The Presidential Candidates’ Foreign Policy Statements: Rudolph Giuliani

The Presidential Candidates’ Foreign Policy Statements: Rudolph Giuliani

by CKR

Continuing my series on foreign policy statements by the presidential candidates, here’s my short version of Rudolph Giuliani’s statement in Foreign Affairs. (Obama, Romney, Richardson, Edwards) Same ground rules. Read Giuliani’s essay.

The next U.S. president will face three key foreign policy challenges:
• To set a course for victory in the terrorists' war on global order.
• To strengthen the international system that the terrorists seek to destroy.
• To extend the benefits of the international system in an ever-widening arc of security and stability across the globe.
The most effective means for achieving these goals are building a stronger defense, developing a determined diplomacy, and expanding our economic and cultural influence.

Security
• Be realistic about our enemies. They follow a violent ideology: radical Islamic fascism, which uses the mask of religion to further totalitarian goals and aims to destroy the existing international system. These enemies wear no uniform. They have no traditional military assets. They rule no states but can hide and operate in virtually any of them and are supported by some. Our enemies are emboldened by signs of weakness.
• Destroy the al Qaeda network and kill or capture its leaders.
• Rebuild the military. The U.S. Army needs a minimum of ten new combat brigades.
• Take a hard look at other requirements, especially in terms of submarines, modern long-range bombers, and in-flight refueling tankers.
• Build a national missile defense system more rapidly.
• Improve our intelligence and technological capabilities to prevent another attack within the United States, including satellites and human intelligence.
• Expand and strengthen the Proliferation Security Initiative.
• Prevent rogue states from handing nuclear materials to terrorist groups.
• Develop detection systems to identify nuclear material that is being imported into the United States or developed by operatives inside the country.
• Enact heightened and more comprehensive security measures at our ports and borders as rapidly as possible.
• National security agencies must work much more closely with our homeland security and law enforcement agencies.
• Preserve the gains made by the U.S.A. Patriot Act and not unrealistically limit electronic surveillance or legal interrogation.

Diplomacy
• Hold serious talks even with our adversaries, but not with those bent on our destruction or those who cannot deliver on their agreements.
• For diplomacy to succeed, the U.S. government must be united. Adversaries naturally exploit divisions. Members of Congress who talk directly to rogue regimes at cross-purposes with the White House are not practicing diplomacy; they are undermining it. The task of a president is not merely to set priorities but to ensure that they are pursued across the government. It is only when they are -- and when Washington can negotiate from a position of strength -- that negotiations will yield results.
• Make changes in the State Department and the Foreign Service. Refine the diplomats' mission down to their core purpose: presenting U.S. policy to the rest of the world. Our ambassadors must clearly understand and clearly advocate for U.S. policies and be judged on the results.
• Strengthen and broaden the Voice of America; expand Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
• Upgrade and extend public diplomacy and strategic communications, with a greater focus on new media such as the Internet.

International Relations
• Regard no great power as our inherent adversary.
• Continue to fully engage with Europe, both in its collective capacity as the European Union and through our special relationship with the United Kingdom and our traditional diplomatic relations with France, Germany, Italy, and other western European nations.
• NATO's role and character should be reexamined. NATO has expanded, taken on roles for which it was not originally conceived, and acted beyond its original theater. Build on these successes and think more boldly and more globally. Open the organization's membership to any state that meets basic standards of good governance, military readiness, and global responsibility, regardless of its location. The new NATO should dedicate itself to confronting significant threats to the international system, from territorial aggression to terrorism.
• The already established and still rising powers of Asia (Japan, South Korea, Australia and India are mentioned) must be given at least as much attention as Europe.
• Work with China and Russia on economic and security issues, but do not be silent about their unhelpful behavior or human rights abuses.
• Continue relationships with other American nations (“of primary importance”). Specifically mentioned are Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.
• Helping Africa today will help increase peace and decency throughout the world tomorrow.
• Continue the Bush administration's effort to help Africa overcome AIDS and malaria.
• Help Africa is to increase trade with the continent.
• Government aid should be linked to reform.
• The United Nations can be useful for some humanitarian and peacekeeping functions, but we should not expect much more of it. The United States should lead, but should be prepared to look to other tools.
• Commit to securing the rights of men, women, and children everywhere.
• Promote economic development by private direct investment. Revitalize and streamline all U.S. foreign-aid activities to support -- not substitute for -- private investment in other countries.
• Faced with a choice between leaving a troubled zone to anarchy or helping build functioning civil societies with accountable governments that can serve as bulwarks against barbarism, the American people will choose the latter. A hybrid military-civilian organization -- a Stabilization and Reconstruction Corps staffed by specially trained military and civilian reservists -- must be developed. The agency would undertake tasks such as building roads, sewers, and schools; advising on legal reform; and restoring local currencies.

Comments

[James]

Guiliani's bottom line on "security?" Adopting authoritarianism is the best defense against totalitarianism. Such has been the battle cry of every caudillo since...since forever, I guess. I just don't believe it, and history backs me up.

How do you know an adversary is "bent on our destruction" unless you hold talks with them? Giuliani thus continues the Bush policy of using "diplomacy" as a reward for those who obey rather than as a genuine tool of foreign policy. NATO is now officially no longer to be a defensive alliance, but a competitor to the UN in managing and moderating interstate relations worldwide. Since NATO was always explicitly a military organization with some diplomatic functions, and the UN was always explicitly a diplomatic organization with some military functions, the policy shift is too painfully obvious to ignore. Authoritarianism at home and militarism abroad...this is better than totalitarianism HOW?

Bush/Rumsfeld and their advisors have essentially proven outright that everything the Russians dreaded about NATO expansion is true and everything the NATO expanders promised was a lie. Giuliani hopes to bury the last vestige of NATO's demure defensive veil.

Note the continued sniping at Pelosi for doing what Republican congressmen have never been reluctant to do. They got a lot mileage out of that; proof positive that the "liberal media" is a myth.

The Republicans have formally drunk the "nation-building" Kool-Aid, leaving me to cite Barbara Tuchman's jab at the logic of the Vietnam War: "What nation was ever built from the outside?"