What if the Republicans come up with a conservative standard bearer who is smart, attractive, and dedicated to debunking Obama’s weakling foreign policy — and female? ~Jennifer Rubin

Via Jack Ross

I think they tried that twice last year in different ways. First there was Clinton, who received some fairly fawning admiration from Republican hawks whenever she would try to belittle Obama as an inexperienced weakling, and then there was Sarah “He Pals Around With Terrorists” Palin who attempted to make Obama’s appropriate concern about Afghan civilian casualties from U.S. and NATO actions into some kind of anti-military insult. (That concern for protecting Afghan civilians also happens to be at the heart of McChrystal’s current thinking.) Palin certainly did her best to engage in all of the hawkish posturing she could. Combined with her shaky grasp of policy detail, this was not reassuring, but reminded voters of why she and McCain made them nervous. McCain attempted in vain to persuade voters that his reflexive bellicosity would be a steady, reliable guide for U.S. foreign policy. It might just be that no one buys the idea that Obama has a “weakling foreign policy,” so it won’t matter who the messenger is. It could also be that when this is the best Liz Cheney can offer by way of criticism, she does not fit Rubin’s description in any case.

Philip Klein asks the question that Obama’s critics were inevitably going to ask:

So President Obama agreed to negotiate with the Iranians, and he agreed to abandon a missile shield in Eastern Europe. What did he get for all this good will? Bubkes, it turns out.

Klein’s post is entitled, “Russia thwarts Obama on Iran,” which sounds dramatic until you realize that it is about as newsworthy as “sun rises in the east.” It is also a little strange to describe the maintenance of Russia’s long-standing position on sanctions as an effort to “thwart” anyone in particular. As I said when the missile shield decision came down and in the days that followed, it would not do any good to portray the decision as a concession to Russia aimed at “getting” something on pressuring Iran:

If the administration insists that Russian support for tightening sanctions or isolating Iran is the “payoff” for abandoning the shield, the decision will be judged to have been a quid pro quo that gained us nothing. If we see it instead not as a concession to Moscow, but rather as a concession to reality and common sense, it does not have to produce Russian cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program to be regarded as the correct and appropriate move.

I warned enthusiastic administration supporters not to make too much of minor statements coming from the Kremlin:

Andrew and Zakaria are also attaching far too much importance to Russian statements on Iran. Zakaria called recent Kremlin statements a “striking shift,” but there has been no shift, and while Andrew is more skeptical he has cited Medvedev’s remark about inevitable sanctions as if it meant something. Like the administration they are praising, they are holding out unrealistic hopes of Russian cooperation on an issue where this cooperation is not going to be forthcoming. The administration and its supporters are setting themselves up for a fall, and they open themselves to the jeers of an otherwise hapless opposition that Moscow has played Obama for a fool. Russian cooperation may be forthcoming in other areas, and repairing relations with Moscow might yield some desirable results, but to measure the success of Obama’s Russia policy by Moscow’s willingness to do something it has no intention of doing is to rig the game in favor of the hawks who preach confrontation and aggression.

Moscow has no interest in pressuring or isolating Iran, which was clear all along. This is not a problem in Russian policy towards Iran, but draws attention to the flaws in our Iran policy. We insist on stopping something that we do not have the means to stop, and we are defining our relationship with Iran according to whether or not Iran ceases doing something it is never going to cease doing. We then compound this mistake by making the quality of our relationship with Russia dependent on whether or not Russia will cooperate in our dead-end Iran policy.

It also happens to be true that harsher sanctions on Iran would be “counterproductive” in several ways. If the sanctions are designed to hamper Iran’s nuclear program, they will instead show Iran that it needs a deterrent all the more. If they are aimed at aiding internal political opposition and weakening the regime, they will have the opposite effect. Unless the goal is to secure Khamenei and Ahmadinejad in their positions of power and accelerate the advance of Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions would seem to make no sense at all. If Russian opposition to sanctions helps us realize the futility of such an approach that much sooner, so much the better for us.

