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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru is a Neocon (Obama taking foreign policy advice from Republican neocon proving once again there is no difference between the two parties On the eve of the President’s last State of the Union speech the White House let it be known that a recent essay by Robert Kagan in The New Republic, which excerpted his book, The World America Made, had been sent to his national security staff for their perusal. As the President told reporters beforehand, Kagan’s thesis – that America is not in decline and must maintain its hegemonic stature in the world, or all is lost – was a major theme of his peroration: “The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe. From the coalitions we’ve built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we’ve led against hunger and disease; from the blows we’ve dealt to our enemies, to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” Have no fear – the empire endures! That President Barack Obama, ostensibly a Democrat of the liberal variety, was touting the views of a neoconservative foreign policy maven whose work has been published in The Weekly Standard, should come as a surprise to exactly no one. The overarching bipartisan consensus in Washington in favor of global intervention ensures that foreign policy disputes are limited to “debates” over means rather than ends. In short, it isn’t a question of whether we ought to have an empire, but of how to best to maintain and expand it. Partisan differences over these matters are mainly stylistic and rhetorical, such as the phony division over “unilateralism” versus “multi-lateralism.” Not that these divisions aren’t real: they are. It’s just that, in the end, they don’t much matter, because whether there’s a liberal Democrat in the White House, or a neocon-manipulated Dauphin, the goal remains the same. That goal is global hegemony, energized by a vision of the US as the defender and best builder of an imaginary “world order.” In his essay, and subsequently published book, Kagan makes the case that, contrary to various prophets of doom, the US is not in decline relative to other nations, and that, in any case, the end of American hegemony will signal the demise of the “liberal international order.” In short, everything depends on us – on our ability to project military power and keep “order” overseas. Without Uncle Sam standing guard at the gates of civilization, the global order will decay and chaos will follow – a condition which will pose new and heretofore unimagined dangers not only to us but to the world. Kagan avers that the declinists are guilty of basing their case “on rather loose analysis,” on vague “impressions” of lost virtue and dissipated will. This is odd coming from an author whose own analysis contains nowhere within it even a single mention of the word “debt.” No wonder Obama liked it! Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
Congressional candidates of both parties owe their election to efforts of the Israeli lobby and its media associates so why would differences be expected?
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