Dean's Foreign Policy: I Am No George Bush

Howard Dean's first major speech on foreign policy on Monday in Los Angeles was delivered amid the immediate aftermath of Saddam Hussein's capture, and a more symbolic twinning of events could scarcely be imagined. The Dean speech was quietly spun as his attempt to re-position himself toward the center, while his major Democratic opponents were scurrying even further to the right in their attempt to identify with the event's popular appeal, denouncing Dean along the way.

But Dean's speech, along with his signature opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, revealed him as the best Democratic alternative to Bush, while sustaining his bona fides as a progressive.

The flag-waving of Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, and John Kerry after Saddam's surrender is a lesson in myopia. The armed resistance to U.S. occupation will continue, and is even likely to diminish. But it is not as daunting a prospect as the longer-term prospects for Iraq, which remains on track to become a state with intense communal rivalries dominated by anti-American Shi'ite clerics. And it does not change the fact that there were always alternatives to invasion.

The war was based on false premises, and it has been costly in innumerable ways, not least in managing the central challenge of Islamic militancy. None of this changed with Saddam's capture. Dean's position on Iraq has been right from the start, and is likely to be seen as such months or years down the road.

The Dean speech was not meant to be an answer to the extraordinary events of the weekend, but inevitably Iraq remained paramount. Much of the media coverage of his speech has focused on his willingness to use military force -- he emphasizes his support for U.S. military action in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, as well as action in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan -- in contrast to his opposition to the current Iraq imbroglio.

But such a measure of a candidate's foreign policy position is superficial. No one in the race is a pacifist, and no one would disagree with Dean's three standards of military action (to respond to a direct or imminent attack on the U.S., or to prevent genocide), which he enumerated in pre-speech interviews in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

In his speech, he emphasized three policy positions that are bound to become the pillars of his own foreign-policy agenda during the campaign. First, the cardinal threat to American security is terrorism, and that Bush has done far too little to protect Americans and much of it, clumsily. Among such threats, Dean pointed to weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists several times in the course of his speech. The second critique points the damage to the alliances and multilateral cooperation due to Bush administration's emphasis on unilateralism. Third is addressing social and economic calamities -- HIV/AIDS and global poverty -- that also give rise to the conditions of desperation and political violence.

Dean said:

"Empowered by the American people, I will work to restore:

The legitimacy that comes from the rule of law;

The credibility that comes from telling the truth;

The knowledge that comes from first-rate intelligence, undiluted by ideology;

The strength that comes from robust alliances and vigorous diplomacy;

And, of course, I will call on the most powerful armed forces the world has ever known to ensure the security of this nation."

This is a fairly sharp piece of rhetoric, reminding listeners of Bush's mendacity and unilateralism. It is far more powerful than his references in the Times and Post interviews to Bush's diplomatic "tin ear," an overly polite reference to the administration's relentless bullying of friend and adversary alike. Dean scored much more decisively in the Los Angeles speech by questioning Bush's judgment, and it is this theme that can raise him from the "anti" insurgent to the stature of statesman-candidate.