When talk turned to probable presidential contenders, no one last night seemed to give Tim Pawlenty much of a chance. Nonetheless, it appears that Pawlenty is moving to re-assemble many members of the McCain campaign as part of his preliminary efforts in preparing a bid. This makes sense, as Pawlenty was one of the true McCain loyalists during the last election. While many elected officials had either abandoned McCain early on or refused to back him until he was already the de facto nominee, Pawlenty was unusual in his consistent and public support. The story from The Hill had this passage that should remove any doubt about the kind of foreign policy thinking Pawlenty will be entertaining:

Among those interested in getting to know Pawlenty are Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Randy Scheunemann [bold mine-DL], two top policy advisers from the McCain presidential campaign who have joined the Minnesota governor’s host committee.

If you are interested in angry Russophobia and needless provocation of other major powers, Pawlenty might well be the candidate for you.

What might be more interesting is whether or not Republican activists and primary voters will recoil from a campaign filled with top McCain staffers. As a losing nominee unpopular with conservative activists, McCain would have much to offer Pawlenty in terms of prestige, so I wonder how much of a liability close association with McCain and his advisors could be. Add to that the instinctve revulsion many economic conservative activists seem to have for any candidate who expresses interest in addressing the concerns of working-class voters, and Pawlenty could have some significant difficulties.

I’ll have more to say soon about the Princeton panel, which was very enjoyable. Thanks again to the Committee on Public Lectures, Prof. Wang, our moderators, Professors Kruse and Zelizer, and my fellow panelists for a good discussion. In the meantime, see the remarks by Mark Thompson of the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, who attended the lecture, and take a look at Tim Lee’s new blog. Tim and Mark were both there, along with a few regular readers and commenters, and it was a pleasure to meet all of them in person after all this time.

Conflating American security with military interventionism is an old trick, but it doesn’t make it any more intellectually defensible. And again, it’s worth repeating: when those disposed to Krauthammer’s arguments held policy making positions, American power declined precipitously. ~Greg Scoblete

Scoblete is responding to this Krauthammer article, which makes the preposterous claims that Obama has been proposing a series of “strategic retreats” and that so-called New Liberalism aims to undermine U.S. hegemony. This is rather like the imaginary “apology tour” Obama has been on these past few months–it hits all the right ideological notes for the people making the charge, but it is pure fantasy. Obviously I agree with Scoblete, and I have made the same point about the previous administration’s disastrous record of declining U.S. influence and power.

One thing that does concern me is that turning the old “weakness” smears around on the GOP will not encourage intelligent re-thinking on foreign policy and national security, but will instead foster a redoubling of the worst aggressive instincts that Republicans currently have. If everyone comes to accept that Bush weakened American power, which he did, the conclusion some national security conservatives will reach is that Bush weakened America by not being hard-line and aggressive enough. In this mad interpretation, the failure of the Bush years was not found in plunging us into an intractable, unnecessary war, harming allied interests with blank checks of support or encouraging reckless allies into self-destructive action, but in failing to follow through. This is also the rationale for the flurry of attacks against Obama, who has more or less maintained second-term Bush status quo on most aspects of foreign policy. If doing the same things as the Bush administration in its second term can be redefined as Obama’s “New Liberalism,” the more aggressive interventionists and hawks on the right can claim that they are guardians of a “conservative” foreign policy, which allows them to promote the self-serving, albeit completely absurd, idea that everyone except for them favors “weakness” and “retreat.”

What is a little amusing about the Krauthammer argument against Obama is that it obsesses over symbolism and superficial appearances while ignoring substance, which is one of the standard complaints against Obama. Bush used triumphalist, self-congratulatory rhetoric, but bungled the execution of many policies to the detriment of the United States. Obama has so far mostly eschewed the national self-congratulation and public displays of moral preening, but now what bothers Obama’s critics here is that he is not showy and superficial enough. For example, Fred Hiatt is worried that delaying a meeting with the Dalai Lama, a meeting which is pretty much purely for show, will send discouraging signals to dissidents everywhere despite Hiatt’s own admission that the administration is apparently interested in making substantive gains on their political rights.

