FOREIGN POLICY
An e-mail exchange between
Jeffrey Goldberg, National Correspondent,
Robert D. Kaplan, National Correspondent
Goldberg: How's Obama doing, Bob?
Kaplan: Jeff, I think the most interesting thing is the real break in foreign policy was not between Bush and Obama, but between Bush in his first six years and his last two years.
Goldberg: You think that was more dramatic.
Kaplan: Yeah, more dramatic. I think that Obama is basically--on Iran, on Europe, on China, on a lot of things except for missile defense and except for Cuba and maybe one or two other things--in many things, he's operating along the same policy lines as Bush, which to me says that Bush didn't get enough credit for his last two years.
Goldberg: Post-Rumsfeld Bush?
Kaplan: Post-2006 elections Bush, yeah.
Goldberg: So what you're saying is that Bob Gates is essentially serving in the same administration.
Kaplan: Yes, that's a very good way to put it.
Goldberg: Thank you. [laughter]
Kaplan: He may have different battles and this and that, but remember, Gates and Condi Rice became very influential in the last two years of Bush, and Cheney's influence diminished. I think we're seeing a carryover effect. Except on issues like Cuba and the willingness to negotiate with Russia on missile defense, where there is a break.
Goldberg: I think the tonal difference--and tonal differences can sometimes lead over to actual substantive differences--is enormous. Obama is hyper-consciously doing what pre-9/11 George Bush said he would do, which is to have a humble a foreign policy. My basic take is that national interests are permanent and a president is there to advance American national interests. If he does that through charm or bullying or bribery or glibness or appeals to morality or military force--it doesn't actually matter as long as he advances American national interests in the appropriate way.
Kaplan: I agree. And I would add that in a global media environment, charm and packaging matter a lot more than they used to matter.
Goldberg: This is where tone actually become substance in a way.
Kaplan: Yes. We do live in this fishbowl media environment where setting the right tone matters so much. But that's been the real shift. In actual policy, there hasn't been a shift. Where there has been a shift is the organization of foreign policy. The National Security Council is predominantly working with George Mitchell on Israel/Palestine while the State Department has taken control of India/Pakistan/Afghanistan. And Richard Holbrooke, the Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, he's poaching already into Iraq and Iran.
Goldberg: He just hired Vali Nasr.
Kaplan: And Vali Nasr is the preeminent Iran expert.
Goldberg: I'm glad that you were struck by that because I was struck by that too.
Kaplan: Vali Nasr is very impressive.
Goldberg: He's very impressive, but Iran is not really entirely in Holbrooke's purview. This is obviously a clear sign that's it's becoming his purview.
Kaplan: You can see how Holbrooke is extending this special envoyship to the entire near-east with the exception of the booby-prize of Israel/Palestine.
Goldberg: This is not to disparage George Mitchell or Dennis Ross in any way, but Richard Holbrooke is a human hurricane, and I wouldn't be surprised if he essentially becomes the off-shore Hillary Clinton.
Kaplan: That's a very good way to put. I would say at the moment when you have such a right-wing Israeli government and the Palestinians are so divided among themselves and incapable of negotiating, the next year or two in Israel-Palestine is not going to bring much hope for any movement there. So I think Holbrooke will bide his time before poaching on Mitchell. Let Mitchell be stuck with the failure for a year or two. Because you may get a new Israeli government in two years or so. I think Holbrooke will leave that aside for the moment. Another interesting facet of these special envoys, is that they allowed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to go to China, South Korea, Japan and Indonesia on her first trip abroad. Because one of the faults of the Bush administration was that it was so consumed by the greater Middle East that it ignored our allies in Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea. But by appointing special envoys to that region, this frees up the Secretary of State to devote more time to what's going to be the center of world power at some point in the 21st century.
Goldberg: Remember what Bill Clinton said about his wife, "two for the price of one?" When you have Holbrooke in the State Department, it's like having two secretaries of state. And that's a good thing. Maybe it's difficult for Hillary Clinton, but the world is big and there are five or six crisis points.
Kaplan: Exactly. The world has gotten to a point where it's too much for one person at the top. There's got be a devolution of responsibility.
