud. “We did have the same intellectual father,” she added.

The good feeling was also evident among the Democrats in the room. In the crowd of about 300 guests, former Clinton administration officials who have split between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama still seemed to be able to talk to each other without throwing a punch.

While Ms. Rice has been busy stamping out speculation that she might consider a becoming the Republican vice presidential candidate, Ms. Albright — a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton —seemed to really miss her old job as secretary of state.

She allowed how much she envied those “still in the business of making foreign policy” and made clear that with myriad pursuits as a college professor, writer, consultant and chairman of the National Democratic Institute, she’s not slowing down. “I still have miles to go and work to do,” she insisted.

If Ms. Albright has any aspiration to reprise her role as secretary of state, though, she’s going to have to get in line. Democrats Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Richard Holbrooke, a former United Nations Ambassador, among others, are jockeying for the position if there is a Democratic administration.

http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/madeleine-albright-is-a-uniter/

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