PART IV: OVERVIEW YEAR 2016: EMPOWERING INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS &
AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS: THE FOREIGN AND SECURITY ISSUES IMPLICATIONS FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE GLOBAL ROLE
By
Harry C. Blaney III
This new last section looking at 2016 will cover the future role and the question of how to make more effective international institutions and American presidential politics and the foreign and security issues implications for America’s future global role. We will look at the implications for American foreign policy of the debate we are seeing in both parties and foreign reactions and the cost to America of the wrong choices.
THE POVERTY OR POTENTIAL OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS?
All of the challenges we have outlined in these three posts on 2016 require a major restructuring and strengthening of our international institutions. A this point is it difficult to see how this goal can be accomplished with the weak and in-warded turning we are seeing in too many countries developed and developing. Yet without strong international bodies we are likely not to solve the many problems that plague our globe in this century.
A whole new rethink is needed and new powers and resources for organizations like the World Bank, IMF, UNHCR, NATO, UNICEF, WHO, UNEP, UNDP, World Food Program, and others are needed and needed now. Not least is new mandates for the United Nations in areas like Peace Keeping and conflict prevention, poverty, and not least humanitarian preemptive actions against the horrors we are seeing in the 21st century. We need to strengthen the mandate of the “Responsibility to Protect” at a time when the wanton destruction of innocent human lives is spreading like a virulent disease throughout the world.
And yes more resources will be needed. In the refugees and displaced person area we are seeing an ongoing catastrophe and the resources are wholly inadequate to the need and lack of resources only compounds the desperate trend towards conflict and displacement and massive deaths of those seeking safety outside their daily killing fields. The same must be said about urgent need to deal with climate change on a broad multilateral basis. This added international capability goes for stopping the spread and impact of disease.
Here we need to think of new ways to raise resources on an international scale that can be allocated to addressing such existential threats and risks. Given the parsimoniousness of national commitments to solve these dangers to all of mankind, ideas like taxing international resources exploitation of the international commons, like the oceans and commercial use of inner space, of shipping, air flights, and, not least, of international financial flows are among the options. We and our children will regret we turned our back at this time to such solutions and permitted even greater cost to humanity and our environment by not taking up these new resource options.
ON AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS: THE FOREIGN AND SECURITY ISSUES IMPLICATIONS FOR AMERICA’S FUTURE GLOBAL ROLE
While this subject will be returned to as this year progresses, It is important to recognize that American leadership is critical to the advancement of any of the goals we have examined. The simple truth is the outcome of the election will either set the direction and success of dealing with our challenges or result in a common global disaster.
In the Republican camp we are largely seeing what can only be described as the “Camp of War” and “Climate Change Deniers” but also the camp of those who, without exception, are people of little understanding of how world politics, ensuring security, and the global economy really works.
The leader of this pack, is Donald Trump and his approach to national security and foreign affairs. It is the most radical and ignorant approach we have seen in a long time. One of the most interesting and despicable events of 2016 is the love feast between Donald Trump and President Putin. But support of torture and water boarding as well as building walls and stigmatizing all Muslims and immigrants indicates a lack of balance and bigotry. It also is counter productive to fighting ISIS. The same can be said of Sen. Ted Cruz, while he is a bit more agile debater than Trump, his opting to be even more extreme than his opponent poses an equally danger to American security.
Recent debates and statements only reinforce their similarities. They each see the other as ruthless. Both are right. They are into mass killing of people, and bullying others as their prime opus operandi. Their mutual hate of minorities, and opponents and indifference to the needs of common people or to the values really of democracy itself can only lead to national and international upheaval. They have been found as misleading and not truthful and believe in ideas that are antithetical to a sane decent society. They have already scared many leaders and citizen abroad about America’s direction.
In the Democratic camp we have two strong candidates with less policy gaps between on many domestic and foreign policy issues. But the differences that do exist are important in some foreign affairs areas.
Hillary is clearly more “moderate” as distinct from “liberal” and more in line with the agendas of the rich than her opponent. She has taken in more than $21 million from the financial sector in campaign support. She Is also more an advocate for a more robust military role than Obama or Sen. Sanders. She has in her rhetoric move closer to Sanders on her stand on trade agreements and inequality.
Sen. Bernie Sanders clearly is proud of his “democratic socialist” label which in reality is not much different from the mainline British Labour Party, and his foreign affairs stance is much in line with that of President Obama in having much caution in getting the US unilaterally involved in “endless wars” in the Middle East and using “smart power” rather than raw stupid kinetic massive ground forces. He advocates sharing the burden of opposition to terrorism which he believes should be destroyed, but with our allies and regional powers including Muslim nations, rather than the kind of foolish blindness to reality approach George W. Bush used in Iraq.
Both support dealing with climate change, on human rights, support for the United Nations, and for cooperation on global development and environment. On fighting inequality abroad and at home both think it is a problem but with Sanders clearly more focused on this issue. They both support the Nuclear Test Banned Treaty (CTBT) and cooperation in NATO and with EU on terrorism and refugees. Both now oppose the Pacific Trade Agreement but Clinton is a recent covert to opposition and in this they differ from President Obama.
Already America is paying a cost for the caustic nature of the Republican debate and as well as the actions of the GOP in Congress impeding actions on the CTBT, Law of the Sea Treaty, opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement, and added resources for diplomacy. Our foes and our allies already have expressed either joy over our discontent or horror at its implication for their security and economy. My contacts abroad, all our friends, do not understand this drift towards craziness, bigotry, hate, and stupidity.
We will see and examine in the coming months how much international issues are drawn into the front of the stage of the presidential debates. What is likely is that external and domestic terrorist acts, the global economy, and other key disruptive events will propel national security and foreign affairs into the mainline of debate especially after the conventions make their choices.
We welcome your comments.
See above box for our section on 2016 Presidential Quotes by both party candidates on this blog.
Rethinking National Security 