A convergence of events–the Russian crackdown in Georgia, Musharraf’s imminent impeachment in Pakistan, the continuing impasse over Iran’s nuclear ambitions–is underscoring the damage of the bellicose Bush foreign policy to America’s relations with the rest of the world.
As the McCain campaign mocks Obama’s willingness to negotiate with rather than bully adversarial nations and dicey allies, reality keeps offering up situations that demonstrate the failure of the Neo-Con blueprint for American world dominance by military power that took us into an unending war in Iraq.
Nicholas Kristof points out that “the United States is hugely overinvesting in military tools and underinvesting in diplomatic tools. The result is a lopsided foreign policy that antagonizes the rest of the world and is ineffective in tackling many modern problems. After all, you can’t bomb global warming.”
Item: As Bush and Putin watch the Beijing Olympics together, the US is helpless to deter new Russian aggression. “While America considers Georgia its strongest ally in the bloc of former Soviet countries,” an analysis concludes, “Washington needs Russia too much on big issues like Iran to risk it all to defend Georgia.”
More here.