Obama’s Ship of State Sinks in Shallow Waters

Today, Barack Obama makes it official: his overall strategy for achieving world peace is to travel the globe and beg dictators, tyrants, and democracies alike, “Can’t we all just get along?” As a potential a captain of our ship of state, perhaps we should expect more from Obama, but he continues to demonstrate that he is anything but a seasoned foreign policy sailor.

That anyone would take Obama seriously when he speaks on foreign policy issues is disturbing enough, but more troubling is that Obama appears to take himself seriously and may actually believe the views he espouses. In a speech at DePaul University today, Obama will make an outrageous claim for which voters, liberal or conservative, should demand clarification or retraction.

Obama’s speech, as reported by the New York Times, sets forth his alleged goal to eliminate all of the world’s nuclear weapons. While such a goal in itself merely places Obama in the pantheon of liberal pie-in-the-sky dreamers, it was one of his stated reasons for why the United States should take the lead in eliminating its own weapons that caught our attention.

According to a preview of the speech provided to the Times by Obama’s aides, Obama will tell DePaul students and faculty that “the United States should greatly reduce its stockpiles to lower the threat of nuclear terrorism." This statement is problematic for Obama regardless of how one interprets it. Either Obama believes that the world is somehow threatened by a possibility of America using its nuclear weapons to carry out terrorist attacks, or he believes that terrorists are more likely to seek nuclear weapons to use against America simply because we possess such weapons.

That's a pretty ominous iceberg in your foreign policy waters, Captain Obama.

The obvious extension of that lamentable logic is that if America would purge itself of nuclear weapons, radical Islamic terrorists would stop seeking the most powerful weapon they can find to destroy America. If Obama truly believes this, then one must also assume by his logic that if Israel were to publicly acknowledge its nuclear arsenal and likewise publicly destroy it, then radical Islamic terrorists across the globe would halt their quest to acquire nuclear weapons and cease preaching the destruction of the Jewish state.

Obama’s foreign policy as it applies to nuclear weapons is simple and easily recognizable: as with all world conflict, somehow, in some way, America is to blame: the world is stockpiling nuclear weapons because we invented them; the world must arm itself to the teeth with nuclear weapons because we have a large number of them and, gasp, we used them twice to end a war; the world’s terrorists would not be seeking nuclear weapons to further their goals if we would just disavow such weapons as dangerous and stop making them; if we are ever victimized by a terrorist nuclear detonation, it will be our own fault for fueling the world’s need for the ultimate weapon to defend itself from America’s dangerous stockpiles.

The “blame America first” theme is rampant among the candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2008. Every world crisis or the response to it is America’s fault. We intervened when we should have restrained ourselves, or we failed to intervene when we should have, or we failed to intervene quickly enough, or when we intervened we did too little or too much. The candidates, Obama in particular, fail to recognize that as powerful as America is, it is not and cannot be directly or indirectly responsible for every facet of international politics or conflict, including nuclear weapons development and arms races between nations.

Certainly we should seek to assure that nations with nuclear weapons are accounting for them, storing them safely, and understand the consequences for attempting to use them for offensive purposes. One does not negotiate such arrangements from a position of weakness or worse, disarmament.

The world is not in more danger of nuclear terrorism because America has large stockpiles of nuclear weapons. To make such a statement was irresponsible and naïve. To conclude that terrorists will stop seeking nuclear devices of their own to use against America was naïve and dangerous. Nation states we have competed with in this arena will not be talked out of their best technologies. Stubborn and sly world leaders such as Putin, Kim Jong-Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Pervez Musharraf, and a host of others must be salivating at the prospect of potentially competing in the international policy arena with the transparent Obama, who appears to think that if he can just sit down and use his charm and charisma on world leaders, they will agree to disarm themselves of the ultimate deterrent from attack. He may as well ask them to give up radar and satellites as well since they should have no fear of any incoming attacks in his Utopian fantasy world.

The portion of Obama’s DePaul speech that best illustrated how unlikely he will be to sail the ship of state through his foreign policy shallowness was his description of how he would deal with Iran:

In his speech, according to a campaign briefing paper, Mr. Obama also will call for using a combination of diplomacy and pressure to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. Aides did not say what Mr. Obama intended to do if diplomacy and sanctions failed.

The last sentence sums it up nicely. Obama’s entire foreign policy strategy is to talk and keep talking, because he appears unable or unwilling to reassure the American people that he would act to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of any radical Islamic government, not merely Iran’s. Perhaps Obama and his aides have overlooked the fact that our approach to Iran has already utilized “a combination of diplomacy and pressure,” including UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions, divestment of terror funds, frozen assets, carrier groups repositioned to the region, and overt statements from President Bush and other officials that we will act if Iran does not change course and renounce its uranium enrichment program.

That Obama plans to “call for using a combination of diplomacy and pressure” on Iran is no plan at all. Only a first term Democratic senator with no foreign policy experience would call for America to do what it is already doing and try to pass that off as a plan worthy of entrusting him with the title of Commander in Chief.

