""The United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone," McCain said, noting that the United States did not single-handedly win the Cold War or other conflicts in its history. Instead, he said, the country must lead by attracting others to its cause, demonstrating the virtues of freedom and democracy, defending the rules of an international civilized society and creating new international institutions.
He renewed his call for creating a new global compact of more than 100 democratic countries to advance shared values and defend shared interests, and said the United States must set an example for other democracies.
"If we lead by shouldering our international responsibilities and pointing the way to a better and safer future for humanity … it will strengthen us to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism," said the four-term senator and member of the Armed Services Committee.
"Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House, for he or she does not take seriously enough the first and most basic duty a president has — to protect the lives of the American people," McCain added, suggesting that neither of his Democratic rivals, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, understand the stakes at hand." Yahoo News
—————————————————————————-
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) – Cite This Source – Share This
/trænˈsɛndənt/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[tran-sen-duhnt] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
| 1. | going beyond ordinary limits; surpassing; exceeding. |
| 2. | superior or supreme. |
| 3. | Theology. (of the Deity) transcending the universe, time, etc. Compare immanent (def. 3). |
| 4. | Philosophy.
|
–noun Mathematics.
| 5. | a transcendental function. |
| Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006." |
***********************************************************************************
So, this transcendent threat is greater than anything else around? It is greater than the shakiness of the economy, the threat of pestilence, the competition provided by an emerging China, all of that?
I don’t think so. The Sunni takfiri networks command the allegiance of a few thousand at most. The worst they could POSSIBLY do to all those they hate and despise would involve some attack that might be bloody in nature but certainly not mortal to any of the societies of the West. Transcendent? If you want transcendence in a threat, you must find something more than a few radicals who through a clever ruse stole a few airplanes and crashed them into buildings. And we accept such rubbish?
Our ancestors who fought at Gettysburg or on any number of other flaming fields would scoff.
What is the matter with him? He should know better than to think this or talk like this.
We should form "a new international group of countries" to "confront" this threat? I guess they did not teach Thucydides at the Naval Academy when he was there. The Delian League was the Athenian Empire in all but name. What sort of "league" would we call this? pl
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080326/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_foreign_affairs
McCain and the conservative “movement” have spent a generation trashing the UN, and the past decade advocating that the US operate in a unilateral manner—and now he barfs out this “League of Democracies” claptrap, because moderates want to hear about greater diplomacy and cooperation and conservatives are either too stupid to understand this is another “League of Nations” or else know that this is lying misdirection seeking to trick voters–the Repub specialty.
And as though it make any sense whatever to begin building another global “league” when the UN is the institution in hand. This is just more non-serious nonsense which we are presented all too frequently with by irresponsible “conservative” candidates.
But McCain is largely able to present such “modifications” to his image and neocon sympathies because Dems do not have a nominee to immediately challenge him on this stuff.
McCain is the perfect 19th century warrior. He would do well fighting the Barbary Pirates. One can imagine him in command of a fleet of sailing ships.
After Nixon lost to Kennedy in 1960 the Republicans have pushed the Democrats as not adequate on National Security. they have routinely borrowed the “missle gap” strategy to make the opposition soft on ? whatever. Before 9/11 it was China after “The War on Terror”. So they play it as the ‘fear card’ too blacken the opposition. It stands in for political purposes and blocks studying any of the other real and more serious threats to our country. It sounds great, makees good sound bites and one liners and makes ‘wimps’ of all who aren’t baying at the moon or otherwise on board. One hopes he knows better but don’t count on him to talk about that during the comming weeks. It’s straight out of the Bush-Rove playbook.
I think it is pusjed now to avoid the reality that 9/111 happened on Buah’s watch and in part due to his people’s neglect. They had other fish to fry and got clobbered. Now we’re stuck with their narrative unless we or someone can change it.
This 08 election admittedly leaves me blue but here are some gray words that I rely upon:
“Time sets all things right. Error lives but a day. Truth is eternal.”
Confederate General James Longstreet
“Oh my, the bee has stung me!
Quick, let us form a alliance to stand against the bees that would sting us.
No one can rest safely knowing that an angry bee might suddenly sting.
