WASHINGTON - In a major policy address, Senator Hillary Clinton on Tuesday
called for a "sea change" in US foreign policy that would include direct talks
with Syria, Iran and North Korea and greater US engagement in promoting peace
between Israel and the Palestinians.
"Let us never negotiate from fear, but let us never fear to negotiate," she
declared, quoting the late president John Kennedy. "Direct negotiations are not
a sign of weakness, they're
a sign of leadership."
The speech, which marks her strongest criticism of the Bush administration to
date, came just one week before the November 7 mid-term elections in which
Democrats are expected to wrest control of at least the House of
Representatives and possibly of the Senate as well. Clinton herself, a
Democratic senator from New York, is expected to be re-elected by a landslide.
The acknowledged, albeit undeclared, front-runner in the race for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Clinton has generally been cautious
in her criticism of the current administration's foreign policy, particularly
with respect to the "war on terror", Iraq and the Middle East.
Her speech, delivered at the New York headquarters of the influential Council
on Foreign Relations, also called for a "phased redeployment" of US troops from
Iraq by the end of the year designed in part to "force the Iraqi government to
... begin to do more to resolve their own political situation". She called the
current political situation there a "complete absurdity".
Clinton said Washington needs a bipartisan policy based on a blend of "both
idealism and realism in the service of American interests" in which diplomacy
is given a much higher value than the administration of President George W Bush
has accorded.
"This administration's choices were false ones," she declared.
"Internationalism versus unilateralism; realism versus idealism ... I think
it's fair to say we are now all internationalists and we are all realists."
She has focused more on the administration's alleged incompetence than on its
overall strategy, particularly regarding Iraq, from where until relatively
recently she opposed withdrawing US troops, a position that has alienated the
Democratic Party's activist base.
But with the Iraq war having become increasingly unpopular, even among
Republican candidates, and a growing number of voters seemingly losing
confidence in Bush's conduct of the "war on terror", Clinton has apparently
decided to become bolder in her attacks on the administration, as she was on
Tuesday even as she appealed for bipartisan support. Her husband, former
president Bill Clinton, who has harshly - but only rarely (apparently in order
not to steal the limelight from his spouse) - criticized Bush's foreign policy,
told a private gathering on Tuesday evening that he had helped draft the
speech.
The senator said three principles should underlie a "bipartisan consensus" on
national security: the renewal "by word and deed" of "internationalism for a
new century", in which Washington accords a "decent respect for the opinions"
of other nations; an affirmation that direct negotiations with enemies "are not
a sign of weakness"; and the blending of idealism and realism that she said had
long characterized traditional US diplomacy "until a small group of ideologues"
- an apparent reference to neo-conservatives and other hawks - came to power
under the Bush administration.
"This administration has abandoned [the] tension [between realism and idealism]
for a simplistic division of the world into good and evil. They refuse to talk
to anyone on the evil side," she said.
"Some have called that idealistic. I call it dangerously unrealistic. These
three principles would force a sea change from the current administration's
policies," she went on, noting that in virtually every dangerous situation
faced by the United States today, "you will see the same mistakes repeated over
and over: the mistaken belief that alliances, international institutions [are]
irrelevant to American interests, the mistaken belief that diplomacy, even if
backed by force, is synonymous with weakness; the mistaken belief that our
military's experience in war planning, our intelligence community's objective
analysis, and our diplomats' experience in negotiations could be dismissed.''
On Iraq, she said "we need a fundamental change in course" based on three main
components: the establishment of an oil trust that would guarantee each Iraqi
an annual share in the country's oil wealth that could be used as a tactic to
help resolve the sectarian conflict over the distribution of oil revenues that
is central to the current impasse; the convening of a public international
conference that would include all of Iraq's neighbors, including Syria and
Iran, to ensure the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity and prevent
civil war; and a phased redeployment of US troops that will "get the attention
of the Iraqi leadership" and prevent US troops from being "put in the crossfire
of a civil war".
On Afghanistan, Clinton accused the Bush administration of "inattention and
false optimism ... that are costing lives". In particular, Washington should
respond to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's call for more troops in
Afghanistan and "improve the security situation with Pakistan".
"We know the general area where the leaders of the Taliban and probably the
leaders of al-Qaeda are," she said in a veiled reference to the tribal areas in
Pakistan, from which the Pakistani army has recently withdrawn. "It is a
failure of our policies on all fronts that five years [after their ouster],
they are sending waves of fighters into Afghanistan from their safe havens."
On Iran, she said, "US policy must be unequivocal. Iran must not build or
acquire nuclear weapons." But while Washington should keep all options on the
table, it should also be "ready to talk directly to Iranians should the right
opportunity present itself". Such talks, she said, would convey "two important
messages: first, to the Iranian people that our quarrel is with their leaders,
not with them; and second, to the international community that we are pursuing
every available peaceful avenue to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state".
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she charged the Bush administration with
"disengag[ing] at crucial moments", although she indicated support for reported
plans by Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the
democratically elected Hamas government. "As events unfold, we need to be
prepared, in close coordination with our Israeli ally, to resume America's
indispensable role in finding a just and lasting resolution," she said.
She also came out squarely for bilateral talks with North Korea, noting that
all of Pyongyang's neighbors had called for direct negotiations. Past
engagement with North Korea, she noted in an implicit reference to her
husband's policies from 1994 to 2001, had prevented Pyongyang from developing
plutonium bombs and testing long-range missiles, both of which it has done in
the past four months.
