The secular Turkey that Kemal Ataturk created out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire has vanished. In its place is a new Turkey that reflects the moderate Islamism embodied in Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP)….The AKP’s Islamic identity means that Turkey’s foreign policy will be increasingly nationalist, as the country becomes as willing to align with the Islamic world as with the U.S. and Europe. Under the AKP, Turkey will no longer be the reliable NATO ally it once was. ~Bloomberg

Via Scoblete

This editorial misses a few things. Turkish secularism has not vanished from the scene. Turkey’s foreign policy is increasingly nationalist because the Turkish government is increasingly responsive to popular opinion, and Turkish public opinion has become more nationalist over the last decade. One of the reasons for this upsurge in nationalist sentiment is the dismissive attitude that the U.S. and other allies have shown towards Turkish interests for at least the last eight years. The AKP’s Islamist roots are part of its popularity, but they are hardly the whole story. It’s easy to imagine how any ruling party in Turkey today would be charting a more independent, nationalist foreign policy. Turkish foreign policy is also more assertive and independent of the U.S., and therefore less “reliable” (meaning less obedient), because Turkey has become more economically prosperous and more confident in pursuing its own interests.

Turkey is more democratic and wealthier than it used to be, which is what numerous U.S. administrations have desired to see, and now many Americans find that they don’t like the result. Evidently, some would prefer it if Turkey were as poor and dominated by its “deep state” as it once was. To say that Turkey will no longer be the “reliable NATO ally” it once was skips past the reality that many other NATO governments are finding it difficult to be “reliable” when this entails supporting U.S. or western European-led wars that have nothing to do with allied defense. Half the problem the U.S. has with Turkey is that many Americans seem unable to accept that many of our Cold War alliances will have to change if they are to have any value in the future. Assuming for the sake of argument that the Turkish government is overreacting to Israel’s refusal to issue an apology, what good would it do any of the parties involved for the U.S. to revise its policy towards Turkey?

Near the end of a forgettable op-ed on the importance of conservative coalition-building, Peter Berkowitz wrote this:

And in the Middle East and elsewhere, conservatism encourages a vigilant search for opportunities to promote liberty while counseling that our knowledge is limited, our resources scarce and our attention span poor.

It seems to me that conservatism should lead us to recognize that liberty in other countries is not something that we in the U.S. are in much of a position to promote, and it is far from obvious that this ought to be one of our top priorities. Conservatives should understand that liberty is something that has to be won largely by the people who stand to benefit from it, and it has to be something that develops naturally within other societies. To the extent that our government is perceived by those people as an unwelcome or intrusive force in other countries, there are not going to be many opportunities available, and we have to be willing to accept that there may not be a constructive role for the U.S. “in the Middle East and elsewhere.” Certainly, limited knowledge and a lack of resources make it seem even less practical, but it doesn’t follow that it would be wise or prudent to make such an attempt even if our knowledge were extensive and our resources abundant.

Josh Kraushaar repeats an odd claim I have seen a few times recently:

Pair Perry on the presidential ticket with an up-and-coming Hispanic running mate such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida or New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, and the Hispanic vote is squarely in play.

No, it isn’t. It’s true that Obama’s approval rating among Hispanics has declined considerably, but it doesn’t follow from that there is going to be a huge movement of Hispanic voters to the Republican column. Assuming for the moment that Rubio or Martinez would accept the offer, both of them were just elected last year. Other than their names, what is it about either of them would make them appealing to Hispanic voters? There is usually too much made of the importance of a politician’s position on immigration for winning over Hispanic voters, but that is because this ignores all the other reasons why Hispanic voters are more likely to support Democratic candidates. It’s not as if Republican opposition to mass immigration is the only thing preventing these voters from backing Republican presidential candidates.

