by vladimir
Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 11:19:35 AM EST
I urge you to read Hillary Clinton's international political agenda in a paper published in Foreign Affairs. (Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-first Century. Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2007). The article is fairly critical of a number of aspects of the current administration.
Change in US foreign politics? Forget it. The criticism directed at the current Administration by Hillary shows that there are no fundamental changes in Washington's global policy to be expected in the foreseeable future.
If elected, Hillary intends to continue with efforts to subdue Iraq. Her criticisms of Bush for the US military's involvement in Iraq should not be taken seriously. Bush also criticized Bill Clinton for the Yugoslav wars while he was a presidential contender. This is a game played often by the US Republicans and Democrats. In case Hillary makes it to the White House in 2008, she intends to complete the process of partitioning Iraq into three minor pseudo-independent states. Hillary's plans for Iraq and the withdrawal of the US troops from the country are immediately offset by the statement that «...we will have to replenish American power by getting out of Iraq, rebuilding our military, and developing a much broader arsenal of tools in the fight against terrorism». Same reasoning as that of Bush. We should expect to see « surgical strikes » against Al-Qaeda (a truly universal pretext) and some other terrorist groups, whose names are not hard to invent no matter what country is being dealt with. US military bases will remain in the Iraqi Kurdistan even after their withdrawal from the southern and central parts of Iraq. Bush is already creating the infrastructure for maintaining US troops in Kurdistan on a long-term basis.
Minor differences exist between Hillary's and Bush's approaches to building up the US military might. For example, she says: «... I will work to expand and modernize the military ... the Bush Administration has undermined this goal by focusing obsessively on expensive and unproven missile defense technology... ».
Seeking international consensus is not considered by Hillary. The plan is to pursue total and overwhelming US military and technological superiority. According to Hillary, Bush's major failure is that he hasn't done a sufficiently good job of this. Democratic controlled Congress recently allocated an extra $100 mln to create a space shuttle with a strike capability, which can hit targets from space orbit at distances over 16,500 km.
Hillary also pledges to raise the efficiency of the US intelligence community, to turn it into «a clandestine service that is out on the street, not sitting behind desks». Obviously, this refers to a focus on the operations abroad. Reagarding Iran, the policy is the same as that of the current Administration.
Regarding Russia, Hillary's opinion is that Moscow should support Washington's policy - stressing that this is of Russia's interest too.
