SOME WORDS FOR YOU TO READ:
We are now more than a decade beyond the Cold War and as yet our political leadership has failed to provide a comprehensive sense of America's role in the post-Cold War, early 21st-century world. For almost half a century our central organizing principle, upon which both a foreign policy and defense policy were built, was "containment of communism". The world in which we now live defies the simplicity and predictability such a doctrine offered. And even containment of communism left unanswered the question of how to achieve that goal, a question that often divided our country deeply, not least between those advocating the use of power to promote our interests and those advocating adherence to human rights as defining of our values.
But rather than presenting a new foundation and framework to define America's role in the world, our current administration has embarked on a dangerous effort to apply power without relationship to America's principles. Its doctrine seems to be that we are powerful enough to do as we wish, and those not with us are against us. A world divided between pro- and anti-Americans is not a world in which we will hope to be secure.
Moreover, the administration's preoccupation with military superiority erodes our greatest strength-the admiration the world has for the American character. We drive the world's prosperity. We are the champions of the ideal of democracy. We are the world's greatest source of optimism, energy, and hope. Global citizens by the hundreds of millions say that they disagree with the United States government but like the American people. To compromise that goodwill through belligerence is to squander our greatest resource.
My new candidate continues:
Today, as we muster for war against Iraq, we are forming alliances with countries like Yemen, whose head of state, Ali Abdullah Salleh, is busily importing Scud missiles from North Korea, is trading weapons throughout the region, is someone who sided with Iraq in the last Gulf war, and is refusing to let us investigate militant groups believed to harbor al Qaeda cells in his country. He exhibits none of the qualities that define democratic leaders. Yet, he is our new best friend for one simple reason-he will let us use his territory for military purposes. Is there a price to be paid after the dogs of war are chained? Absolutely-both in compromise of our principles and in the substantial cash we are undoubtedly paying him.
And nowhere is that price more evident than in Iraq itself, which we willingly supplied with dozens of biological and chemical warfare agents in the 1980s. After the first Persian Gulf war, U.N. arms inspectors found quantities of chemicals and missile parts with names like Union Carbide and Honeywell on them. A recent news report states:
The story of America's involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his attack on Kuwait-which includes large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors-is a typical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that "the enemy of our enemy is our friend."
That is indeed a foreign policy principle. It just happens not to be an American one.
And my candidate says on IRAQ and the Middle EAST:
As a matter of additional principle, the United States must not seek empire in the Middle East or elsewhere. According to published reports, senior officials in our current government propose, quietly, that we create a permanent U.S. military presence in a defeated Iraq to intimidate Iran and Syria, buffer Israel, and replace Saudi oil with Iraqi oil. Any such grandiose notion of playing hegemon in the greater Middle East region is folly and a prescription for disaster. Its political and financial costs are unknown and probably unknowable. This secret dream of empire represents hunger for power at its worst and is contrary to America's traditional principles. This is the kind of aggressive and arrogant post-Cold War thinking the American people must steadfastly resist.
Since the president has not seen fit to tell us what our larger purposes are in the region, suspicions legitimately arise when rumors of empire drift through the salons of Washington. Will we assume responsibility to reconstruct Iraq, referee its bitter ethnic quarrels, bear the cost for rebuilding a nation of 22 million, and place thousands of American service personnel in jeopardy for an untold number of years? Or will we simply retreat from the rubble and let Iraq devolve into a sinkhole of tribal violence on CNN? The American people deserve to be told the truth about their nation's policies and the obligations in lives and treasure those policies require.
On Poverty and AIDS:
In using our economic strength to offer opportunity and hope in the less developed world, we can start with refugee camps and non-functional economies where well over a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. Though we can't, by ourselves, alleviate all their suffering, we can help create international institutions that can by bolstering infrastructure construction-particularly water resources development, micro-loans for the financing of shelter and income creation, assault on diseases such as AIDS and malaria, universal global literacy, and agricultural development sufficient to provide an adequate level of nutrition.
Traditional "top down" foreign aid must be replaced by new grassroots methods of creating economic opportunity. And we must make a new priority of addressing the needs of women in the developing world. Through such avenues as education, micro-lending, agricultural technology, and property rights, empowerment of women-especially mothers-improves children's health, education, and nutrition and lifts the conditions of society at large.
On North Korea:
North Korea offers a particularly vivid example where China should be called upon to lead in regional isolation of, and collective negotiation with, a nation that endangers East Asian security more than it does ours. If we are unable to convince states neighboring outlaw nations that their interests are at stake in isolating and resolving threats such as North Korea, then we are in for a long century. The threat of North Korea also underscores my first principle that alliances should be properly formed. North Korea received much of its recent nuclear technology from Pakistan, our ally in Afghanistan. True allies do not let their immediate self-interest endanger their partners.
Well, do you have any thoughts on the clips I have posted? Tell me what you think. I will post the name of the candidate later. Please give your feedback. I will also post a link to the entire paper later on.
