The Limits Of Coherence
Writing on the incoherence of McCain’s policy proposals, Sullivan gives as an example: “the League of Democracies that wouldn’t, for some reason, include India.” At first, this struck me as something that McCain would do, since it makes no sense even from his own perspective, but it isn’t really true. India wouldn’t want to join such a League, but McCain seems quite willing to extend an invitation to India, as he did by implication in his speech in Los Angeles when he classed India among the “leading democracies.” It is Russia he is obsessed with excluding, and wants to oust them from the G-8 while bringing in Brazil and India, as he said in the same major World Affairs Council speech that I discuss in my column in the issue of TAC that is currently online. If you think continuing to worsen our relations with Moscow is a priority, McCain’s foreign policy is plenty coherent. It’s also terrible.
For what it’s worth, he’s also committed to damaging relations with India, too, inasmuch as he wants to impose the same restrictions on them that Kyoto imposes on states that have ratified it. Closing that loophole would remove one kind of objection to Kyoto, I suppose, but India would never ratify such measures and proposing it would sour relations. Doing that also presupposes that making Kyoto’s ratification more politically viable is actually desirable.
The whole idea of a “League of Democracies” is absurd and counter-productive to the actual encouragement of democracy around the world, but it’s certainly true that Russia is not a democracy. Why we should want to marginalize them is beyond me, however. There are plenty of other third world kleptocracies we seem intent on doing business as usual with.
I agree, except that I would say that a regime can be illiberal and authoritarian while still retaining democratic elements. My compromise description of the Russian regime is authoritarian populist. But we agree that excluding them doesn’t make sense, and we definitely agree that the League is crazy.
I think we will just have to agree to agree. (sigh).
I even like the idea of “authoritarian populism”, although I think in Russia’s case I’d modify it to “Mafioso authoritarian populism”. Italy used to be run by similar dudes. Maybe still is.
Making the trains run on time may not be enough to make one a statesman, and indeed one can shape them up to a timetable and still be a villain, and yet, it i’s an achievement often too flippantly deprecated.
Does anyone have any real background to McCain’s boiling hostility towards Russia? While I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to describe Russia as an ally, they could provide valuable backing to the US on a whole host of fronts, Iran topping the list. Did Putin try to make a pass at Mrs. McCain at an embassy party or something? There is a personal animus there that I just don’t get.
Adam01,
I think it has something to do with Russia backing the Vietcong, and him taking that whole experience rather personally.