Tuesday, September 18, 2012

What Moscow and Beijing Are Reading in Romney

Vlad Putin has expressed his gratitude for Mitt Romney's candor.  It has, Putin says, justified his wariness of dealing with America's leadership over missile defence systems deployed in Europe.

Moscow and Beijing know that Romney has fallen under the guidance of warmongers like John Bolton who recently wrote this delightful piece in National Review Online.

 
First and foremost, we should cut Syria off from its major supporters. The television images from Syria will not change permanently until the underlying strategic terrain changes permanently. Russia should be told in no uncertain terms that it can forget about sustained good relations with the United States as long as it continues to back Assad. We should resume full-scale, indeed accelerated, efforts to construct the limited missile-defense system designed by George W. Bush to protect American territory not against Russia but against rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. But we should immediately make it clear to Moscow that we will begin to consider broadening our missile-defense program to deal with Russian and Chinese ballistic-missile capabilities. We should also announce our withdrawal from the New START arms-control treaty, and our utter disinterest in negotiations to prevent an “arms race” in space. Let Moscow and Beijing think about all that for a while.

The magnitude of such a shift as a response to the conflict in Syria may seem startling, but each of these proposals is meritorious on its own terms. Wrapping several major policy redirections around the Syria problem thus advances multiple objectives simultaneously. Both Russia and China think Obama is weak, that America is declining, and that they can ignore our views on Syria and many other issues with complete impunity. It is time for a wake-up call to the Kremlin and Zhongnanhai.

Next, we should tell Iran that our patience with their decade-long ploy of using diplomacy to gain time to advance their nuclear-weapons program has ended. Tehran should face a stark choice, and we can leave to their imagination what will happen if they fail immediately to dismantle all aspects of their existing nuclear effort. We should also reverse the fantasy still trumpeted by Obama that, despite its repeated violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty over 20 years, Iran is somehow entitled to a “peaceful” nuclear program. Until there is a new, trustworthy regime in Tehran, there can be no claim to benefits or “rights” under a treaty Iran has grossly abused. We should introduce this new reality to our European friends as well, perhaps by simply being unambiguous with them.

Finally, in Syria itself, we should do now what we could have begun to do ten years ago (and what the Obama White House at least says it is doing now): find Syrian rebel leaders who are truly secular and who oppose radical Islam; who will disavow al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups; and who will reject Russian and Iranian hegemony over their country. We will need some reason to believe that this opposition can prevail against not only the Assad regime but also the terrorists and fanatics who also oppose Assad. This must be not a faith-based judgment but a clear-eyed assessment of reality. Such is the kind of opposition that, assuming it exists, we should support, aiming for regime change in Damascus when — and only when — it becomes feasible on our terms. On this matter, too, we should tell our European allies that we want their support for something other than semiotic diplomacy.

Classic, rabid John Bolton.  It has never crossed his tortured mind that America's unrivalled military superiority has utterly failed to deliver success ever since the neo-cons succeeded in foreign policy "bait and switch" substituting the threat and use of military force as a substitute for diplomacy.   That Bolton now has Mitt Romney's ear is genuinely sad.

3 comments:

  1. Even aside from the utter amorality of it all, Bolton's rather idiotic here: "our utter disinterest in negotiations to prevent an “arms race” in space. Let Moscow and Beijing think about all that for a while."
    It strikes me as a bit dim for the United States, which no longer really has a manned space program, to insist on pursuing an arms race in space as a measure to intimidate the Chinese, who do have one, and the Russians, aka the guys American astronauts have to get rides up to the space station from. Yeah, I'm sure they're really scared, there.

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  2. What about the menace of Communist China? They are showing aggression around the globe. Country's are having to escort them out of their territories. China hacked into other country's secret files. They sold infected electronic components to country's. U.S. missiles and other weapons had infected components, purchased from China.

    Russia and China know, Iran has troops in Syria. That's why they are blocking any support for the people of Syria. Russia and China are both allies of Iran too. Russia even said, it would be a bad mistake to attack Iran.

    So, is it a wait and see, who will attack who first? Israel wants the U.S. to draw a line on Iran, right now. Russia and China obviously are promoting, for Iran to have their own nuclear weapons.

    Oh well, we always knew there would be, a WW111 sooner or later.

    Harper is a total war monger. He is working very hard, to promote one. Slamming the door in Iran's face, will certainly cause more resentment from Iran. You keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

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