A pair of interesting op-eds in the Wall Street Journal today.

Bret Stephens offers a thought provoking proposal that we help Pakistan through the global economic downturn in exchange for relinquishing their nuclear arms. While such a proposal is too blunt to be realistic, it puts the issue in proper perspective. Pakistan simply cannot be entrusted with the world's most dangerous weapons, and we need to do all we can to convince them (and others) that it is in fact in their own interest to disarm.

Despite its far-reaching outlook, this type of ambitious action is exactly what we're going to need to make it through the years ahead. We can't afford to think small.

Balancing this is yet another cynical blanket attack on Obama's purportedly limp-wristed foreign policy.

This type of criticism is tossed in with the usual Conservative blindness towards the fact that their policies have failed. Terrorism is a greater threat than it was after 911, our military is overstretched, our enemies are empowered, and global interest in the value of human rights and Democracy are in free-fall. It takes a certain kind of hard-headedness to criticize someone else's policy which has not even been enacted yet while your own continues to cough and sputter.

So lets talk about foreign policy.

First, one of the most commonly repeated lines that Conservatives try to mock Liberals with is that talk is weak, and that you can't expect to confront our enemies with words alone. That misses the point entirely. Diplomacy and "talking" is more about getting our current and, more importantly, potential allies to support our policies than it is about getting our avowed enemies to change their minds about us. Conservatives continually graft this assumption - that we expect our enemies to treat us better because we act nicer - on to us as a means of "proving" the naivette of Liberals. I don't expect this kind of unintelligent babble to dry up any time soon.

The economic reality has more or less given the floor to democrats and Liberals when it comes to economic policy. Why has the reality of the international situation, which is similarly troubled, not yet validated a Liberal approach to foreign policy? Because Liberals need to be bolder in talking about it and setting the agenda.

Conservatives think that Obama is essentially proposing to enact the "humble" foreign policy of George Bush's 2000 campaign. I hope that that is a fundamental misreading of Obama's foreign policy plans, because a Liberal foreign policy should always be more robust than a Conservative foreign policy. And by "robust," I mean intelligent, effective, and engaged. Liberals need to rise to the occasion and prove, by delivering better results, that we are better at managing international affairs and ensuring the interests of America on the world stage.

I do get concerned that focusing too much on a domestic agenda will lead us to ignore the important goals that we have set for ourselves abroad: drawing down in Iraq, eliminating Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, stabilizing Pakistan, engaging and containing Iran and other unsavory regimes, and rolling back nuclear proliferation. (And lets not forget about those darn pirates!) We have an overflowing inbox in the international department, and the stakes are too high to wash our hands of the failure of the Bush years. As Americans, like it or not, we own this mess, and the credibility of our country and Liberalism itself depends on our ability to clean things up.

Moreover, our domestic woes are not divorced from international policy. Fixing the financial system is an inherently international affair, and the crisis offers an opportunity for multi-national cooperation. Liberalizing trade with other countries can keep our consumer economy spending, and provide a wider market for American-made goods and services. And a major push for alternative energy can only be strengthened by cooperating with other nations and foreign companies as we begin to create a new energy industry. Liberals should instinctively look for ways to internationalize any American policy that promotes Liberal ideas, and we should be unafraid of engaging the world confidently, even if the last act didn't exactly warm the audience up for us.

Conservatives are claiming that Obama's policies will lead to isolationism failure abroad. Don't let them be right.