by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n This essay appeared in the September 7, 2004\u00a0National Review Magazine.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n John Kerry is worried about his record of support for gay unions, abortion-on-demand, and other hot-button liberal causes that rile moderate swing voters outside of New England. One way to counteract the image of an out-of-touch Boston liberal is to sound hawkish on foreign policy: If Vietnam was once something to be tapped for proof of a young Kerry’s opposition to the corporate military-industrial complex, it is now even more richly re-mined in his gray years for evidence of military valor, toughness, and hyper-patriotism.<\/p>\n The slogans \u201cJust as tough, but smarter,\u201d and \u201cRespected, not just feared\u201d now summarize the Kerry-Edwards party line on foreign policy. With those flippant phrases, a Jamie Rubin, Sandy Berger, Rand Beers, Joe Biden, or Joe Wilson can promise new style, same substance. In light of an amazing military victory in Iraq, followed by a difficult occupation, Kerry’s most recent statements suggest that he would not necessarily have done anything different from what President Bush did in invading Afghanistan and Iraq, but instead would have \u201creached out to\u201d and \u201csat down with\u201d allies; such an embrace of multilateralism, we are assured, would have avoided a \u201cunilateral,\u201d \u201cpreemptive,\u201d and costly American enterprise. Kerry’s Iraq \u2014 it is presupposed that someone else mysteriously would have first removed Saddam \u2014 would purportedly now have involved a multinational effort, aimed more cautiously at order and stability rather than at unworkably radical democratic transformation.<\/p>\n To the degree that there is any consistency in Kerry’s evolving positions about the use of force, there seem at least two constants: partisanship and expediency. Thus Republican administrations’ efforts to remove Saddam in 1991, and rebuild Iraq in 2003, prompted Kerry’s initial opposition and subsequent support, depending on the pulse of the battlefield \u2014 yes to war, if victory looks assured and cheap; no, if it is in doubt or its consequences turn messy. Thus Bill Clinton’s five air campaigns against Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, and Sudan \u2014 often without congressional or United Nations sanction \u2014 earned not Kerry’s principled opposition to unilateralism, but his partisan approval, especially since Americans were bombing without being much shot at. That almost a decade later U.S. soldiers still patrol the Balkans or that neither the Taliban nor Saddam was much bothered by cruise missiles is not a problem.<\/p>\n Perhaps a better barometer of Kerry’s views about American power is his past opposition to strategic military expenditures that emphasized deterrence \u2014 the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, and the Strategic Defense Initiative. Not the use of force, but U.N. resolutions, sanctions, and protocols \u2014 coupled with multipolar, American-led diplomacy \u2014 should solve critical problems. This theme was emphasized by Kerry’s own father in his book,\u00a0The Star-Spangled Mirror\u00a0<\/i>. \u201cAmericans,\u201d Richard Kerry warned presciently of George W. Bush, \u201care inclined to see the world and foreign affairs in black and white.\u201d We are guilty as a people of \u201cethnocentric accommodation \u2014 everyone ought to be like us.\u201d The elder Kerry went on to counsel about the \u201cfatal error\u201d of \u201cpropagating democracy\u201d \u2014 an idealism that made us stupidly captivated by \u201cthe siren’s song of promoting human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Previews of John Kerry’s proposed foreign policy also seem reactive, if not parasitic upon George Bush’s prior initiatives: His carrot of softer talk seems reasonable now only because someone else wielded the stick first. Kerry talks, for example, of a lack of renewed American engagement in the Middle East, but he cannot specify whether Clinton’s Oslo initiatives were wiser than Bush’s support for Ariel Sharon’s unilateral efforts to leave Gaza, dismantle Hamas, and erect a fence. Was it cowboyish, as the Europeans allege, to isolate Arafat? If so, should we jump-start the peace process by bringing him back on board? Yes, no, maybe?<\/p>\n Kerry’s overall approach to contemporary Iraq, Israel, our other allies, and the world at large is best summarized as something like, \u201cI would not have done it; but since Bush did it, I wouldn’t overturn it now.\u201d Thus Kerry welcomes Libya’s bid to rejoin civilization. He acknowledges that Pakistan is now more friendly than hostile, with its nuclear dispensary shut down. It is salutary that Saudi Arabia at last is confronting its homegrown terrorists. Yet would Kerry have initiated any of the much-slurred efforts that helped to effect these changes \u2014 the removal of the Taliban and Saddam, tough talk with Pakistan’s Musharraf, renewed vigilance over Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear arsenals, and withdrawal of troops from Saudi Arabia? Would reliance, instead, on U.N. resolutions have made an impression on Mullah Omar, the Hussein dynasty, Muammar Qaddafi, or the Saudi royal family? Kerry seems to think so: During his senatorial career, he was always a strong advocate for dialoguing with the Vietnamese, North Koreans, Cubans, and Iranian mullahs.<\/p>\n Kerry flinches at the post-Cold War dichotomy of Old Europe vs. New Europe; so will he restore all those troops now being unilaterally withdrawn from Germany? France, we are told, has been unnecessarily alienated by President Bush; so will Kerry apologize \u2014 or will he learn that for the first time in decades the French are truly worried about American fury, giving the next president more, not less, leverage with French leaders?