So it must be! Tis our sacred duty! A mission to eradicate the threat of bees!”
So said the Bush/McCain bear as it licked the last of the honey from its paws.
That McCain is shadowed by Lieberman suggests that “transcending threat” is code for defending Israel.
Squabbling between cultures in that part of the world is a centuries-old fact. Those factions, however, are unified in their hatred of Israel. That hatred may have foundation.
For all the blather about road maps and two state solutions, the United States is tone deaf to Arab complaints. The deafness is not surprising given the fact that too many U.S. officials enjoy dual US/Israeli citizenship.
Unless and until the U.S. public catches on, treasure will flow to the Middle East while our country rots from the inside out.
Discussion of defending Israel get little attention for fear of being branded as anti-semitic.
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
does not connect for me with “….for he or she does not take seriously enough the first and most basic duty a president has — to protect the lives of the American people.”
Colonel:
The clue to understanding McCain’s characterization lies in definition (5), which refers to transcendental functions. The term “transcendental” in mathematics conveys the general sense of “going on forever”, so that transcendental functions have polynomial representations that go on forever, and transcendental numbers necessarily have decimal representations that continue randomly without hope of termination.
Definition (5) translates as “ad infinitum”, in simple terms.
Thus McCain’s comments are most apt, because in his view, this threat is one that justifies a war without end, intended to enrich forever the military-industrial complex even while it bankrupts the nation.
Whaddayaknow?! A politician telling the awful truth for a change!
Colonel,
I agree with you that McCain is not the man, but for another reason. From everything I can see, and adding accounts from others who have seen first hand McCain’s bizarre behavior, McCain is in the beginning-Alzheimer’s stages. Which is sad, for him and his family. We cannot not afford another presidency where the unelected aides run the asylum which is what transpired under the Reagan administration especially during it’s second term. The voters and nation deserve a president that is ‘on top of the game’ and not ‘absent without a clue’.
McCain with advancing Alzheimers does not bode well for our nation should he become the prez by our election process.
“What sort of “League” shall we call this?”
How about “The Avengers”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers_%28comics%29
It’s really a pity he has
so bought into the neo-con ideology. There is a lot to
like about the man.
Are we destined forever to relive the Melian Dialogue?
“Your strongest arguments depend upon hope and the future, and your actual resources are too scanty, as compared with those arrayed against you, for you to come out victorious. You will therefore show great blindness of judgment, unless, after allowing us to retire, you can find some counsel more prudent than this. You will surely not be caught by that idea of disgrace, which in dangers that are disgraceful, and at the same time too plain to be mistaken, proves so fatal to mankind; since in too many cases the very men that have their eyes perfectly open to what they are rushing into, let the thing called disgrace, by the mere influence of a seductive name, lead them on to a point at which they become so enslaved by the phrase as in fact to fall wilfully into hopeless disaster, and incur disgrace more disgraceful as the companion of error, than when it comes as the result of misfortune.
“This, if you are well advised, you will guard against; and you will not think it dishonourable to submit to the greatest city in Hellas, when it makes you the moderate offer of becoming its tributary ally, without ceasing to enjoy the country that belongs to you; nor when you have the choice given you between war and security, will you be so blinded as to choose the worse.
“And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best. Think over the matter, therefore, after our withdrawal, and reflect once and again that it is for your country that you are consulting, that you have not more than one, and that upon this one deliberation depends its prosperity or ruin.
“The Athenians now withdrew from the conference; and the Melians, left to themselves, came to a decision corresponding with what they had maintained in the discussion, and answered: ‘Our resolution, Athenians, is the same as it was at first. We will not in a moment deprive of freedom a city that has been inhabited these seven hundred years; but we put our trust in the fortune by which the gods have preserved it until now, and in the help of men, that is, of the Lacedaemonians; and so we will try and save ourselves. Meanwhile we invite you to allow us to be friends to you and foes to neither party, and to retire from our country after making such a treaty as shall seem fit to us both’.
“Such was the answer of the Melians. The Athenians now departing from the conference said: ‘Well, you alone, as it seems to us, judging from these resolutions, regard what is future as more certain than what is before your eyes, and what is out of sight, in your eagerness, as already coming to pass; and as you have staked most on, and trusted most in, the Lacedaemonians, your fortune, and your hopes, so will you be most completely deceived’.