Pro-immigration views are certainly no guarantee of Hispanic support, as McCain and his 31% show, and Martinez and even Rubio are correctly seen as being well to the right of most Hispanic voters nationally. More to the point, Perry has not been all that successful in winning support from Hispanics in Texas, so it doesn’t make sense why he would do any better in a presidential election. According to this report, exit polling from last year significantly overstated Perry’s support:

But Segura says that Perry’s performance with Latinos in Texas is overstated due to poor exit polling methodology. According to his research, Perry’s support among Latinos the 2010 election was closer to 23 percent.

“I think he actually under-performs with Hispanics in Texas,” he said. “There’s a huge skew in the exit poll data … The 38 percent for Perry is nonsense.”

Perry would not be particularly competitive with Obama among Hispanics, and it’s not clear why putting Rubio or Martinez on the ticket would change that. During the primary and general election campaigns, Martinez made a point of denouncing her opponents for supporting amnesty. Rubio has tended to be more of a “centrist” on immigration, but he is a party-line Republican in almost every other respect, which is why so many Republicans like him. Putting Rubio or Martinez on the presidential ticket would be another good example of the bad habit many Republicans have of wanting to promote their rising political leaders too quickly before they have had a chance to do very much.

Andrew made a curious comment on the Palestinian Authority’s U.N. maneuver:

All of which explains the hilarious/tragic spectacle of the US government furiously attempting to prevent the UN from recognizing the two-state solution that the United States has supported for as long as one can recall.

U.N. recognition of Palestine as an independent and full member state would not create a two-state solution in any meaningful sense. Even if recognition had U.S. support, it would be rejected out of hand by the one party whose agreement is essential to making a two-state solution work, and it could mark the end of any hope for a negotiated settlement. The reason why Palestinian leaders have been contemplating this risky move is that they have reached the conclusion that negotiations leading to a lasting two-state solution are not going to happen. A bid for recognition would be a desperate gamble that would almost certainly backfire on the Palestinians, and it would provide the Netanyahu government with a pretext for taking provocative actions that it might not risk taking otherwise.

Hussein Ibish described some of the serious risks that a recognition bid involved earlier this summer:

There are other risks. Israeli retaliation could include annexation of parts of the West Bank, for example, or abrogation of the Oslo agreements. A failed UN initiative, or one that “succeeds” without improving the daily lives of Palestinians under occupation, could lead to an explosion of popular anger in the West Bank.

As Ibish said, a bid for recognition at the U.N. would have “largely symbolic value and very harmful practical consequences.” U.N. recognition would not provide any part of Palestine with independence, and the eventual hope of statehood would actually recede. It may not be the administration’s intent, but blocking a Palestinian U.N. recognition bid might be the biggest (and maybe only) favor it has done for the Palestinians so far. Ibish also argued that there needs to be an alternative that will give the Palestinian leadership an incentive not to take the U.N. route, and that still seems to be elusive. Regardless, the only ones who will benefit from an impasse at the U.N. are the ones most opposed to Palestinian statehood.

Andrew concludes his post this way:

The foreign policy is set by US public opinion, and sustained by elite media grandstanding for the Christianist imperial and apocalyptic project in the Middle East.

This greatly exaggerates the influence of public opinion on the setting of foreign policy. The vast majority of Americans would prefer that the U.S. not take sides in the conflict. Their views are largely unrepresented in Washington. There are organized activists focused on this issue to the virtual exclusion of all else. They do not represent public opinion. However, most of the public is not very engaged or concerned about this issue, so the most energized and active groups tend to prevail and define the nature of the debate.

P.S. The “Uniting for Peace” option that Rogin reports on here isn’t likely to yield any better results. As Ibish argued, a “Uniting for Peace” maneuver might technically succeed, but it would accomplish nothing:

It is very difficult to see how such a resolution would advance the cause of Palestinian membership in the UN. Boycotts and sanctions have been in place in many contexts, including the Middle East, without such a resolution, and there is no indication that it would have any practical impact on either Palestinian UN membership or coercive measures aimed at Israel by other member states.

James Joyner notes that Romney’s VFW foreign policy speech is mostly unremarkable boilerplate. He also says this:

Even some of us who don’t take our talking points from Rush Limbaugh grumbled a bit about the “apology tour” in Obama’s early weeks. But that’s gone away as he’s settled into office.

