"Ten National Security Myths"

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John McCain's supporters have repeated this ["it's a dangerous world"] refrain over and over, replete with 3 am imagery, to call attention to his presumed national security credentials and to cast doubt on Barack Obama's readiness to be Commander-in-Chief. Obama has on occasion challenged the politics of fear, but many of his supporters have too readily conceded that it is a dangerous world.

The world is more dangerous than it would have been had the Bush administration not invaded Iraq, spurned Iran's diplomatic overtures in 2003 and unnecessarily antagonized Russia by expanding NATO and withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But the world is far less dangerous than it has been in previous election years -- certainly less dangerous than in 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected, or in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was voted into office. Seven years after the 9/11 attacks, it is evident that al-Qaeda lacks the capacity to pose a systemic threat to America. Since 9/11 there have been no major terrorist attacks against US targets outside the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Civilian and military casualties in Iraq have indeed declined since the deployment of additional US forces. But to say the surge worked is misleading in three ways. First, it confuses the temporary surge of US forces in 2007-08 with a number of other factors that reduced violence.
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Second, the surge has had an ugly flip side. To reduce the violence, the US military built concrete walls to separate Sunnis and Shiites, which facilitated ethnic cleansing by both sides but especially by Shiite militias against Sunni residents of Baghdad.
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Third, the surge has not created the conditions for political reconciliation or a stable Iraq, which, after all, was its main purpose.

Iran has been able to increase its influence in the region not because of its strengths but because of Washington's blunders -- most notably its illegal invasion of Iraq, which brought to power a pro-Iranian Shiite government, and its policy of isolating Hizbullah and Hamas, which has opened the door for Tehran to forge a closer alliance with both groups.

McCain's position of refusing to meet with such leaders without conditions ignores a long, albeit uneven, bipartisan tradition of direct negotiations with our enemies, a tradition that runs from Kennedy to Nixon to Reagan. It also ignores the abysmal record of trying to isolate "rogue" states with the goal of regime change.
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As our experience with North Korea makes clear, however, to talk or not to talk misses the main point. The key question is not whether the president will meet with other leaders, "rogue" or not, but whether the United States will use diplomacy effectively to achieve US objectives.

The lesson we should draw from our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan is not that we need more conventional forces but that the missions of regime change and counterinsurgency are -- in addition to being illegal, in the case of the former, and unethical -- not essential to US interests and cannot be achieved at acceptable cost.

The best way to advance peace and security is to breathe new life into the UN by reforming the Security Council to better reflect today's realities. In particular, that means enlarging the council to include emerging powers like India and Brazil. We need a more inclusive global forum that enables major -- and minor -- powers to deal with common problems, not a less inclusive new organization that through exclusion would make common action more difficult.

The call for the United States to lead the world is a staple of both political campaigns. Yet understandably, much of the rest of the world is more skeptical, if not outright resistant, to Washington's global leadership than at any time since the end of World War II. What has passed as leadership in recent years too often has been swollen rhetoric about American greatness and pious dictates about how other countries should organize their economic and political systems, not leadership to solve common problems.

Indeed, on issues where American leadership has been most needed, like resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reducing nuclear weapons or halting global climate change, Washington has been largely absent or downright obstructionist.
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Neither campaign has grasped the central lesson of the Bush era: The world does not need strong US leadership so much as it needs constructive US participation as a great power.

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