“The Athenian envoys now returned to the army; and the Melians showing no signs of yielding, the generals at once betook themselves to hostilities, and drew a line of circumvallation round the Melians, dividing the work among the different states. Subsequently the Athenians returned with most of their army, leaving behind them a certain number of their own citizens and of the allies to keep guard by land and sea. The force thus left stayed on and besieged the place…
“Meanwhile the Melians attacked by night and took the part of the Athenian lines over against the market, and killed some of the men, and brought in corn and all else that they could find useful to them, and so returned and kept quiet, while the Athenians took measures to keep better guard in future…
“The Melians again took another part of the Athenian lines which were but feebly garrisoned. Reinforcements afterwards arriving from Athens in consequence, under the command of Philocrates, son of Demeas, the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.”
Thucydides, HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, XVII
Perhaps the current attitudes are actually pre-Melian since there appears to be no realisation — let alone discussion — of the “issues”, of cause and likely effect or even of the “honour” of surrendering to a Great Power, however misguided and destructive its policies.
This is not so much real-politik as government according to the whims of bipolar disorder patients on a roller coaster.
And there is always that extraordinarily stupid “if you’re not with us, your with the terrorists”, the hallmark and epitaph of the Bush II presidency, to cheer us up.
There must be a dozen things that are more threatening to us a society than terrorism. Terrorism can certainly hurt us, but I don’t see how it can destroy us as a society, assuming we don’t do it for them. China, Russia, climate change, pandemics, and even killer asteroids are all more potentially threatening. Yet we waste so much money fighting terrorism, and in the most ineffective way imaginable.
McCain is just promising us more of that.
“Super Duper Double Willing Coagulation League.”
Col, the Delian League served to enrich Athens not Bankrupt it.
A better example of McCain would be in this link:
http://killeenroos.com/1/Romefall.htm
McCain is determine to fight the Sassanid Empire in Mesopotamia while transcendent challenge of our time, the Euro, Yen, Yuan, et all, destroy the Dollar.
He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue… In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War
Colonel, I was watching Bill Buckley’s “Firing Line” program many years ago when he was musing about the threat from the Warsaw Pact being more internal than external. “It’s difficult to think of another such military alliance whose primary purpose was the invasion of its own members.” And here Buckley and his guests paused fruitlessly, spinning their mental wheels.
“The Delian League, you pinheads!” I spat at the TV. Still, Buckley got the job description exactly right. The Warsaw Pact had the good sense to dissolve itself on April Fool’s Day, 1991–but of course NATO still hasn’t gotten the joke.
McCain is running on a platform promising us “other wars” when he doesn’t even know what to do with the two he’ll inherit from King George IV. He wants to engineer a war with Russia somehow, when the last Bohemian Corporal who tried it came a cropper. McCain was reportedly great at crashing airplanes–is this a valid reason to entrust him with the highest office in the land, that he manages to survive self-inflicted disasters? Come to think of it, this was the theme of candidate King Georgie’s resume as well.
Jose
Thanks for pointing that out. pl
If there is a “transcendental” foreign policy challenge facing the United States, we should consider the thesis made by Mike Davis in Planet of Slums.
According to its blurb:
This is an unprecedented situation and an obvious breeding ground for serious discontent.
You’d think by the comments of many in power and punditry today that we were about to be attacked by a couple shiploads of Gort-class planet-scorching robots from “The Day The Earth Stood Still.”
McCain joins in these histrionic exhortations that are boldly and obviously proclaimed simply to scare the pants off of my fellow Americans and continue the primacy of “hard power” policies over all else. Overexaggerating the terrorist threat. Hyping all our enemy’s capabilities while hubristically thumping the casings of our smart bombs and crowing about our unsurpassed power. Promoting fear instead of simmering down threats practically, cooly and with an eye on the balance sheet.
By all means, deal with the hardest threats the hard way, but we should be exerting a lot more creative effort towards being what we want to be: open, rich, supportive of realistic democracy and equitable trade, a desirable and tolerant patchwork of communities and a ribald forum for ideas, science and debate. Isn’t that how we got our many “fans” in the world (and they are still many)?
