Will Tiananmen Be Obama's Roadmap?

By David Paul Kuhn

Tehran is beginning to feel like Tiananmen.

The inspiring images of this Iranian green revolution, of the young striving for freedom, carries an eerie symmetry with Tiananmen Square. A brave student in a burka standing against armed police feels like that student who stood against those tanks.

We are left to wonder, will Iran recall this moment in two decades? Will Iran have changed? For all the change in China, the repression remains. Tiananmen was recalled this month only beyond China's borders.

Barack Obama came to Cairo on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was a speech to engage the Muslim world and implicit with compromise. Vital actors in the peace process include some of the more authoritarian regimes in the world, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt. Obama spoke professorially of liberty but, as expected, did not risk relations with Cairo by evoking the struggle of prominent Egyptian dissident Ayman Nour.

As Tiananmen unfolded, like today, the political left and right came together. It's American to side with the students. Top foreign affairs men in Congress, from liberal Representative Stephen Solarz to conservative Senator Jesse Helms called for the White House to stop arms sales and high-technology transfers.

George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker urged caution. Bush said that he "deeply deplore[d] the decision to use force against peaceful demonstrators and the consequent loss of life." But Baker added that the Chinese Government displayed ''a significant amount of restraint'' over the last few weeks in dealing with protesters.

Bush feared hurting relations with China more than standing up for the right thing. Just as Obama now fears, Bush had to engage the repressor when the worst repression was over.

And so Obama holds back. He does not want to respond harshly to the same Iranian regime that he hopes to work with on its nuclear program and the Muslim-Israeli peace process. And also like Bush, Obama realizes how sensitive foreign capitals are to American interference.

"It's not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling--the U.S. president meddling in Iranian elections," Obama told reporters Tuesday. "What I will repeat and what I said yesterday is that when I see violence directed at peaceful protesters, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it is of concern to the American people."

His Monday statement came after allies from Germany to France had already offered far stronger condemnation. Meanwhile, a state department spokesman on Monday sounded most like Baker in his restraint. He said Washington is "deeply troubled" but "I haven't used that word, ‘condemn,'" because the United States had to "see how things unfold."

Obama has left the hawkish idealism of George W. Bush, often termed neo-conservatism, and turned toward the realism of H.W. Bush. On the campaign trail, Obama spoke admirably of the father often as he criticized the son.

So perhaps no one should be surprised that now, as I wrote on the day of Cairo, marriages of convenience again reign over U.S. foreign policy. The man elected to personify our better angels, would have to work with some bad men to get his job done.

Now Democrats have the power to decide what to do about Iran. But realism is a cold dish to come from the party that claims the warmer heart. It places a state's interest first and last.

In recent years, the American political left gravitated toward realism. Obama, like many on the left, drummed that Iraq did not attack the United States on September 11, 2001. It was a war of choice, not necessity. And so the inference was, foreign policy must be guided by necessity and not ideals.

Now Obama is acting the realist. W's "freedom agenda" is far away in that corridor of misapplied policy and misspent power. Liberals now have to deal with the contradictions of power. Is their ideal president more realist than idealist? Is Wilsonism dead? If the answer is yes, what should Americans do about oppression abroad? After all, freedom is the unifying value of liberalism. You can't talk down most tyrants. And confronting Iran will only undercut talks. And its talks the left has long sought.

Yet Obama may have to risk talks to take some stand. H.W. Bush felt compelled, only days after hesitating, to impose sanctions targeted at the Chinese military and take humanitarian measures. But he would only go so far. "I don't want to see a total break in this relationship, and I will not encourage a total break in the relationship," Bush then said.

A week later, Bush was forced to go further. The president publicly criticized China's senior leader. But at the same time, Baker was participating in backroom diplomacy with Beijing to avoid confrontation.

Bush's approach to Tiananmen may be Obama's roadmap on Tehran.