By Peter BakerFriday, November 3, 2006; Page A19
The New Politics of National Security
By Kurt Campbell and Michael O'Hanlon
Basic Books, 319 pp., $26.00
HARD POWERThe last-minute campaign furor over Sen. John F. Kerry's "botched joke" about the uneducated becoming "stuck in Iraq" was no joke for the Democratic Party. Once again, with an election looming, it found itself cast as the peacenik, antiwar, hostile-to-the-military, soft-on-defense, weak-on-terrorists party.
Whether that will stick won't be known until Tuesday. Polls have shown that voters for a change are more likely at the moment to trust Democrats on Iraq and terrorism than Republicans. But that support seems perishable, and even if Democrats win one or both houses of Congress, they face a long-term challenge of redefining their image when it comes to national security.
That's where Kurt Campbell and Michael O'Hanlon come in. Their provocative new book, "Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security," offers a manifesto of sorts for a party still struggling to find its voice in the post-Sept. 11 world. As a party, Democrats have been torn between two poles as represented in the extreme by Joseph I. Lieberman, the hawkish Connecticut senator, and Ned Lamont, the antiwar liberal who beat him in a Democratic primary.
Campbell and O'Hanlon come closer to Lieberman than to Lamont, offering a muscular vision for U.S. power in a dangerous world tempered by the sort of pragmatism they say the Bush administration has been missing. "Democrats must make clear that they, like Republicans, understand that effective diplomacy must often be backed by the credible threat and sometimes use of military force," they write.
In fact, they argue that President Bush has it right in some ways, praising his priorities in terms of promoting democracy and free trade, defeating terrorists, and opening a new relationship with India. "Hard-power Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans should therefore not run against the Bush legacy on matters of ideas so much as of seriousness, competence, and execution."
This may be a hard sell even within their own party, where the loudest voices these days argue for a radical departure from Bush's policies. A succession of think tanks and foreign policy elites have been trying to counter the angry blogosphere with a more nuanced position for the party, with limited success. If Democrats win on Tuesday, the internal fight over national security will grow even more pronounced. Democrats have prospered this year mainly by being against Bush without coming up with a genuine alternative. If they find themselves in charge on Capitol Hill, they will face pressure to develop a common posture.
Campbell and O'Hanlon bring years of experience and study to the debate. Campbell served as a Pentagon official under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and now works as senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a frequent commentator on foreign policy.
As they note, Democrats have been hobbled for decades by the public perception of weakness. The party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy was transformed by the Vietnam War and has wrestled with national security ever since.
Clinton's discomfort with the military -- his awkward initial salute to Marines standing guard at his helicopter, his fight over gays in uniform, his tentative response to Bosnia -- exemplified the problem to many. But during eight years in office, he grew more accustomed to his role as commander in chief, responding more confidently to the Kosovo crisis.
Bush, though, has used the issue against Democrats as a cudgel for years, managing to paint Kerry, a combat veteran decorated for service in Vietnam, as weak on security. This year, Bush has cited votes against his counterterrorism legislation to assert that Democrats do not even want to spy on, detain or try terrorists; he went so far this week as to declare that if Democrats win, so will terrorists.
The authors argue that it is not enough to simply shout back; Democrats, they say, "sometimes try too hard to sound like anti-Republicans -- and wind up weakening themselves more than their political opponents in the process."
Instead, they propose a detailed agenda dealing with homeland security, the military, Iraq, terrorism, nonproliferation, energy and China. They propose increasing active-duty armed forces by 50,000, creating State Department rapid-response teams for post-conflict situations and setting up regional National Guard planning centers to better respond to crises such as Hurricane Katrina or a terrorist attack. They would continue missile-defense development but at a lower level, cut the F/A-22 program in half, revamp the Joint Strike Fighter program, retire more Minuteman missiles and Trident submarines, and cut back the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
On Iraq, they heartily agree with fellow Democrats that Bush "bungled" the war and "dispelled any notion of innate Republican superiority in matters of international hard power." But they criticize their party's rush for the door. "Democrats have focused mostly on missteps in Iraq. But there has been a less vibrant debate about the potential downsides of a precipitous American military withdrawal and how the dangerously eroding U.S. position in Iraq might somehow be made more promising."
It's a debate Campbell and O'Hanlon want to make more vibrant. If Democrats find the right course, the authors argue, the party has a chance to make a historic shift in the party's political perception. If not, they say, "Democrats are apt to remain on the political sidelines, left to contemplate what went so terribly wrong."
Baker is a White House correspondent for The Washington Post.
Takamichi Sekine, LL.M. '91, is a professor at the School of Policy Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, where he teaches courses in the areas of Environmental Law, Comparative Environmental Law, Environmental Assessment. He is also legal adviser for Japan's largest environmental organization, the Nature Conservation Society of Japan, and a member of the Environmental Center of the Japan Bar Association. Takamichi recently won a major environmental case in Japan, when the Naha District Court ordered former Okinawa Governor Masahide Ota to pay approximately 328 million yen ($3 million) in damages to his client, an environmental group. The governor was charged with illegally implementing development projects in an area inhabited by rare birds. Takamichi continues to actively pursue environmental cases in Japan which are likely to become significant precedent for the coming decade.
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