McCain’s hawking our weakest lines of business.
The tactic is the strategy. Win by conjuring fear. It worked for the Bush gang in the last executive election.
This is the argument against sanitizing battle. The population loses an appreciation for its’ brutality and finality. Show the carnage that this foolish president brought forth by his decision and the public may appreciate-a bit- the true cost.
What’s happening while these criminals distract the public with fear? More illegallity in the form of taxpayer funded bailout to the Wall Street cronies. Where in the Fed’s charter does it say they can finance non-bank entities to avoid insolvency?
McCain looks even worse when you realize that he wants to emulate not so much the presidents policies, but those of Dick Cheney – unchained.
He can’t even keep Iran and Al-Qaeda straight without a correction from Joe Lieberman….
McCain knows very well that Islamic terrorism is not the threat he’s making it out to be. But we have to understand that the Establishment (both sides of the aisle) of this country is using 9/11 and terrorism as the rubric to define any/all U.S. interventions abroad from here on out, in the same way that “communism” was for 50 years the all-purpose justification for interventions in Vietnam, Grenada, Cuba, Nicaragua, etc regardless of whether there were any bona fide commies involved or not. The U.S. invaded Iraq supposedly to stop another 9/11-type event down the line.
Jose,
General Heinz Guderian put it more succinctly: “Boot ’em, don’t splatter ’em.”
My own favorite is the Klingon proverb: “Only a fool fights in a burning house.”
Montag
As I recall, Guderian said “Boot them. Don’t piss on them.”
That makes the spirit of the thing clearer. pl
All:
Trying to work with governments that are based on the principle of the representative government makes the foreign policy costs to go up – the populace’s concerns must be either addressed or ignored at government’s peril.
A league of dictatorships is more viable since such states will not have to worry too much about popular opinion nor future elections.
J @9.05pm,
If I may ask, what other insights or anecdotes do you have to suggest that McCain is entering senility?
This thought first entered my mind when he kept saying a week or so ago, that Iran is arming Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Joe Lieberman had to tell McCain that McCain meant to say that Iran was arming “extremists.” I assume extremists are better than AQI? or worse? who knows?
I thought to myself, McCain doesn’t know who or what the f he’s talking about. I thought, he’s just a sloganeering machine. We’re gonna fight and get these guys and fight and get those guys until victory . . . . The bad guys themselves are interchangeable.
If you have any other examples, I’d like to hear, because McCain’s “quick wit” on the trail makes him seem like he’s still got it.
Though I can’t tell if his terrible national security policies are a result of senility, or the same old GOP Military Industrial Complex which has seriously infected the party. It’s unfortunate that so many in the MSM are unwilling to criticize McCain’s national security positions because he was a war hero which inoculates him from serious national security policy critiques.
Have any of the Presidential candidates released health records?
Are all of you sure there is even going to be an election in November?
Someone at Asia Online today makes the point that AlQaeda is a small, incompetent organisation that got lucky onece because the U.S. was busy asleep, or watching TV, or shopping, or looting the taxpayer …
September 11 was a third-rate operation
Babak,
If a league of dictatorships was more viable then the Axis should have won WWII. Dictatorships can be suckers for implementing a foolish popular whim as much as democracies. Witness the Argentine Junta’s diastrous invasion of the Falklands/Malvinas Islands in 1982. This misadventure was wildly popular with the Argentinians–until the extent of their humiliation became apparent and the Junta lost all legitimacy.
Colonel John Hughes-Wilson tells a funny story in “Military Intelligence Blunders and Cover-Ups” about the British Victory Parade after the dustup. A bureaucrat in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was chatting balcony to balcony with a colleague in the Defense Intelligence Staff:
“You know, Harry, this all shows the results of letting some desperately unpopular tinpot autocrat use a crazy foreign military adventure to court popularity and get off the hook at home.”
“Charles, you’re absolutely right. Yes, Galtieri and the junta really blew it.”
“Galtieri? Harry, I’m talking about Margaret Thatcher!”