The trouble with this is that there never was an apology tour. Obama never offered anything to any other nation that could reasonably be interpreted as an apology. This didn’t “go away” over time–it never existed! The “apology tour” is a complete fabrication. If Romney said this as a throwaway applause line once or twice, we could dismiss it as cheap politicking and no one would care, but this criticism has been at the core of Romney’s foreign policy message for the last two years. It is the main conceit of his campaign book, No Apology, whose foreign policy section is painfully bad. Romney has decided for some reason to put an obvious falsehood at the center of the argument why voters should trust him to set U.S. foreign policy.

Something else Romney said in his speech was more annoying because it could have implications for how Romney would conduct foreign policy:

American strength caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is at best only partly true, and it is potentially very misleading. It smacks of self-congratulation, but worse than that it perpetuates the myth that it was principally U.S. policies, rather than the efforts of the populations of eastern Europe and the USSR, that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. George Kennan dismissed this idea as nonsense:

The suggestion that any Administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish. No great country has that sort of influence on the internal developments of any other one.

If Romney thinks otherwise and somehow wins the election, America could face many of the same dangers of overreach and hubris that we faced during the Bush years.

Scott Galupo doubts that Romney can attack Perry from left (on entitlements) and right (on immigration) at the same time (via Allison):

But, at this point in the history of U.S politics, it would be a highly unusual creature who could launch both attacks simultaneously.

I would love to believe that Romney’s phony demagoguery will not do him any good, but why couldn’t Romney be successful in using both lines of attack against Perry? Perry’s record on immigration puts him much closer to George W. Bush and John McCain than it does to rank-and-file Republican voters. Perry has not been as visible or outspoken on the national level in support of mass immigration, but he is at odds with the vast majority of the party on this issue. There isn’t much public support for making changes to Social Security and Medicare. Even among those that Pew identifies as “staunch conservatives,” support for making such changes is just 47%. Positioning himself as the defender of entitlements and borders isn’t that strange of a combination. This is a fairly logical combination for someone running to be the nominee of a party with large blocs of elderly voters and opponents of liberalized immigration laws. It is certainly unimaginative, and no one is ever going to say Romney shows political courage, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t work. Besides, how better to describe Romney than as a “highly unusual creature”?

Pete Wehner believes that Ryan’s budget proposal is not much of a political liability:

To put it another way, four months after Ryan’s plan was introduced, it is nothing like the political liability many people thought it would be. In fact, the public’s attention remains focused on the debt and the deficit as well as job creation; “Mediscare” tactics haven’t gained any traction at all (but not for lack of trying by liberals). All this might change, but based on what we know at this juncture, Ryan and his plan are doing rather well.

Wehner’s evidence for this is mainly that movement conservatives and House Republicans have sided with Ryan, some of them were enthusiastically urging him to launch a presidential campaign, and Gingrich’s direct criticism of Ryan’s plan doomed his presidential bid. It seems clear that support for Ryan’s plan is now more or less required among movement conservatives, but the political danger from Medicare reform has never been that it would turn the conservative movement and House Republicans against its advocates. Gingrich was hardly a serious contender in the first place. It would be a mistake to see Gingrich’s collapse as proof that Ryan’s plan is popular. What Romney’s advisers seem to understand is that candidates proposing major overhauls to Social Security and Medicare will be vulnerable to attack, and these candidates will not fare very well with larger primary electorates that include many more low-information and non-ideological voters.

Ryan’s refusal to accept the role of pinata in the nominating contest suggests that he understood that his proposed changes to Medicare are incredibly difficult to sell to voters. Unlike Perry, Ryan can fall back on his previous support for expanding Medicare. That makes Ryan’s pretensions to fiscal responsibility easy to ridicule, but it allows him to blunt the attack that he simply wishes to do away with the program all together. Perry has denounced these programs, but it is not clear that he could defend his position very effectively. Ryan proposed a less ambitious change to Medicare than anything in Perry’s book, and even this appears to be politically toxic with the public. It may win Romney no friends with Ryan’s admirers, but Romney is betting that most primary voters want something very different from what Ryan boosters think they want. The bad news for fiscal conservatives is that Romney will most likely win that bet.

