Obama’s latest foreign policy initiative exchanging high profile visits for the release of hostages in North Korea and Burma has endangered Americans abroad and weakened this nation’s moral standing.
It’s clear that the recent meetings between Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-il and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) and Burma’s General Than Shwe were payment for the return of three American hostages. These meetings served to legitimize two brutal dictatorships that used these two powerful American representatives as proof of their power and importance.
Although neither Clinton nor Webb were acting as official representatives of the Obama Administration, both have the ear of the President and both visits were approved by the White House. It’s obvious that these visits would not have been allowed had they run counter to Obama’s foreign policy.
Understanding that the visits were an extension of Obama’s foreign policy, it’s necessary to recognize that the visits have been used by both dictatorships to shore up their rule at home. Each nation is ruled by an ailing dictator, whose poor health has weakened their grip on power at home. Demonstrating that they can command meetings with American officials is a reassertion of influence at home and abroad, a reassertion that the Obama Administration is complicit in.
By trading legitimacy for hostages, Obama has made every American abroad a target for dictatorships desperate for international recognition. All a fading despot has to do at this point is kidnap an American, sentence them to hard labor and wait for a visit from a high-ranking American official. The visit is videotaped, the American should utter some words of apology and images of the event are broadcast around the world demonstrating that no matter how many of your own people you murder, the United States would still be happy to talk to you.
Even worse than making bargaining chips of Americans is the fact that this new policy of engagement has lent American prestige to the aid of the world’s worst dictators. Our nation’s greatness is being used to prop these thugs up and legitimize their rule.
This is totally unacceptable and runs counter to international efforts to marginalize and eliminate the governments of Burma and North Korea. Indeed, just days before Webb’s visit, the European Union passed new sanctions against the Burmese Junta.
It is cowardly and shortsighted for the Obama Administration to send its unofficial ambassadors around the world to visit with dictators at a time when the rest of the world is attempting to marginalize them. Obama’s foreign policy of engagement has delivered photo-op after photo-op to despots like Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-il and Than Shwe.
He has strengthened these men at home and abroad and signaled that the United States is unwilling to take moral stands against the conduct of these thugs.
Regrettably, Obama has displayed a humiliating cowardice in his interactions with totalitarian regimes at a time when American foreign policy should be designed to rebuild our moral standing on the world stage.
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