{"id":251,"date":"2008-08-20T12:52:20","date_gmt":"2008-08-20T10:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=251"},"modified":"2008-08-19T19:52:56","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T17:52:56","slug":"obama-v-mccain-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"Obama v. McCain: Foreign Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"How the United States deals with the world around us has been the principal province of the president, for as long as there has been a U.S.\u00a0 It is an area in which most presidents learn it on the job, as was the case for Presidents Reagan & Clinton.\u00a0 In other circumstances, presidents bring a strong policy background to the job, such as was the case with President George H. W. Bush.\u00a0 (His son, President Bush, doesn’t seem to have learned anything, not really having understood anything prior to having taken office.)<\/p>\n

Senator Barack Obama is only a little older than me.\u00a0 Neither of us can seriously have understood at the time all of the implications of the Vietnam War, but both of us became well enough aware of the world around us to understand what was happening during the Carter administration (he might have even gotten it during the Ford administration).\u00a0 He has spent some of his life outside of the United States, and he has spent some of his life in the time of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

Senator John McCain is of a different era.\u00a0 His views are informed by his having served in the Vietnam War and been captured and held by the Vietcong.\u00a0 There are few people on earth who can relate to his nearly unique experiences.\u00a0 McCain spent most of his life with the Cold War, and he was born outside of the United States.<\/p>\n

Both of these men have interesting perspectives on foreign policy, but to be sure John McCain has been there a whole lot longer.\u00a0 Which positions should we judge?\u00a0 My own areas of interest revolve around the reconstituted Soviet Union, how we handle the Middle East, and how we engage the developing world.\u00a0 I am also interested in continued development of international relationships to reduce cybercrime and cyber-terrorism.\u00a0 As an expatriate foreign policy probably impacts me more than domestic policy, which is why it’s up front next to education.\u00a0 But these days that should be the case with more Americans.\u00a0 Our new found isolation in the world has empowered bad actors, like Hugo Chavez.<\/p>\n

Senator McCain has been a strong proponent of America following international law and norms.\u00a0 As a former prisoner he saw what happened personally when those norms weren’t followed.\u00a0 The senator has always expressed strong concern about the way the Bush Administration treated detainees in Guantanamo Bay, and advanced legislation<\/a> against such reckless behavior.<\/p>\n

Senator McCain supported former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush on both their decision to go to war and initial tactics.\u00a0 This to me represents a remarkable failure on his part, because Mr. Rumsfeld failed to ask the very question that most foreign policy experts would ask: what happens after you invade?\u00a0 We take over and then what?\u00a0 The departure from the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force to \u201cshock and awe\u201d only worked until the shock and awe wore off, if it worked at all.\u00a0 The actual justification for the war is now thoroughly debunked, and the next president will have to clean up this president’s mess.<\/p>\n

Senator McCain has been very vocal about Russia’s invasion of Georgia.\u00a0 Here I am entire agreement with him, and I would perhaps have gone farther.\u00a0 Russia has for years lost its luster to me, and the current president has lied<\/a> \u2013 repeatedly \u2013 about Russia’s intent.\u00a0 It’s all about reasserting Russia’s position as a super-power, taking control of her oil, and using economics as a policy weapon against the west.\u00a0 As I wrote previously<\/a>, we brought this on ourselves.\u00a0 McCain has been there early on, as it is in his nature to address such threats.<\/p>\n

Senator Obama has made statements to the same effect as of late, but has otherwise taken a less prominent stance.\u00a0 Sometimes that’s not a bad thing.\u00a0 If the current president plays \u201cbad cop\u201d in some way in the near future, Senator McCain will be left with fewer options than Senator Obama in January.\u00a0 The reverse is also true.\u00a0 President Bush can use the McCain’s stridency to say, \u201cThis is who you get later if you don’t solve the problem to my satisfaction.\u201d\u00a0 It’s right out of a West Wing Episode<\/a>, and arguably out of the Iran Hostages<\/a> playbook, where Iran resolved the matter the moment Ronald Reagan took office.<\/p>\n

John McCain has also stated his preference for ending sugar, oil, and ethanol subsidies as part of his education plan.\u00a0 Were those subsidies tied to quality standards I might have more sympathy for them, as I did with the Swiss<\/a>.\u00a0 Absent those, the American way of life is not on the line, and it would seem that commodity prices are doing just fine on their own at the moment, and so it’s free money to remove those subsidies.<\/p>\n

Senator Obama is not without his own touch on foregin policy.\u00a0 In 2006 he sponsored a bill<\/a> that eventually became law to stablize the Congo.\u00a0 He has stated that he is willing to meet with leaders of countries that we don’t especially love, like Cuba, North Korea, and Iran.\u00a0 He has been extremely cagy about the terms of such meetings and he has parsed his words carefully since.\u00a0 Normally such parsing drives me CRAZY, reminding me to look up what the definition of is is.\u00a0 The art of foreign policy, however, is talking out of both sides of one’s mouth.\u00a0 Senator McCain and our current president don’t do this, so far as I can tell.<\/p>\n

And the Winner is…<\/h2>\n

\"\"While I find John McCain’s views on Iraq far from my own, his views on Russia seem to be more aligned than those of Barack Obama, and there can be no doubt as to who has more experience. Obama has nowhere near the amount of experience of his opponent, but he did get Iraq right, and he probably has a good handle on Africa.\u00a0 Still I do not agree with his willingness to meet with just any ole dictator.\"\"<\/p>\n

Today both candidates get passing grades on foreign policy, with McCain getting about a 80\/100 and perhaps Obama getting 75.\u00a0 So let’s give this round to McCain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the United States deals with the world around us has been the principal province of the president, for as long as there has been a U.S.\u00a0 It is an area in which most presidents learn it on the job, as was the case for Presidents Reagan & Clinton.\u00a0 In other circumstances, presidents bring a … Continue reading “Obama v. McCain: Foreign Policy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,87,4],"tags":[134,135,127],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-internet","category-politics","tag-foreign-policy","tag-iraq","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}