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Zakaria: Mccain Vs. Mccain | Newsweek Voices - Fareed Zakaria | Newsweek.com

WORLD VIEW
Fareed Zakaria
Mccain Vs. Mccain

Amid the din of the dueling democrats, people seem to have forgotten about that other guy in the presidential race—you know, John McCain. McCain is said to be benefiting from this politically because his rivals are tearing each other apart. In fact, few people are paying much attention to what the Republican nominee is saying, or subjecting it to any serious scrutiny.

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.

I write this with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage. I also agree with much of what else he said in that speech in Los Angeles. But in recent years, McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic, alternating between neoconservative posturing and realist common sense. His speech reads like it was written by two very different people, each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic.

The neoconservative vision within the speech is essentially an affirmation of ideology. Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies. It proposes a League of Democracies, which would presumably play the role that the United Nations now does, except that all nondemocracies would be cast outside the pale. The approach lacks any strategic framework. What would be the gain from so alienating two great powers? How would the League of Democracies fight terrorism while excluding countries like Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Singapore? What would be the gain to the average American to lessen our influence with Saudi Arabia, the central banker of oil, in a world in which we are still crucially dependent on that energy source?

The single most important security problem that the United States faces is securing loose nuclear materials. A terrorist group can pose an existential threat to the global order only by getting hold of such material. We also have an interest in stopping proliferation, particularly by rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea. To achieve both of these core objectives—which would make American safe and the world more secure—we need Russian cooperation. How fulsome is that likely to be if we gratuitously initiate hostilities with Moscow? Dissing dictators might make for a stirring speech, but ordinary Americans will have to live with the complications after the applause dies down.

To reorder the G8 without China would be particularly bizarre. The G8 was created to help coordinate problems of the emerging global economy. Every day these problems multiply—involving trade, pollution, currencies—and are in greater need of coordination. To have a body that attempts to do this but excludes the world's second largest economy is to condemn it to failure and irrelevance. International groups are not cheerleading bodies but exist to help solve pressing global crises. Excluding countries won't make the problems go away.

McCain appears to think that he can magically unite the two main strands in the Republican foreign-policy establishment. But he can't. This is not about personalities but about two philosophically divergent views of international affairs. Put together, they will produce infighting and incoherence. We have seen this movie before. We have watched an American president unable to choose between his ideologically driven vice president and his pragmatic secretary of State—and the result was the catastrophe of George W. Bush's first term. Twenty-five years earlier, we watched another president who believed that he could encompass the entire spectrum of foreign policy. He, too, gave speeches that were drafted by advisers with divergent world views: in that case, Cyrus Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski. It led to the paralyzing internal battles of the Carter years. Does John McCain want to try this experiment one more time?

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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

1947

Ahhh McCain you've done it again

Attached Images

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braindead

Wait - isn´t the G-7 / G-8 club of DEMOCRATIC industrial giants ?
So therefore Brazil and India have there much more reason to be than Russia or China?

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luffaman

rep side:
mccain is way too old, yes, reagon was old too, but mccain's experience as a pow in vietnam makes his health condition even more questionable, a president dead on his presidential derm is a big no no for american now, besides his pow experience also gives me goosebumps, it is hard to imagine that a normal person won't hold any peeve over certain people, so be careful, my asian american bros.

dem side:
hillary, i don't even want to mention her name, almost every time her campaign is in trouble, she jump out and point finger at china issures, if that is what her self-claimed politic experience laid on, then i want a newbee president.

obama, i total fell for his charm, but let's be realistic, as some wabber said before, he "has a lot things to prove as a black president", i guess that sacrificing latino and asian americans' interests to please black and white maybe one of obama's "a lot of things". and i am pleased to see in primaries, most latino and asian show enought political iq to vote hillary rather than obama.

so to sum it up:
since we have reached a stage that female or black president is acceptable, then how about trying a independant candidate like ron paul(seriously)?

or a step further, how about that governator(joking)?

or another step further, how about a guy without a citizenship like luffaman (being super narcissistic)?

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CCP (chinese comedian party) founder

glyn

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Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

luffaman

come on, it is weekend, i just want to add some amusing spice.
if it is distracting, i can edit it.
besides, some wabbers who neither a us citizen nor living here still have a say, i figured i can at least persuade those who have a vote which one to pick.
what do you think the rest of my post?

glyn

I thought my last sentence explained that.

luffaman

glyn, i get it.
i tried to talk from a technical angle, i am expecting a educated reply but not a personal attack.
unfortunately, people don't need to be mature as you expect to have a right to vote.

imo, after media bombard, average american's attitude toward "toxic" toys made in china is not as mature as i expected, but damage to chinese toy industry is already there, we have to live with it.

glyn

[quote=luffaman;498943]glyn, i get it.
i tried to talk from a technical angle, i am expecting a educated reply but not a personal attack.


If you wish to construe my reply as a personal attack then you are at complete liberty to do so - but it was not meant as such. I have not expressed an opinion on the candidates in the forthcoming American election, but your original post was a personal attack on all three.

Johnny W

Russia should not be in the G8, but China should.

glyn

Masada

I love Fareed Zakaria. It's particularly refreshing when ideology doesn't get in the way of common sense.

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Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει

Scotsman

Russia already tells Germany what to do so they have two seats at the moment

Johnny W

The conference was initially started as a meeting of the worlds top economic powers. Russia is not among the top 8 nations in either GDP or economic output. From what I understand, the invitation for them to join was made merely as a show of gratitude for the collapse of the Soviet Union, not because they are one of the top economic powers. According to IMF data, China, Spain, and Brazil all have larger GDP's than do Russia. All of those three should have been invited to join before Russia. China especially has a right to upset that Russia is invited, but China is not.

Now if they want to expand the group to the G12 or higher, then Russia should get an invite. But right now, Russia doesn't have the economic influence that the other nations have.

glyn