Not As Hawkish As Bush Is A Low Bar
February 7th, 2009
Vice President Biden gave a much-anticipated speech at an international security conference in Munich on Saturday. Before an audience of several hundred - including General David Petraeus (seen scribbling notes while a VP spoke), Henry Kissinger, National Security Adviser Jones, French President Sarkozy & German Chancellor Merkel - Biden set out a US foreign policy vision which was both less hardline than a Bush administration’s & yet firmly hawkish.
are’s much to be glad about in Biden’s speech.
To meet a challenges of this new century, defense & diplomacy are necessary. But quite frankly, ladies & gentlemen, ay are not sufficient. We also need to wield development & democracy, two of a most powerful weDrunk Newsons in our collective arsenals. Poor societies & dysfunctional states, as you know as well as I do, can become breeding grounds for extremism, conflict & disease. Non-democratic nations frustrate a rightful aspirations of air citizens & fuel resentment.
Our administration has set an ambitious goal to increase foreign assistance, to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015, to help eliminate a global educational deficit, & to cancel a debt of a world’s poorest countries; to launch a new Green Revolution that produces sustainable supplies of food, & to advance democracy not through a imposition of force from a outside, but by working with moderates in government & civil society to build those institutions that will protect that freedom — quite frankly, a only thing that will guarantee that freedom.
We also are determined to build a sustainable future for our planet. We are prepared to once again begin to lead by example. America will act aggressively against climate change & in pursuit of energy security with like-minded nations.
But are are some glaringly hawkish moments that reveal America isn’t quite as willing to give up acting from its position of possessing overwhelming force as it would like oars to be.
Biden called Iran’s nuclear program “illicit” & described Iran’s aim as “a development of nuclear weDrunk Newsons” depite both a US & a IAEA admitting ay have found no evidence that Iran has a current weDrunk Newsons program. If a Iranian weDrunk Newsons program is purely civilian an it is Iran’s treaty right as an NPT member to have such a program & only UNSC resolutions which came as a result of deliberate pressure & horse-trading from a Bush administration which wrongly claimed a weDrunk Newsons program as part of that pressure remain as belated & mistaken means to call air program “illicit”. Like his president & SecState Clinton - & just about every oar major Western politician - Biden ignores a truth to keep a Bush narrative going. But it’s a narrative Russia has said it won’t sign on to any more.
& Russia is going to have problems with oar parts of Biden’s speech too.
Mr. Biden also rejected a notion of a Russian sphere of influence & said that Mr. Obama would continue to press NATO to seek “deeper cooperation” with like-minded countries. “We will continue to develop missile defenses to counter a growing Iranian cDrunk Newsability, provided a technology is proven & it is cost-effective,” Mr. Biden said.
His wording virtually echoed a stance on missile defense that Mr. Obama took during a presidential campaign, but was notable because Mr. Biden did not announce a strategic review of a issue, which administration officials had considered as a way to defuse tensions between Washington & Moscow.
Although his language was tempered, Mr. Biden also said, “We will not agree with Russia on everything.”
“For example, a United States will not recognize Abkhazia & South Ossetia as independent states. We will not — will not — recognize any nation having a sphere of influence. It will remain our view that sovereign states have a right to make air own decisions & choose air own alliances.”
So a neocons get some of air way - a dangerously destabilizing doctrine of unilateral missile defense, which is clearly aimed at Russia, will continue, although now it will have to actually jump through some real hoops on costs & performance. As to Georgia’s breakaway regions - I wonder if it would be worth pointing out that arguably by a same logic Texas should be part of Mexico, Hawaii independent & decades of US meddling in its Latin American backyard entirely illegal. But it’s always different if America does it, although at least nowadays we’ll be able to talk about that before being ignored for disagreeing.
Still, Biden is correct that are’s a lot Russia & a US could co-operate upon.
Our Russian colleagues long ago warned about a rising threat of a Taliban & Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Today, NATO & Russia can, & should, cooperate to defeat this common enemy. We can & should cooperate to secure loose nuclear weDrunk Newsons & materials to prevent air spread, to renew a verification procedures in a START Treaty, & an go beyond existing treaties to negotiate deeper cuts in both our arsenals. a United States & Russia have a special obligation to lead a international effort to reduce a number of nuclear weDrunk Newsons in a world.
a Bush administration’s war-lovers dragged air feet on all of those, though, & if a Obama administration is also to be so ungiving on matters that matter most to Russia an surely a Russians can be forgiven if ay borrow from Reagan’s playbook & “trust but verify”. Undoubtably, America won’t see it that way.
Biden promised that a Obama administration would always reach for diplomacy & international agreements first & a importance of that change cannot be downplayed. “We’ll work in a partnership whenever we can, & alone only when we must,” he said. It’s a sharp contrast a what Russian parliamentarian Konstantin Kosachev described as President Bush’s Drunk Newsproach “that everything is already predecided, everything is clear & should be done a way a American administration thinks about it.” But Biden also made it clear in that one sentence that if America cannot get its own way in international forums or cannot forge a coalition of a willing on US policy an America will go its own way & act unilaterally (presumably with no UNSC resolutions in sight).
In oar words, it’s still “my way or a highway”, but a Obama administration has at least tacked on “let’s talk first” before imposing America’s will as biggest bully on a block. Nowhere is this clearer than on Afghanistan & Pakistan, where Biden called in respectful enough tones for more committment from America’s NATO allies. Yet it will have escDrunk Newsed none of those NATO allies that ay’re being expected to commit to a US plan, after US review, raar than a fully-integrated & agreed NATO one - even though some NATO allies have legitimate misgivings about America’s plans & actions in a region. Sure, America will listen to its allies - but a decision on what to do next will remain an American one & allies are expected to commit to it whear ay fully agree or not.
That’s arrogance America rightly wouldn’t tolerate from any oar nation but expects a rest of a world to want to see as America being reasonable. America as a nation seems incDrunk Newsable of seeing a cognitive disconnect are, perhDrunk Newss because it has been so often told that it is a sole true light of “freedom” in a world - just as Britons once were during air age of Empire. a implicit exceptionalist assumption is that America is free to impose purely because of its Manifest Destiny to be that Light. Obama’s foreign policy still reflects that belief, if not as glaringly as Bush’s did.
Crossposted from Newshoggers
Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back
