BPR Interview: Danielle Pletka

Danielle Pletka, Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, talks to Brown Political Review’s Annika Lichtenbaum. Pletka is in favor of increased U.S. involvement in Syria and has advocated targeted airstrikes against the Assad regime.

Brown Political Review: Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have shown mixed support for U.S. intervention in Syria. Have you noticed any partisan divides in other areas of U.S. policy on Syria?

Danielle Pletka: I don’t think it’s just members of Congress. I think there’s a genuine lack of confidence in the president. Take my colleague, John Bolton [the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations]. I think John recognizes that Bashar al-Assad represents one of the best opportunities for us to strike at the soft underbelly of the Iranian regime. I think that he understands, like many do, that Assad is not a good guy, considering long-term U.S. interests and principles in the Middle East. But he doesn’t support doing anything – why? He doesn’t trust the president.

Here’s another great example. The president said, “I need to strike Syria, I’ve made a decision to do it.” Who came out in support? The Speaker of the House – John Boehner, a Republican. Majority Leader of the House –  Eric Cantor, a Republican. What did the president do? Left them out there on that limb, sawed it off right behind them. Sure, there were a bunch of non-interventionist Democrats as well, but at the end of the day, they were just carrying water for their political leader. What about the Republicans who supported their Commander-in-Chief? He just screwed them over with nary a thought to what political price they might pay. That’s Washington and that’s Barack Obama.

BPR: What do you mean, screwed them over?

Pletka: There is no public constituency for this action. The president has shown no leadership. The president has not argued to the American people, “We need to do it.” The president told the American people that he was arming the Syrian rebels and then didn’t do it. Anybody who came out in support of the president did so as a matter of principle, and then he turned about and said, “I don’t care what political price you have to pay, I’m not going to give you any back cover with the American people who view this as a bad idea. Drop dead, I don’t care. It’s all about me.”

BPR: So you don’t support the diplomatic resolution?

Pletka: Well, a lot of people don’t understand what a draft UN resolution is. You can do a draft UN resolution under Chapter VII, which is mandatory with the implied use of force; you can do a draft resolution under Chapter VI, which is the Security Council without the use of force; and you can do a resolution under Chapter V, which is basically nothing – which is what this resolution is. Chapter V has no enforcement mechanism. And of course, there’s also no referral to the International Criminal Court, which was built exactly for these sorts of crimes against humanity.

BPR: Do you view a diplomatic solution as the easy way out?

Pletka: It’s a lie to the American people. It’s a lie to the people of the Middle East. And more importantly, perhaps, it’s a lie to the people of Syria, that [the UN resolution] is going to, in any way, change the situation on the ground. But of course, we all should have known full well that the president of the United States doesn’t give a damn about the people of Syria.

BPR: Or is President Obama just finding it very difficult to determine a course of action that works?

Pletka: Maybe there are people who believe that the office of the president of the United States is irrelevant. I’m not one of them. I believe that the president of the United States has enormous power and influence. If the president of the United States wanted to do something, he could.

BPR: Isn’t it hard to find a viable way forward that pleases some percentage of the American people while also doing something for the Syrian people?

Pletka: What kind of democracy do we run? Is it the kind of democracy that requires the vote of the American people every time we go forward? I didn’t realize we ran that sort of a democracy. Is it the President’s job to please the American people?

BPR: You’ve said that the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party is misleading people, saying we can’t go into a country where we have no national interests. Do you think there’s potential for public support to increase for intervention in Syria in the future?

Pletka: The President always needs to consult the American people. But the President is a leader, not the head of a mob. The American people are the most compassionate, the most decent, the most willing to lay down not just treasure, but blood, for the liberty of others. But when the American people aren’t given a reason to do that, when the American people are told that we’re done in the Middle East, that the war on terror is winding down, that Iraq is at an end, the American people rightly ask, “So, you don’t care about this, Mr. President. Why should we?”

Have I criticized the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party? Absolutely I have. They’re in the same immoral place as Barack Obama, which is a place in which they think about themselves, and they think about selfish needs rather than the global interests of the United States and the principles for which we stand.  So history isn’t with them, as it isn’t with this President. And failure is something that we’re going to pay a very high price for, not because of the 110,000 Syrians that the President is entirely indifferent to – but because the collapse of Syria and the weakness of the United States will tempt others, like the Iranians, to do things which will cause us to pay a high price later. [That price is] something we could have averted with a minor amount of courage and principle and leadership two years ago.

BPR: Will the lack of strength President Obama has shown on this issue be damaging regarding Iran and North Korea?

Whenever you’re weak, whenever you allow illiberal forces to prosper, whenever you suggest that America doesn’t have an interest in global leadership, that we wish to avoid every fight, you have trouble. Pletka: Whenever you’re weak, whenever you allow illiberal forces to prosper, whenever you suggest that America doesn’t have an interest in global leadership, that we wish to avoid every fight, you have trouble. That’s what happened after the ‘90’s – when we didn’t respond to the attack on the Cole, when we didn’t respond to the bombings in Tanzania, we paid a very high price on 9/11. We’ll pay that price again, and I know exactly who will be at fault.

BPR: Do you still believe airstrikes are the best course to take, going forward?

Pletka: Absolutely. Now that there’s a fight going on between the Free Syrian Army and Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, there is all the more reason to seek to empower the Free Syrian Army and disempower the forces of Al Qaeda – and at the same time the forces of Iran, Hezbollah, and Assad. If we can help people fight for themselves, we’ll be doing a service to ourselves and to humanity. I don’t see any reason why we ever need to intervene in any way more forceful than that.

BPR: Could you ever see ‘boots on the ground’ being necessary?

Pletka: No, I don’t ever see a need for boots on the ground, should we follow the scenario we just laid out [US airstrikes on Syrian regime targets]. If we do nothing, I suspect that one day, not too far off, we’ll have to see boots on the ground.

BPR: Though you are a staunch supporter of Israel, your position differs markedly from theirs. Israel has hardly taken an active approach in Syria. Do you believe this is the right policy for Israel, or should they be pursuing other, perhaps military, options?

Pletka: The underpinning of that question, of an American who supports the state of Israel because of everything that they stand for, is that somehow because we support Israel, we’ve got to be supporting the policies of the state of Israel. I think the Israelis are wrong, but I also support their right to defend their own interests, the way they see them. But that doesn’t mean they get to dictate ours, any more than I can dictate theirs.

BPR: So should Israel be moving forward with more aggressive policies?

Pletka: I care about American interests. That’s what’s first and foremost in my mind. I care about our interests, I care about our national security, I care about our principles and I care about what America stands for in the world. What we stand for is freedom for the state of Israel and everybody’s right to live in peace and security. That goes for the Syrians as well. That doesn’t mean that the Israelis need to embrace the same policy. And if they choose not to, their people are allowed to vote in and out of office people who will have different policies. That distinguishes them from pretty much everybody in the Middle East.