Trudy Rubin: Time for a new foreign policy

At some point in this presidential campaign we may have a real debate on foreign policy differences.

The candidates have sparred about experience. They have clashed on Iraq. But they’re still dancing around the most central question: How do you balance force and diplomacy when trying to keep America safe?

Nothing illustrates the need for clarity more than the jousting over whether America should talk directly to the likes of Raul Castro or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In a July debate, Sen. Barack Obama was asked if he would talk without preconditions to leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. He famously responded, “I would.”

President Bush and Sen. John McCain have taken Obama to task on this one, as has Hillary Clinton. I, too, have questioned the smarts of such a gesture.

But the real issue isn’t whether the next president should sup with unpleasant leaders. It’s whether the United States should talk without preconditions to countries with which we’re at odds.

Communing with Castro or Ahmadinejad makes sense only after addressing grievances at lower levels. Holding summit meetings prematurely can hinder progress by raising false expectations.

“Having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raul Castro lends … the status of our country to him,” President Bush said last Thursday. It could also “discourage reformers inside their own country,” the president added.

That said, the Bush policy of avoiding diplomacy in favor of military solutions has been a failure. Late in the day, the president seems to have been persuaded that diplomacy is central to dealing with Iran and North Korea. But in the Iranian case, the diplomacy has been so hedged and half-hearted that it has gone nowhere.

So, while Obama’s readiness to meet dictators betrays inexperience, the essence of his (and Hillary Clinton’s) position is the right one. America’s security, and the U.S. military’s new counterinsurgency theory, will rely heavily on diplomacy and political maneuvers, backed up by force only if unavoidable.

On this central issue, Clinton has it right; Obama grasps the essence. Bush and McCain have it wrong.

Take Cuba. The point isn’t, or shouldn’t be, whether to hold a meeting with Raul Castro. It’s whether it still makes sense to isolate and sanction Cuba.

This policy, long after the Cold War’s end, is dumb. If Bush would junk U.S. sanctions, Americans would flood into Cuba, and its people would be exposed to new ideas and prospects.

Bush and McCain support a policy that kept Fidel Castro in power for decades and will keep his brother in power, too.

Or take Iran. Here, too, proposing direct talks with Ahmadinejad is a mistake. The Iranian president heads the hardest-line faction in Tehran, and shows little interest in better U.S.-Iranian relations. Iranians would regard such a summit as vindication for his anti-American and anti-Israel policies. Such a summit would undercut the more pragmatic factions in Iran.

When Richard Nixon met Chinese leaders, both sides were already committed to renewing relations as a hedge against Soviet power. But in Tehran, there is still an internal power struggle over whether to engage fully with the Great Satan. So any U.S. diplomacy must be smart.

However, Obama was right when he said: “The notion that not talking to countries is punishment for them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.”

America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have immeasurably strengthened Iran by eliminating its two key enemies, the Afghan Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and by putting a friendly Shiite government in power in Baghdad. In order to exit Iraq, the United States must involve Iran in serious regional negotiations with all of Iraq’s neighbors. This won’t happen so long as Iran’s top leaders still suspect America wants to topple their regime.

The next U.S. president needs to propose that America and Iran compile an agenda of their key concerns and discuss them without preconditions. Iran’s threats to Israel, the nuclear issue, and Iranian human-rights violations would all be on that agenda. The aim would be to develop a new relationship that met the interests of both sides. Such a proposal would galvanize the pragmatists in the Iranian regime.

“We have key leverage with Iran,” says Iran expert Trita Parsi, author of “Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States,” “because Iran recognizes they can’t get their legitimate role in the Middle East without U.S. buy-in.”

Obama’s tactics may betray inexperience, but he – and Clinton – grasp the need to revamp U.S. policy toward Iran and Cuba. For all their “experience,” Bush and McCain are glued to policies that have failed.