In Republican foreign policy circles, you can’t really get more “serious” than former Secretary of State James Baker. His record for partisanship is unquestioned — Baker did, after all, oversee the 2000 Florida recount on behalf of George W. Bush — but after serving as Secretary of State and chairman of the Iraq Study Group, Baker’s perspective carries quite a bit of weight and credibility within the DC establishment.
With that in mind, this October 2006 clip of Baker on Fox News talking about diplomacy has been making the rounds the past few days.
“Diplomacy involves talking to your enemies,” Baker said. “You don’t reward your enemies necessarily by talking to them if you are tough and you know what you are doing. You don’t appease them. Talking to an enemy is not, in my view, appeasement.”
Obviously, given the context, this had nothing to do with the debate between Obama and McCain. Baker’s interview was a year and a half ago. The point, though, is that the conservative approach to international affairs has been equating diplomacy with “appeasement” for quite some time. The right said it about Reagan talking to Russia; the right said it about Nixon talking to China.
Asked about the clip, John McCain — who, last week, endorsed Bush’s “appeasement” talk with some enthusiasm — said Baker only talked with adversaries who seemed open to changing their tactics. “When Secretary Baker was secretary of state, they didn’t talk to Castro. They had a very strict position on whether to negotiate with him or not,” McCain said.
That’s partially true, but incomplete.
As Marc Ambinder noted:
On Castro, that’s true. But Baker, as a member of the Iraq Study Group, advocated robust regional diplomacy to solve the problems created by the war in Iraq. While Secretary of State, he routinely talked to his counterparts in Syria and Iraq. Without preconditions.
As the Post reported,
“Baker noted that when he was secretary of state for President Bush’s father, he made 15 trips to Syria in 1990 and 1991, “at the time when Syria was on the list of countries who were state sponsors of terrorism. On the 16th trip, guess what, lo and behold, Syria changed 25 years of policy and agreed for the first time in the history to sit at the table with Israel, which is what Israel wanted at the time.”
A brief Google search provides other examples. Right before the first Gulf War began, Baker indicated his willingness for a face-to-face chat with Saddam Hussein. At a press conference to discuss the Iraq Study Group’s report, Baker said, twice, “You talk to your enemies, not just your friends.”
And in this case, as partisan as Baker might be, there’s no room for him to endorse McCain’s approach.
On a related note, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) doesn’t seem to have much use for McCain’s policy on diplomacy, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates seems reluctant to defend the “appeasement” talk.
And as long as we’re on the subject, in George H. W. Bush’s new book, the former president argues, “I was a big believer then, and still am, that personal diplomacy can be very useful and productive.”