Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Diplomacy is not wimpy

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   U.S. Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani are reducing the current international crisis in Ukraine to a simplistic essence and in the process are doing a disservice to the nation.
    They worry not about the nuances of geopolitics or global economics. They say that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a tough guy while President Obama is a wimp.
    Graham went on CNN Sunday and proclaimed that “we have a weak, indecisive president that invites aggression.” On Fox News, Giuliani criticized Obama as indecisive while praising Putin’s quick action and decisiveness in the Crimea: “That’s what you call a leader,” he said.
    American pundits have a long history of designating who is a wimp and who is not. They usually miss the mark
    Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, a five-star general, and Richard Nixon, who volunteered as a Naval officer in World War II, spoke boldly of liberation for Eastern Europe. They were not wimps. Although these presidents sounded like they would step in with military support for the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 or to stop Warsaw Pact troops from invading Czechoslovakia in 1968, the harsh reality of another war in Europe dictated otherwise.
    Secretary of State John Kerry likes to windsurf, for which he has been derided as a wimp, despite being decorated for bravery during the Vietnam War.
    President George W. Bush, declared a manly man for his service in the Texas Air National Guard, backed up his non-wimp image by invading the neutral nation of Iraq in pursuit of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
    Allowing name calling to drive foreign policy is a dangerous game, no matter who plays it. Some members of the Soviet military implied that Premier Nikita Khrushchev was a wimp during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis because, they claimed, the U.S. was a paper tiger. Recognizing that names won’t hurt you, but sticks and stones can, Khrushchev pointed out to his generals that if the U.S. were a paper tiger, it was a paper tiger with nuclear teeth. He and President John F. Kennedy both knew that foreign relations should not be based on clichés, especially wrong ones.
    Make no mistake about the situation in Ukraine. Obama knows that Putin is a brutal foe with imperialistic aspirations and a worldview shaped by his career in the Soviet secret police. He knows that Russia has a history of crushing the democratic aspirations of her neighbors.
    Negotiating with allies and adversaries is not as glamorous as wrestling a bear or shooting a tiger. For Obama’s political foes to reduce foreign affairs to a question of wimp or not wimp is simplistic—and reckless.

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