Munk Debates: A prelude to a brawl of the brains

Richard Holbrooke

You've said that the next president of the United States will be dealt the worst opening-day hand in foreign policy in U.S. history. Barack Obama is an untested foreign-policy novice. Under the circumstances, wouldn't it be reckless to elect him?No, I don't think it's reckless to elect a Democrat as president.

Let's assume it's Obama. He has spoken for a year and a half on these issues. He has shown a capacity to deal with them quite well and at a considerable level of sophistication.

The Republicans have shown quite the opposite.

John McCain is a friend of mine – I like him a great deal – but he's made it clear that his foreign policy will be centred on winning the war in Iraq. I don't think the kind of victory he envisages is achievable in Iraq.

So the American public is dealing with a very clear choice. Iraq is the defining difference between the candidates, and the election will be a referendum on Iraq.

A Democrat will be under tremendous pressure to get the troops out of Iraq. But Niall Ferguson, for one, warns that leaving Iraq too soon might unleash a regional war that would make the Balkans look trivial. Obama has been against the war from the start. Wouldn't there be a serious danger of premature withdrawal?

I will resist any temptation to comment on the innuendo.

Neither Obama nor Clinton has committed to a certain withdrawal date, despite immense pressure from activists. Of course, it will take some time to take troops out of Iraq – and it must be accompanied by an international effort to stabilize the country. It will require the buy-in of all of Iraq's neighbours.

The extreme difficulty of doing this is precisely why I said the next president will inherit such a bad hand.

[Iraq's] government is a faction of a faction. Basra is coming under Iranian control. The Turks are petrified that the Kurds will separate. The country is breaking up into regions. The really bad news is that because of the incredible mess the Bush administration is handing off, the buy-in will have to include Iran.

Getting a buy-in from Iran seems like a tall order. Why do you think Obama would have a better chance of success than McCain?

Both Democratic candidates have promised tough diplomacy with Iran.

The Republicans have said they think talking to the Iranians is the equivalent of appeasement.

But the U.S. talked to the Soviet Union continually through the Cold War, and it successfully avoided a confrontation over the Cuban missile crisis. Ronald Reagan called them the evil empire, then negotiated with them.

The idea that talking to Iran equals appeasement is disgusting. I cannot stress too highly that talking does not equal weakness. We negotiated with [Slobodan] Milosovic and ended the war in Bosnia, and ended the oppression of Kosovo.

Niall Ferguson would say you're writing off John McCain far too soon. He's tough, but, unlike Mr. Bush, he knows a few things about war. Can't we expect him to run as the anti-Bush?

For the most part, there's been a symmetry of views. There's only one major area where McCain has taken issue with the Bush administration, and that's climate change. I applaud him for that.

Mr. Ferguson points out that one of America's biggest weaknesses is its short attention span. The public doesn't have the staying power for a long slog far away. People are sick and tired of this war, and they just want out.

The U.S. public supported the Vietnam War for 14 years. There's this myth that the war in Vietnam was lost at home, but in fact it was lost because the projections and predictions of our military and civil leaders proved to be false.

Iraq has now gone on for five years, and every single rationale for the war given by the administration proved to be false. How does that prove the public is impatient? Does Ferguson want the public to lie back and accept whatever the politicians tell them?

Then what about the other war – the one in Afghanistan? That's not going so well either. In fact, you've warned that the conflict in Afghanistan will be far more costly and much, much longer than the Americans and their allies realize – even longer than Vietnam. How confident are you that the American people, or their allies, will stay the course?

All three candidates have said they would redouble our efforts in Afghanistan. The big difference is that since McCain would continue to fight toward a victory in Iraq which will elude him, he won't have the resources.

The American public is supportive of the effort in Afghanistan. Call it, if you wish, the good war, as opposed to Iraq. Every American understands that's where the 9/11 attacks were planned, and to walk out means the return of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The problem is that the war is not being conducted effectively, particularly because there's no viable, self-sustaining government.

Corruption is way above the level of what can be accepted. Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a narco-state. And the issue of the Pakistan border must be solved. American and Canadian governments should be very open with their public about this. If we tell people success is around the corner, all we'll get is a backlash later.

You and Niall Ferguson do agree on one thing: The United States faces a huge crisis of legitimacy. How can your nation go about regaining the world's respect?

I was thinking it is more a crisis of leadership. For over 65 years, the United States has been the leading country in the world in terms of its overall political leadership, creating international institutions and leading international coalitions, usually beneficially. That has been lost in the last seven years.

Restoring America's leadership role in the world has got to be the macro objective of the next president. The mantra has to be leadership without hegemony. What this administration practised is hegemony without leadership. We have to move away from the idea that you lead simply by asserting your position and waiting for people to agree with you.

In order to get there, the next administration is going to have to shed a great deal of unacceptably expensive baggage. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib – these are intolerable legacies. And it will be very hard to assert America's leadership role in the world so long as it continues to be bogged down in Iraq.

Yet it could take years to resolve the turmoil in Iraq. What happens if the U.S. still has as many troops there four years from now as it does today?

If that's the case, and if there's fighting and if there are American deaths, there will be very harsh consequences. If the war is still going on, I assume it will be a one-term presidency.

I'm sure you realize that 99 per cent of Canadians probably agree with your position in this debate.

I'm surprised it's not 100 per cent. I can't imagine who the other 1 per cent might be.

