Issues2004: Foreign policy

Jeff Jarvis has posted the latest entry in his Issues2004 series and this time his topic is foreign policy. I agree with the subtext of Jeff’s post—that the War on Terror is the fundamental foreign policy issue that confronts us. But I also have some pretty basic differences from Jeff.

I don’t have a Wilsonian bone in my body. Don’t get me wrong. I would be thrilled if we were able to establish a functioning liberal democracy in the Arab Middle East. There’s already a functioning liberal democracy in the Middle East—Israel. And there’s already a functioning democracy (to a greater or less degree) in the Muslim Middle East—Turkey. I believe that liberal democracy would good for Arabs in the Middle East, good for the United States, and good for the world.

But I also believe that the process of giving liberal democracy a foothold in the Arab Middle East will be a protracted one—probably a multi-generational process. And there are foreign policy issues which just can’t be put on hold for a multi-generational timeframe.

To my mind the most critical foreign policy issues before us are nuclear proliferation, state support of terrorism, trade, and immigration. And China is the linchpin of all of these issues.

The revelations of the A. Q. Khan affair in Pakistan showed us how urgently nuclear proliferation needs our attention. I believe that we should be taking the following actions to reduce nuclear proliferation:

1. Establish a significantly closer relationship with Russia. We should be urging and helping the Russians to:
   1. Secure the Russian nuclear stockpile.
   2. Stop assisting the Iranians with nuclear technology.
   3. Join us in an anti-nuclear mutual defense pact. Any nuclear first strike (other than by the U. S. or Russia) should be treated by each of us as an attack on us and be met with a nuclear response.
2. Declare that regime change in Iran is the official policy of the United States. Yesterday.
3. Take the steps necessary for China to stop propping up the North Korean government.

Although there’s been progress in this area there continues to be state support for terrorism which we just can’t tolerate anymore. Culprits include the usual suspects (Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan), allies (France and Germany), and trading partners (China—indirectly). We’ve got to be willing to make sacrifices to treat this issue more seriously.

I’d say the biggest trade issues we have are with China and India. Both need to open their markets in a serious way and treat intellectual property violations in a serious way. China’s monetary manipulations are in my opinion the economic equivalent of war. And the liability reform we should be asking of the Indians—if we plan on U. S. companies offshoring services to India—will almost inevitably become a very serious issue indeed.

Immigration is also a foreign policy issue. We need to be significantly tougher bargainers with Mexico than we have been. Why aren’t economic, land policy, environmental, labor relations, and linguistic issues on the table in our negotiations with Mexico? And, in my opinion, Chinese trade policies are having a very deleterious effect on the Mexican economy which in turn results in increased immigration from Mexico to the United States.