P.S. While I don’t think the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize matters one way or the other, it is instructive that Obama’s acceptance of the award has received this kind of reaction:

What’s more, he’s etched in stone the phrase with which critics will dismiss his presidency.

As Ross says elsewhere in the column, accepting the Prize changes nothing about the realities around the world and makes none of the problems Obama faces any easier, so why should it change anyone’s expectations of what Obama will do? I keep seeing and hearing arguments to the effect that the Nobel Committee was trying to neutralize or corner Obama by making it harder for him to support additional troop deployments in Afghanistan and the like. It must be one of the few things on which Rush Limbaugh and David Frum both agree. This doesn’t make any sense. If Obama does not deserve the award, and if it has no real significance, why will Obama give it a second thought when he considers what should be done in Afghanistan or elsewhere? If his acceptance was grudging, why is he going to let the award constrain what he does? If the reasons provided for giving him the Prize mainly concern climate change and nuclear disarmament, why should the award affect a decision on Afghanistan troop levels or pressuring Iran on its nuclear program?

I am here in Princeton preparing for the panel, but I had noticed a couple items that I wanted to discuss briefly. Bill Frezza takes that ludicrous Bret Stephens’ op-ed from the other day, which I remarked on here, and he uses it as his starting point for an argument that is, if this is possible, even more bizarre. Frezza writes:

It was shocking. Only after reading it [Stephens’ op-ed] twice did I realize it was just a forecast and not reality. Yet as Nobel Peace Prize winner Barak Obama pursues his strategy of global multilateralism, the inexorable logic of reciprocal disarmament smacks one in the face.

If the US refuses to acknowledge the existence of evil, rejects unilateralism, and insists on an even-handed approach to international relations, what else can we expect the UN to deliver but an insistence that all sides in the Middle East give up their weapons of mass destruction, including Israel? If this harrowing forecast becomes reality, what might happen next?

War.

The small problem with this “inexorable logic” is that Obama has already ruled out any sort of Israeli disarmament. Having ignored this and all that it implies, Frezza goes on to explain why the Iranian government would welcome an Israeli attack and uses this in support of the attack:

The Iranian mullahs may be crazy but they’re not stupid. The biggest threat to clerical rule comes not from Israel or the US but from Iran’s own restive people. The surest way to crush domestic opposition is to unify the country around hatred for the infidel invader. A price would have to be paid, but Ahmadinejad might find a little death and destruction acceptable compared to the loss of power. Bloodying Israel’s nose by putting up a good fight wouldn’t hurt his standing either. If Ahmadinejad’s handlers believe that Israel will execute a careful surgical strike, which is likely given Israel’s interest in minimizing collateral damage, the mullahs may roll the dice.

So Frezza wants us to believe that a course of action that makes Ahmadinejad and Khamenei more secure in their positions of power and which will at most delay, not prevent, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is in the interests of Israel’s government. To listen to advocates of attacking Iran, one might have thought that it is the character of the current regime that makes an Iranian nuke so threatening. By Frezza’s own admission, an Israeli attack would strengthen the current regime and open Israel to retaliatory strikes, which would in all likelihood be seen by much of the world as justified self-defense against an unprovoked attack, and this is going to help Israel’s government? It is fair to say that Frezza’s article has an abundance of “[t]ortured logic rife with miscalculation.”

In recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, it had also broken the cardinal rule of post-cold war European security: that borders in Europe would never again be changed by force of arms. ~Ronald Asmus

The Russians might not have realized that this was such a “cardinal rule of post-cold war European security” when the United States and NATO blatantly violated it beginning in 1999. Kosovo was separated from Serbia by force of arms, and this de facto arrangement guaranteed by Western military forces became official when the United States and many western European states recognized the independence of Kosovo. So, yes, many of these Europeans were in a bit of a bind when faced with the consequences of their governments’ actions over the previous decade.

