AS THE Obama administration charts its foreign policy, there is increasing unease about its lack of achievements. The Iraq war lingers, Afghanistan continues to be mired in its endless cycle of tribal disarray and Islamist resurgence, Guantanamo remains open. Still, Obama has introduced important changes in both the style and substance of US diplomacy. An honest dialogue with the international community has at times led the president to acknowledge our own culpabilities and shortcomings. Even more dramatic has been Obama’s willingness to reach out to America’s adversaries and seek negotiated solutions to some of the world’s thorniest problems.
It is Obama’s declared engagement policy that has raised the ire of critics and led them to once more take refuge in the spurious yet incendiary charge of appeasement. Columnist Charles Krauthammer recently exclaimed, “When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom.’’ Acknowledgement of America’s misjudgments is derided as an unseemly apologia while diplomacy is denigrated as a misguided exercise in self-delusion. After all, North Korea continues to test its nuclear weapons and missiles, Cuba spurns America’s offers of a greater opening, and the Iranian mullahs contrive conspiracy theories about how George Soros and the CIA are instigating a velvet revolution in their country. Tough-minded conservatives are urging a course correction and a resolute approach to the gallery of rogues that the president pledges to embrace.
Such views miscast the essence of diplomatic engagement. Diplomacy is likely to be a painstaking process and it may not work with every targeted nation. However, the purpose of such a policy is not to transform adversaries into allies, but to seek adjustments in their behavior and ambitions. North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and Iran would be offered a path toward realizing their essential national interests should they conform to global conventions on issues such as terrorism and proliferation.
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