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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (84115)3/20/2003 10:03:56 AM
From: JohnM  Read Replies (3) of 281500
 
Caldwell's point (do read him carefully) is that America is going to take measures against France, not out of pique, but out of hard headed political calculations - that whatever calculus enabled the French to believe they could set themselves up to thwart and obstruct actions that we believed were essential for our national security without paying any price - well, that calculus has got to go. The surest way to overturn it is to make some example of the French pour encourager les autres.

This is doubly true as it is a neocon article of faith that it is wise in foreign policy to reward your allies and punish your enemies as it encourages more allies in the long run. The neocons believe that the US has spent twenty years bullying our allies and appeasing our enemies, and that we are now paying the price of that mistaken policy.

Terrible, just terrible, foreign policy advice. The French and the Germans are our allies with which we have a serious policy disagreement but with which we have profound agreements on a host of other issues. To reify the Iraq disagreements into basic premises of foreign policy is only to make a bad moment much worse.

I agree that this is neocon policy. But it's yet one more reason to find that policy not only wrong but objectionable.
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