Of course the EU report disproves that Russian claims of “genocide,” which were clearly hyperbole and propaganda from the begnning. The idea that NATO began bombing Serbia because it was committing “genocide” in Kosovo was likewise laughable, but to this day Westerners continue to take this claim seriously. The report acknowledges that Russia had the right to protect its “peacekeepers,” but said that the Russian response was excessive. This is true, which adds to the responsibility of the Georgian government for the stupid decision to launch an attack that would precipitate a Russian response that it must have known would not be minimal and proportional. That doesn’t absolve Russia of responsibility for its excesses, but it makes the responsibility of the escalating party all the greater. It is also true that the separation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia violates international law, just as the partition of Serbia violated international law. As far as I can tell, virtually no one who objected to the partition of Georgia paid any attention to international law when Kosovo was illegally detached from Serbia. Indeed, many of the same people endorsed the latter move and claimed that it was a “one-time” exception that would not create a precedent. The trouble is that precedents were created whether or not Western governments wanted to acknowledge them or not. Official Russian propaganda claimed outrageous and false things, and I suspect one of the reason why Moscow framed its propaganda the way that it did was to mimic and thereby mock false Western claims over Kosovo. Then again, perhaps mockery was not the intent. Perhaps Moscow believed that the West would be more willing to accept military action if it were wrapped into the sanctimonious cant of humanitarian intervention.

In the end, holding out the prospect of NATO membership for Georgia was a dangerously provocative act that the West had no interest in backing up when it elicited the angry Russian response that inevitably followed. Recognizing Kosovo was madness, and Georgia paid the price for it. Trashing international law and ignoring state sovereignty when it suited us paved the way for other major powers to do the same to their weaker neighbors. The aggressive and confrontational foreign policy of at least the last ten years, including both Clinton and Bush administrations, brought about this state of affairs, and it will probably take decades to undo the damage that “humanitarian” and “well-intentioned” hawks have done to the international order.

I agree with Jesse Walker that the success of non-interventionism inside the GOP remains a very long shot. It seems to me that Andrew has misread Drudge if he detects an undercurrent of antiwar sentiment there. Today’s Drudge headline highlights a Times story reporting declining morale among our soliders in Afghanistan, and the story emphasizes that the soldiers see the war as futile and lacking clear objectives, but there are plenty of ways for a reflexively pro-war audience to reconcile this with continued support for the war. Of course, the war in Iraq has been futile and lacking in clear objectives practically since the beginning, but that has not stopped two-thirds of Republicans and an even higher proportion of self-described conservatives from backing it to this day. Furthermore, as Walker notes, Republican leaders certainly aren’t moving in that direction.

Andrew’s original post referred to a “looming foreign policy war” on the right. That would be very welcome to the extent that it meant that conservatives were beginning to think twice about their foreign policy assumptions, but if it happened right now it would probably be short and not to the advantage of non-interventionists. After all, if there were a “foreign policy war” on the right, who would be on our side? Andrew invokes Hagel and Huntsman, which reminds us of how politically lopsided such a fight would be. I have said in the past that Huntsman might provide a sober, informed foreign policy perspective because of his diplomatic background and experience overseas, but Huntsman already scrapped any ambitions for higher office and party leadership when he accepted the post in Beijing. Hagel abandoned any thoughts of a presidential run and he is now persona non grata on much of the right…because he had the sense to oppose deepening our involvement in Iraq. For that matter, Hagel is a long way away from being a reliably good guide on foreign policy, as I have said many times, and my guess is that Huntsman would prove to be far more conventionally hawkish on policy once we learned more about his views. Ron Paul has done great work making the case against empire and war, and for his troubles he is reviled by much of the rest of his party.

What does seem clear to me is that most of the public will continue to reject conservatives and the GOP in part because of their disastrous foreign policy views. Until most conservatives and Republicans see that they are at odds with most of the public on these questions and recognize that they are in the wrong, it is hard to see how non-interventionism or even a humble “realism” will make much headway on the right.

Those of you in the Princeton area may be interested in the panel in which I am participating this Monday. “The Future of Conservatism” panel will include myself, David Frum, Ross Douthat and Virginia Postrel, and it will be held at 4:30 on Monday in McCosh 50 at Princeton. Thanks to the Princeton Committee on Public Lectures for making this event possible.