Obama Really Means to Change Foreign Policy

Fifteen years ago, incoming President Bill Clinton promised a government "that looks more like America." Today, would-be President Barack Obama promises a government foreign policy that looks more like that of the world.

And ironically, Bill’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who once called herself the "agent of change," is now the guardian of the old policy order.

Obama promises "fundamental change" in America’s international relations, and he means it. When asked, during the July 23 Democratic debate, if he would be "willing to meet separately, without preconditions, during the first year of your administration" with foreign leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Obama immediately answered, "I would."

Realizing that Obama had violated foreign policy orthodoxy, Clinton pounced, deriding Obama’s answer as "irresponsible and, frankly, naive."

In so saying, Clinton faithfully reflected the standard operating procedure of diplomacy, which holds that meetings "at the summit" must be preceded by an elaborate sequence of "confidence-building" measures, aimed at producing a positive outcome.

And since Ahmadinejad and Chavez are avowed enemies of the United States, one might legitimately wonder if they would come to such a parley willing to talk about conciliation, or if they would be primed for confrontation. It helps, in prudent foreign policy-making, to have a good outcome envisioned in advance.

America, after all, is the greatest power on earth, and so little nuances here can mean big earthquakes overseas. What would happen, for example, if the 44th president were to meet with Iran’s Ahmadinejad? What would the image of a handshake do to American efforts to curb that country’s nuclear program? And what signal would be sent to Iranian dissidents seeking to change the theocratic regime?

In other words, there’s a time-tested logic to all this striped-pants ritual and protocol.

But still, there’s a problem. Most of the "experts," practitioners of traditional diplomacy, have discredited themselves by supporting the Iraq war. Clinton voted for it in 2002, and she has mostly supported it in the years since, backing away only under extreme nomination pressure.

And it’s no secret that her coterie of top foreign policy advisers -- including Bill’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Hillary’s rumored choice for that post, Richard Holbrooke -- were once quietly supportive of the war.

For his part, Obama comes from a different world. His father was Kenyan, and his stepfather came from Indonesia, where young Barack lived for four years. Obama himself was a state senator, representing inner-city Chicago, when the bipartisan "neoconservative" vision for the Middle East dominated Washington.

So it was easy for him to feel distant from the combined foreign policy vision of George W. Bush and the Clintons on Iraq. It was even easy, and effective, for him to label the New York senator’s approach as "Bush-Cheney light."

Pow! Clinton might have started this argument over foreign policy politesse, but Obama aims to finish it -- and finish her. His campaign Web site showcases a video in which he declares, in his opening cadence, to a cheering crowd, "We want an end to this war, and we want diplomacy and peace!"

And yet in contrast to, say, ‘08 rival John Edwards -- who opportunistically voted for the war when in the Senate because his political consultant told him to do so, and then, with equal opportunism, came out against it -- Obama looks out at the planet from a genuinely different perspective, distinct from the Bush-Clinton Beltway-ocracy.

As he said after the debate, "I was drawing on a set of experiences that come from a life of living overseas ... being able to see the world through the eyes of people outside our borders."

So when Obama talks about changing our foreign policy, to better reflect the destiny of America as it sits immersed in globalism, you had better believe he means it.