Why McCain Scares Me
Writing in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria does a fairly decent job of explaining the elements of Senator McCain’s foreign policy vision that I find so disturbing:
On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed.
In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.
We have spent months debating Barack Obama’s suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain’s proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.
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I remember that speech when it was made, and I found it quite distressing as well. McCain is dangerous because of his vision of the United States in the world, and the way it will treat other nations. Pat Buchanan has said similarly — it’s clear that when McCain speaks of there being “other wars” in part it is because he will force people to react to his arrogant, and angry, actions against them.
Wow… thanks for pointing this out. For some reason, this specific point from the speech wasn’t covered by the media… I listen to NPR, watch MSNBC and check FoxNews and CNN websites daily and I didn’t see any of this being commented upon.
What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers.
While I certainly an opponent of the united states taking it upon itself to actively exclude nations from decision making, I’m not sure how this is any different or worse from the exclusion of nations and peoples that are not considered “major global powers.”
As somebody once noted, the Republican party’s foreign policy stance has generated into the strutting of cod-piece weearing adolesent boys. Sad… and scary.
“I’m not sure how this is any different or worse from the exclusion of nations and peoples that are not considered ‘major global powers.’”
Do you really not see the difference between excluding China or Russia from such a group and excluding, say, Luxembourg?
Here is the speech.
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/Speeches/872473dd-9ccb-4ab4-9d0d-ec54f0e7a497.htm
Why didn’t they print the speech and let the thirteen poeple that read that mag decide?
Fareed (wonder who he’s supporting?) did a decent job of omitting, taking out of context, distorting and exaggerating McC’s speech.
Just about everything this apparent terrorist sympathizer cites is a material falsehood. Nixon and etc. did not meet with China without stark requirements. Reagan met with the “evil empire”, his words, at the same time he was expanding the navy, researching SDI, and placing MRBM’s in Western Europe.
The only positive I see is that Fareed and you savants oppose McC. He must number one!
Do you really not see the difference between excluding China or Russia from such a group and excluding, say, Luxembourg?
No. Exclusion is exclusion.
As to Russia’s problems with the G8, they seem to go beyond McCain. This from Newsweeks competitor, Time:
There aren’t many clubs harder to join than the G-8. You have to be at the top of the global heap: one of the very richest industrialized countries, potent enough to help steer the world’s economy. And you’re supposed to be a functioning democracy too. So when Vladimir Putin opens this year’s G-8 summit next weekend at the sumptuous Palace of Congresses overlooking the sea 15 km from St. Petersburg, the famously stone-faced Russian President can be forgiven a brief flicker of a smile. The former kgb officer in East Germany will be in charge of a gathering to which, by any objective measure, he should not have been invited.
Even now a small army of diplomats is buttoning up the communiqués that will record a bland consensus on three topics Putin has chosen for the first G-8 Russia has ever hosted: energy security — which Moscow itself made controversial in January by cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine after raising the price of the commodity by 400% — and the less contentious areas of education and infectious disease. But the main focus of attention will be Russia itself: a Russia awash in oil money and emboldened by it, becoming less free at home and more assertive abroad, in ways that have increasingly disappointed and worried leaders who used to talk of a “strategic partnership” but now fear, as one scholar recently put it, that “Russia is leaving the West.”
The George W. Bush who in 2001 said of Putin that “I looked the man in the eye ? I was able to get a sense of his soul” and “found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy,” sent Vice President Dick Cheney to Lithuania in May to declare that Russia should stop using its oil and gas supplies to keep customer countries [an error occurred while processing this directive] in line, and to complain that Putin’s government “has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people.” Privately, the other G-8 leaders regret giving Russia the nod four years ago to host this year’s gathering. Instead of a carrot to induce improved behavior, the venue has become a spectacular stage for Putin to proclaim his rather different message: Russia is back, and I’m in charge.
That’s why the St. Petersburg summit may be more significant than most such gabfests. It will focus the world’s attention on two crucial questions: What does Putin’s Russia really want? And will that lead to more conflict with other countries, even another cold war?
Repayments
Churchill’s old saw about russia being a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma continues to have force now that the Iron Curtain has long since been pulled back. Moscow’s more muscular approach to the world has roots in its domestic politics. And there, a contradictory welter of good and bad developments contend for dominance, giving the Kremlin cause for both expansive confidence and prickly insecurity. The economy is booming. Since 1999, growth averaging more than 6% a year has produced a cumulative expansion of 65%. High oil prices are the main reason. Still, says Roderic Lyne, a former British ambassador to Moscow, “the boom doesn’t stem from oil alone. Genuine entrepreneurs have built good businesses in telecom, information technology, retail, brewing, food processing and consumer credit.”
A government that was broke under President Boris Yeltsin has had six budget surpluses in a row, just agreed to speed repayment of its foreign debt, and has socked away over $70 billion in a rainy-day fund. More than 6 million Russians a year now take foreign holidays. There are more than 100,000 U.S.-dollar millionaires. It’s also true, as Lyne argues, that Russians have rarely been so free. “They are vastly freer than the Chinese. They can live well and have fun. They can read, watch, say what they like and access the Internet.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, in polls Putin’s approval ratings are high, nearly 70%.
But these positive trends coexist with many signs that Russia is stumbling on the path toward free-market democracy — so much so that some U.S. and European legislators and human-rights groups want to kick it out of the G-8.
Full article here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1209926,00.html
It also seems Zacaria does misrepresent what McCain said about China – at least as I read it. This about China from the speech:
“Dealing with a rising China will be a central challenge for the next American president. Recent prosperity in China has brought more people out of poverty faster than during any other time in human history. China’s newfound power implies responsibilities. China could bolster its claim that it is “peacefully rising” by being more transparent about its significant military buildup, by working with the world to isolate pariah states such as Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and by ceasing its efforts to establish regional forums and economic arrangements designed to exclude America from Asia.
China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries. We have numerous overlapping interests and hope to see our relationship evolve in a manner that benefits both countries and, in turn, the Asia-Pacific region and the world. But until China moves toward political liberalization, our relationship will be based on periodically shared interests rather than the bedrock of shared values. “
China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries
Do you really think that destiny has anything to do with foreign relations?