Given the Iraq hearings yesterday & today, it seems a few foreign policy posts are in order. My goal with these posts is less to comment on the news of the hearings than provide insights into how an Obama administration's foreign policy might be constructed and waged.
This first one is an interesting dialogue on tyranny, terror and military action Obama had with Condi Rice (McCain's future running mate?) during her Senate confirmatin hearings in January 2005.
If nothing else, it is obvious how clear thinking, smart, persistant yet non-confrontational, respectful but uncompromising (e.g., when he wont let her dance around his question around the 7 minute mark) Obama is. A telling extract:
"Tyranny if engagead in by an a ally of ours, or a country sufficiently powerful enough, doesn't prompt military action. In other cases it does ...
Do we have a well thought through doctrin that we can present to the world that explains when military action is justified and when it is not? Apparently it's not justified in Sudan where there's a genocide taking place. It wasn't justified in Rwanda ... there are a numer of circumstances in which we had felt that such incursions or nation building was not appropriate despite the evidence of great tyranny ... so what I'm looking for is some clearly atriculated statement as to when you think military action is appropriate.
We went into Iraq because of a specific threat of terror, not tyranny ...
Part of the public diplolmacy both internationally and domestically requires the administation to articulate these reasons in a way that are coherent and consistent."
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