Is the advocate for a nuclear-free world willing to enforce the removal or prevention of nuclear weapons by military action? Is he willing to wage war for peace? If not, he learned nothing from the Cold War, where one nation could not reduce arms unless the other did so simultaneously. Likewise, even in Obama’s anti-nuclear utopia one nation will never dismantle its nuclear arsenal unless all other nations do so.

Rather than referring to Republican candidates as “warmongers” for their hard line stances on Iran, Obama and his fellow Democratic candidates should come to a decision and share with voters what they will do when Iran or any other nation refuses to comply with UN sanctions and resolutions already in place and is on the verge of a viable nuclear weapon. That is a question the next president will undoubtedly be forced to deal with decisively, but decisiveness requires a decision and it is clear that Obama has not made his yet.

America is not the problem. America's arsenal is not fanning any terrorist flames. Terrorists seek the most efficient and formidable means for killing mass quantities of those they hate. Obama will likely still be shaking their hands and smiling warmly at them in negotiations when a Western city disappears in a flash and a cloud.

As waders at beaches in Florida or Australia can attest, danger can lurk even in the shallowest waters. The same is true in politics. The shallowest policy positions usually portend grave danger if followed to their conclusions. Rather than arrogantly believing he can seal missile silos with his dripping charisma, Obama should demonstrate leadership by making a commitment to take all necessary actions to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons beyond those nations that already possess them. A broad smile, sanctions, and political pressure will not deter governments or terrorist organizations determined to become world powers by building fearsome weaponry.

If Obama wants to pilot the ship of state, he should develop a more substantive foreign policy and spend more time navigating in deeper waters than he has attempted to explore thus far in his campaign.

Technorati Tags:
Barack Obama, Presidential Candidates, 2008 Presidential Campaign, Foreign Policy, Nuclear Disarmament, Terrorism, Iran, Nuclear Weapons

Obama, Nukes, and "American Hiroshima"

When Barack Obama is wrong, he is really wrong. When he is right, it is often unintentional. Obama’s risky and impulsive recent foray into tough-sounding foreign policy declarations illustrated that sometimes a candidate can be spectacularly wrong from a policy perspective but correct tactically even if it was likely unintentional. Such may have been the case with his comments about never using nuclear weapons against terrorists.

To frame the issue in context, the previous criticism heaped upon Obama for proclaiming that if elected president he would meet with leaders of rogue nations like Iran was justified. Keeping oppressive regimes isolated politically and economically from the United States is an effective way to create unrest and citizen dissatisfaction in such countries that might lead to internal reform or overthrow of the undesirable regime. Meeting with such leaders would merely remove a useful diplomatic tool and increase reliance on potential military conflict to achieve the same end. Hillary Clinton was right to call Obama’s position naïve and irresponsible.

Not content to look the fool on only one major foreign policy issue, Obama decided to announce that if elected president he would send troops into a sovereign Muslim nation armed with nuclear weapons, Pakistan, to eliminate al Qaeda regardless of whether Pakistan’s government authorized the invasion. I have argued strenuously against the U.S. taking any such action in previous posts, and will not restate those arguments here, but I found Obama’s hypocrisy in talking tough to Pakistan remarkable. In essence, Obama would remove troops from Iraq, where they are engaging al Qaeda daily, and redeploy them into a nuclear-armed Muslim nation without that nation’s permission so they can, drum roll please, engage al Qaeda daily. Removing our troops from Iraq will not result in al Qaeda leaving Iraq and redeploying along with us. Al Qaeda will remain in Iraq, destroy the fragile Iraqi democracy, and considerably expand al Qaeda’s territorial reach and resources. Critics of Obama’s desire to invade Pakistan were correct to call him ignorant and naïve on this issue.

Most sensible candidates would realize that after turning the other cheek and having that one slapped too there is no third cheek to turn to opponents, but Obama found one nonetheless. After talking tough of invasions of Pakistan and taking the fight to al Qaeda leadership, Obama clarified that he would never use nuclear weapons in the War on Terror. He began his comment about nuclear weapons use by stating that he would not use such weapons to fight terrorists in circumstances involving innocent civilians, but immediately retracted that position and declared he would not use them under any circumstance in fighting terrorism. Hillary Clinton and other critics in both parties seized on this comment as a further illustration of Obama’s foreign policy ignorance and evidence that he lacks the mettle to be commander-in-chief. They cited perhaps the most overused cliché in Washington, “never take anything off the table,” as the best position for a leader to take, but Obama, albeit inadvertently, raised an important tactical issue that comes part and parcel with a policy of threatening nomadic terrorists with nuclear annihilation: the terrorists are not officially tied to any foreign governments.

What Obama should ask his critics in both parties to explain, for this is a bipartisan issue, is under what specific scenarios they would authorize the use of nuclear weapons in the War on Terror. A logical follow-up question would be to ask what it would take for them to reach the point of unleashing a nuclear weapon, such as terrorists detonating nuclear devices in America, and how they would determine whom to strike in retaliation. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have truly examined this issue and its tactical implications, but some have, in their efforts to sound forceful, stated they would strike in knee-jerk reaction against nearly any available target. For example, presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, who fought admirably to defeat the recent illegal immigration amnesty bill, stated that America should threaten to detonate nuclear weapons at Muslim holy sites as a deterrent, apparently believing that terrorists will equivocate on their “American Hiroshima” plans if they are convinced we would destroy Mecca or a similar sacred place if provoked.

