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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (35131)	7/28/2002 9:23:17 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

The Europeans have not helped matters by making it clear that they consider Bush to be a stupid, ignorant, illiterate, cowboy. Well, . . . uh . . . . um . . . hand over mouth, looking downward, . . . uh . . . well, certainly not cowboy. He doesn't make the grade. ;-)

To: LindyBill who wrote (35131)	7/28/2002 9:23:59 AM
From: kumar	Respond to of 281500

<<a stupid, ignorant, illiterate, cowboy. >> not that there's anything wrong with that :-) :-) cheers, kumar@likeIdwouldsay.pov

To: LindyBill who wrote (35131)	7/28/2002 5:21:42 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi LindyBill; Re HMS Pinafore: Now landsmen all, whoever you may be, If you want to rise to the top of the tree, If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool, Be careful to be guided by this golden rule-- Stick close to your desks and never go to sea, And you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navee! members.tripod.com -- Carl

To: LindyBill who wrote (35131)	7/29/2002 1:59:01 AM
From: tekboy	Respond to of 281500

followed up on Tek's comments on various Political Science types who he believed are the best by googling and reading excerpts from them tonight. They are, of course, multilateralists to the bone. well...most of the people I was mentioning to John were academics whose value was not in their foreign policy opinions but rather in their conceptual contributions to various disciplines--basic social science as opposed to applied social science, you might say--so that's not entirely relevant. (Most academics' views on current policy are not worth spit, or rather not necessarily worth any more than a random SI poster.) And it's hard to see Huntington, the guy I raved about, as Mr. Multilateral; he's a conservative democrat and not at all PC. As for my two "ideal" NSA picks, Nye could certainly deserve that title, but my hunch is that he'd be sensible and pragmatic enough to avoid any great harm to the republic. He was an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, and also head of the National Intelligence Council, and is hardly a lefty loony. Haass, meanwhile, is about as multilateralist as Colin Powell. Today, compared to Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz et al., that looks pretty soft, but I think that's because the goal posts have been moved to the right recently. What you'd get with Haass would be hegemony with a human face; what you'd get with Nye would be internationalism with some common sense. The thing I think you're missing, finally, is the point Wohlforth and Brooks make in the lead article in the current FA: We're so dominant at the moment that we really don't have anything to fear from some multilateralism, so long as we keep our eyes on the big picture and don't give away the store. Interestingly, even Robert Kagan, whose piece on transatlantic relations has gotten such play recently, offers policy recommendations at the end that aren't that different from those of Wohlforth and Brooks. In his mid-90s book on how to think about American foreign policy in the post-Cold War world, Haass used the image of the US as sheriff, with our allies and occasional partners as a posse. That is, we're the dominant player in the game, but there are some things we could use some help with, so we round up some other folk and go after the problem with some backup. Why be Gary Cooper in High Noon--the unilateralist option, you might say--when for the relatively small price of politeness and some listening you can guarantee that the odds are heavily in your favor? tb@seemslikecommonsensetome.com