The Case Against Holbrooke

(Washington, D.C.) The pressure is building on the Senate to confirm Richard
Holbrooke as
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Senators should resist it for one overriding reason:
Holbrooke uniquely personifies the Clinton practice of appeasing — rather than resisting
—
war criminals and terrorists in the pursuit of expediency-driven, but ultimately
counterproductive, “peace processes.”

In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month, Holbrooke
spoke
with characteristic condescension about those who opposed his efforts to cut deals with Slobodan
Milosevic. He described them as “people who haven’t been there, who haven’t tried to end wars
and prevent wars.” Holbrooke told the Committee how he — unlike those “people” whom he
went on to demean as “moralists and political pundits and columnists” — was willing to do the
“tough slogging” (“this isn’t fun; this isn’t bridge or tennis”) involved in negotiating with the
likes of Milosevic.

An Absence of ‘Moral Judgment’

Never mind that the un-fun “tough slogging” transformed Holbrooke into a internationally
renowned figure, able to command huge speaking fees, book advances and salaries from Wall
Street investment banks — all of which prompted questions about the Ambassador’s ethical
conduct. Worse yet was his explanation of what was entailed: He had to avoid “making
a
moral judgement…about somebody with whom I’ve had to negotiate.”

There may be no better enunciation of the real “Clinton Doctrine,” and
no more
compelling reason for preventing the promotion of one of its most aggressive
advocates.

The fact is that the Clinton Administration has repeatedly shown itself willing to suspend
“moral
judgments” in the name of using diplomacy to “end wars and prevent wars.” Unfortunately, this
is a rationalization for appeasement — an approach that has proven to be a costly failure, time and
again.

A particularly egregious example of this Doctrine has been evident in Amb. Holbrooke’s
willingness to suspend “moral judgments” in order to negotiate with Milosevic. The Serbian
dictator has been able to exploit the successive agreements with the U.S. and its allies that ensued
in order to legitimate his hold on power at home, usually at horrible expense to adjacent
non-Serb populations and territories.

The Clinton ‘Doctrine’ at Work

This is hardly the only instance of the phenomenon, however. Consider the following bill of
particulars:

• China: The Clinton team has suspended “moral judgment” about
  Communist China — most
  dramatically, by declaring that human rights would no longer be taken into account in
  fashioning U.S. economic and other relations with Beijing. It has even gone so far as
  effectively to reward the PRC for China’s intensified crackdown on civil liberties, its
  theft of
  U.S. nuclear secrets, its sacking of our embassy in Beijing, its efforts to garner influence with
  the American government via illegal contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign and its
  increasingly hostile assertiveness in East Asia and elsewhere. For example, in recent weeks,
  the Administration has granted the Chinese: new licenses to launch sensitive satellites;
  essentially unlimited access to powerful computers; and concessions intended to restart
  negotiations on China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

• North Korea: The Administration has also been working closely with
  former Secretary of
  Defense William Perry to develop a new “roadmap” for normalizing relations with
  North
  Korea. To do so, of course, the United States will have to ignore the North’s behavior that is
  clearly threatening (for example, Pyongyang’s continued pursuit of long-range ballistic
  missile programs and nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and its proliferation of
  these weapons) — to say nothing of the immorality of a Stalinist regime that is, at the same
  time, permitting its people to starve by the millions.

• Syria: President Clinton is managing to rise above a “moral judgment”
  about Syrian despot
  Hafez Assad. Even as the United States was warning the Russians not to sell new, more
  powerful weapons to Syria on the grounds that the State Department is obliged to list Assad’s
  nation as a sponsor of terrorism, the Administration is making clear its eagerness to get
  progress in the Syrian-Israeli “peace process.” It is so anxious, in fact, to get a deal between
  the parties that Mr. Clinton is expected to promise Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak when
  the two meet on Thursday that U.S. peacekeepers will be available for deployment on the
  Golan Heights — a step designed to help sell Israel’s withdrawal from this strategic high
  ground but that will have the effect of exacerbating the dangers associated with doing so.

• Cuba: The New York Times reported last week that the
  Clinton Administration has also
  decided to rise above moral sensibilities by beginning to normalize relations with Castro’s
  Cuba. The Administration is, of course, at pains to describe this initiative as a people-to-people
  one, rather than an embrace of Fidel and his regime. (For example, the U.S. Chamber
  of Commerce has been authorized to send a delegation to Cuba on these grounds, even though
  the transparent agenda for such a trip is further to increase political pressure from selfish
  American business interests for an end to the embargo.)

The immorality of a Clintonian gambit that will have the effect of providing political
and economic life-support for Castro is evident in a passage from the Times’ article.
It
reports that “American officials say they are now determined to go forward, even if
Castro responds by cracking down on dissent.”

In an op.ed. article that appeared in the June 29 editions of El Nuevo
Herald,
Donald Trump urged his counterparts in the U.S. business community not to
participate in such an odious enterprise.

If I formed an investment corporation with European partners, I could earn millions of
dollars in Cuba. But I prefer to lose those millions than to lose my
self-respect. I prefer to
dispense with that type of profit than to become a financial supporter of one of the most brutal
dictators in the world, a man who once was willing to collaborate in the destruction of my
country. For me, there are no doubts regarding the embargo. Of course we must keep
the
embargo. We must keep it until Castro goes.

The Bottom Line

The Senate should not dignify, let alone endorse, the Clinton policy of pursuing “processes”
that
simply cannot produce genuine peace — or other, durable benefits for U.S. interests — based as
they are on treating with known war criminals, “ethnic cleansers,” genocidal maniacs and state
sponsors of terrorism. The last thing the United States needs as U.N. Ambassador, a
position
that will do much to shape and explicate American foreign policy in these and other areas
around the world, is a man like Richard Holbrooke who believes that that policy can be
safely and securely made in the absence of “moral judgments.”