October 5, 2008

Will a new US President mean a new foreign policy?

Gareth Porter: McCain subscribes to extreme neocon ideas, but Obama is not a break with the past Pt.5

In George W. Bush's final speech to the UN as head of state, he provided a series of reasons to view his administration's policies as having succeeded in conducting a global war on terrorism. Despite his regime's demonstrated aversion to multilateralism, Bush called on the UN and all international institutions to take a lead role in the War on Terror in the future. Investigative reporter and historian Gareth Porter tells Senior Editor Paul Jay why he believes that while Obama and McCain represent different visions of US foreign policy, neither truly represent a clean break from the legacy created by the Bush administration.
Bio

Gareth Porter is a historian and investigative journalist on US foreign and military policy analyst. He writes regularly for Inter Press Service on US policy towards Iraq and Iran. Author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

• 
• • John Gray
  • The Observer,
  • Sunday September 28 2008
    

Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.

You can see it in the way America's dominion has slipped away in its own backyard, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez taunting and ridiculing the superpower with impunity. Yet the setback of America's standing at the global level is even more striking. With the nationalisation of crucial parts of the financial system, the American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated. In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed.

Ever since the end of the Cold War, successive American administrations have lectured other countries on the necessity of sound finance. Indonesia, Thailand, Argentina and several African states endured severe cuts in spending and deep recessions as the price of aid from the International Monetary Fund, which enforced the American orthodoxy. China in particular was hectored relentlessly on the weakness of its banking system. But China's success has been based on its consistent contempt for Western advice and it is not Chinese banks that are currently going bust. How symbolic yesterday that Chinese astronauts take a spacewalk while the US Treasury Secretary is on his knees.

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Contributors

Parag Khanna 09.26.08, 12:00 AM ET

Whoever is elected president of the U.S. in November will surely proclaim a "new world order" in one form or another in January 2009. But what America wants for the world and what the world wants for itself have diverged in a way no U.S. president can repair.

For the past 20 years, globalization has relentlessly diffused power and technology into the hands of rising powers like China and India, while control over energy resources has propelled Russia, Brazil, Venezuela, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia into the tier of pivotal states as well. The axiom at play is as familiar to historians, economists, and realists as it is shocking to those who cling to American exceptionalism: The one with the money makes the rules.

Today it is Arab, Russian, and Far Eastern currency reserves and sovereign wealth funds that have all but marginalized the old, American, Cold War order created by the International Money Fund and World Bank. Instead, regional and bilateral preferential trade agreements mean new rules are being built from the ground-up: Gulf Cooperation Council rules for the Gulf, Chinese-Asian rules for the Far East, and Euro-zone standards and regulations attracting an ever-greater following.

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Palin says she understands foreign policy because...

 

Not terribly surprising, but I have it from a reliable source that Elliott Abrams, currently Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy who also heads the NSC’s Near East office, is regularly briefing the McCain campaign — Randy Scheunemann appears to be the main contact — and has told friends and colleagues that he is confident that he will get a top post in a McCain administration. Now, assuming Abrams is not talking through his hat, I very much doubt that a Democratic-majority Senate would confirm Abrams, who pleaded guilty to essentially lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra affair, to any position that required confirmation (especially as long as Chris Dodd, who clashed frequently and bitterly with Abrams when the latter served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs under Reagan, remains alive). That would leave his current abode — the NSC — as his most likely destination. But he is already a deputy national security adviser. Does that mean that he thinks he will be THE Deputy National Security Adviser — in charge of the day-to-day operations of the NSC — or even THE National Security Adviser in the McCain White House?

Abrams is no fool, and his political instincts have always been very sharp, so, unless my informant is mistaken, I assume he has reason to feel confident about his future under McCain. If so, there can remain really very little doubt that McCain’s foreign policy will be thoroughly neo-conservative and very aggressive; a replay of Bush’s first term. After all, it was Abrams, backed by Cheney, who drove the isolation policy against Hamas (so much for democracy promotion!); it was Abrams who suggested to Israeli leaders that they extend the 2006 war with Hezbollah to Syria; it was Abrams who, for all practical purposes, undermined Rice’s efforts to get a Israel-Palestine framework agreement before Bush leaves office. Among many other things.

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Related
Liberal interventionism makes a comeback


By Hossein Derakhshan, political analyst

Iran is likely to find US foreign policy will not change much if Obama wins the White House

Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, has adopted the rhetoric of change which has captured the imagination of many Americans and non-Americans around the world.

But when it comes to the foreign policy, there are enough reasons to remain sceptical. Will he adopt a foreign policy with objectives which differ from those of George Bush, the current US president, or will he merely change Bush's strategies and tactics?

Some authors, like Raymond Aron, the French political theorist in his book, The Imperial Republic, hold that the US is essentially founded on two principles - Empire and Republic.

