Palin Denounces Negotiations Without Preconditions, Supports Negotiations Without Preconditions

One of the virtues of Sarah Palin being badly underbriefed about national security issues, is that she has to rely on common sense to bluff her way through questions, and she keeps accidentally straying from conservative dogma. When asked about the “Bush Doctrine” of preventive war, she said she embraced the doctrine, but then actually outlined a much more reasonable “imminent threat” standard for action. And here she is talking about negotiations without preconditions:

WILLIAMS: What — first of all, what in your mind is a precondition?

PALIN: You have to have some diplomatic strategy going into a meeting with someone like Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-il, one of these dictators that would seek to destroy America or her allies. It is so naive and so dangerous for a presidential candidate to just proclaim that they would be willing to sit down with a– a leader like Ahmadinejad and just talk about the problems, the issues that are facing them. So that — that’s — that’s some ill-preparedness right there.

That’s just not what preconditions are. As Ilan Goldenberg says, she’s talking about the need to prepare before a meeting, which is different, “not negotiating until preconditions are met means not starting your negotiating until the other side has met some kind of condition you imposed.” That’s our current policy — that we need to isolate Iran until they preemptively give in to all our demands, and then we can talk. Obama’s proposal is also Palin’s proposal — to negotiate first in hopes of getting a deal. Of course you have to prepare. You don’t just fire up Air Force One and head to Pyongyang without some kind of bargaining strategy and preliminary meetings. But that’s uncontroversial.