Zakaria validates Obama's fresh diplomacy

As we blogged yesterday, the rare diplomatic successes President Bush has enjoyed during his time in the White House have come when he has employed an innovative, experimental approach to foreign affairs. Newsweek writer Fareed Zakaria, in an article released in the latest edition of that news magazine, makes much the same case.

He offers a defense of Obama's fresh approach to international relations, while arguing that, quite apart from the bullyish, frustrated strategies utilized by the Bush Administration to encourage political change in places like Iran, Venezuela, and, to a lesser extent, Russia, the president has scored key gains in places once considered rogue states and uncooperative elements by tapping qualities that have been far too lacking during his time in office: creativity and open-mindedness.

Take, for instance, Libya. As recently as late 2003, Libya was viewed by many within the upper-echelon of the Bush Administration as a county unripe for diplomatic overtures and a decided foe in Washington's 'War on Terrorism'. As mentioned yesterday, the warming of relations between Washington and Tripoli that began in December '03, came in response to the decision by Libyan frontman Muammar al Qaddafi to shelve the country's program of weapons of mass destruction.

At this point, the Bush Administration could have taken Libya's capitulation to represent a vindication of its promotion of the principles of democracy, free-market economics, as well as a tell-tale sign that the Bush-led terror war was gaining ground. Indeed, based on the administration's track record of hard-nosed diplomatic posturing, reasonable observers could have been forgiven for expecting more of the same in the case of Libya.

However, Washington, along with counterparts from the U.K., chose a different route, and the benefits have been significant. Rather than merely praising Libya for coming out of the shadows of state-sponsored terrorism (though, there still exist convincing and worrying reports of continued activity on this front), Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair encouraged foreign direct investment into Tripoli and other locations within Libya in order to expand the country's economic opportunities and, by extension, take steps towards further reducing its affinity for radical, violent activity. Today, Libya represents a rare bright spot on the Bush Administration's map of foreign policy initiatives.

Secondly, there is the example of North Korea. To be sure, U.S. problems with the communist state continue to abound, with alarming reports that, despite progress on the issue, North Korea presses ahead with its nuclear program and badly needed political and economic reform have been slow in materializing, if not stalled altogether.

Still, there have been, as Zakaria points out, meaningful steps taken to improve political and diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang. The White House's chief diplomat in North Korea, Christopher Hill, has been willing to toe the line between Washington's strictly multilateralist policy of engaging North Korea and speaking directly with his counterparts in the country, absent the representatives of regional neighbors such as China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and so forth.

Hill's willingness to do so has been wise on two counts. First, his more direct form of communicating with the North Koreans has offered the specific and more direct attention for which they've called as a pre-requisite for movement on the nuclear issue. On the second count, Hill has employed this direct method of diplomacy in a way carefully calculated to not give North Korea's eccentric president, Kim Jung-il, the prestige that an expressly bilateral summit between representatives from Washington and Pyongyang might engender. In this sense, Hill has been able to hold meaningful and, at times, fruitful talks with North Korea, without bolstering Kim Jung-il's claim to be a global power player.

A third and final example of Bush's success in employing Obama-style diplomacy appears closer to home and manifests itself in the Administration's handling of Peruvian presidential elections in 2006. In a region in which many contend that the best way for a candidate to get elected is by portraying her or himself as the 'anti-U.S.' candidate, the Bush Administration has had a particularly difficult time winning allies and stalling the rising tide of Anti-U.S.-ism in Washington's 'back yard'.

Bush learned a harsh lesson in the averse results that an overt U.S. effort to influence Latin American presidential elections can have in Bolivia in 2002, when his ambassador in La Paz stated just weeks before the country's general election that U.S. aid to Bolivia would be cut off, were left-wing coca leader Evo Morales elected president. Morales, who had been hovering in the single digits in opinion polls, saw his numbers skyrocket overnight and finished a close second behind Gonzalo 'Goni' Sanchez de Lozada in the general election, winning just over 21% of the vote. Riding his new-found recognition and a wave of anti-Washington sentiment spurred on by Sancho de Lozada's close ties with the White House and a deteriorating domestic state of affairs, Morales claimed a convincing victory in Bolivia's presidential election in 2005, in which he became the first candidate in his country's history to capture a first-round victory by winning an outright majority of votes. The Bush Administration's effort to sway the 2002 contest had clearly come back to haunt it in the form of Morales' unprecedented win three years hence.

In Peru's 2005 general election, however, Bush felt determined not to make the same mistake again. With a tight, three-way contest for the presidency brewing between leftist and ardently anti-U.S. candidate Ollanta Humala, centre-right candidate Lourdes Flores, and former President Alan Garcia, Washington decided to take a hands-off approach and let the chips fall where they may. The Administration felt confident that Peru's electorate would not give Humala an outright victory in the first round of voting and then, in a two-way contest with Flores or Garcia, would drift from the leftist's radical proclamations and shift into the camp of the more moderate Flores or Garcia.

Bush's strategy paid off. Humala won the most votes in the first round, with Garcia narrowly edging Flores to advance into the run-off contest, in which he scored a solid, five point victory, as voters grew leery of Humala and the U.S. quietly and successfully helped Garcia play up Humala's ties to Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, a Washington bug-a-boo and no best friend of the Peruvian people either (as I experienced during a trip to the country in the aftermath of its presidential election in the summer of 2006).

Taking its cue from its misadventure in the 2002 Bolivian general election, the Bush Administration had earned a precious ally in a region in which leaders friendly with Washington rarely prosper.

This tactic does not represent Obama-like diplomacy in terms of political preference, or even the subvert, one might argue sinister way in which the U.S. meddled in Peruvian politics. However, it does resemble the type of keen attention to, and consideration of, other countries' domestic political conditions and histories that an Obama Administration would employ in its diplomatic approach. Indeed, knowing the type of internal conditions present in a country with whom you hope to partner and in whom you hope to gain an ally represents a critical facet of any president's successful foreign policy agenda. Senator Obama, it seems, understands this and would proceed accordingly upon taking the White House in January 2009.

Signing off from Gallup, you've been reading the New Mexico Progressive- the Land of Enchantment's only progressive blog written by a young activist with his feet on the ground and an ear to the street. Thanks for stopping in, and come by again soon.