There's been a lot of criticism aimed at Barack Obama for saying that nuclear weapons are off the table in the fight against terrorism.
Hilary Clinton charged that his comment was reckless: "Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons." Joe Biden called it "a very naive way of figuring out how you're going to conduct foreign policy". Chris Dodd charged Obama with making "unwise categorical statements about military options".
I'm not ready to endorse a candidate yet, but on this particular issue, Obama is right, and his critics are not only wrong, but dangerously wrong.
The criticisms center around three conventional ideas about foreign policy and politics:
- A president should never take any option off the table.
- A president should never let other countries, particularly adversaries, know what we are, or aren't going to do next.
- A candidate should use 1 and 2 to avoid any substantial discussions of foreign policy.
Each of those ideas is dangerous in its own way.
There are definitely options which should be taken off the table. Torture, for example, comes to mind. It generally produces bad information, it endangers our citizens and soldiers, both by setting a bad precedent and lowering our status in the eyes of the world, and it demeans the soldiers who are ordered to perform such degrading acts on another human being.
Banning torture is a no-brainer, and yet there are those who argue in favor of it, in ways that are eerily parallel to the arguments in favor of nuclear weapons. "What if," the argument goes, "the terrorists have planted a nuclear bomb under New York, and torturing one of them is the only way to find out where it is and stop it in time?"
The answer is simple. It such an incredibly unlikely event occurred, and there really was no other way to save a city full of people, whoever was in charge would use torture—in spite of the fact that it probably wouldn't work. We would try it anyway, we would try it even though we had taken torture off the table, and the question has nothing whatsoever to do with what our general policy toward torture ought to be. Hard cases make bad policy.
So, to begin with, the idea of taking nuclear action against terrorists off the table doesn't mean—and no one with a brain would ever think it meant—that some bizarre and unforeseen combination of events might, theoretically, lead to an exception. Our enemies know this. We know this. We're grownups.
On the other hand, for normal, real-life cases, we should take it off the table. Nuclear deterrence, to quote Clinton, has only worked, "since the time of the cold war" because such uses were off the table. Other countries don't use nuclear weapons because they know that we won't, unless they do. To the extent that we break that promise—something the Bush administration has already done in multiple small ways—we undermine the deterrence factor.
If your neighbor has a gun, but you know that they would never shoot at you as long as you don't shoot at them, your desire to own a gun or use it stays relatively low. On the other hand if your neighbor constantly threatens to shoot first, or does shoot first, you might begin to think that it was a very good idea to arm yourself.
Having the gun might well be a deterrent, but not if anyone thinks we're likely to shoot first.
This brings us to the second conventional idea—that we should never let other countries know what we're likely to do. This idea might actually have some merit in certain circumstances. If we were the weakest power in the world, for example, it might be a good idea to play our cards close to our vest, for several reasons. We might not want other countries to know how weak we really are. We might need the element of surprise in order to win over more powerful adversaries. We might need to do a lot of bluffing.
But we are not the weakest power in the world, we are the strongest, and that is an entirely different game. Our greatest danger will come from sending mixed messages, or from being perceived as a bully. If we say, loudly and clearly, that we will not use nuclear power except on those who use it first, and if we back off from blurring the line between acceptable and non-acceptable uses with "bunker-busters" and radioactive casings, we will be sending a clear message that the rest of the world can follow.
But because of our strength, we create the context. If we lead the world to think that we might do anything at any given moment, other nations will be forced to act accordingly, and we will find ourselves in a much more dangerous world. We can only lead by sending a clear and responsible message.
And, of course, there's the flip side of the issue. To the extent that we lie, or hide our plans, from our enemies we must lie or hide our plans from our citizens. If it is not appropriate to clearly and honestly announce our intentions to the world, we must also keep them hidden from the voters.
That way lies the end of democracy. We've had more than enough of that attitude from the Bush administration—and we've seen where it leads. Sure, there will always be state secrets. But the idea that our basic policies can't be discussed openly, that citizens don't get to know what policies they're voting for, is the first step on a very slippery slope that leads to wars we didn't want, secret surveillance of citizens, imprisonment without Habeas Corpus.
Joe, Hilary, Chris—Barack got this one right. The country doesn't want another Bush, not even a gentler, kinder, and more progressive Bush. We want someone who believes in democracy—in openness, and honest dealings—both at home and abroad.
There's still time to get back on the bandwagon.
