Defending the Indefensible, Academically

Accuracy in Academia ^ | March 14, 2014 | Spencer Irvine

[Academiadotorg]

Perhaps the Obama Administration’s foreign policy is becoming so indefensible that even its best and brightest academic defenders are becoming tongue tied defending it.

At the Center for American Progress, Georgetown professor of international affairs Charles Kupchan recently said, “Obama is probably out in front of this issue, that he made, perhaps I would go so far as to say a signature part of his first term policy, engaging.” But, he added, “I would say that the jury is still out, but that the glass is more half-full than half-empty, or you might say empty.”

He dove into several examples and gave a simple response to how Obama has fared in foreign policy:

“Russia: we had some good years on reset when Medvedev was in office, reversal since Putin’s come back.” “Cuba? Not a slam dunk but some progress has been made.” “Syria? Disaster.” “Burma? Success.”

“Engagement with adversaries doesn’t always work, but often does work,” Kupchan claimed.

“I would say that Obama has not been a failure and hasn’t been a great success, but that these things take time,” Kupchan concluded. He claimed that it takes 10 years to go from rapprochement to friendly relations, and insisted to the audience that engagement takes time.

But, notwithstanding his previous points of how engagement is worth the effort, Kupchan added another condition: Do not engage in “countenance engagement” with “maximalist actors like al-Qaeda.” Why not? His point was that if an actor is actively trying to harm you, then you should not negotiate with that actor.

Regarding diplomacy, Kupchan said, “Even if we agree that North Korea and Iran are rogues, in an era of weapons of mass destruction, do we have an alternative not to try diplomacy?”