[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]
There are a number of ways to deal with threatening foreign policy issues. You can deal with such problems confrontationally, which is easy because it requires little real understanding of the more subtle facts on the ground. Or you can be smart and deal with them more thoughtfully and subtly. The problem with that is that subtlety requires patience and intelligence.
We have recently faced just such situations in both Iran and Honduras. While almost all our Republican congressmen and pundits have adopted the confrontational mode, President Obama has chosen to take a different, more sophisticated and subtle approach to the problems at hand.
Republicans in the Congress and the media seem to champion any cause that might conceivably embarrass Obama. The recent Iranian election and its aftermath have given them the opportunity to castigate the president for not being more forceful (confrontational) in his comments on the situation there.
By way of background, it should be noted that aggressiveness has been a standard Republican response to evolving foreign policy issues. It’s part of the Neocon philosophy. Yet, there is ample evidence that suggests that this sort of confrontational approach is more likely to have negative results. Where did “axis of evil” and all the other Bush rhetoric get us? Into a nightmare of a war.
It’s not easy to go the other way. Subtlety and finesse, if they are to be successful, require that the implementer of the policy really understands what is going on in the area concerned, as only a profound understanding is likely to bring success. Our recent adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, examples of aggressive military confrontation, are perfect examples of the pitfalls involved in the confrontational approach. A different, less aggressive approach might have brought a far more palatable result.
Israel is pushing every button it can reach to involve us in military action against Iran. The Israelis would like us to attack Iran directly, or failing that, to condone and militarily support an Israeli attack. Many Republicans have openly supported this approach. “Bomb, bomb Iran…..”
In Honduras, the situation is very similar and very different. To be understood, it must be viewed against the history of various American administrations in the past fifty years overthrowing “leftist” regimes at will, a reality that has created extraordinary anti-American feelings across the region.
Now, a left-leaning Honduran president — who is a friend of the Castros, Hugo Chavez and the other left-of-center Central and Latin American presidents — has been deposed in a military coup. Given our past history of meddling there, President Obama has decided to play this situation very carefully and along with virtually all the other regional presidents and the OAS, has supported the deposed president and the attempt to reinstate him.
The reaction from congressional Republicans is that Obama is supporting all the wrong people in Latin America. This has brought a tirade of criticism focused not on the policy of reinstatement itself, but on the premise that we are in league with the leftists whom they have always seen as their enemies.
In both Iran and Honduras, this new subtle policy is creating real problems for those whom the Republicans would have us confront. The Iranian people know we did not meddle in their riots, partly because we stayed non-confrontational. Ditto for the Hondurans. They know we are on the right side of their issue. Our enemies will suffer more as a result of this new, more thoughtful policy.
For critics of Obama policy in Iran and Honduras, there is no acceptable course of action but to take on the evil doers (Persian clerics and Latin leftists) in a way that makes it crystal clear precisely where the United States stands: Against the Mullahs in Iran and against the leftists to the south. According to those critics, it is impossible to have a valid foreign policy if you do not take the moral high ground and tell everyone else how good we are and how bad they are.
Under that kind of policy, there is no room for subtlety. If aggressiveness worked, it would be OK, but it doesn’t seem to. This new administration is trying a new, more sophisticated way of approaching our foreign policy issues.
Think how constructive it would be if they were not constantly being carped at by the owners of all our most recent confrontational foreign policy disasters.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.
