Doug Gets "Schoen" Up

The Philadelphia Inquirer published this column in its editorial section today from Doug Schoen, who is described as “an author and political adviser” (I can assure you that there's more going on with this guy, though, and I'll get to it later).

There is probably more that I could say in response to this, but this is what I have for now.

Diplomacy is back.

During its first six years, the Bush administration disparaged diplomacy. It refused to negotiate a nuclear weapons deal with North Korea, declined to allow U.N. inspectors to continue to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and ignored the Iraq Study Group's recommendation to open a dialogue with Iran and Syria.

Over the last few months, however, this attitude has begun to change. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has embraced shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East and brokered a nuclear weapons deal with North Korea. Across the aisle, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi braved White House objections to visit Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Rep. Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has reiterated his long-standing desire to visit Iran.

This return to diplomacy is welcome. However, to someone who has spent a significant portion of his career as a political consultant working internationally - often in turbulent countries attempting to make the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy - this conception of diplomacy seems strangely pinched.

“The conception of diplomacy seems strangely pinched” – I don’t know what the hell that means.

Diplomacy in today's interconnected world should suggest more than sitting face-to-face with foreign leaders in formal anterooms. Instead, it should mean focused, data-driven attempts to understand and mobilize public opinion in countries whose conduct is vital to the interests of the United States.

We've done it before. In Mexico and Serbia in 2000 - and again in the Dominican Republic and Ukraine in 2004 - nongovernmental organizations and Western governments mounted subtle and successful efforts to secure free, democratic elections and, in the process, thwart anti-Western leaders. Those techniques are particularly effective in pseudo-democratic regimes, such as the ones that currently govern Venezuela and Iran. Here's how such an approach would work.

Pay attention to public opinion. Some of the most pressing problems facing the United States today can be attributed, at least in part, to its failure to take public opinion seriously.

In Iraq, even a rudimentary understanding of Islamic insurgents and the various sectarian factions continues to elude the United States. As journalists such as George Packer have pointed out, surveys and public opinion research should have featured prominently from the beginning.

The same hindsight can be applied to Iran. In 1997, a Western-oriented reformer, Mohammad Khatami, became president. His success would have transformed Iran and benefited the entire world. Yet the West allowed Khatami to fail and was then caught off guard when he was replaced by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fundamentalist demagogue intent on securing nuclear weapons. As the United States considers how to respond to Iran's nuclear program, we would do well to spend as much time monitoring Ahmadinejad's domestic favorability ratings and cultivating pro-Western sentiment.

No. “The West” didn’t allow Khatami to fail. George W. Bush allowed Khatami to fail when he included Iran as part of his “axis of evil” in the State of the Union speech and undercut Khatami by stirring up nationalist, anti-U.S. sentiment.

Ensure that the winner wins. Democracy does not always produce results favorable to the United States: The terrorist organization Hamas' recent electoral triumph in the Palestinian territories attests to that. Yet on the whole, the United States has been well served by ensuring that the people who win elections take office - and hurt when it has ignored election fraud in sensitive parts of the world.

In 1992, the West stayed quiet and allowed Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic to steal the election. It was a decision that would cost the Balkans tens of thousands of lives.

Though such a statement could definitely be true given Milosevic’s history, I think it is naïve to imply that this is what led to the bloody conflict in that region where we still keep a peacekeeping force. The breakup of the Soviet Union and communist rule unleashed nationalist forces in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia, with the latter two countries seceding from the federation of Yugoslavia in 1991. Short of directly involving ourselves in Serbia’s affairs with the required military force, I’m not sure what else we could have done at the time (as we found out to our detriment later, the world is full of lousy leaders, but we can’t take out all of them).

Similarly, during the 2004 election in Venezuela, the West turned away from compelling evidence that incumbent President Hugo Chavez had committed election fraud, an oversight that ensured an avowedly anti-American leader continued control of the largest oil supply in the Western hemisphere.

I guess Schoen is referring to the recall vote against Chavez, though the vote was monitored by The Carter Center and the Organization of American States, which certified the vote as “fair and open.” Also, five other opposition polls declared a Chavez victory (all noted here).

Gee, maybe if we weren’t busy trying to help organize coups against this guy (in 1992 under Poppy and 2002 under Dubya), we would not have indirectly helped to consolidate his support. Didn’t learn anything from dealing with Fidel, I guess.

Embrace exit polling. The best way to establish or protect democracy in difficult circumstances is to promote credible, outside polling, particularly exit polls on Election Day. Multiple, well-funded exit polls can help remove the temptation for incumbent governments to commit fraud, as in Mexico's successful transition from one-party rule in 2000.

Applying the strategies of public opinion research abroad is not a panacea. Indeed, the experience of countries such Venezuela under Chavez demonstrates how cleverly authoritarian regimes can misuse polling and political communications. All the more reason for the United States and other like-minded allies, be they governments or NGOs, to mount winning campaigns.

I think Schoen is on the right track with his notions to promote diplomacy and free elections, though this is kind of vanilla, boilerplate stuff here (taking on the powerful “anti diplomacy-and-free-election lobby”?).

And I wonder if the Inquirer was second on Schoen’s list anyway in terms of trying to obtain a forum? I ask that because it sounds like he approached The Daily Kos already, and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga handed him his head (gee, dude, tell us what you really think, OK?).

Oh, to be The Great Orange Satan…