NOT BAD

Posted at 9:42 a.m. ET:

The president has had a bad week, and is nursing a series of self-inflicted wounds - poor vetting of appointees, incompetent handling of the so-called "stimulus" bill, and an improperly partisan speech Thursday night, right in the middle of stimulus negotiations.  He needs a set of instructions.

And so we looked apprehensively at the new administration's first major international outing - a speech by Vice President Biden at an international security conference in Munich this weekend.  We promised at Urgent Agenda to be fair.  Automatic opposition is not our thing here.  Biden, when speaking off the cuff, can be a walking train wreck.  His Munich speech was carefully prepared, and not bad at all.  We've read a number of reports and, despite the attempts by some journalists to label it "a clean break" from the Bush years, it was not.  There was far more continuity than break, and that is good.  Obviously, we have to wait for the words to be put into practice to see if the American spine remains firm, or starts to bend.  That will be the real test.

The New York Times gives a comprehensive report:

MUNICH—Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. rejected the notion of a Russian sphere of influence, promising that America’s new government under President Obama would continue to press NATO to seek “deeper cooperation” with like-minded countries.

Mr. Biden, in a much-anticipated speech at an international security conference, also said that the Obama administration would continue to pursue a planned missile-defense system that has angered the Kremlin, provided the technology works and isn’t too expensive. The missile defense shield, Mr. Biden said, is needed to “counter a growing Iranian capability.”

Fine thus far, although we must object to the "too expensive" notion.  Defense against nuclear-tipped missiles is never too expensive.  If money becomes the escape clause, then we go into opposition.  But the overall thought here is fine.

In the Obama administration’s first outline of how it will conduct America’s relations with the rest of the world before an international audience, the vice president signaled a tough line on Iran. “We will be willing to talk to Iran,” Mr. Biden said, in a departure from the Bush administration. But Mr. Biden quickly tacked back to a refrain common during the last years of the Bush presidency, and spoke of offering Iran’s leader a choice: “Continue down your current course and there will be pressure and isolation; abandon the illicit nuclear program and support for terrorism and there will be meaningful incentives.”

Has to be spelled out, of course.  The details are critical.  But that was a good statement of basic American policy. 

“We will not agree with Russia on everything,” Mr. Biden said. “For example, the United States will not recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. We will not recognize a sphere of influence. It will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their own decisions and choose their own alliances.”

Good.  Fine.

...any chance for a rapprochement between Washington and Russia at this conference all but evaporated, foreign policy experts said, after Obama administration officials concluded that Russia pressed Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Republic, to close the American base in that country. The base is crucial to the American-led fight in Afghanistan that Mr. Obama has identified as his central national security objective.

Okay.  At least the United States came to the right conclusion and made its feelings known.  The base-closing, a major act of hostility to our interests, wasn't papered over.

On Friday, the opening day of the conference, Iran’s Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, told the audience that Mr. Obama’s decision to send George Mitchell, his new envoy, to the Middle East to listen and not to dictate was “a positive signal” but also said that, in terms of Iran, “the old carrot and stick cliché” — ironically, the very strategy that Mr. Biden outlined — ”must be discarded.”

So, the conflict remains pretty much where it was.  I have no idea what the Bush haters will say now.  Maybe they think Bush is still under the Oval Office desk and that Dick Cheney is sending daily memos to Biden.  (Not a bad idea.) 

We'll watch this day by day for any signs of slippage or deception.  But the vice president acquitted himself well on this first international outing, and, although our judgment must be tentative and cautious, we're pleased to say it.

February 7, 2009.