Straight Talk: Analyzing Presidential Diplomacy With U.S. Enemies

Gallup reports that a large majority of Americans supports presidential-level diplomatic talks with our international enemies, including Iran (and this finding's noteworthy as Iran tops the list of perceived foes of the United States).

The report is careful to note that public support for talking to our enemies could decline if the dangers of such an approach became demonstrably evident in the course of the long presidential campaign:

The issue of using presidential diplomacy with U.S. enemies distinguishes Barack Obama from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, and even from his opponent for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton.

Obama is the only one of the three who has said he would personally meet with the leaders of countries like Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela as president, and he recently defended his position by saying "strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries." Clinton has criticized Obama's approach as "naïve," and McCain has been unrelenting in his attacks on the issue, accusing Obama of being dangerously inexperienced and having "reckless judgment."

Bottom Line

McCain may eventually persuade more Americans that there is nothing for the president of the United States to discuss with hostile foreign leaders like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and that to do so only undermines U.S. efforts to destabilize such regimes.

However, for now, whether it's the leader of an "enemy" country, generally, or the president of Iran, specifically, Americans think it's a good idea for the president of the United States to meet directly with the nation's adversaries.

We can thus see that while public opinion appears favorable to Barack Obama's position, a spirited campaign debate on the merits of meeting our enemies (especially unconditionally) could very well provide the context for a more skeptical public stance vis-à-vis our foes.

One doesn't get this nuance from Matthew Yglesias, who writes on Gallup's findings today:

One point I've been trying to make in my book talks is that there's precious little evidence that public opinion is demanding a neo-imperial foreign policy for the United States. Nobody felt during the 2000 presidential campaign that the public was clamoring for a new Orwellian doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense" (to repeat the phrase used in Doug Feith's book) in which the United States was going to launch aggressive wars against countries that hadn't attacked us or our allies and had no plans of doing so. September 11, clearly, had a large impact on public opinion but even then there was little public interest in doing this, which is why the Bush administration overstated both the scale and the immediacy of the alleged Iraqi threat while drastically downplaying the costs.

And you see again that while it took a certain amount of courage for Barack Obama to stand up to the crusted-over notion that the United States should set itself up as too damn important to conduct high-level talks with regional adversaries, there's not some genuine avalanche of public opinion on the other side of this issue. What you have instead is a political and media system that's very vulnerable to hype, fearmongering, hysteria, etc. But calm political leadership that doesn't panic at the first sign of conservative self-confidence about the politics of warmongering has a real chance to win these fights.

Yglesias make reference to his book, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats.

I've read the book, and to study Yglesias is to understand how the folks on the left can ideologically twist and turn endlessly to devise a position on international conflict where the resort to arms would never be considered a viable policy position of the Unitied States.

Notice how Yglesias offers no clear, verifiable reference for his claim that:

September 11, clearly, had a large impact on public opinion but even then there was little public interest in doing this, which is why the Bush administration overstated both the scale and the immediacy of the alleged Iraqi threat while drastically downplaying the costs.

Considering Yglesias has made a career out of hammering "liberal war hawks," and as one who's demonized John McCain as "the militarist," we might think that we'd at least get some empirical confirmation for these substantive claims and spurious smears.

Straightforward polling data from the "even then" period after 9/11 puts Yglesias in a bind:

FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. March 12-13, 2002. N=900 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.
						.
"Do you support or oppose the U.S. military action being taken in response to the terrorist attacks?"
		Support	Oppose	Not Sure
		%	%	%
	3/12-13/02	91	6	3
	2/26-27/02	82	11	7
	1/30-31/02	89	7	4
	1/9-10/02	90	5	5
	12/12-13/01	91	6	3
	11/28-29/01	91	5	4
	11/14-15/01	91	6	3
	10/31 - 11/1/01	87	8	5

Not only that, in 1998, when the Clinton/Gore administration ratcheted-up American foreign policy efforts to prevent Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction, large majorities favored military efforts over non-military means to resolve the crisis:

Previous polls have shown that controlling weapons of mass destruction and containing Iraq are among the public's top priorities in foreign affairs, and underpin support for a tough approach toward Iraq. Also, Americans seem to have become less patient about using non-military measures against Iraq since the last inspection crisis. Gallup (1/16-18) found 75 percent believed military force "will eventually be necessary to keep Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction" -- up from 56 percent last November (11/21-23), after inspections were resumed.

So, while this is two years before the 2000 presidential election campaign, the polling data show support for military action over diplomacy ("non-military measures"); and while these polls do not survey support for regime change per se, the data here, gathered during a Democratic administration, nevetheless cast asperision on blanket left-wing denunciations that there was "little public interest" in "anticipatory self-defense."

Moreover, after the fall of 2002, when U.S. intelligence officials, as well as those in intelligence bureaus around the world, had documented Iraq's continuing efforts at WMD procurement, American public opinion firmly supported the Bush administration's policy of regime change:

The standard question used by many public opinion organizations, including the Pew Research Center, asks whether the respondent favors or opposes taking military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power. These questions yield higher measures of support than the standard question asked by Gallup/CNN/USA Today, which asks about invading Iraq with ground troops....

Here are recent polls on the general question of using force in Iraq:

Organization	Dates	N	Question	Favor/Yes	Oppose/No	DK
Pew Research Center	1/8-12/03	611	Would you favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein's rule?	68	25	7
Fox News/ Opinion Dynamics	1/14-15/03	900 RV	Do you support or oppose U.S. military action to disarm Iraq and remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein?	67	25	8
CBS/NYT	1/19-22/03	997	Do you approve or disapprove of the United States taking military action against Iraq to try to remove Saddam Hussein from power?	64	30	6
Newsweek	1/23-24/03	1001	In the fight against terrorism, the Bush Administration has talked about using military force against Saddam Hussein and his military in Iraq. Would you support using military force against Iraq, or not?	60	35	5
Time/CNN	1/15-16/03	1010	Do you think the U.S. should or should not use military action involving ground troops to attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq?	60	33	7
ABC/Washington Post	1/16-20/03	1133	Would you favor or oppose having U.S. forces take military action against Iraq to force Saddam Hussein from power?	57	41	3
NBC News/Wall Street Journal	1/19-21/03	1025	Do you think that the United States should or should not take military action to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq?	56	36	8
Gallup/CNN/ USA Today	1/23-25/03	1000	Would you favor or oppose invading Iraq with U.S. ground troops in an attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power?	52	43	5

This analysis, then, raises serious doubt on Yglesias' larger assertions that Barack Obama's views are in line with public opinion on international diplomacy. To quote this passage once more:

And you see again that while it took a certain amount of courage for Barack Obama to stand up to the crusted-over notion that the United States should set itself up as too damn important to conduct high-level talks with regional adversaries, there's not some genuine avalanche of public opinion on the other side of this issue.

The Gallup data discussed at the start of this post are much more variegated than Yglesias' view suggests, and a review of public opinion trends in precisely those periods Yglesias claims support his push for diplomacy-at-all costs indicates how drastically unserious (even dangerous ) are the representative foreign policy points of the far-left.