The Bush/McCain statements of recent days that negotiating with America's adversaries is naïve, irresponsible, and constitutes "appeasement" is, well, naïve and irresponsible. Refusing to speak with the enemy flies in the face of the bipartisan policies of generations of American presidents--Republicans and Democrats--including such great "appeasers" as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton And George H.W. Bush. They all successfully negotiated with America's adversaries and enemies, sometimes even those who had tens of thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at America's heartland and who were arming guerrilla armies (today we would call them terrorists) who were killing American troops.
In the short run, such attacks by Bush/MCain might make a good bumper sticker in an attempt to define Obama as weak on national security before Obama fully defines himself. But, as shown by his Philadelphia speech on race and his criticisms of the McCain and Clinton's gas tax holiday proposals, Obama has an uncommon ability to successfully inject a certain level of nuance into the political debate. McCain may gain a temporary advantage with certain Americans for jumping on Bush's "appeasement" bandwagon. But over the course of the campaign, Americans will see that he represents a continuation of Bush's tough sounding talk, but counter-productive policies, that have only strengthened America's adversaries like Iran and North Korea, protected Osama Bin Laden and his top al Qaeda lieutenants hiding in the mountains of our "ally Pakistan, weakened our armed forces by tying them down in an unwinnable civil war, and made the country less safe.
If Bush and McCain want to assert that an American president negotiating with America's adversaries and enemies is appeasement, than virtually every American president--both Republican and Democratic--since the Second World War is an appeaser.
•The US allied itself with the communist Soviet Union and its notorious leader Josef Stalin during the World War II and American presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman, along with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met personally with Stalin three times during the War. In 1933, realizing that isolation had not stopped communism from taking hold in the Soviet Union and US interests required Soviet cooperation, FDR invited Stalin's Foreign Minister to Washington for negotiations, which ended in an official agreement establishing formal diplomatic relations. In 1941, two days after Nazi Germany invaded the communist Soviet Union, President Roosevelt promised assistance and unfroze Soviet assets. American diplomat Averell Harriman and Churchill's minister Lord Beaverbrook led a special mission to Moscow and soon a confidential protocol was signed in which the US and Britain agreed to send military supplies to the Soviet Union. In December 1941, after Pearl Harbor, the United States and the Soviet Union became wartime allies. President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and General Secretary Stalin personally met for negotiations twice during the war to plot common strategy against German and Japan, at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in early 1945, followed by a third summit with Stalin and the new American President Harry Truman and the new British Prime Minister Clement Atlee at the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945. The result of Roosevelt's, Truman's and Churchhill's willingness to negotiate with communist adversaries--victory over the Germans and Japanese in World War II.
• Throughout the Cold War with the Soviet Union, which followed World War II, American presidents held "Summit Meetings" numerous times with their Soviet adversaries when they believed it was in America's interest.
•In 1952, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated the Democrats for president, in part by promising "I shall go to Korea" to resolve the Korean War. Within weeks following his election, Eisenhower made a secret trip to Korea to meet with Communist leaders. His meetings with our adversary led to an Armistice that ended the Korean War.
•Despite the intensifying Cold War and the growing arms nuclear race between the US and the Soviet Union, President Eisenhower believed it was better to have in person negotiations with Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, to ease Cold War tensions, even as Khrushchev famously proclaimed, "We will bury you." In 1955, President Eisenhower, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden and French Prime Minister Edgar Faure met with Khrushchev at the Geneva Summit. Despite the arms race, Khrushchev eventually advocated a policy of "peaceful coexistence" and in 1959, at Eisenhower's invitation, he spent 10 days touring the United States and meeting with the President at Camp David, leading to a significant thaw in US-Soviet relations.
•During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US and the Soviet Union came as close to nuclear war as at anytime in Cold War history. But while staring down Khrushchev, Kennedy also held off his generals who were prepared for war, and negotiated with Khrushchev to remove Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba in exchange for the US agreeing not to overthrow Fidel Castro, along with a secret accord to remove certain American missiles from Turkey nine months later. Kennedy's hard-nosed diplomacy averted a worldwide nuclear catastrophe. Ironically, it also started to build a certain trust between Kennedy and Khrushchev that led to the signing of a nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963.
•While the US and Russia managed to avoid a hot war, throughout the Cold War they fought numerous proxy wars in various parts of the world, most notably in Vietnam where Russian and Communist Chinese arms were supplied to the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong (whom today we would call terrorists) which were used to kill American soldiers. This didn't stop Richard Nixon, perhaps the most anti-communist of all American presidents, from pursuing negotiations with Russia and China and eventually negotiate an end to American involvement in the Vietnam War. Despite China's military support of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, in 1972 Nixon became the first American President to visit Communist China, eventually leading to the normalization of relations. Simultaneously, Nixon pursued a policy of détente with the Soviet Union, leading to the signing of the SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) treaty during Nixon's visit to Moscow in May, 1972. In 1973 he signed a peace treaty with North Vietnam, ending America's involvement in the Vietnam War. Today, America carries on peaceful trade with communist Vietnam.
