Diplomacy call goes against Bush beliefs

Except for its call to dramatically increase the number of Americans training Iraqi forces -- a call that Bush could easily heed without losing face -- the commission's key recommendations carry an emphasis on diplomatic engagement that has been missing from the Bush administration so far.

Bush has sought to use negotiations as a reward for bad actors coming clean, refusing to talk to Iran, Syria, and the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority until they change their ways. His diplomatic policy may have reflected a justifiable skepticism about his potential negotiating partners, but it has largely failed to change their behavior.

For every success like persuading Libya to give up its nuclear program, the Bush administration has had multiple disappointments. Iran and North Korea, for example, have contentedly plowed ahead with their nuclear programs, unconcerned with any consequences.

The Baker-Hamilton report's most striking quality was its deep pessimism about Iraq. But it placed whatever hopes it had on the value of diplomacy, and the need to reach a careful consensus before taking precipitous acts.

"For 40 years we talked to the Soviet Union during a time when they were committed to wiping us off the face of the Earth," said former secretary of state James A. Baker III, dismissing the idea that diplomacy should be reserved only for states that behave themselves. "So you talk to your enemies, not just your friends."

References to the Cold War were marbled throughout the comments yesterday of various members. The bipartisan group openly yearned for the national unity on foreign policy that prevailed during the Cold War -- a period when both Republicans and Democrats endorsed a similar containment policy, and average Americans shared a desire to defeat communism.

Bush and his team, which includes many Cold War-era policymakers, have interpreted the era somewhat differently. In speeches, they have tended to focus less on the bipartisan nature of the containment policy than on President Ronald Reagan's courageous decision to beef up America's defenses. In their telling, Reagan's willingness to place more nuclear missiles in West Germany, despite domestic and international opposition, convinced the Soviet Union that it could never prevail against the United States.

A similar notion -- that a strong hand can force concessions -- has guided Bush's policies during the war on terrorism. But these policies, the commission implies, are no longer effective when it comes to Iraq and its neighbors.

Even the commission's desire to engage the Iraqi government in a carrot-and-stick push for reforms -- something the administration has fitfully attempted -- requires a diplomatic dexterity that's been missing from the White House playbook so far.

Some of the problem may be related to personnel: There is no global diplomatic maestro in this administration such as Baker, Henry Kissinger, or Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the complex Balkan peace deal for the Clinton administration.

But much of the resistance has been based on principle.

Bush simply believes that negotiations aren't fruitful if partners can't be trusted. And on this point, he has some significant supporters -- not only among neoconservatives in the United States, but in Israel, which remains the key US ally in the Middle East.

"Iran knows how to get to the table with us, and that is to do that which they said they would do, which is verifiably suspend their [nuclear] enrichment programs," Bush said last week.

Iran isn't likely to stop enriching uranium, at least without some concessions from the United States. Syria, meanwhile, stands accused of assassination and mayhem in neighboring Lebanon. And the Baker-Hamilton commission wants Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria as part of a comprehensive peace deal -- something Israel has been highly reluctant to do.

Nonetheless, negotiating with Iran and Syria would merely acknowledge their importance in the Iraq puzzle, not enhance it. Iran has close ties to the key drivers of sectarian violence in Iraq -- the hard-line Shi'ite clerics.

Reining in Shi'ite extremist Moqtada al-Sadr's Iran-backed militia will be necessary to exacting comparable concessions from Sunni Muslim militias in Iraq's strife-torn Al Anbar Province.

Meanwhile, Syria's porous border with Iraq remains an entry point for foreign agitators and international terrorists. Better policing of the border on both sides is a crucial part of restoring order in Iraq.

For Bush, the commission's recommendations offer a chance to change course and to reunite the country behind the mission in Iraq.

But doing so means more than a shift in strategy; it would require a shift in attitude.

And Bush, who won the confidence of the country after the 9/11 attacks and gained reelection in 2004 partly by channeling the visceral anger of Americans toward their enemies, isn't going to turn into a latter-day Talleyrand overnight.

The president has already rejected some of the diplomatic overtures the commission recommended back when John F. Kerry, then the Democratic presidential nominee, proposed them in 2004.

Changing course now would suggest that Kerry had a point after all.

And that the painstaking, sometimes humiliating diplomatic path favored by Bill Clinton and Bush's own dad had a point, too.

It's an open question whether this president is willing to go so far.