But did the Delian “League” enrich Athens? Depends what you mean by “enrich” and whether you choose to judge Athenian affairs in, say, 431 or 403 BCE. While there was a heap of loot to use as Athenian pork (by 454 BC only 17 states were still furnishing naval contingents to league operations and by 431 only Lesbos, Chios, and Samos were still providing ships — the others sent cash) a reasonable person might believe that this helped drive the imperial dream to increasingly bizarre folies de grandeur including the imposition of Athenian law, political system, even weights and measures on “allies”, Athenian military/financial satrapies (1000 cleruchs), Athenian colonists/settler cells on “allied” land, routing all grain shipments via the Piraeus, enforced oaths of loyalty, goodwill, even love toward Athens, and numerous other examples of a disastrous lack of tact, diplomatic skill, restraint, judgement and understanding in the treatment of “allies” and the sort of isolation that made having to tear down the walls of Athens more likely than not.
As to McCain, he wants to be president and believes he can be with the help of whatever is left of the Bush II coalition of the willing to believe anything at all; Mark Shields said years ago on the Newshour that the only cure for presidential ambition is embalming fluid.
In October 2006:
“Finally, a questioner lays it all on the line: ‘The war’s the big issue,’ he says, adding, ‘Some kind of disengagement—it’s going to have to happen. It’s a big issue for you, for our party, in 24 months. It’s not that long a time.’ McCain replies, ‘I do believe this issue isn’t going to be around in 2008. I think it’s going to either tip into civil war…’. He breaks off, as if not wanting to rehearse the handful of other unattractive possibilities. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I believe in prayer. I pray every night.’ And that’s where he leaves his discussion of the war this morning: at the kneeling rail. On the way to our next stop, McCain tells me, ‘It’s just so hard for me to contemplate failure that I can’t make the next step’.”
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/02/mccain200702?printable=true¤tPage=all
Montag:
The Soviet Union, a dictatorship, won WWII. The other allies were a side-show to the Eastern Front.
I was only suggesting that a League of Democracies would be very difficult to manage and to get to do anything since the price will be high: state price + popular price
Arun beat me to this – I have been traveling. How many times has George Bush repeated this tripe without ever being called on it!! The primary function of the president, what she or he takes the oath of office to do, is to protect the Constitution, our form of government. It looks like McCain wants to carry on the fear mongering that has gotten us so far off track. Or will we look back and see that our democratic republic died at the hands of George Bush and the feckless Congress that failed in its Constitutional duty to be one of the co-equal branches of government?
This “league” of McCain’s is interesting and it seems others here have done a pretty good job skewering the idea.
As for McCain’s views on terrorism, I decided to do a bit of research to see what others believe is the greatest threat to the U.S.:
Hillary Clinton tends not to speak much in such absolutist terms, but in this speech she identifies nuclear proliferation as the greatest threat with a nod toward nuclear terrorism: “I think it’s important that we also focus on the most significant threat of all: nuclear proliferation. The 9-11 Public Discourse Project, an outgrowth of the 9-11 Commission, argued that ‘preventing terrorists from gaining weapons of mass destruction must be elevated above all others problems of national security because it represents the greatest threat to the American people.’” And after further review, Senator Clinton in the New Hampshire debate definitively agreed that “nuclear terrorism” is the greatest threat.
Barack Obama agrees: “The gravest danger to the American people is the threat of a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon and the spread of nuclear weapons to dangerous regimes.”
President Bill Clinton: “In his campaign, Bush had said he thought the biggest security issue was Iraq and a national missile defense,” Clinton said. “I told him that in my opinion, the biggest security problem was Osama bin Laden.”
John Kerry: “This is a stark reminder that the war on terrorism is global, and extends far beyond Iraq to our very shores. Terrorism is the biggest threat to Americans’ security, and this event exposes the misleading myth that we are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
No surprise here from President G.W. Bush: “The greatest threat we face today is the possibility of a secret and sudden attack with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.”
And finally, to conclude the theme, Colin Powell, the friendless man hated by the right and left: “What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it’s terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?”
