In recent weeks, it has become increasingly clear that there is a void at the heart of the Democratic Party.
At the outset of our first great debate over post-September 11 foreign policy -- what to do about Saddam Hussein and Iraq -- the Democrats are sitting it out, worried about taking on a popular wartime president and preferring to focus on domestic issues. In the latest issue of The Prospect, Harold Meyerson calls this an abdication of leadership on the most important issue facing this country. And as a result, the task of criticizing the President's plans for Iraq has been left to internationalist Republicans and nervous European and Middle Eastern leaders.
But politics isn't the only or the most fundamental reason for the Democrats' silence. As Peter Beinart pointed out recently in The New Republic, the Dems can't articulate a serious critique of President Bush's plans to invade Iraq because they don't have an overarching theory of how America should deal with the new threats to our security.
Bush does. Iraq is to be the test case for his new policy of preemption, outlined in a June speech at West Point. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge," Bush said. "In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act."
In practice, preemption would violate international law, which only allows such attacks in the narrowly defined case of a truly imminent threat. The United Nations charter goes even further, allowing only countries that have been attacked to respond with military force. Such rules are fundamental to the international system of norms and institutions built largely at our behest starting in the aftermath of World War II. And overall, this regime has been extremely successful when it comes to creating opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation between states while constraining their worst impulses.
But the current system was not able to stop al-Qaeda. And if the Europeans get their way and maintain the status quo, it may fail again. The strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon tragically underscored America's vulnerability to attacks from decentralized terror networks, a weakness that could prove unimaginably deadly if exploited with weapons of mass destruction. President Clinton understood this, but he never mustered the political will to go beyond cruise missile strikes at Osama bin Laden and relatively limited efforts to contain Iraq.
Clearly we need a new theory -- but do we need Bush's? To address the looming threat we face, Beinart argues for what he calls "preemption plus." In this scheme, a war with Iraq would be followed by a "political intervention -- i.e., nation-building" (a task that Bush is currently botching in Afghanistan).
Yet even this vision is too narrow. While nation-building in Iraq would be crucial in the aftermath of an invasion, starting with an invasion gets the process exactly backwards. Such an approach could unravel the international system that ultimately protects our best interests. This is especially the case now, when we desperately need close cooperation from other nations to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and shut down terrorist cells around the world.
It's time for Democrats to think big. Really big. What we need is a muscular new internationalist doctrine that addresses post-September 11 threats in Iraq and around the world -- something along the lines laid out by Michael Hirsh in the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs.
Under such a doctrine, territorial sovereignty would become somewhat less sacrosanct: If a rogue state violates international law or norms by harboring terrorists or seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction, the international community -- led by the US -- would have a range of options culminating in the possibility of military action. These options would be pursued forcefully, but Bush-style preemption would be ruled out because it undermines the system and could lead to globally destabilizing aggressions (for example, an Indian attack against Pakistan).
So what does this mean in the case of Iraq? Saddam Hussein does threaten to undermine regional stability and spread weapons of mass destruction. But instead of starting with invasion as the goal and working backward to create a rationale for action (Bush's approach, as with the tax cut), America should build a new consensus for action grounded in the international system.
For example, Iraq is actually in violation of international law for interfering with authorized UN weapons inspectors in 1998. Per Robert Wright, therefore, our first step should be to seek a UN Security Council resolution based on Iraq's noncompliance that demands unprecedented inspector access. Its language should be crafted to create a legal mandate for action -- broadly defined -- if inspections are obstructed. With a U.S. invasion force standing by in the Gulf, this threat would be highly credible.
Condoleeza Rice, the President's national security advisor, has admitted that, in principle, such tactics might work. In an interview with The New York Times in June, she noted that President Kennedy's strategy of a naval blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis "actually was pre-emptive" but "preserved the possibility for the Soviets to back down." Rice "would not apply the lesson to the current Iraq debate, but said that 'there's a whole range of possible ways to take early action.'"
Moreover, if Hussein refuses to allow inspectors into the country, the U.S. case for an invasion would be more credible to our European allies and less destabilizing in the Muslim world -- particularly among the alienated youth who could become the next generation of terrorists.
An assertive foreign policy in which the U.S. preempts threats against its security in concert with the international system is surely the best -- and safest -- approach. Would that the Democrats had the courage to advocate it.
