High expectations followed Obama s election, but expectations were higher and felt by more people around the world when it came to foreign policy. The much lamented apologetic tour he embarked upon did restore lubrication to a seized up international mechanism, but Obama s actual foreign policy gambits showed little tangible deviation from his predecessor s.
The unilateral swagger of the Bush era was easily reversed, but Obama s scrapping of Bush s missile defense plan is truly a step in the right direction. Russia has already reacted favorably by scrapping its threatened missile deployment near the Polish border, allowing US & NATO supplies to flow through Russia to Afghanistan’s northern border and most recently showing support for stronger sanctions against Iran. Russia is sending back a clearly positive signal, but action must follow this, of course
Russia s removing the threat of missile deployment as well as a rebuke of the Iranian president s most recent holocaust denial (Russian s know that Nazi slaughter-lust was no Zionist lie) is only a first step. More significant concessions, such as allowing tougher sanctions on Iran and progress on a new START initiative, will be expected from the Russians, but a significant corner has been turned here.
Irving Kristol, the god-father of neo-conservatism, died the day after this policy was announced and the militant freedom spreading anticommunist foreign policies of his movement seem to be going with him. The impending march of neo-con democracy across Eastern Europe to the gates of Russia was actually scaring the hell out of these people and, as oppose to Iran, they have lots of nukes that work now. The main thing that continued to amplify the voices of iron-fisted Russian Generals, FSB directors and Putin himself was the encroachment of NATO membership and US missile defense. A missile defense program centered around a nonexistent technology aimed at long range missiles that are a decade beyond Iran s grasp and happen to be stockpiled by Russia. This is why the Russians will continue to respond positively to a new US missile defense plan to deploy tangible, functional mobile weapons platforms away from Europe and against the proven medium and short range missiles stockpiled by Iran now.
There are varying opinions about this in Poland, Czech Republic, and other Eastern European and Baltic states, but that s no reason to restart the cold war. The cold war is over and if this course of action is continued, the road back to the cold war can be avoided. Irving Kristol s time has, literally, passed. It s up to his son, William Kristol, to rally the Neo-con movement to a coherent foreign policy, but I don t think he s up to the task.
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