“By all means, deal with the hardest threats the hard way, but we should be exerting a lot more creative effort towards being what we want to be: open, rich, supportive of realistic democracy and equitable trade, a desirable and tolerant patchwork of communities and a ribald forum for ideas, science and debate. Isn’t that how we got our many “fans” in the world (and they are still many)?”
conqueringshed @ 02:14.
If you missed it, go back and read the rest. It’s not long and it’s hard to imagine a sweeter summing up.
walrus
“Are all of you sure there is even going to be an election in November?”
no. and i’m not sure that george w. bush will still be with us by november.
but we carry on by faith.
thanks to j for mentioning the mccain dementia. i held off this time, but maybe now it’ll be easier seen. or maybe not, seein’ as there are those who still speak of our earlier alzheimer’s victim as “the great communicator” for those years he spent saying nothing, not very well.
again on mccain:
american hero.
prisoner of war, internalized.
torture victim. how sane would you still be?
it’s the pow, torture history that gets him the free pass to say stupid stuff, when it should be the warning light.
Montag, Babak Makkinejad,
A brief word on the Argentine war — a matter of some consequence for us Brits.
Mrs T. got lucky. A friend of mine who was an MoD civil servant at the time said that the Argentinians simply failed to adjust the fuse times when they adopted the strategy of attacking at very low altitude out of the sun. Had they done so, our naval losses would almost certainly have been very much worse.
An article in the Air & Space Power Journal suggests he may have been right:
‘Many of the Argentine bombs in the campaign failed to explode when they hit the British ships. The failure was probably caused by releasing the bombs from such a low altitude that the fuse-arming-delay time exceeded the weapon’s short time of flight; thus the fuse failed to arm and the bombs did not detonate.’
(See http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj02/fal02/corum.html)
But for a small error in setting the fuses, who knows — the Thatcher revolution might have been stillborn and the junta might still be in power in Argentina.
As to the question of a whether a league of democracies is more feasible than a league of authoritarian states.
What is often not recognized is that there was a real possibility of a geopolitical order based upon an alliance of authoritarian regimes in the late Thirties, which was frustrated by Hitler’s decision to attack the Soviet Union. The diplomats of the German Moscow Embassy, in particular the last German ambassador to the Soviet Union, Werner von der Schulenberg, argued that Stalin was turning from an international into a national socialist; and they believed that Germany’s need for raw materials could be better satisfied by cooperating with Russia than by attacking it. On this basis, Schulenberg argued that Germany should attempt to create a ‘continental bloc’, made up of the three original signatories of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Germany, Italy and Japan, and the power against whom the pact had been directed — the Soviet Union. His strategy was taken up by Ribbentrop, who radicalised it into a project by which the four powers would slake their thirst for territorial expansion by dismembering the British Empire.
As with the Falklands, but on a vastly greater scale, small causes may have had great consequences. As Babak Makkinejad points out, it was essentially the Red Army which destroyed the Wehrmacht. The thought of what might have happened to Britain, had Stalin and Hitler continued as allies, tends to make me shudder.
Could the Nazi-Soviet Pact have lasted? It is far from clear that Stalin would have broken it — his daughter recalls him in his last years saying ruefully: ‘Ech together with the Germans we would have been invincible.’ As to why Hitler decided to abandon the pact, opinions are still divided. Some believe that Mein Kampf defined what were always Hitler’s real agendas. But Schulenberg’s junior colleague Hans von Herwarth thought that the problem was that Hitler had become lost in the fictions created by his own rhetoric, and could not absorb new information — a kind of feedback loop.
In the light of recent experience, the problem of deceivers deceiving themselves, and becoming trapped in their own rhetoric, hardly seems peculiar to authoritarian leaders.
Talk of a ‘League of Democracies’ certainly makes very good rhetoric. And underlying it is the patent fact that the United States and Western Europe do continue to have very substantial common interests, and are likely to continue to do so.
But there are real difficulties, many of them to do with the economic aspects of geopolitics. European dependence on gas supplies coming from or through Russia is one central fact — and attempts to open up alternative routes are not doing very well: Putin and Gazprom seem to have been winning most of the tricks. This is hardly going to make the Germans, who are central in all this, terribly enthusiastic about a ‘League of Democracies’ one of whose targets is Russia: which seems to be McCain’s conception. And who knows — some version of Schulenberg’s ideas might just conceivably come back into fashion.
