John McCain and Sarah Palin have criticized Barack Obama and Joe Biden for their willingness to talk with world leaders without preconditions. First, it's either naive or a fabrication when McCain suggests Obama will suddenly pop up at a negotiation with the leadership of Iran. There are always a host of preparatory and diplomatic steps taken before such events. McCain knows that.
Negotiation is nearly always a process that begins before the parties actually meet whether the negotiation is between organization senior executives or senior government officials. To think otherwise is indeed naive.
When Barack Obama says he will meet with leaders of countries hostile to the U.S., no doubt he intends to do so with skill and both insistence and persistence as needed. He simply doesn't want to force his ideas down their throats before he even gets on the plane. And he knows that if he lays out publicly what he wants and they can't deliver, he may need to publicly back down. That's never good.
The preconditions that Condoleezza Rice and others in the Bush Administration have publicly proclaimed in the past were based on the increasingly faulty assumption that the U.S. always has the upper hand. But the world has changed. And George W. Bush eventually had to change, agreeing by his actions with Senator Arlen Specter who has long called for negotiations with world leaders without preconditions.
The current economic crisis demonstrates how interdependent countries truly are and with whom they are willing to talk to save themselves. If the U.S. won't budge, if it throws its weight around like a schoolyard bully, insulted countries may turn to China or Russia. To not recognize this is indeed naive.
It's important to point out, too, that stringent preconditions such as the cessation of violence can actually play into the hands of those who have a vested interest in continuing it. They'd like nothing better than a chance to assure the talks never take place by doing more of what they prefer - being violent. In this sense, publicly pronounced preconditions can elicit more of what negotiators hope to stop.
You have to wonder, too, when McCain/Palin claim they'll reach across the aisle to Democrats if they win the election, whether there will be preconditions beforehand then too. If so, a President McCain and Vice President Palin would likely find themselves waiting alone in a room as indignant members of Congress go out for a long lunch.
Prof. Reardon is the author of The Skilled Negotiator and blogs as bardscove.
And no one is suggesting that. I'm not sure where you're getting this stuff.
No, the preconditions were based on the fact that Bush and Rice didn't WANT to have the talks, but they wanted to make it look like they tried (and wanted to be able to blame N. Korea, Iran, etc).
Just another example of changing the baseline so their inanity looks normal.....
I live abroad, so I see things most Americans never will. Sure, there are a lot of people that still respect Americans, but they sure don't want it to be America that influences the direction of their country.
Totally agree. In any negotiation it is always to one's advantage TO NOT REVEAL ONE'S HAND ahead of negotiations; thus a meeting WITHOUT preconditions. Only an idiot would reveal what his wants are so as to arm the enemy. Isn't that what all the Republican trolls were so against previously when talking about the Iraq pullout? They claimed that to say or specify ahead of time of a particular withdraw date played into the hands of the enemy because it allowed them to hold all the cards once they knew the preconditions. Now these Republican trolls are against their own stands of earlier? Looks like the Republican brand is lost in the fog.
This line of reasoning is fundamentally absurd. They, the Iraqis, live in Iraq. They will be there no matter what. When we leave as all other aggressors have throughout time, Iraqis, or whatever they are called, will still be there. I don't think their goal is to wait. Their goal is to live!
Thus any quote McPalin uses to try and claim that Obama would sit down with Ahmadinejad is a flat out lie.
The fact is you can't win anything today through wars except of course if you are an oil company or munitions magnate or a private security corporation then profits will soar and troops will die but the average person will lose.
We need grown-ups in our government, not school yard bullies.
There is turmoil in Pakistan, a Nation with Hydrogen Bombs and Rockets. The Wars of Iraq and Afghanistan seem Eternal.
Even the closest friends of Israel acknowledge that Israel is in trouble because the Enemies inside Lebanon and Palestine are worse than eight years ago. Saudi Arabia and other Arab Nations are volatile.
Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and many other Fanatics and Extremists have been in the rise during these past eight years.
Israel changed a lot of Palestinians accused of grave crimes for some dead corpses or skelentons.
Latin America is complicated by Demential Guys like Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Rafael Correa.
Evo Morales is a fool that I pity. But the other three guys belong in a madhouse.
There are many similarities between Hugo Chavez and John McCain. John is the American Mirror image of Hugo :
Aggressivite, Hate, Inferioriy Complexes, Irrationality, Impetuousness, they do not take counsel or advice, rash actions, revenge, hate, hate, hate, creating enemies outside. Enemies of consulting and diplomacy. Practicioners of extreme nationalism or Jingoism, Idiotic Patriotism.
American Youth and Ethnic Minorities will save us from the danger of more Irrationality, Rashness, that is undue haste or lack of deliberation and caution.
Oh dear America, save us and save yourself from more Irrationality and Imbecility.
TossUpStates
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Vicente Duque
Even Thomas Friedman of the New York Times for the pass few months have been writing about the decline in the country's ability to apply any kind of leverage to non allied countries.
The truth of it is the Bush administration will leave a legacy of diminished moral and legal authority because of the Iraq War.
The IRA killed innocent civilians on the British mainland for over 20 years. But throughout this period the UK govt. beginning with John Major and ending with Tony Blair some 15 years later, together with some very brave Irish politicians such as David Trimble, John Hume and many others (including Bill Clinton), never gave up on their negotiations, which were often held in secret.
There were many people throughout this time that said you shouldn't negotiate with terrorists, but the goal was always to bring a lasting peace to the situation. It worked. This is the only way sanity can deal with insanity and Obama has shown, like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton before him, that he has the right temperment to do the same with the terrible threats that face us all. The last thing we need in such a delicate situation is a maverick.