<\/p>\n Kerry’s positions on North Korea and Iran also depend on antecedent Bush strengths. Kerry dispenses a lot of Richard Holbrooke-Sandy Berger tough talk, but offers nothing concrete about what he would do differently \u2014 or any appreciation that both messes inherited from the Clinton administration are being addressed by a tougher Bush determination to end appeasement. By the same token, Kerry talks about modernizing and reorganizing the U.S. military \u2014 even as he is relentless in his castigation of Donald Rumsfeld as a failed secretary of defense. Does he have any appreciation that Rumsfeld earned criticism precisely because three years ago he began implementing the very reforms that Kerry is now pirating and adopting as his own?<\/p>\n There is a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu about the entire Kerry talk of ushering in supposed calm after the raging storm. Jimmy Carter, in reaction to the Nixon-Ford Vietnam era, assured the world of a new multilateralism without an inordinate fear of Communism \u2014 and thus helped to prompt Communist aggression in Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, and Central America, as well as the Iranian embassy takeover. We talk of the Kerry half-measure and flip-flop, but such hesitation is simply updated Carterism \u2014 redolent of the occasions on which Carter sold F-15s to Saudi Arabia but ensured that they were not capable of bearing arms; wrecked the Olympics in lieu of confronting the Soviets in Afghanistan; and shuttled a dying Shah of Iran from one embarrassed foreign host to another.<\/p>\n Many who now praise Ronald Reagan forget that 1980s Hollywood was convinced he would deliver us a nuclear winter; he was a proto-George W. Bush who was willing to go it alone, if need be, to stop Soviet aggrandizement. Thanks to Reagan and the senior Bush, however, Bill Clinton was freed from having to deal with things like an aggressive Soviet empire, tactical nuclear missiles threatening Europe, Grenada, Panama, and Gulf War I. In contrast, Clinton’s commitment to \u201cengagement,\u201d coupled with launches of cruise missiles, did not deter terrorists from bombing the World Trade Center or attacking Americans in Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Yemen. The thugs in Somalia were not appeased by Clinton’s decision to withhold tanks from our troops, lest such armor \u201cescalate\u201d the situation. Haitians were singularly unimpressed when our troops seemed, and then sort of seemed not, to land on their shores. Bill Clinton’s only foreign-policy success was a repudiation of U.N. and EU nonchalance about genocide in the Balkans, when at last he unleashed the U.S. Air Force to put an end to the killing.<\/p>\n So what would John Kerry’s foreign policy look like? In the first few months, things would be little different from what we see now, as the Democrats could triangulate on prior Bush resoluteness in the same way Clinton profited from Reagan-Bush strength on the Cold War, Kuwait, and Panama. During this honeymoon, Kerry would reassure the Europeans with comfortable platitudes, and Kofi Annan might bask in overt American praise for the U.N. The War on Terror would be recast as not really a war at all: The proper tactic would be better police work to indict and jail miscreants, while providing more material aid to deal with the \u201croot causes\u201d of despair in the Arab world \u2014 pathologies that are best addressed not by radical and painful efforts to embrace democracy, but by sending money and diplomats abroad to appease status-quo autocracies.<\/p>\n But within a year or two, the terrorists, the vacillating Europeans, the Iranians, the North Koreans, and the Chinese would all take their measure of John Kerry. When Clinton, in his second inaugural address, characterized America as \u201cthe world’s indispensable nation,\u201d Kerry asked: \u201cWhy are we adopting such an arrogant, obnoxious tone?\u201d And he once remarked that his father had taught him \u201cthe benefit of learning how to look at other countries and their problems and their hopes and challenges through their eyes, to a certain degree, at least in trying to understand them.\u201d China, Iran, Cuba, Syria, and North Korea would all agree.<\/p>\n Kerry is thus both a European realist, who believes force has little utility in a complex postmodern world, and a multicultural diplomat who would not prejudge other nations as \u201cbad\u201d when they are merely \u201cdifferent\u201d; or, as Jamie Rubin put it recently, a Kerry foreign policy would mean \u201can appreciation for other cultures and values. The bullying of the Bush administration will come to an end.\u201d No more tough \u201cAxis of Evil\u201d talk to Kim Jong Il or Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, but rather greater understanding of the\u00a0probl\u00e9matique\u00a0<\/i>of totalitarian culture or the paradoxical role of theocracy in the modern world.<\/p>\n Once friends and enemies alike understood this return of Carter-Clintonism to American foreign policy, they would learn to ignore the do-gooder nagging and whining and do pretty much what they wished. They could rightly expect another Warren Christopher cooling his heels for hours on the Syrian tarmac, promises of resumption of food and oil for Korean Stalinists, or more cash and weapons sent to a rehabilitated Arafat’s Palestinian Authority \u2014 all dressed up as \u201ccollective solutions,\u201d \u201cU.N.-sponsored initiatives\u201d within a \u201cmultilateral framework.