As to the United States, the League of Democracies idea does not sit very well with an economic model involving dependence upon capital inflows from non-democratic states — notably China. For one thing, insofar as an American strategy to have both guns and butter depends upon such imports, it depends upon the Chinese not anticipating that those guns might be turned on them.
Back in 2003, the Canadian financial analyst Marshall Auerback wrote a piece on the http://www.prudentbear.com website entitled ‘The Kindness of Strangers is Killing America’, pointing to likelihood that the imbalances in the global economy would end up producing a very unpleasant crisis. It may be a straw in the wind that Auerback is now a consultant to the bond firm Pimco, and has produced updated version of his argument in an article co-authored last September with the Managing Director of that organisation entitled ‘Renegade Economics: The Bretton Woods II Fiction.’
(See http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Viewpoints/2007/Renegade+Economics-+The+Bretton+Woods+2+Fiction-+Executive+Summary.htm.)
Col Lang, “So, this transcendent threat is greater than anything else around? It is greater than the shakiness of the economy, the threat of pestilence, the competition provided by an emerging China, all of that?”
Col, I agree with your sentinments here. However, in the spirit of fairness and full disclosure, it should be noted that it is not some guys crashing airplanes into buildings that has McCain (and his like minded peers) making hyperbolic statements regarding the threat level posed by islamic extremists.
Rather, the argument goes, these extremists want to destroy our civilization and would love to obtain – and use against us on US soil – nuclear weapons and/or maybe some effective biological agents. It is the potential of this sort of attack that makes the threat “existential”.
avedis
The takfiris are an existential threat to INDIVIDUALS, TOWNS maybe even part of a CITY, but they are not an EXISTENTIAL threat to the UNITED STATES or to any major European State.
I will not speak of them as competitors in the market place of ideas. The thought is absurd. pl
This post got eaten by the spam filter, probably because I was using the local library’s wifi, so here it is again posted from home:
This “league” of McCain’s is interesting and it seems others here have done a pretty good job skewering the idea.
As for McCain’s views on terrorism, I decided to do a bit of research to see what others believe is the greatest threat to the U.S.:
Hillary Clinton tends not to speak much in such absolutist terms, but in this speech she identifies nuclear proliferation as the greatest threat with a nod toward nuclear terrorism: “I think it’s important that we also focus on the most significant threat of all: nuclear proliferation. The 9-11 Public Discourse Project, an outgrowth of the 9-11 Commission, argued that ‘preventing terrorists from gaining weapons of mass destruction must be elevated above all others problems of national security because it represents the greatest threat to the American people.’” And earlier Senator Clinton in the New Hampshire debate definitively agreed that “nuclear terrorism” is the greatest threat.
Barack Obama agrees: “The gravest danger to the American people is the threat of a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon and the spread of nuclear weapons to dangerous regimes.”
President Bill Clinton: “In his campaign, Bush had said he thought the biggest security issue was Iraq and a national missile defense,” Clinton said. “I told him that in my opinion, the biggest security problem was Osama bin Laden.”
John Kerry: “This is a stark reminder that the war on terrorism is global, and extends far beyond Iraq to our very shores. Terrorism is the biggest threat to Americans’ security, and this event exposes the misleading myth that we are fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
No surprise here from President G.W. Bush: “The greatest threat we face today is the possibility of a secret and sudden attack with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.”
And finally, to conclude the theme, Colin Powell, the friendless man hated by the right and left: “What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it’s terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?”
nattyb,
accounts are from those serving in iraq. mccain’s behavior during his iraq visits off camera and behind the scenes, caused the hair on the back of their necks to stand on end.
conqueringshed,
“…while hubristically thumping the casings of our smart bombs and crowing about our unsurpassed power.” I would substitute HUMPING for thumping, but that’s just me.
No, McCain apparently hasn’t released his health records or even given out the names of his doctors. People in Europe were shocked at what an old man he seemed to be. He has to wear heavy makeup to hide the facial scars from skin cancer surgeries.
