Talk to the bad men too

Talk to the bad men too
By Chris Dodd
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: August 13 2007 18:57 | Last updated: August 13 2007 18:57


In the 1980s I travelled many times to Nicaragua, where I met President Daniel Ortega. At the height of the cold war, I was subject to criticism in some quarters for meeting a leader with ties to the Soviets. But my goal wasn’t to become friends with the Sandinista president, it was to press him to renounce violence as a political tool and allow the people of Nicaragua to choose their next leader.

Despite opposition from the Reagan administration, Congress voted to restrict US funding of the Contra rebel forces and Mr Ortega later agreed to elections. In 1990 Violeta Cha morro won and Mr Ortega respected the results by stepping down. As a result, Nicaragua today has an imperfect demo cracy but a democracy nonetheless.

At the recent CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate, we were all asked whether, as president, we would meet leaders of Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and North Korea without preconditions. With American security at stake and our reputation in the world in tatters, it was a chance for us to demonstrate how we might use diplomacy to help America lead on the global stage in the 21st century.

But rather than using this opportunity to showcase to the country their diplomatic bona fides, two candidates – senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – have chosen to squabble and make irresponsible statements.

To be sure, there was little disagreement on the stage about the Bush administration’s diplomatic failures. In six years, Mr Bush and Dick Cheney have weakened America by refusing to meet representatives of certain nations, irrespective of their importance to US interests and security.

However, we were not asked whether as president we would try to correct the failed Bush-Cheney course – how could we not? Rather, we were asked how we would use our experience and judgment to plot a new course.

John F. Kennedy famously said that we should never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate. This was something his one-time rival, Richard Nixon, understood, when he went to China and met Mao Zedong. Reagan also understood this, calling the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” in one breath and meeting Mikhail Gorbachev in the next. Theirs was a generation that gave us the Marshall plan, Nato, arms control agreements and the UN – institutions that helped ensure 60 years of relative peace and security.

Our leaders created systems and structures for the postwar world because the world’s problems could not have been tackled without inter national co-operation and US leadership. This international architecture strengthened America’s global leadership and enhanced US security.

This administration, on the other hand, is walking away from those institutions, treating diplomacy as if it were a gift to our enemies.

But with due respect to senators Clinton and Obama, on this question they are not only wrong to turn this into a political debate; they are also wrong on the substance. The notion that America should treat these five countries the same is naive at best, irresponsible at worst.

Meeting Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad would be a mistake; no leader who denies the Holocaust ever took place and actively calls for the destruction of Israel should be rewarded with a face-to-face meeting with a US president – although in a Dodd administration this would not preclude American diplomats from meeting other high level Iran ian officials.

In contrast to Iran, I would be open to meeting other difficult leaders. Indeed, I have already met Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez as a US senator on the foreign relations committee. I have also met Bashar al-Assad, because engaging with him was – and is – in America’s interest.

What is not in America’s interest is letting the actions of bad actors fester. For all its flaws, Syria should play an important role in stabilising Iraq, and a constructive role in achieving a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Syria can also enhance Israel’s security by applying pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah while ceasing interference in the political life of Lebanon. Likewise, by engaging with Mr Chávez in Venezuela – to whom we are somehow losing a PR war – we can re-establish US leadership in our own hemisphere and shine a light on the importance of upholding democratic institutions and practices in his country. And while no one likes Kim Jong-il, if we can de nuclearise the Korean peninsula by engaging with him, we should.

Responsible leadership engages with the world. It does not needlessly provoke nuclear powers by declaring in favour of specific military actions, as Senator Obama did recently.

The next president must understand that diplomacy is essential to repairing our nation’s fractured world relationships. He or she must recognise that the choice between coddling tyrannical leaders or going to war with them is a false choice when the US is no longer acting alone. When the US is once again a leading, strong moral voice in the world, it will be the terrorists and the tyrants who are isolated, not the US. And if my colleagues would stop scoring political points in the media for a moment to recognise that, they would probably realise that that is one point on which we all agree.

The writer is a Democratic US senator from Connecticut and presidential candidate