ON MONDAY, speaking in Wilmington, North Carolina, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards gave a major foreign policy address that insulted America’s allies in the war on terror, and suggested giving France and Germany a virtual veto over American security policy.
Edwards’s core point is that the Bush administration’s approach to terror has meant that “we must face these new challenges alone.” But Edwards ignores facts past and present. NATO is in Afghanistan, and is expanding its role. NATO is involved in training Iraqi military and police. NATO has assisted the Polish military contingent in Iraq with command support. Our two most important allies in the world, Great Britain and Japan, have troops in Iraq, along with numerous other allied states, such as Denmark, Poland, Italy, and South Korea. Moreover, virtually all of our allies are assisting in the Bush administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative, a groundbreaking effort to stop weapons proliferation traffic on the high seas and through the air. What are our coalition partners to think when Edwards ignores those contributions and describes our effort as being done “without strong allies”? The truth is, given the profound and dramatic change the Bush administration has made in the security agenda of the world’s democracies since 9/11, its record of getting allies on board that agenda has been strikingly successful.