\u201d Once more, Jamie Rubin assures us that we can provide Iran with properly sanitized nuclear fuel, which might just do the trick of shutting down their plutonium factories in the fashion that once worked in North Korea. After all, we all know that one of the world’s greatest oil exporters that burns off its natural gas at the wellhead is spending billions of dollars for reactors simply to ensure sufficient supplies of domestic electricity.<\/p>\n If Kerry’s foreign policy could well be disastrous for the United States in the long run, it still might well get him elected. George W. Bush was the Great Corrector: When he arrived in office, it was unquestioned that Europe would forever be allowed to harp and ankle-bite under the aegis of an assured American-led NATO. Support for old anti-Communist thugs and oil-pumpers was standard American policy in the Middle East. Afghanistan was a sewer best avoided. Three hundred and fifty thousand sorties over two-thirds of Saddam’s air space; an unenforceable, corrupt, and counterproductive U.N. embargo of Iraq; and occasional indiscriminate bombing of the Iraqi homeland corralled Saddam while thousands of Iraqis perished each year.<\/p>\n Perhaps, without the impetus of 9\/11, Bush would have let things be. But he did not \u2014 and embarked on radical and much-needed changes in U.S. foreign policy, which are already starting to bear fruit. Yet the hysteria that these corrections have prompted in Europe, the Arab world, and the U.N. wears at the American people. Many are tired of the pandemonium stirred up by the shrill Michael Moore, Howard Dean, and MoveOn.org \u2014 and, in some vague way, accept that the departure of George Bush might make things less stressful and hurtful. Like patients who finally rebel at the side-effects of their life-saving medicines, too many Americans know in their heads that what we are doing will save us \u2014 even as our hearts moan that in the here and now it is all so unpleasant and depressing to read the things they say abroad about George Bush’s America.<\/p>\n Kerry, then, is the mellifluous Siren that appeals to beleaguered sailors. In lieu of the \u201cneoconservatives\u201d provoking rogue nations and terrorist sponsors, Kerry’s subtlety, erudition, and nuance would charm others to address the \u201cmore important\u201d (but less confrontational) problems of the environment, globalization, and drug smuggling. To win these \u201cwars\u201d we need not isolate an Arafat, ram democracies down the throats of Afghans and Iraqis, embarrass the Europeans, or talk of embedded pathologies within the Arab world. In short, Kerry has no foreign policy other than the Siren song that if George W. Bush would just go away, things would be so much quieter, people would be so much nicer, and we would be so much better liked. And all this might just work, until we hit the shoals.<\/p>\n \u00a92004 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Magazine This essay appeared in the September 7, 2004\u00a0National Review Magazine. John Kerry is worried about his record of support for gay unions, abortion-on-demand, and other hot-button liberal causes that rile moderate swing voters outside of New England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[798],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1c9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7605,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/melancholy-lessons-from-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":4597,"position":0},"title":"Melancholy Lessons from Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine The unfolding collapse of Iraq\u2019s government before the legions of al Qaeda jihadists is the capstone of Barack Obama\u2019s incompetent and politicized foreign policy. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), armed with plundered American weapons and flush with stolen money, is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Bombed_out_vehicles_Aleppo-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11149,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trump-seeks-middle-ground-in-foreign-policy-balancing-act\/","url_meta":{"origin":4597,"position":1},"title":"Trump Seeks Middle Ground in Foreign-Policy Balancing Act","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 19, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The best course is to use overwhelming military force only when the interests or credibility of America and its allies are on the line. 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Critics on the right once argued over \"Who lost China and Eastern\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2004"","block_context":{"text":"March 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/march-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6473,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fifteen-minutes-of-foreign-policy-malfeasance\/","url_meta":{"origin":4597,"position":3},"title":"Fifteen Minutes of Foreign Policy Malfeasance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 On the eve of the 12thanniversary of the terrorist strikes on 9\/11, President Obama last night addressed the nation and reprised every delusional and bankrupt internationalist idea that contributed to that disaster. The current Syrian crisis\u2013\u2013merely the latest Middle Eastern example of Obama\u2019s incompetence\u2013\u2013exemplifies\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4563,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/country-at-a-crossroads\/","url_meta":{"origin":4597,"position":4},"title":"Country at a Crossroads","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"November 2 will say a lot about the American people, and our future by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Magazine Had Lincoln lost the 1864 vote, a victorious General McClellan would have settled for an American continent divided, with slavery intact. 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