Dean’s Foreign Policy

Dean addresses concerns that he is not sufficiently against Bush’s Doctrine of Preemptive War. Part of this came from his apparent willingness to use force in North Korea if necessary.

While one always wants to keep a bit of strategic ambiguity over specific actions that would lead to war, I’m still unclear on when unilateral action is acceptable given an imminent threat.

I supported military action in Iraq, though I was not particularly happy with the administration’s path. Much like Kenneth Pollack and others–presumably including Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel who have been quietly, but consistently critical of the President, I understood the long-term problem, but did not grasp the reason to rush. However, if we were going to rush, well, okay.

Dean is saying the right things in general, but I’m still not sure where he would draw the line between courting multilateral institutions and deciding the interest was too great to not act unilaterally. That is a hard question to answer, but he is going to have to answer it if he is to do well.

The fundamental problem of the Bush administration isn’t one case, it is a pattern of ignoring international problems and agreements. When he trashed Kyoto–fine, it was flawed, but he offered no serious plan to replace it. The International Criminal Court? Okay, but what other institutional arrangements can we make. And what about another trade round? –oops I forgot, he isn’t actually for free trade.

Globalization and environmental problems that cross individual country’s borders have to be addressed internationally. Many of those institutions thought up by the Europeans are deficient, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work towards functioning institutions, it means we should propose better alternatives.

This is what excites me about this next election–foreign policy returns and forces the Democrats to argue the issue. Dean seems to be up to it even if I think he needs to clarify specific issues, as is some others such as Lieberman. Some like Kucinich are off in meditation land, while others are trying to say much of anything.

For reconstruction of Iraq, Dean has offered a detailed seven point plan. Only Edwards and Lieberman have offered up their own detailed plans. The plan is quite good.

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