It is not clear who is more ignorant, Obama or Tancredo, when it comes to nuclear weapons use in the War on Terror, but there is no mistaking that both are fundamentally unqualified and naïve on how their positions would be interpreted by our Islamic terrorist enemies. Whereas Obama would never use nuclear weapons, Tancredo would, especially if provoked by a nuclear detonation on American soil, retaliate against Islam itself rather than any specific enemy. In his view, an attack motivated by religion demands a response that targets that religion. The logic behind such action is severely flawed. The terrorists worship martyrdom and would consider the destruction of holy sites as collateral loss in a permanently escalated war. If they are willing to martyr themselves and their children for the cause, they will merely shrug at the loss of buildings and other material representations of their faith. Additionally, the world’s moderate Muslims would not remain moderate after Tancredo wiped out the symbols of their faith.

Tancredo’s nuclear gunslinger mentality is symptomatic of the thinking of many in Washington. America’s reliance on Mutually Assured Destruction in the Cold War has created a false sense of security that the threat of our nuclear arsenal will protect us from traditional powers like Russia or China as well as Islamic terrorists. Internet forums are filled with comments about “turning the whole area into a sea of glass,” or “they won’t realize what they’ve unleashed if they set off a nuke in America,” and other similar boasts. Our military might blinds us to the reality that if terrorists detonate a nuclear device in America, Obama’s position on using our nuclear weapons might actually be the most correct because of one simple question: whom and where would we strike in retaliation?

Our American bravado and outrage after such an event would make us want to react decisively; to punish and avenge; to destroy everyone responsible for the heinous act. The pressure on an American president to retaliate against someone, anyone, would be unbearable. The initial impulse would be to consider any Muslim nation known to harbor terrorists as targets, and the ignorant among us would believe in those moments that all Muslims everywhere are the enemy and thus fair game for nuclear annihilation. Consider for a moment the dilemma a president would face after such a cataclysmic event in America. What if al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the nuclear detonation in America? Would we bomb all of Iraq in response? What if Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah claimed responsibility? Would we bomb all of Iran in retaliation? What of the millions of Iranians who are reportedly pro-western but are ruled by a radical regime? What if al Qaeda elements hiding in Pakistan gloated that they nuked America? Would we bomb Pakistan, a Muslim nation also armed with nuclear weapons?

Thus is the paradox of leaving nuclear weapons on the table as a response to terrorism. Terrorists know no borders; they blend into local civilian populations; they strike and move, rarely remaining in place long enough to be hit by initial retaliations; the terrorists usually do not represent the political or even religious views of the majority of their countrymen, thus retaliation against an entire nation merely punishes millions of innocent foreign citizens as recompense for the deaths of millions of American citizens. Such a response, while it may appeal to our baser instincts, would be tactically unsound and surely result in further nuclear destruction and literal fallout across the globe. How would we have responded to 9/11 had it been a nuclear detonation in New York perpetrated by the same group of nineteen al Qaeda operatives? They were natives of Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, among other nations. Would we have retaliated against each of those nations for the actions of their rogue citizens?

Unless a nuclear terrorist attack could be proven to have been the sovereign decision of a foreign government, a nuclear retaliation by America against an entire nation would be counterproductive. It is not an act of war by a nation if some of its radical residents, unaffiliated with that nation’s government, perpetrate an attack on another nation. Thus a measured response is essential. It is perfectly justifiable to issue ultimatums to that nation to capture those responsible immediately or allow us to do so, but an emotional and rash nuclear response against an entire nation to punish a small group hiding therein would be irresponsible in the extreme.

Harry Truman approved the use of atomic weapons against Japan in WWII because tactically it made sense to demonstrate destructive power to Japan’s government in order to convince it to surrender. The government of Japan, not wanting to see any more of its citizens annihilated, surrendered, ultimately saving millions of lives in both nations. Nuclear response against terrorists is an entirely different matter. There is no central government anywhere that can be intimidated into halting all terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals. Likewise, the deaths of possibly millions of innocent Muslims would be viewed as merely the creation of millions more martyrs to the cause and further incentive to continue targeting America and our allies. Use of nuclear weapons in a declared war between nations, as tragic as it is, makes tactical sense. Using them against an enemy hidden within nearly every nation on earth would be logically unsound and tactically impractical.

Obama likely did not weigh such considerations before arriving at his decision to never use nuclear weapons to fight terrorism. It is far more likely that his opposition to such weapons is purely ideological and reflects the influence of the view held by many on the anti-war left that nuclear weapons are innately evil and never should be used under any circumstances regardless of the enemy we face. However, as it applies to combating terrorism, an undefined and nomadic enemy, Obama was right to suggest that nuclear weapons not be used. Nuclear weapons carry a finality that never can be undone.

Technorati Tags:
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Tom Tancredo, Nuclear Weapons, War on Terror, Mecca, Muslim Holy Sites, Radical Islam