Like you, I’m sure, I’m all for “realism” in foreign policy. Sometimes you have to hold your nose: as when you deal with the rulers in Beijing, for example. But now and then you might ask, “How does it look to the boys in the camps?” That is the line attributed to Vladimir Bukovsky, the great Soviet dissident. When making policy or holding meetings, Westerners should pause to consider, “How will it look to the boys in the camps?”
Well, our new president, Obama, has been pretty depressing on that score. It started, really, when he gave an interview to al-Arabiya, the Middle Eastern television network, in the first days of his presidency. The Obama people were very, very proud of that interview — they kept bragging about it. I heard such bragging at the Davos forum, held shortly after the inauguration. But what was the content of that interview?
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Obama told Middle Eastern dictators, basically, “Relax. You don’t have Bush down your neck anymore — pressuring about freedom, democracy, human rights, and all that stuff. We want to get along with you.” Fouad Ajami published a column on this interview in the Wall Street Journal. The title of the column: “Obama Tells Arabia’s Despots They’re Safe: America’s diplomacy of freedom is officially over.”
And then there was Obama’s “Nowruz” greeting — New Year’s greeting — to Iran. Or to “the people and leaders of Iran,” as he put it. President Bush sent Nowruz greetings, of course: but to the Iranian people, expressing American solidarity with them. Not to the regime that subjugates them. Obama went out of his way to refer to the country as “the Islamic Republic of Iran” — twice. What that did was concede the theocrats’ view of the country: which is not the majority view of Iranians. Obama also called for a relationship with Iran based on “mutual respect.”
Mutual respect? What is there about the Iranian regime to respect? Forget what Iran does in its foreign policy: its pledge to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, for example. (Just a small example, huh?) What about what the regime does to the Iranian people?
They stone girls to death for the crime of having been gang-raped. Think about that, if you can bear it. And, just a day before Obama sent his New Year’s message, we learned that a young Iranian blogger, Omid Mir Sayafi, had died in an Iranian prison: Evin, that torture chamber and graveyard for so many good people. Moreover, an American journalist, Roxana Saberi, is being held in that self-same prison. What will happen to her, we can only guess.
And now we get to Obama and Hugo Chávez — that soul-brother handshake that the American president laid on the Venezuelan strongman. Chávez is plenty belligerent in his foreign policy. But what about his treatment of Venezuelans — of Venezuelan oppositionists? You will find chapter and verse at the Human Rights Foundation, here. And chapter and verse is not at all pretty.
Reagan and Bush did the necessary in foreign policy: They dealt with despots and other unsavory elements when they had to (and even when they didn’t have to, really). But they were conscious of a question: “How will it look to the boys in the camps?” They seldom forgot them. They understood that American foreign policy had to have a moral component, in order to be American.
A lot of people didn’t like Bush’s second inaugural address — and that included many of my fellow conservatives. Bush said, for example,
All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.
The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”
The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people, you must learn to trust them. Start on this journey of progress and justice, and America will walk at your side.
That wasn’t for everyone. They said, “Pie in the sky,” “Wilsonian tripe.” But to a lot of us, that was a fair enunciation of American ideals. And President Obama, of course, is manifesting a different view.
He has reached out to tyrants — in the case of Chávez, literally. And he has won the applause and approval of the world’s elites: the governments, democratic and not; the U.N.; the editorialists at Le Monde, Der Spiegel, the Guardian, etc.; the academics; and so on. But how does it look to the boys in the camps?
I imagine that, if they know, they are demoralized. What’s next? Necking with Kim Jong Il? Reagan and Bush rocked the boat, to a degree. And that was extremely heartening to political prisoners. Natan Sharansky (then Anatoly Sharansky) writes about this in his book Fear No Evil. Many others have testified to it as well.
Funny how the parties have flipped. Time was — not so long ago — the Republicans were the party of a crude, cold “stability,” in which dictatorships were propped up or schmoozed; it was the Democrats who intruded principle and that jazz. My, my.
Whoever is in charge, this much is true, I think we can say: In order to be effective, and safeguard the national interest, American foreign policy does not have to be morally sickening.