Niall Ferguson

There has been a Republican in the White House for the past eight years and the world is a less-safe place. The Bush administration has created a mess in the Middle East and dramatically diminished America's leadership role in the world. So how can you possibly argue the world will be safer with another Republican in the White House?

I think this is the kind of question that needs to be answered historically, because if we simply make this judgment on the basis of one president, we'll come up with the wrong answer.

It was under Democrats that the U.S. became embroiled in the Vietnam War, which was vastly more costly in terms of life and money, and it was a Republican administration that extricated the United States from it.

It was under Jimmy Carter that the U.S. suffered its most disastrous reverses of the Cold War – the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Islamic victory in Iran. Under Ronald Reagan, the Cold War was won without a shot being fired.

The Bush administration has made its mistakes, and I've been as vocal a critic as anybody. But although the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been less than triumphant successes, they have been quite small wars by historical standards. Global conflict has actually trended down. And this has been a relatively peaceful decade. These small wars attract a huge amount of attention, but they're not comparable to the Iran-Iraq war or the war in Indochina.

Yet most people would rate George W. Bush as the worst president ever. And Democrats like Richard Holbrooke argue that John McCain will just bring us more of the same in foreign policy.

That is clearly not the case. In no way is John McCain a neo-con. There's a strong realist strain in his record. He is something of a maverick in Republican ranks, which is why he is so attractive to independents.

The worst argument Obama supporters can make is that a McCain presidency would be a continuation of the Bush administration.

Of course, not everybody jumps up and down with delight when they hear the name Henry Kissinger [who has been advising McCain]. But what's appealing about [McCain's] approach is precisely his link to the international tradition. He is a committed believer in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and free trade – which is more than can be said of some politicians – and he has promised to restore alliances with Asia and Europe. He wants to revive the nuclear non-proliferation regime, which is one of the most important initiatives of the past 40 years.

I am strongly attracted to him because, unlike many politicians who approach strategic dilemmas with an ignorance of history, his thinking is historically informed. I can assure you of one thing – I wouldn't be involved in this debate if John McCain weren't involved in the election.

Yet a lot of people believe that electing Barack Obama would make the world stand up and cheer. It would signal a new agenda from the American government and be a big step in restoring its credibility and reputation. What do you think of that?

I think it's hilarious. It's true that electing Barack Obama will send a signal to the world – but not the one his supporters imagine.

I think you have to ask yourself what the reaction will be in Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, Harare and Khartoum.

The reaction will be that an inexperienced man – one with less experience of government than any president in the last century – is now in charge of the foreign policy of the most powerful country in the world. They'll say, “A rookie is in charge. And this will be so easy for us.”

But if McCain wins, an old guy will be in charge.

That's a canard. It's always said that John McCain will be a very old president. But relative to the median age of the population – which has been going up – he'll be quite close to the presidential average.

Barack Obama would be an extraordinary outlier – even younger in relative terms than Bill Clinton. Skin colour matters less than age and experience. He's too young to be president.

Both you and McCain have warned that getting out of Iraq too soon would be a tremendous mistake. But that's what people used to say about Vietnam. The U.S. went home, and all the terrible things that were supposed to happen didn't.

Egotistic baby-boomer journalists need to realize that this conflict is not another Vietnam, and this election is not a rerun of 1968. This is a very different conflict.

It's a much smaller war than Vietnam, but the costs of leaving too soon would be far greater. There's a real danger that this could disintegrate into a much nastier conflict.

Sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites could escalate and spill over Iraq's borders into all its neighbours. There's the danger of Iran benefiting from the disintegration of Iraq and becoming the hegemonic power in the Persian Gulf. The region is the nucleus of Islamic fundamentalism.

The economic stakes are much higher too, because it's also crucial for fossil-fuel supplies.

Mr. Holbrooke is confident that Barack Obama wouldn't make the mistake of withdrawing American troops prematurely. How confident are you?

Obama has repeatedly talked about a drawdown of troop levels. He's on the record as saying the surge wouldn't work. And of course he was wrong about that. The troop reduction in 2006 was a big mistake, and the level of violence in Iraq was drastically reduced by the surge.

Those who abhor the war need to focus their minds on a worst-case scenario. We want this to go away and end happily, but one has to recognize that a difficult situation can get worse.

We must rid ourselves of the delusion that it is a crisis we can walk away from, because the spillover effects, in terms of the economic impact and terrorist threats, are unimaginably large. John McCain gets this. I don't think Obama does.

Many Canadians – and some Americans too – think that despite 9/11, the terrorist threat has been overhyped. I imagine you don't agree.

There's a real danger that the terrorists will achieve a super-9/11. When I talk to the experts, it makes my hair stand on end, because there's a much higher probability of this than people realize.

According to [Harvard national security expert] Graham Allison, if the U.S. and other governments just keep doing what they are doing today, a nuclear terrorist attack in a major city is more likely than not by 2014. Another estimate, by Matthew Bunn, puts the odds of a nuclear terrorist attack over a 10-year period at 29 per cent.

We mustn't assume we are out of the dangerous waters we entered in 2001.

You know that 99.9 per cent of Canadians are going to disagree with your position in this debate.

I'm surprised it's not 100 per cent. I'm going to be booed and hissed, no doubt. But if Canadians get what they wish for, they're going to rue the day.