Goldberg: Can I ask you a small-bore question that interests me endlessly. What do Ambassadors do now that you have this super envoy system? You spent your whole life waiting to be ambassador to Egpyt, ambassador to India, and all of a sudden...
Kaplan: ...you have Holbrooke. Ambassadors actually do a lot, except they're not going to make the big decisions any more. They're not going to have the influence they had before. Take a really complex country like Indonesia with 235 million Muslims and it's got relations with the U.S. at like 15 different levels, with military exchanges, with agricultural exchanges, with this and that. There are daily crises all the time that are not important enough to get into the newspaper, but which somebody has to handle at the scene. Constant visits from Congress--and substantial visits, not like going to a Caribbean island over Christmas kind of visits. Ambassadors to big, big countries like Egypt, Indonesia, India are overworked and do a lot.
Goldberg: And then the gloryhound comes in and takes the credit. Bob, speaking about Asia, is China a threat and what is Obama likely to do on China?
Kaplan: China is a long-term threat, not a short-term one. When you look at its naval acquisitions and purchases and building. They have a shop-'til-you-drop policy on submarines, including nuclear ones. China wants to dominate the western Pacific, it wants to have a presence in the Indian Ocean. It's going to be a peer competitor of the United States on some future 'morrow, but not now. And the important thing is to kind of hedge against it by supporting allies like Japan, India, Indonesia, etc. But also by trying to draw China into the Pacific alliance system. Because the last thing we want to do is kind of bring about the very thing we're worried about through our own hostile actions. I think that while Bush and Rice had the right policy towards China, they were too absent in Asia. Just showing up at Asian summits and meetings to a much greater extent then we have is probably the most responsible way of balancing against China. The President is going to the APEC summit in November in Singapore. He'll probably make a visit to Indonesia at that time. As we said before, the envoy system has liberated the President, the National Security Advisor, the Secretary of State to kind of bore in on Asia.
Goldberg: Let's talk about the burgeoning Bolivian threat. [laughter]
Kaplan: Well, I think in terms of South America, there's one thing I want to say, Jeff. Each political party, the Democrats and the Republicans, have their weakest points, their stupidest points. And the stupidest Democratic position during the Bush years was the hostility to a Colombian free trade pact.
Goldberg: Absolutely. Here we are agreeing again.
Kaplan: Because Colombia is like your image of a success story. We actually won there. We have a democratically elected president who's got an 80% approval rating, who has beat back the FARC drug lords to a significant extent. And all they want to do is trade freely with us. I think Obama's going to push that through.
Goldberg: Colombia brings up an interesting point actually, and maybe this was inevitable. If you look at the sum total of the President's two main trips, he has, in short order, unsettled Japan and South Korea with his response to North Korea; Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE in his opening to Iran; India, by talking about Kashmir; the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. by resetting the relations with Russia; and Colombia, by the way, with his more than perfunctory hello to Hugo Chávez.
Kaplan: Who is the arch-enemy in Bogotá. Hated in Colombia like Hamas is hated in Israel.
Goldberg: Hugo Chávez, very notably, once referred to Colombia as the Israel of South America. The point is that in every region Obama has unsettled stalwart American allies. Now maybe that's the inevitable byproduct of doing some rethinking about how much of an enemy does Hugo Chávez really have to be? Or, maybe there is a way to talk to the Iranians. I find it unsettling in a way because, on the one hand, you want to friends of your enemies or at least neutralize them. On the other hand, you don't want to scare the hell out of your actual friends in doing that. Is that a fair point?
Kaplan: It's a fair point, but he's not really going to unsettle our allies unless the policy moves leftward, which I don't think it will. As I said, I think Obama can get this free trade pact with Colombia through, which is what the Colombians care about the most. A Republican president couldn't do it; he can do it and he probably will do it. People want us to stabilize the Iranian relationship. It's natural that the Sunni Arab sheikdoms and other Sunni countries would be nervous at the beginning, but as long as he doesn't make any untoward compromises--any sellout style compromises--I think he's headed along the right road.
