THE TWO Ps….Nicholas Burns makes the case for quiet, persistent diplomacy:
Talking to our adversaries is no one’s idea of fun, and it is not a sure prescription for success in every crisis. But it is crude, simplistic and wrong to charge that negotiations reflect weakness or appeasement. More often than not, they are evidence of a strong and self-confident country. One of America’s greatest but often neglected strengths is, in fact, our diplomatic power. Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Libya in September—the first by a U.S. secretary of state in five decades—was the culmination of years of careful, deliberate diplomacy to maneuver the Libyan leadership to give up its weapons of mass destruction and renounce terrorism. She would not have achieved that victory had she refused to talk to the Libyans.
Burns, of course, has no time for campaign claptrap about “preconditions” being the same thing as “preparation.” In fact, he doesn’t even mention it, saying only this about Iran: “I’m not saying the next president should sit down immediately with Ahmadinejad. We should initiate contact at a lower level to investigate whether it’s worth putting the president’s prestige on the line.”
Of course. That’s preparation. A precondition, by contrast, would be a demand that Iran agree to halt its nuclear program before we even sit down to talk, even though their nuclear program is supposedly one of the very reasons for the talks in the first place. It’s just a backhanded way of ensuring that no talks will ever take place.
Unlike John McCain, Barack Obama favors preparation but generally opposes preconditions. That’s the right attitude.
