I'll let you all handle the election. And in other news, why don't the Chicago Cubs start using Carlos Zambrano as a pinch-hitter on his off days? He's up there with his per-at-bat RBIs.
Okay. In the early proto-general election foreign policy skirmishes, Obama and McCain have sparred over Iraq and Al-Qaeda, the natural and rightful points of contention. But why doesn't Barack mix it up a bit and burnish his foreign policy cred by addressing the traditional challenges of a resurgent Russia--his chief strength? Quietly, the reconstruction of a Soviet-style superpower threatens to become a Neo-Con's dream issue for 2012. We can stop it.
Obama surrogates have done a lousy job highlighting his legislative issues, which is admittedly a bit thin due to his campaigning. But in his quiet but solid 2005 visitto the Ukraine with Dick Lugar, Obama can tout a substantive, unimpeachably post/bi-partisan position that became law. That is, a very sensible, cautious, and seasoned position. Highlighting it could very well help to, er, disarm the crotchety lyricist of the hit tune "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran."
Beyond Obama-Lugar, Obama-Schiff-Hagel took great strides towards reducing nuclear proliferation threats and supporting, financially, the clean-up and securing of loose sites.
Indeed, this has been Obama's issue, and few--if any--legislators have pursued it more doggedly. In The Audacity of Hope, there is a passage that movingly recites Obama's and Lugar's shock at the condition of Ukrainian arms sites, where virtually no security protocol existed and the attitude towards the hazards of the site by its personnel were lax to a self-endangering degree.
(I would quote the passage to you, but, like a good Iowan, I loaned my copy to a Hillary-leaning voter last December. It hasn't returned, but I think it did the trick, and Iowa's bookstores have piles of remaindered campaign autobiographies. I mean, I walked by as Joe Biden was signing a copy of his hardcover worst-seller this past October. The line wasn't very long, but I was getting kind of thirsty, so I went to find a water fountain instead, and by the time I got a drink, I sort of forgot about him.)
Back to business. Politifact had a great article last week that I didn't see until I started writing this diary, about McCain trying to seize the issue belatedly, and pointing out that McCain routinely voted for "conventional weapons" such as bunker-busters, which last week he claimed should be eliminated.
Let's face it. If mismanaged, the Putin, er, Medvedev Russia could become America's next Cold War target. How? If someone who has his head up the ass of the "military industrial complex." And of course, he's going to owe Grumman and Boeing a couple favors.
Obama is the strongest candidate particularly on Russia, but mark my words: the worst "gotcha" moment of the campaign debates had nothing to do with Wright or Farrakhan. It was Russert's token "world leader" question. Stupidly, Clinton jumps in first and looks bad by mumbling Medvedev, but Obama looks lost and mumbles a bit. That could be an issue, especially because, with a shit-eating smirk on his face, Russert gratuitously ticks off facts from Medvedev's bio setting up the next question. And both of Obama's answers are vaguer than we know his knowledge is. He looked out of his depth, even if he wasn't. Let's make this the big strength, a cornerstone of a policy that emphasizes cooperative disarmament as a way to strengthen diplomatic ties. And hit the books!
Let me present some talking points:
- In foreign affairs, John McCain is not a Reagan conservative. He is a Goldwater conservative, a Bush conservative--Reagan never fired a shot, except for Grenada and Libya.
- Shock and Awe was such a surreal spectacle, a gratuitous display of unquestionable military might. Mission accom...? Of course not. The think tanks were wrong to apply--even magnify--the SDI, M.A.D. mindsets that hold weaponry in such high esteem. Manpower and sufficient combat support has, or rather is, replacing the "video game wars" of the nineties.
Iraq has taught us that we can't just turn on CNN and watch a sick game of "Pong" like we used to. And why not try to humanize the holocaust of Iraqi civilians that has accompanied McCain's war? Let's see what he says about that.
- The failed reliance on state-of-the-art weaponry argues now more than ever: it's time for a peace dividend. McCain says that the war isn't a success until there aren't Americans being shot at? I'll bet Obama can propose a very quick solution to that.
- In an article for either Atlantic or The New Republic sometime in the early 2000s, Colin Powell raised an interesting point: the Cold War was dominated by the game-theory mentality. Powell proposed that maybe the world isn't zero-sum anymore. If only he had said that to Wolfowitz rather than a reporter.
But Powell's point is so inordinately sensible that it could inform a tough, substantive Obama doctrine and rhetoric evinced by his work towards proliferation. With the decline of polar powers, carrot-and-stick isn't working as well as it used to. Sanctions backfire and look weak-willed, and no one has the stomach for stalemate anymore. With the centralization of power in the Kremlin, Putin won't want potentially hostile neighbors treating uranium like a chemistry set, and by engaging with him on this issue--and perhaps by bombarding them with cultural engagement and by pitching disarmament as potentially beneficial to the Russian economy,that has shifted away from industry and into a modern-day Kleptocratic nation-state, we can generate some goodwill and common cause with an emerging enemy even while its civil liberties disappear.
For a second you thought I was talking about America there, didn't you?
In sum: Obama can--and needs, fast--to seize the sensible, universally respected, feather-in-his-cap position of nuclear and conventional weapon security teetering on phased disarmament; and contrast it with an expensive, inhumane policy only favored by military contractors, 72-year old white men, and Toby Keith. Talk up Russia as a threat, and then talk it down in the next breath with your plan.
In the new world, carrot-and-stick can be replaced by common-cause initiatives; the second-world is littered with foreign ministers who studied in the US with Kissinger wannabes. It's not a helping hand--it's a shared mission, instead of a pissing contest.
And wherever McSame walks, you can be sure to find a flaccid trickle of yellow, trying to cover up the Red. Come on, Barack: True blue time.