Peace
We are now more than a decade beyond the Cold War and as yet our political leadership has failed to provide a comprehensive sense of America's role in the post-Cold War, early 21st-century world. For almost half a century our central organizing principle, upon which both a foreign policy and defense policy were built, was "containment of communism". The world in which we now live defies the simplicity and predictability such a doctrine offered. And even containment of communism left unanswered the question of how to achieve that goal, a question that often divided our country deeply, not least between those advocating the use of power to promote our interests and those advocating adherence to human rights as defining of our values.
But rather than presenting a new foundation and framework to define America's role in the world, our current administration has embarked on a dangerous effort to apply power without relationship to America's principles. Its doctrine seems to be that we are powerful enough to do as we wish, and those not with us are against us. A world divided between pro- and anti-Americans is not a world in which we will hope to be secure.
Moreover, the administration's preoccupation with military superiority erodes our greatest strength-the admiration the world has for the American character. We drive the world's prosperity. We are the champions of the ideal of democracy. We are the world's greatest source of optimism, energy, and hope. Global citizens by the hundreds of millions say that they disagree with the United States government but like the American people. To compromise that goodwill through belligerence is to squander our greatest resource.
My new candidate continues:
Today, as we muster for war against Iraq, we are forming alliances with countries like Yemen, whose head of state, Ali Abdullah Salleh, is busily importing Scud missiles from North Korea, is trading weapons throughout the region, is someone who sided with Iraq in the last Gulf war, and is refusing to let us investigate militant groups believed to harbor al Qaeda cells in his country. He exhibits none of the qualities that define democratic leaders. Yet, he is our new best friend for one simple reason-he will let us use his territory for military purposes. Is there a price to be paid after the dogs of war are chained? Absolutely-both in compromise of our principles and in the substantial cash we are undoubtedly paying him.
And nowhere is that price more evident than in Iraq itself, which we willingly supplied with dozens of biological and chemical warfare agents in the 1980s. After the first Persian Gulf war, U.N. arms inspectors found quantities of chemicals and missile parts with names like Union Carbide and Honeywell on them. A recent news report states:
The story of America's involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his attack on Kuwait-which includes large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors-is a typical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that "the enemy of our enemy is our friend."
That is indeed a foreign policy principle. It just happens not to be an American one.
And my candidate says on IRAQ and the Middle EAST:
As a matter of additional principle, the United States must not seek empire in the Middle East or elsewhere. According to published reports, senior officials in our current government propose, quietly, that we create a permanent U.S. military presence in a defeated Iraq to intimidate Iran and Syria, buffer Israel, and replace Saudi oil with Iraqi oil. Any such grandiose notion of playing hegemon in the greater Middle East region is folly and a prescription for disaster. Its political and financial costs are unknown and probably unknowable. This secret dream of empire represents hunger for power at its worst and is contrary to America's traditional principles. This is the kind of aggressive and arrogant post-Cold War thinking the American people must steadfastly resist.
Since the president has not seen fit to tell us what our larger purposes are in the region, suspicions legitimately arise when rumors of empire drift through the salons of Washington. Will we assume responsibility to reconstruct Iraq, referee its bitter ethnic quarrels, bear the cost for rebuilding a nation of 22 million, and place thousands of American service personnel in jeopardy for an untold number of years? Or will we simply retreat from the rubble and let Iraq devolve into a sinkhole of tribal violence on CNN? The American people deserve to be told the truth about their nation's policies and the obligations in lives and treasure those policies require.
On Poverty and AIDS:
In using our economic strength to offer opportunity and hope in the less developed world, we can start with refugee camps and non-functional economies where well over a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. Though we can't, by ourselves, alleviate all their suffering, we can help create international institutions that can by bolstering infrastructure construction-particularly water resources development, micro-loans for the financing of shelter and income creation, assault on diseases such as AIDS and malaria, universal global literacy, and agricultural development sufficient to provide an adequate level of nutrition.
Traditional "top down" foreign aid must be replaced by new grassroots methods of creating economic opportunity. And we must make a new priority of addressing the needs of women in the developing world. Through such avenues as education, micro-lending, agricultural technology, and property rights, empowerment of women-especially mothers-improves children's health, education, and nutrition and lifts the conditions of society at large.
On North Korea:
North Korea offers a particularly vivid example where China should be called upon to lead in regional isolation of, and collective negotiation with, a nation that endangers East Asian security more than it does ours. If we are unable to convince states neighboring outlaw nations that their interests are at stake in isolating and resolving threats such as North Korea, then we are in for a long century. The threat of North Korea also underscores my first principle that alliances should be properly formed. North Korea received much of its recent nuclear technology from Pakistan, our ally in Afghanistan. True allies do not let their immediate self-interest endanger their partners.
Well, do you have any thoughts on the clips I have posted? Tell me what you think. I will post the name of the candidate later. Please give your feedback. I will also post a link to the entire paper later on.
Peace