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William S. Lind

September 16, 2008

A few weeks ago I wrote a column explaining why Senator John McCain is wrong on Iraq. In contrast, Senator Barack Obama is largely right on Iraq. Whether he would follow through on his plan for withdrawing U.S. troops is another question. The Democratic foreign policy establishment is no less Wilsonian than its Republican counterpart, and once it has used anti-war voters to gain power it will want to show them the door as soon as it dares.

But if Obama is right on Iraq, he is wrong on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. His prescriptions for each are so close to the policies of the Bush administration that if McCain is McBush, Obama appears to be O’Bush. It seems many voters’ desire to climb up out of the Bush league altogether is doomed to frustration.

 

On Afghanistan, Obama wants to send in more troops and win the war. But more troops doing what U.S. troops now do-fighting the Pashtun and calling in airstrikes on anything that moves-guarantee we will lose the war. As was the case in Iraq, the first necessary step is to change what our troops are doing. From what I have seen, Obama has said nothing on that score, probably because his position on Afghanistan is mere posturing intended to show he will be “tough on terrorism.”

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Whose culture of hatred?
Ayman El-Amir

"Why do they hate us" was the most perplexing question that gripped Americans in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks seven years ago. The groping for answers did not take long as the Halliburton- Bush administration produced its own hasty response. It launched a carpet-bombing campaign of Afghanistan from end to end, ousted the backward rule of the Taliban, chased Al-Qaeda's leaders and operatives and adopted in September 2002 the Bush doctrine of hot pursuit and pre-emptive strikes against suspected terrorist targets. Billions of US dollars and tens of thousands of brains and hardware were poured into the global war on terror. It forestalled some plots but failed to prevent others in London, Madrid and North Africa.

The Halliburton-instigated invasion of Iraq then shifted the focus and relegated the "Why do they hate us" question to the background of the short American memory. One of the versions concocted by the Halliburton-Bush administration to sell the Iraqi war was to fight the terrorist coalition of Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. All evidence belied the notion of any possible connection. Instead of serving as the landmark in stamping out terrorism, Iraq itself became a hotbed of terrorism. It turned into a jihadist's dream of crushing "the infidels", a freedom fighter's dream of evicting the conquerors, and a multifarious sectarian dream of settling old scores. The relative drop in attacks and number of casualties the US command structure is now flaunting to justify the reduction of occupation forces is misleading: divided Iraq is not turning into a peaceful country and will not be so for a long time to come.

The US-led global war on terror is faring even worse in Afghanistan where NATO troops are fighting desperate battles against a resurgent Taliban. The lessons of past British occupation and Soviet conquest remain unlearned. And NATO generals are experiencing self-doubts that the war against terror in Afghanistan can ever be won. A US analyst once compared trying to crush Al-Qaeda to smashing a ball of mercury with a sledgehammer. All that happens is that it breaks up into a myriad of smaller balls each having the same chemical elements of the original ball. After seven years of Bush's global war, terrorism has mushroomed, the world is not a safer place to live in and the agonising question of "Why do they hate us" still persists. The UN's experience in tackling the problem may be relevant here.

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Peter Leeson, the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at George Mason University and author of the forthcoming book “The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates”

Since the dawn of the cold war, a “democratic domino theory” has helped motivate important U.S. foreign policy decisions. Dwight D. Eisenhower summarized this theory, which he called “the falling domino principle,” in 1954:

You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.

Eisenhower was talking about communist dominoes. Since him, however, other U.S. policymakers have invoked the same basic logic — only with democratic instead of communist dominoes — and thus virtuous effects where a “first domino” falls.

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Israeli influence on US Middle Eastern policy

by CHRISTOPHER VASILLOPULOS
Christopher Vasillopulos, Ph.D., is a professor of international relations at Eastern Connecticut State University.

A few years ago a former Jordanian foreign minister asked me, "Why doesn't the US make Israel the 51st state and be done with it?"
"Because," I replied humorlessly, "as an official part of the US, Israel would have much less influence on US foreign policy in the Middle East. What state, even including California, which by itself has one of the world's largest economies and over 36 million citizens, comes close to Israel's influence on any foreign policy matter? As a state, Israel would have to compete with other states for Washington's attention; its 5 million people would be an insignificant part of 300 million Americans, less than 2 percent. More than this, its lobbying activities would be much more visible and seem to be just another set of interests seeking favorable treatment."

