Jon B. Alterman of the Center for Strategic and Internationl Studies, back from a trip visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has advice for the Bush Administration in dealing with the Asad regime that might interest Barak Obama and his critics, as well.
How to Manage Asad
Jon's recommendation: engage Syria diplomatically to work along shared interests.
Jon's assessment of the current policy of isolating the Assad regime demonstrates pretty underwhelming results from this strategy. The Syrian leadership appears to be hunkering down, ignoring U.S. pressure, and looking to wait out the President until a new American head of state takes up residence in 2009.
What is interesting to me in Jon's recommendation vis a vis Barak Obama's wise equivalent recommendation of diplomatic engagement with various rogue regimes is that Jonathan, of all the people who I've seen engaged in that discussion - Hillary Clinton, Charles Krauthammer, George Will (who originally raised it), and, most recently, the Economist, all of whom have condescendingly and wrongheadedly, I belive, referred to Barack's suggestion as a sign of his inexperience and naivete - Jon Alterman clearly has the most serious and direct experience and realistic outlook on the Syrian situation, at least, of all of those players.
And his suggestion: engage diplomatically.
Perhaps Hillary, Charles, George, and the Economist editors just don't understand, well enough, the underlying issues around diplomacy and force in dealing with such regimes. God knows that each of them would be loathe to admit such a thing. But Hillary Clinton, in particular, has little more experience than Mr. Obama and, for all the reasons that Alterman articulates here, it seems to me that Barak, experience or not, just seems to understand better our diplomatic challenges and opportunities than does Ms. Clinton. That and she was playing politics. Which is unfortunate when the better policy will need to be adopted whomever is elected in November of 2008, if it gets shelved for a less engaged policy for the sake of validating Ms. Clinton's politics. And if Hillary, Charles, George, and the Economist has better policy in mind, they might articulate it because other than orchestrating summits and sending ahead envoys - something of a laughably obvious suggestion, frankly, and not something that requires sage wisdom, really - I haven't seen anything that beats Alterman's description here of the need for bilateral diplomacy.
The truth is that Obama is right. And a President Obama looks like a sensible alternative to the failures of pressure politics in the status quo. It's not the first time that Barack has run into the authors' of failed policies not wanting to admit their failures. And if he can give a commitment that he will not pull American troops out of Iraq until the Iraqi government gives the ok, then hopefully President Obama (given no significant changes in the leadership of the current contenders in the race) will have plenty of time to demonstrate what diplomacy can accomplish.
Fuck 'em, Barack. You're thinking is right. Largely because you are not burdened with defending the failed policies that these folks helped articulate. Let them be responsible for their failures. You be responsible for adjusting course for American international policy in a more humble and effectively engaged direction.
If Barack can't find it in himself to say we stay until the Iraqis give us the ok, I'm voting for Rudy Guliani or Fred Thompson or John McCain or even Mitt Romney or any of the Republicans who commit to staying. But if Barack says he'll stay, he'll be the best choice, as much as the most formidable candidate, amongst the current crop.
