Foreign policy realignment?
Fareed Zakaria makes some good points today, arguing that the the Bush administration’s foreign policy, and in particular his “ideology of regime change — armed Wilsonianism” contributed to the Republican electoral defeat:
Something similar has happened in foreign policy. The electorate has
seemed to sense that there is a new world out there and that the nostrums
presented by McCain in his campaign are irrelevant to it. As with
economics, these feelings developed after watching the ideas in action.
Bush embraced a series of radical policy stances — many of them long
espoused by neoconservatives — especially during his first term.
But the vigorous unilateralism openly advocated by the administration is
recognized by most Americans to have weakened the country’s influence
abroad. Its excessive reliance on military force has yielded few results
worth the costs.
But Zakaria also suggests that the Iraq War was not a major issue in the election campaign. I don’t buy that. It’s true that the economy ranked higher than Iraq among the concerns of the voters. Nevertheless, the same polls also suggest that two-third of the voters strongly or somewhat disapprove of the war in Iraq. You don’t have to be a pollster to figure out that those who supported that war ended-up voting for McCain. And that’s the guy who lost the election. Final polls also found that those who thought the decision to go to war in Iraq was wrong backed Obama by better than 5 to 1; those who thought it right supported McCain by a nearly identical margin. Logic tells me that opposition to the war did play a role in the outcome of vote.
Moreover, opinion polls also reflect declining public support for U.S. global interventionism. In short, there is clearly no enthusiasm for new global crusades, which means that the general public would welcome a more realist foreign policy approach by the Obama Administration.
Whicn brings me to the current debate over the fate of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. If Obama resists the pressure from the liberal imperialists in his camp, he and the Democrats clearly have an opportunity to achieve an electoral realignment when it comes to foreign policy, especially if the Republicans continue to espouse the same old neoconservative ideas. And such a realignment could also take place among the “elites” if the liberals and not the conservatives would be identified with foreign policy realism.
In any case, according to Steve Clemons it seems that our old friends from the PNAC are back in business. I wonder why…
Long before the market crashed, the media decided that the election would be about the economy as a means of avoiding their responsibility for the war. When over 50% of voters polled said their biggest concern was the economy after the crash, it represented the synthesis of the two issues – the war, along with the dumping of liquidity after 9/11 to avoid a serious recession, were behind it all. Voters know that, even if their behavior isn’t always rational. And since the election, the media has shifted all its talk of crisis to the economy instead of the world situation because it does not want to confront what it wrought in its responsibility for the war, that is, the collapse of the American empire.
The economy eclipsed the Iraq war in this election. You can make the argument that the Iraq war cost Hillary the Whitehouse, but then the economy handed the Whitehouse to Obama on a (tarnished) silver platter.
http://rightklik.blogspot.com/
I’d like to believe that Americans have lost their taste for global imperialism, but I have my doubts. How does one explain that both candidates went out of their way to promise more wars? Obama went so far as to propose the cross border attacks on Pakistan that Bush officially initiated two or three weeks later. I’m afraid I have to agree with the odious Bill O’Reilly that Americans don’t oppose war; they’re just opposed to losing wars. Unhappily it follows from this that only a major military catastrophe can really turn US citizens from a policy of global imperialism. Sooner or later the catastrophe will happen. No one wins all the time and the US will not always be able to just peacefully withdraw troops from untenable situations and then move on to the next contrived crisis.
Harsh light shed by Kirt. Militarism is deeply ingrained in our culture. Very few of us decried the “clean” carnage of the first Gulf War, and few citizens took notice of non-so-clean involvement in the Balkans. I wonder if conservatives who rightly detest the abuse of citizens, which empire-building often entails, would be okay with empire as long as citizens still enjoyed the full protection of the Bill of Rights. Close the borders, limit the powers of goverment, end the tyranny of the Fed, and conquer the world?
Right wing, left wing …phooey!….this rotten & foolish economic & war policy is basically all bi-partisan. And, it’s driven or aided & abetted by MSM which controls public opinion. Look at the Wests current account losses, look at the debts (Govt & private), and the destruction of out industry (& concurrent huge immigration) and then “follow the money” …To the lenders??….Who owns all this money we are borrowing? Debt servicing, along with big taxes, is sucking all the wealth out of the western world and causes more debt and the selling of our businesses & assets. It destroys our ability to create our own capital. It’s stupid. I ask is there a link between all this “lending & crooked media ownership” and, 50 yrs of bad economic & foreign policy? If I am right this is what must be fixed or we will all go down.
PS Re Iraq & polling: In recent Australia elections, when PM Rudd said he would pull us out of Iraq his popularity jumped 15% overnight and he won a landslide.
Where is America going to get this money.The answer is: close all bases worldwide, leave Iraq,Afganistan,Korea,Okinawa, and still that may not be enough to pay the interest on the outstanding loans to China,Japan and middle east countries. Go the way of Russia that theUS showed Osama bil laden how and did it to America as well.
It is a p ity the average american are trully nice people.
America is insolvent and those who run Orwellington DC who have never done anything but hand out taxpayer money live in the rarified clouds of the ruling class and can’t see it and furthermore don’t care as long as we provide enough oney to keep their paychecks coming and their potty power offices open.
Anyway that is all we need to know, we ‘are’ insolvent’.
So let Obama and all the liberal interventionalist and neos carry on with their overseas visions……it will all end.
It reminds me so much of Russia’s economic demise….the over extension, the slow crumbling, then the final crash, right down to not even being able to pay their military’s wages.
That is where we are headed barring some miracle.