David Habakkuk,
By all accounts the negotiations conducted by Molotov in Berlin in November, 1940 proved that Germany and the Soviet Union couldn’t be allies. The Germans tried to interest Molotov in a Southern expansion towards the Indian Ocean, while he was only interested in a Westward expansion against the buffer states between the two nations. Hitler became convinced “that sooner or later Stalin would abandon us and go over to the enemy.” According to Albert Speer, Hitler drew a pencil line along the Ural Mountains after Molotov left, demarcating the German and Japanese spheres of influence in the Soviet Union. The Germans were also angry about the prices the Soviet Union was charging them for the goods they traded. At one point the Germans had to hand over an unfinished cruiser to give the Soviets their pound of flesh!
yes, mccain is very visibly very old. much of my hope for survival of the nation comes from my inability to believe that the younger folks will be willing to turn their government over to someone who looks & acts that,well,really,living-dead. (especially when he’s receiving whispered wisdom from lieberman.)
Montag,
As to buffer states, Poland and the Baltics no longer served this role — having been partitioned. What the November 1940 negotiations made clear was indeed that Stalin was not prepared to abandon South-Eastern Europe to Germany, and confine his ambitions to Asia. But maintaining the Pact would probably still have been Hitler’s least worst option.
Certainly, Hitler could draw pencil lines along the Urals — just as the neocons could dream of ‘regime change’ in the ‘axis of evil’ leading to the final abolition of tyranny. Werner von der Schulenberg and his military attaché, Ernst Köstring, were both First World War Eastern Front veterans — and their professional judgement, accepted by the German Foreign Office, was that sending the Wehrmacht into the vast expanses of Eurasia would involve it in the same kind of problems as had done for the Grande Armée. This turned out to be the case.
The Soviet experts’ assessment of the likely result of a war fought in Europe — where the conditions favoured the kind of mechanised warfare at which the Wehrmacht had proven their master in 1939-40 — was quite different, and made them deeply skeptical of the notion that Stalin would side with the British. As his fellow diplomat Ulrich von Hassell put it in a diary entry recording a conversation not long after the invasion, Schulenberg’s view was that Stalin would have been highly unlikely to have attacked Germany ‘except in the event of an obvious breakdown’. These two very experienced diplomats both believed that ‘Russia had only one feeling about an intact Germany – fear’, and would ‘never have attacked Germany, or at least never have attacked successfully, so long as Germany possessed an intact army.’
As to reliance on the Soviets for raw materials, of course there were problems, but probably ‘compellence’ was a better solution than invasion. The German Moscow Embassy ‘house view’ is set out in another diary entry by Hassell from March 1941. The ‘insanity’ of an invasion of Russia, Hassell noted, was being defended on the grounds of the necessity of occupying the Ukraine, it would actually mean ‘the cutting off of imports from Russia, since the Ukraine will be only be useful after a long time.’ And this also proved to be the case.
What comes out of Hassell’s earlier comment was that the central issue was actually whether Hitler could realistically expect to bring the war in the West either to an end or to an inconclusive stalemate, without so weakening the Wehrmacht as to tempt Stalin to try his luck. It is hard one to call, but I suspect that if a significant part of the resources that were deployed on the Eastern Front had been deployed against Britain, things might have got very sticky indeed.
Hans von Herwarth, having earlier fully supported his ambassador’s plans for a German-Soviet entente, changed tack dramatically in the lead-up to the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and warned Western diplomatic colleagues in Moscow, notably Charles Bohlen, of the negotiations, in a desperate attempt to make the democracies realise that they needed to come to terms with Hitler before Stalin did. The following year he warned the American Moscow Embassy of the plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
In the lead-up to the invasion, Schulenberg was desperately trying to engineer a meeting between Stalin and Hitler. Decades later, in his memoirs, Herwarth would recall how he had thought the two men might ‘get on very well with one another’, and form an unbeatable combination, raising the terrifying spectacle of ‘a world dominated by Hitler and Stalin.’
The views expressed by Bohlen on U.S. policy towards the Soviet Union after 1945 are often misunderstood, because the decisive influence on his thinking of the views of the German diplomats is missed. A major problem here is the widespread assumption that people like Schulenberg and Herwarth were heel-clicking Nazis: which was not the case.