Get your friends close and your enemies closer

This should be the foreign policy of US right now. Why would McCain and Palin mock Obama for trying to have a bridge to communicate with rogue leaders Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Ahmad Ahmadinejad? Is it really smart to declare to never talk to such leaders? Is it really in US long-term national interest to shut US off from one of the most important and powerful states in the Middle East—Iran—or one of US major suppliers of oil, Venezuela?Should isolation of the potential enemies be the way to go in the current affairs? I don't think so.

"of course we should talk to difficult adversaries—when it is in our interest and at a time of our choosing"--these words have been the position of senior diplomats serving from Carter to Bush administration. This holds true most importantly nowadays."You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with very unsavory enemies." (Israel's Yitzhak Rabin)

So, why should the United States approach the world any differently now? We inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any time and from great distances. Americans are not excluded. And when others—China, India, Brazil—are rising to share power in the world with America, it needs to spend more time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike.

The real truth Americans need to embrace is that nearly all of the most urgent global challenges—the quaking financial markets, climate change, terrorism—cannot be resolved by America's acting alone in the world. Rather than retreat into isolationism, as we have often done in our history, or go it alone as the unilateralists advocated disastrously in the past decade, we need to commit ourselves to a national strategy of smart engagement with the rest of the world. Simply put, we need all the friends we can get. And we need to think more creatively about how to blunt the power of opponents through smart diplomacy, not just the force of arms.( obtain form Newsweek)