More proof if any were needed that Democratic foreign policy’s no different to the GOP’s, whoever the front man or woman is.Billmon at Kos:
In February of last year, with the newly born Democratic Congress still waiving its little arms and spitting up mucus, Dick Lugar (the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) and Joe Biden (the committee’s nominally Democratic chairman) introduced the “NATO Freedom Consolidation Act”. Like its predecessors, the bill authorized the President to immediately begin treating the Ukraine and Georgia as full-fledged NATO allies in all but name – with weapons sales, military advisors, etc. Senate cosponsors included Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Gordon Smith of Oregon, and, naturally, John McCain (R-POW).
Also like its predecessors, the bill was whisked through both houses of Congress with about as much deliberation as a resolution praising the Future Farmers of Benton County for their fine showing at the Iowa State Fair – with no hearings, no debate, no roll call votes. President Bush signed it into law on April 9, 2007. The White House put out an official statement marking the occasion. It was one sentence long.
And so, with an absolute minimum of democratic process, the United States of America committed its full prestige and power (if not, just yet, a legally binding guarantee) to the defense of the two former Soviet republics, even though the Russians have repeatedly stated that they regard NATO membership by either country as a direct threat to their own vital security interests. As others have already noted, this is as if China had unilaterally announced a military alliance with Mexico and Cuba. Actually it’s worse: Imagine the US reaction if China announced a military alliance with Mexico, after which the president of Mexico started dropping public hints about taking New Mexico back – by whatever means necessary. (And if that comparison seems unnecessarily paranoid, consider the history of Russia in the 20th century. Even paranoids have real enemies.)
A careful search of Nexus and Google reveals that the number of stories appearing in the pages of major US newspapers and magazines, or on the wires of major American news services, taking note of this fateful decision, equals exactly one: a brief item out of UPI’s Moscow bureau, warning of the Russian reaction. The Georgian and Ukranian press, on the other hand, gave the new law saturation coverage – encouraged by their respective governments, both of which issued official statements describing their future NATO admissions as, in effect, done deals.
At the moment US policy seems to be to surround Russia (and Europe too incidentally) with a ring of former USSR satellites in which the US has deliberately fomented unrest; then while Russians are bogged down on their borders, instigate a new cold war and an arms race to keep them bogged down diplomatically. Hurrah, a new bogeyman, now 911 and and Al-Qaeda’s getting a bit stale! If a few Euroweenies worry that their countries may become the venue – well, let ’em, that’s just too bad. Shut up and get your troops to Kabul. Anatole Karensky in The Times:
Western politicians may ridicule such fantasies as Russian nationalist paranoia. But why shouldn’t the Russians worry about Western armies and missiles moving ever closer to their borders? This contributes to a territorial encirclement very similar to what Napoleon and Hitler failed to achieve by cruder means. The official Western answer is that Nato’s expansion is purely defensive, that no Nato country would dream of claiming even an inch of Russian soil. But the feigned innocence of the West’s baffled answer to the encirclement protests only intensifies Russia’s sense of fear and provocation – and there are at least three reasons why the Russians are right to feel aggrieved.
NATO is now little more than the armed wing of neoliberal politics. That certainly won’t change, except purely cosmetically, whoever the president is. Obama may be the world’s favourite candidate but unfortunately we don’t vote and should he survive this campaign, even if he does get elected to the Oval Office, he’s still got to suck up to freedom-lovin’ DINO types like Biden and pals to get there.
Their view of the world as one giant globalised free-market sandbox for US corporations to play soldiers in is the prevailing orthodoxy of liberal and conservative elites alike, not least the Clintons themselves. After all it was the Clinton presidency and it’s reliance on corporate support for its Balkan adventures that laid the foundation for Bushco and Halliburton’s Iraq and now this meddling in Georgia and the Ukraine. Scratch a Clinton, find a pro-choice Bush, scratch an Obama, find another, less sullied Clinton. There are barely any real substantial foreign policy differences at all.
So why care that at the moment the Clintons and their embittered, blinkered supporters are succeeding in undermining Obama’s presidential bid and busy turning the convention into little more than a gala event for Hillary?
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton’s name will be placed in nomination at the Democratic National Convention, an emblematic move intended to unite the party after a divisive primary — but will it steal some of Barack Obama’s thunder?
During the Denver gathering, Democrats are to officially choose Obama, but the state delegations will do a traditional roll call for his vanquished primary opponent as well.
Obama and Clinton — fierce rivals then, reluctant allies now — agreed to the arrangement after weeks of negotiations. The two sides made the announcement Thursday in a joint statement.
‘Unite the party’. Oh, sure.
Obama’s campaign said he encouraged Clinton’s name to be placed in nomination to show unity and to recognize her accomplishment.
Earlier, he gave both Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, prime speaking slots during the convention.
Hillary Clinton is to speak Aug. 26, the second night of the convention. Historically, the state-by-state roll call occurs the next day.
Idiot. He deserves to lose just for that bit of political naivete alone.
Despite that we Europeans should care that McCain is – somewhat mind-bogglingly when you compare the two hopefuls – ahead in the latest polls. I don’t think much of Obama’s politics, but on character alone he’s the better candidate. At least he’s not visibly nuts. (Not that that appears to matter to the networks and newspapers. The content of Obama’s character is definitely outweighed by his skin colour when it comes to media representation).
This suits the Clintons just fine, thanks: their plan appears to be to steal (or just ruin) the Democratic Convention, either will do, and to deliberately scuttle the Obama campaign by handing McCain the White House, thus bolstering their own run in 2012. Way to have a nation’s interests at heart there, Hils and Big Dog.
It would be easy to get bogged down in this internecine Obama v Clinton stuff, or over who’ll be veep, and easier still to spend useless time boggling over the media’s continued kid-glove treatment of McCain’s obvious inadequacy. Sometimes it almost seems as though the Bush administration and its DINO and media collaborators are making Russia the new bogeyman merely to project McCain as the war hero who’ll keep the Russkies at bay and a black man out of the White House… But surely not. They wouldn’t be that cynical. Would they? Well yeah, they would.
But what’s really important to me is that what’s just political drama to the US voting public is being played out in Europe’s backyard – with real nukes.
Work experience boyBritish Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s thrown our lot in with the US, with seemingly little thought to diplomatic nuance or to the future politico/ military implications of doing so. The UK is, as usual, slavishly supporting the US in writing cheques it’s ass can’t cash and in so doing is destroying European cohesion, such as it is.
The lessons of history mean nothing to these people in the US or UK; all that matters is what’s expedient right now in terms of careers and of their continued grip on power. If that means capitulating to the needs of US internal political forces – an encircled Russia, a divided Europe and a new, bigger bogeyman to unite against – the so be it, and screw the rest of us. What’s a bit of fallout when the US presidency is at stake?
