Dean to offer a foreign policy
Howard Dean, the Democratic presidential candidate, has the quintessential foreign policy problem of a former governor: He is without portfolio.
Except for the occasional trade mission, Dean has had little reason to dip into the stew of international affairs. Indeed, he has defended his readiness to lead a superpower by pointing to his vocal opposition to the war in Iraq.
Now, as the former Vermont governor solidifies his front-runner status in the nine-way race for the party's nomination, bolstered last week with the endorsement of former Vice President Al Gore, he seeks to impress upon an increasingly attuned audience that his foreign-policy knowledge is deep and wide -- not the Achilles' heel of his maverick campaign, as his rivals charge.
To that end, Dean will deliver his most extensive foreign-policy speech to date tomorrow in Los Angeles, in which he will call for the creation of a global alliance to defeat terrorist cells and root out weapons of mass destruction, according to the Dean campaign.
The alliance would operate with a multibillion-dollar fund paid by the United States and its partners, which could include NATO members and other countries with common interests.
The alliance would be modeled on the federal Nunn-Lugar program, initiated in 1991 to secure nuclear, chemical, and biological materials left behind by the former Soviet Union.
Under Dean's plan, cooperating nations would work to identify nuclear, chemical, and biological arms around the world. It also would work to create specially-trained units to handle terrorist situations involving lethal substances and work to ensure cooperation against biological terror.
Dean also will propose strengthening protection of ports, aircraft, food supplies, and power plants, and giving greater federal support for local police, fire, and medical responders.
In an interview with The Washington Post, published today, Dean embraced a plan that would establish the borders of a Palestinian state, and said he would seek negotiations with North Korea to work out a deal that would include economic aid, energy assistance, and a "nonaggression pact." Dean's rivals have sought to make his inexperience with foreign affairs an issue in the campaign. Some have more extensive records to point to from time served in Congress.
And some say Dean's inexperience already has shown, such as when he said the United States should be "even-handed" in its handling of the Middle East peace process, although he later clarified his views and offered unequivocal support for Israel's right to exist.
To be sure, Dean is in much the same position as President Bush in 2000, when Bush was governor of Texas and seeking the nation's highest office with little experience in foreign dealings.
Dean has spent months schooling himself in foreign affairs. He has made the rounds of Georgetown salons, meeting there with well-known thinkers and asking them questions.
He has also met with newspaper editors. In an interview with those at the Globe, Dean said some of the attendees have been Bush officials. "So I can't tell you who they are," he said.
But he rattled off other names, including Anthony Lake, former national security adviser for President Clinton; Susan Rice, assistant secretary of state for Africa under Clinton; Danny Sebright, a former Pentagon official who is vice president at a Washington consulting firm headed by William Cohen, who was Clinton's defense secretary; former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; and Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, national security adviser under Clinton. Recently, Dean has added Ivo Daalder, of the Brookings Institution.
At his speech tomorrow before the Pacific Council on International Policy, Dean is expected to showcase his foreign policy advisers, a coming out of sorts for an unseen kitchen cabinet.
