[Peace-discuss] Stealing Obama's clothes

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Weeks late, MSM begins to wonder "if the Bush administration is taking its 
foreign policy cues from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. 
Barack Obama," but it still doesn't draw what seem to be the obvious conclusions 
-- for example, that the war will continue with only tactical changes regardless 
of who the next president is.  If so, that will have implications for what an 
anti-war movement should be doing.  --CGE]

	State Dept. Talks With Iran, N. Korea Look Like Obama Policy
	By KIRIT RADIA
	WASHINGTON July 21, 2008

When William Burns, the State Department's third-ranking diplomat, sat down 
across from Iran's nuclear negotiator this weekend, he did so despite previous 
demands by Washington that Tehran suspend nuclear enrichment before talks take 
place.

Later this week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet for the first time 
with her North Korean counterpart in what the State Department is calling an 
"informal meeting" of the six-party talks, a negotiating format that has drawn 
fire from hawks in the administration for engaging Pyongyang.

The State Department has also admitted it is considering establishing the first 
diplomatic office in Iran in nearly three decades. And an Iranian official 
disclosed last week that the two sides are considering resuming direct flights 
between the countries.

In its waning months in office, the Bush administration is perceived to be 
emptying the diplomatic toolbox in a final effort to make progress on key 
objectives, like eliminating the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs as 
well as handing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the next president.

The new efforts have both critics and supporters of the focus on diplomatic 
solutions wondering if the Bush administration is taking its foreign policy cues 
from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, who has 
advocated broader engagement with America's enemies.

The new efforts are a significant departure from the policies pursued during 
President Bush's first term, which was marked by preemptive war and an assertive 
foreign policy that was chided by many at home and abroad as "cowboy diplomacy."

The seeds of today's diplomatic efforts, however, were sowed early in the 
administration's second term.

By 2005, unilateral efforts to coax Iran and North Korea to abandon their 
nuclear ambitions had failed. The United States was stretched thin in Iraq and 
Afghanistan as the situations there deteriorated. It became clear that America 
needed help from its traditional allies.

Rice, in her 2005 confirmation hearings, declared, "The time for diplomacy is 
now." Her first trip abroad was to court European allies who were estranged 
after disagreements over the decision to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Soon the United States established multilateral negotiations with North Korea 
involving its neighbors, and joined European efforts to persuade Iran to stop 
its nuclear enrichment, a key step towards developing nuclear weapons. The 
diplomatic overtures in the past week are a broadening of efforts to reach out 
to countries the U.S. once shunned as members of the "Axis of Evil."

The State Department rejected suggestions that the move amounted to capitulating 
to enemies who had dug in their heels and stalled negotiations for years.

"It is, in fact, a strong signal to the entire world that we have been very 
serious about this diplomacy and we will remain very serious about this 
diplomacy," Rice said on Friday of the meeting with Iran. Rice's spokesman 
dismissed the idea that the administration had changed its policy.

"We're trying to push what we see as an advantage. But the substance is the 
same," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said last week. "It sends a 
signal, yes. Is it a change in policy? No."

"I would read it as is the United States looking for opportunities to advance 
diplomacy," he added. "And if we see an opportunity to do that within the 
confines of the principles of our policies, we're going to do it."

Obama had been criticized by the administration for saying he would talk with 
the leaders of Iran, North Korea and Cuba to further diplomacy.

"This debate, though, should not be about whether we talk to Iran. That is not 
the real issue," Rice said in an apparent jab at Obama during a speech last 
month to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "Diplomacy is not a 
synonym for talking. True diplomacy means structuring a set of incentives and 
disincentives to produce change in behavior."

Rice ignored a question on Friday as to whether the new approach was inspired by 
Obama's plans.

Graham Allison, a former senior official during the Reagan and Clinton 
administrations and now a professor at Harvard University, called the 
administration's shift "a flip flop into the reality zone."

"I think that what Bush is doing is quite consistent with what Obama had 
proposed some months ago, and for which the Bush administration had criticized 
him," he said. "It's more than ironic that someone who the administration wants 
to characterize as inexperienced and naive in foreign policy happens to have had 
a view about Iran, namely that you could talk to them, which ideologues in the 
administration then characterized as appeasement, which Bush is now adopting."

Obama welcomed the decision to meet with Iran, saying "Now that the United 
States is involved, it should stay involved with the full strength of our 
diplomacy. A united front with our friends and allies directly calling on the 
Iranians to stand down on their illicit nuclear program will maximize the 
international pressure we can bring to bear and will show the Iranian people 
that Iran's isolation is a function of its government's unwillingness to live up 
to its obligations."

The White House has also adopted a new tack with regard to troop levels in Iraq, 
one that also steps in the direction of Obama's call to withdraw troops as soon 
as possible.

On Friday the White House said it had agreed with the Iraqi government to an 
ambiguous "time horizon" for withdrawing troops. The move goes counter to the 
administration's refusal to apply what it called an "arbitrary timeline" for 
removing forces from Iraq.

Obama has called for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq over the course of 16 months.

But it remains to be seen how effective the new tactics will be.

Saturday's meeting with Iran yielded no positive response from Tehran on the 
issue of halting uranium enrichment. Rice told reporters that the United States 
would have to consider imposing new sanctions if Iran does not agree to suspend 
enrichment in two weeks.

Talks with North Korea, though they have been met with success in shutting down 
Pyongyang's plutonium reactor, have been repeatedly delayed and the most 
contentious issues have yet to be discussed, including North Korea's nuclear 
weapons stockpiles, which it so far has refused to hand over.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News