Foreign Policy Potpourri Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

So rather than doing a whole bunch of posts on various issues, just thought I’d post on some observations from today's conference.

Madeleine Albright, who probably gave the best speech of the conference, cited Harry Truman as the example of strong reasonable foreign policy leadership for the 21st century.   I completely agree with Matt Yglesias. Enough with the Truman references.  True he did a lot to shape the early period of the Cold War and set up the necessary international infrastructure.  But he also got us into the Korean War and left office incredibily unpopular.  Bush often compares himself to Truman these days, believing that he too will be vindicated in the long-term.

Senator Daschle points out that the single biggest beneficiary of global warming is Russia.  Global warming will melt a lot of their useless land making it arable.  It will open up more places for oil and gas drilling.  Create new sea lanes in the North, which are currently iced over. 

Daschle’s comment was the only point during the entire energy/environment panel where someone actually tried to tie geopolitics to global warming.  We keep talking about how global warming is a national security problem, but even when you get a General on the panel the conversation always shifts to domestic energy issues.

Great summary from Daniel Levy on U.S. Middle East policy these days.  “We go around asking everyone ‘help us on Iraq.  help us on Iran’  They all say ‘give us political cover on Israel.’  But none of it is happening right now on either end.

Zbig Brzezinski is great.  AJ at Americablog says all that is necessary on this front.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

Senator Daschle points out that the single biggest beneficiary of global warming is Russia. Global warming will melt a lot of their useless land making it arable. It will open up more places for oil and gas drilling. Create new sea lanes in the North, which are currently iced over.

Daschle’s comment was the only point during the entire energy/environment panel where someone actually tried to tie geopolitics to global warming. We keep talking about how global warming is a national security problem, but even when you get a General on the panel the conversation always shifts to domestic energy issues.

My God, what a revolting and disspiriting approach to this issue! Does every serious problem have to be turned into either a security issue or a geo-strategic issue? Isn't it enough to point out that climate change will be a very, very awful thing because it will radically transform and destroy natural environments all over the world that people love, and in which they make and find their homes?

Daschle's scenario strikes me as both perverse and a bit goofy. One might just as well speculate that climate change will be bad for Russia because warmer climates mean less indoor heating in Europe, and lower cash revenues from oil and gas exporting.

Here is a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/01/AR2007040100644.html"> coutervaling account of some of the harmful health effects of climate change on Russia. So maybe Daschle will now say we should promote climate change because it will generate more disease in Russia, and turn that country into a net strategic loser?

China has concluded that climate change will diminish already-stressed water suplies, and threaten the country's continued development. So whoopee for climate change, and for its providential impact on US strategic advantage?

People can go back and forth, spinning these competing scenarios forever, because nobody can really predict with any reasonable certainty the geopolitical, economic and social effects of climate change. The phenomena are just too complex, and chaotically interrelated.

The world can only effectively address climate change if it adopts the attitude that people in Russia and China and the US, and everywhere else, are our brothers and sisters in humanity, that we are all in this together, and that we all want to preserve the natural world that we love, and that has nutured us, furnished our memories, and laid down the spiritual and emotional patterns of our lives. To the extent these debates get caught up in endlessly speculative, interminably revised, crassly material and morally twisted arguments about who "wins" and "loses" from climate change, and about the insipid rivalries of states and statesmen, to the same extent the global cause is undermined.

If it could be demonstrated that the US would be a strategic winner as a result of climate change, should we all then support it? The Daschle comments remind one of the psycopathic, Strangelovian calculations of certain nuclear strategists of the Cold War, who laid out depressing scenarios for "winning" a massive nuclear exchange. Who knows, maybe the US would "win" the geostrategic battle for the world in the aftermath of climate change. But who wants to live in that shitty world?

I live in New Hampshire. We have seasons here. I love our seasons, and I want to keep them. I love the colors of the leaves on the trees in fall; their melancholy falling and swirling in the crisp, clean late October air; the shimmering banks and mounds of snow, and frigid, starry nights in winter; the syrup from the sugar maples; the puffs and smells of smoke from wood-stove fed chimneys; the frozen ponds; and the hard-won redemption of spring. My son loves to ski and snowboard down our mountains, and plays soccer surrounded by the brightly colored oaks and beeches and birches and maples in the fall. I think most normal human beings - the ones who don't live in Washington apparently - think in similar terms about their natural environment and why it is worth preserving. They don't think "we better stop climate change so those damn Russkies don't make a killing in nickel and wheat."

[SolderNoLongerInIraq]

" But he also got us into the Korean War and left office incredibily unpopular."

One would have thought the Koreans, Chinese and Soviets might have played some role in "getting" anyone into "Korea."

But when it comes to making a long track to plug the guy who gave us the Nojeh Coup, unaccountable support to the mujahadin in Pakistan/Afghanistan and what truly was one of the lowest points in American military history (Operation Eagle Claw), as "great."

Not that Zbibby's call for support of increasing repression by the Shah's police state against the Islamic revolution and a post-revolutionary coup of has-been Iranian military officers might be seen today as pointlessly cruel, hopelessly behind the times and, more important, profoundly deaf to the song of history.

No, he's now "great!"

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