•Although President Reagan termed the Soviet Union "the evil empire" and in Berlin famously called on Soviet leader Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," as much as anything, it may have been Reagan's personal diplomacy with Gorbachev that led to the end of the Soviet Empire. Beginning with the Reykjavik summit in 1968, Reagan met annually with Gorbachev. Gorbachev returned to Moscow convinced that Reagan was not, as he earlier thought, a "caveman" and did not intend to attack Russia militarily. This gave him the political opening to continue his policy of perestroika which involved economic liberalization, democratic reforms and drastic military cuts. President George H.W. Bush continued Reagan's negotiations with Gorbachev until the collapse of the Soviet Union. If there was ever a lesson in the potential benefits of talking with our adversaries, it was in the extended negotiations between Gorbachev and President Reagan and the first President Bush which ended the Cold War.
•Although the second President Bush proclaimed last week to the Israeli Parliament that negotiating with adversaries is "appeasement," the Israelis themselves have never shrunk from negotiating with either enemy Arab governments, or Yasser Arafat and the PLO--which carried out terrorist attacks in Israel--when Israel believed it was in its self-interest to do so. Egyptian armies attacked Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973, the last time under the leadership of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Within a year of assuming office in 1977, President Jimmy Carter met with Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin. In November 1977, Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel, speaking before the Knesset and implicitly recognizing Israel, despite threats from several Communist Eastern European countries to retaliate. In September, 1978, President Carter invited Sadat and the hawkish new Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David for direct piece talks. Begin and Sadat personally hated each other but were repeatedly lured back into the negotiations by Carter's personal appeals. In the end they shook hands and signed the Camp David Agreements under which Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, which it had occupied in the 1967 War, in return for normalization of relations and access to the Suez Canal. As a result of these negotiations, the strongest military force in the Arab world was no longer at war with Israel and Israel was a safer nation. In 1993, Yasser Arafat of the PLO and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin signed the Oslo Accords in the presence of President Bill Clinton. While the accords did not ultimately resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they led to nearly 7 years of relative peace. There have been numerous direct talks between the PLO and the Israel government since then, despite the PLO's history as a terrorist organization.
It is President George W. Bush who has moved decisively away from the tradition of the previous 11 American presidents--both Republicans and Democrats--of negotiating with our adversaries when they believed it was in the strategic interest of the United States (although even W. has occasionally done so.) Early in his Presidency, Bush proclaimed that Iraq, Iran and North Korea constituted an "axis of evil" and increased American hostilities against those countries. The result has been that America is less safe than it was 8 years ago.
Under President Clinton, the United States negotiated an accord with North Korea to ban their development of nuclear weapons in exchange for certain food and energy aid. Under President Bush, such aid largely halted and North Korea then expelled international weapons inspectors and detonated its first atomic weapon. Only late in his presidency has Bush returned to a more conciliatory policy towards North Korea, through 6-party talks which may in part have put the North Korean nuclear threat back in the toothpaste tube. (Although the US has always held Libya responsible for the Lockerbie attacks on Pan Am Flight 103, one of the biggest terrorist attacks on Americans before 9/11, the Bush administration led talks with Libyan leader Qaddafi under which Qaddafi gave up his nuclear program. Libya 34th nation to sign the nuclear test ban treaty).
As for the other two members of the "Axis of Evil," Iraq and Iran, Bush's policies couldn't have been a bigger disaster. As well as costing the lives of over 4,000 brave American troops, bankrupting the nation with $2 trillion dollars in long-range debt, bogging America down in a civil war, weakening our armed forces, and distracting us from capturing Osama Bin Laden in the mountains of our "ally" Pakistan, the Iraq War has greatly strengthened Iran. The leaders of the government we support in Iraq spent years of exile in Iran and are allied with the Iranian government. Most of the various Iranian factions and militia receive arms and support from Iran. When the Iraqi government needed to forge a ceasefire with Sadr and his Mahdi Army, it was the Iranians who brokered the deal.
The day before President Bush, supported by John McCain, denounced negotiations with Iran as appeasement, Bush's own Defense Secretary said of Iran, "We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage and then sit down and talk with them."
So if George Bush and John McCain want to debate Barack Obama on whether talking with America's adversaries is appeasement, that should be a debate Obama, as he has said, is happy to have. Obama has the authority of 11 Republican and Democratic Presidents standing behind him. Eight years of a Bush Presidency has made America less safe. John McCain apparently wants to continue the same policies. Despite Bush/McCain's charges of appeasement, negotiating with America's adversaries helped win World War II and the Cold War, end the Vietnam War, and bring peace between Israel and Egypt.
As President Kennedy said, "We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate."