There was a time when people like Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, and George H.W. Bush represented the right-wing of the foreign policy Establishment. Yeah, sure, there were plenty of citizens to their right in the John Birch Society or various anti-communist organizations. There were generals/politicians like George Wallace’s running mate Curtis LeMay who never saw a problem that couldn’t be nuked. Some people saw Nixon and Kissinger as savvy “realists” who were able to navigate a middle path between the more pacifist elements of the left-wing and the more fever-brained emotionalism of their base. In fact, most of the National Security Council over the last thirty-five years has been made up of Kissinger-apprentices, regardless of what party they’ve served. You could almost say that Nixon and Kissinger provided a framework that has persevered since Ford left office, and which has formed the based for what we consider ‘normal’ American foreign policy.
It’s a policy that I, and most of the left, have found wanting, but it’s familiar, like an old baseball mitt. Prior to 9/11 few people questioned why we periodically ramped up to invade a Grenada or a Panama, or why we were expanding NATO eastward, or why new American bases were cropping up in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and Central Asia. Those of us who opposed these policies (or, in the case of NATO, questioned them) were definitely in the minority within a Democratic Party Establishment that was operating on Kissingerian terms.
So much has changed. The New START Treaty that the Obama administration has negotiated is being opposed by the Senate Republicans, and therefore will probably not be ratified. Yet, the GOP foreign policy Establishment supports it, as was evident when Obama recently discussed the treaty with the press.
More interesting than the comments, though, were the three men flanking the president at the time: Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, and Henry Kissinger, all veterans of modern Republican presidents, and members in good standing of Republican Foreign Policy Elder Statesmen, at least by the standards of the Republican establishment.
The point Obama and his team wanted to emphasize, of course, is that this treaty enjoys broad bipartisan support, just so long as one overlooks the Senate Republican caucus. It didn’t matter; the GOP votes that count are the ones that refuse to even consider the consequences of their conduct.
No one questions that the leader of the GOP foreign policy Establishment in the Senate is Richard Lugar of Indiana. He serves as the Ranking Member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he has been a true leader on the critical issues related to securing nuclear materials in a post-Soviet world. Here’s Lugar talking to his colleagues:
LUGAR: Please do your duty for your country. We do not have verification of the Russian nuclear posture right now. We’re not going to have it until we sign the START treaty. We’re not going to be able to get rid of further missiles and warheads aimed at us. I state it candidly to my colleagues, one of those warheads…could demolish my city of Indianapolis — obliterate it! Now Americans may have forgotten that. I’ve not forgotten it and I think that most people who are concentrating on the START treaty want to move ahead to move down the ladder of the number of weapons aimed at us.
But his colleagues either disagree that it is their duty to safeguard the country against nuclear attack and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials, or they have some higher priority than their duty. We might expect the opposition party to be a little reluctant to hand the president a foreign policy accomplishment that he can put in his cap, but we’re talking about nukes here. Isn’t there a certain point where politics ends and the interests of the country begin?
This isn’t being held up as some bargaining chip. There is no clearly articulated ideological opposition to the treaty. But, evidently, the old foreign policy Establishment has no pull, no credibility, with the current breed of Republican senator.
I’ve been saying that these folks are worse than anything we’ve ever seen before. This is just proof of it in one area. But it’s just as true in every other area.
Actually, anyone crazier than Kissinger and/or Curtis LeMay is hard to envisage. And while I have not currently paid attention to GOP howling, the ‘old’ policies were based on systematic lies about ‘danger’ ; partly enabled by deliberate ‘intelligence’ overestimates of Soviet/Russian threat : rather reminds me of Iraq.
That this was a ploy for public consumption is verified by the policy of routinely sending nuclear-armed SAC bombers into Soviet airspace to ‘Twist the Bear’s Tail.’
Nov 22 I included this NPT outline in my updates – more comprehensive than anything I had put together myself.
http://www.transcend.org/tms/2010/05/the-npt-and-the-nuclear-power-trap/
The Point ? That Kissingerian policies have always been wrapped in lies and hidden : no wonder broad support is short because they are official secrets wrapped up in military initiatives funneled through Israel.
I disagree that ideology has anything to do with what’s going on. If anything, with guys like Coates and Kirk coming into the caucus, there’s more Lugar types in the caucus now. This is and always has been about politics. Its about denying Obama any victory so that when he runs in 2012 the GOP can run attack ads (and Broder can run op-eds) saying that Obama was a foreign policy failure (by 2012 it will be CW that Obama “lost” Afghanistan) and the GOP daddies will make us great again on foreign policy. This is about forcing the White House and Obama to spend precious time and political capital going after a non controversial issue, preventing them from being able to fully engage on bigger issues like taxes and jobs. This is about the Republicans using the built in leverage of our 18th century political institutions to prevent ANYTHING from getting done unless their right-wing agenda is accommodated. This is, and always has been about power. And until Obama and the dems learn how to successfully wield it, we’ll keep scratching our heads over these “no-brainer” policy issues that can’t be resolved.
Was this part not clear?
Apologies. You’re right, you did make that pretty clear. Perhaps we are on the same page. in my view, what defines the craziness of the current GOP is their willingness to play chicken with our rusty political institutions in order to enact the right-wing agenda that the public don’t even remotely support. My view is the party of no strategy, now that it successfully did its magic by denying obama any political victories in domestic policy, is now moving to foreign policy. Its pretty clear that Obama isn’t planning to ever call them out on this game, so why not? With the house lost, the dems have no chance to enact anymore domestic legislation before 2013. Obama’s one arena where he still has power, foreign policy, is now the latest area the GOP is planning to obstruct to deny political victories. This fight over the START treaty is about politics and if the GOP can flex its muscle here, they will know that their newly acquired power extends to foreign policy as well and that whatever Obama wants to do, he needs to run it by the GOP (nice little state department budget you got there, shame if anything were to happen to it, no?). Obama needs to rally the left and the establishment here and beat back the GOP’s tentacles trying to hijack foreign policy as well. They’ve already had 8 years of destroying the world, they can wait until 2012 for another crack at it.
You are complaining that they do not take the treaty seriously. Think about it.
Not that there is any doubt that demockracy is being killed by fascists. You usually don’t accept comment that blunt. Neither were they so blatant…before GWB/Cheney/Rove.
While this remark focuses on only one aspect of Kissingerism, it was only in 2006 that Henry spoke in Israel advising that in order to maintain Israel as a Jewish state, the “transfer” of Palestinian Israelis into cantons is warranted. Presumably, this Afrikaaner-like solution, which worked in South Africa for a period, could be sustained politically. And of course, those cantons would eventually become a source of cheap Palestinian labor.
On this matter of resolving the Palestinian conflict in the most pernicious ethnocentric way, leading to an Apartheid state, Brent Scowcroft (the Bush I Secretary of State), was not a follower. In every way, he seems as anti-Kissinger as Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.
The word arrogance comes to mind. Arrogance. Because it is perhaps the best measure of the sheer void of understanding of global politics that these Rep peacocks can strut.
Actually, they understand foreign policy and politics quite well. Far better, apparently, than the Democrats. It’s just that their goals have much more to do with 1984 than 1776.
Well I suppose I must think every Serious Person has been insane since Nixon and that these people are devils incarnate. Kissinger is and was insane. The J. Edgar Hoover of foreign policy; an evil, abominable, horrible person.
when Kissinger is sane…the world truly is coming to an end.