Contrast that with its current position as an ally whose interests are assumed to be identical with the foreign policy goals of any conceivable American administration. Contrast that with Israel's immunity to criticism. Every other interest group in the US is subject to scathing attack, while Israel operates under the cover of perpetual victim, ever ready to label any critic an anti-Semite. To take the recent Iranian missile tests as an example, consider the hard-line responses by virtually all American commentators, to say nothing of the two presidential candidates. To them it is unthinkable that Iran has missiles that can reach Israel. It is, of course, normal and acceptable for Israel to conduct military operations that demonstrate its capacity to strike Iran, as it did recently. It is unthinkable for Iran to have a nuclear deterrent, even in five to 10 years, while it is normal and acceptable for Israel to have had hundreds of nuclear bombs for over 20 years. In pursuing its objectives, Israel is not at fault for playing Americans like an out-of-tune violin. Americans are responsible for their willingness to subordinate their interests to Israel, whether they have been misled by the media or politicians or the Jewish/Israeli lobbies.

For making this obvious point, American scholars Walt and Mearsheimer have been subjected to a barrage of criticism. They represent a hard-line "realist" approach to foreign policy, which believes in pre-emptive war and does not countenance any interference in the pursuit of national interests by morality or sentiment. On this basis they supported, as did I, the First Gulf War and did not support the current Iraq War. The only difference was that Israel and its surrogates, the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, wanted to weaken Iraq as part of their policy of remaking the Middle East in Israel's favor. It should be remembered that before the attack on Iraq, many neoconservatives preferred to attack Iran, which was perceived as a greater threat to Israel. But the case, full of lies, exaggerations and miscalculations as it was, was easier to make against a weakened Iraq. They settled for Iraq with the understanding that "the road to Tehran leads through Baghdad." They assuaged their disappointment with a widely heard joke: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran." Chicken hawks have a tendency to use macho references.

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Walden Bello | September 5, 2008

Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Despite the glitter that surrounded both the Olympics in Beijing and the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the messages coming to Asia from the two events were very different.

From Beijing the message was, to put it in the words of one pundit, China has had a few bad centuries but is back on its feet. From Denver, the word was that the United States has been on a desperate decade-long downspin that can only get worse if the Republicans keep the White House.

For people in this part of the world, the weakening of U.S. power is most evident elsewhere: in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, where Washington is bogged down in unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; in Latin America, where the rebellion against neoliberalism and U.S. meddling is in full swing; and, most recently, in Central Asia, where Washington and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have been taught a painful lesson in overextension in Georgia.

The erosion of Washington's position is less obvious in Asia. After all, the United States continues to maintain more than 300 military bases and facilities in the Western Pacific. Over the last decade, it has established a permanent troop presence in the Southern Philippines to make up for its giving up its two big military bases on Luzon Island in 1992. And in Indonesia, the Pentagon has reestablished its close ties with the Indonesian military after several years of uncertainty, using the opportunity provided by relief operations during the tsunami of 2004.
Erosion of U.S. Power in East Asia.

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Jewish participation in US politics greater than in any European country

Yoram Ettinger
Published: 09.09.08, 00:51 / Israel Opinion

Intense Jewish participation in US elections has been nurtured by home-court conditions: The US considers Judaism a key factor in the foundation of its cultural, ideological, legal and political systems.
The trilateral covenant among the US, the Jewish people and the Jewish State was established by the Puritans during the 17th century, expanded by the Founding Fathers and sustained until today.

A marble replica of Moses’ head is featured at the House Chamber on Capitol Hill, facing the seat of the House Speaker.

The sculpture of Moses, holding the Tablets, hangs above the table of the US Supreme Court Justices. A granite rock, shaped like the Two Tablets, welcomes visitors to the Texas Legislature in Austin. In fact, a US Federal Judge rejected an appeal to relocate the rock (lest it violate, supposedly, separation of Church and State), contending that it was not a religious monument, but rather an evidence of the moral-cultural foundation of Texas and the US.

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posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 09/02/2008 @ 9:08pm

The zealots and zombies of the Christian right, those dark armies of the night, are girding for battle behind Sarah Palin's flag and, to be sure, she has credentials to lead them. But it's been hilarious this week watching Republican spokesmen trying to put a positive spin on Palin's utter lack of foreign policy experience.

Even funnier is watching cable TV pundits, trying to be even-handed, because if they were even the least bit honest they'd be cackling out loud about McCain's pick, live on national television.

Some GOP pundits and strategists have suggested -- as Jon Stewart has noted -- that Palin has a good grasp of foreign policy because her state is up there someplace near Russia. Perhaps the funniest commentary of this sort comes from one of the most rabid neocons, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy. Gaffney titled it: "Sarah Palin's experience."

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GOP logic at play...

Added: August 31, 2008

29 Aug 2008

Andrew Sullivan

Think about what the Palin pick really says about how McCain views this campaign and how he views his potential responsibilities in national security.

Think about what it says about the sincerity of McCain's own central criticism of Obama these past two months in foreign affairs.

Think about how he picked a woman to be a heartbeat away from a war presidency who hadn't even thought much, by her own admission, about the Iraq war as late as 2007.

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