Zack Beauchamp comments on the MEK rally in Washington today:

When was the last time you could remember any other terrorist organization that killed Americans demonstrating outside the White House and lobbying influential American politicians? What’s next, HezbollahPAC?

I suppose other organizations could try to do this, but no one would want to have anything to do with them. The surprising thing is not that the MEK is trying to mislead Americans into lending it support, but that many Americans now seem more than happy to provide that aid. Whether they do this because they don’t actually knowwhat the group is, or because they know exactly what it is and see it as a useful instrument against Tehran, the effect is the same. Unfortunately, the MEK and its advocates are not receiving the sort of criticism they should receive because they happen to have the “right” enemy.

This is why virtually no one cares that both Perry and Romney have vocally pro-MEK advisers connected to their campaigns. In Romney’s case, this isn’t just some tangential, informal adviser. Mitchell Reiss is reportedly one of Romney’s main advisers on foreign policy. As Jim Antle’s article in the new issue explains, Reiss is considered to be Romney’s relatively less hawkish adviser:

In the New Republic, Eli Lake has reported that Romney’s foreign-policy advisers are divided. Lake described Reiss—who ironically was the man dispatched to convince Jennifer Rubin of Romney’s hawkishness—as a surge skeptic, while Dan Senor, a former spokesman for the Coalition Provisional
Authority in Iraq who later sent a distress signal to Republican hawks about the dovishness of senate candidate Rand Paul, was pro-surge. Reiss and Senor
still advise Romney today and are similarly at odds over Afghanistan.

It hardly bodes well for a future Romney administration that the more skeptical, less hawkish member of his team has been actively advocating on behalf of a terrorist organization. What’s worse, Reiss isn’t on the margins of these advocacy efforts, but has been very involved in them.

Like many other pro-MEK advocates, Reiss has confused the issues of the treatment of the population of Camp Ashraf with the question of whether the MEK should remain on the FTO list. The people at Ashraf should be relocated outside Iraq, and they should not be sent to Iran against their will, but this has nothing to do with the MEK’s designation by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. It ought to be possible to address what is properly a political refugee problem left over from the Iraq war without legitimizing a terrorist group.

P.S. Of course, Bachmann is even worse on this issue than the other two candidates, since she has personally spoken in support of removing the MEK from the list.

Ross doesn’t see much use in the Huntsman strategy Dan McCarthy discussed yesterday:

When Paul feuded with Giuliani over foreign policy four years ago, he was separating himself from the pack on an issue that actually mattered, both to the Republican electorate and to the country as a whole. Whereas by casting himself as the candidate of capital-S Science, touting his belief in evolution and global warming, Huntsman is staking out maverick-y positions on issues that matter far more to media-intelligentsia types than to most American voters.

No less important in giving Paul a modest advantage last time was the fact that he was the only Republican candidate who would have taken strong antiwar and anti-hegemonist positions. At least for those voters looking for a straightforward attack on Bush-era foreign policy, Paul was the only option, and he campaigned that way. Unless I have missed something, Huntsman has taken positions that are essentially identical to Romney’s viewson these issues. Trying to be a less annoying Romney isn’t going to win a lot of support.

Not only were the issues that separated Paul and Giuliani more timely and politically relevant, but they also reflected disagreements on what the candidates believed the federal government should be doing. Having flirted with cap-and-trade as a governor, Huntsman now rejects it, so how does it really differentiate him from the rest of the field that he believes in anthropogenic global warming? When it comes to environmental policy, aren’t Huntsman and Romney currently on the same page as all of the other candidates? It’s not as if there is a large bloc of anti-Intelligent Design, environmentalist Republican voters out there anyway, but if there were they might just as well stick with Romney.