This Year's Stakes -- Peace with Obama or a New Cold War with McCain/Palin

[David Dunham]

Here's the link to a program with Charile Rose interviewing the NY Times' Tom Friedman: http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/9/9/1/a-conversation-with-thomas-l-friedman In my view, Friedman does a good job explaining how the world can be made much better with a return to sane US policy at home and abroad.

Sarah Palin's comments about foreign policy in her interview with Charlie Gibson suggest that McCain and Palin would take the world in a vastly different and far more dangerous direction than the economic and diplomatic cooperation that Friedman urges. Although Palin and McCain deny it, they seem determined to be very aggressive in dealing with Russia and essentially to start a new Cold War. A new Cold War could be dominated again by a military rivalry between the US and Russia, with China involved as well. In a world defined by this military rivalry, the European countries would be largely dependent again on the US for protection because their militaries dwarf in comparison to those of the three military super powers. The US for years has been spending more on defense than the rest of the world combined, and Russia has been spending billions each year to "upgrade" its nuclear weapons force such that it now has far more nuclear warheads than any other country. China also now has an extremely powerful and expensive military. In this new and ugly world defined by military rivalry, what would be particularly dangerous is that McCain is more of a hothead than any US president since the dawn of the atomic age, and Putin in Russia can be very emotional too and is not checked by anything close to the experienced Communist politburo that constrained Soviet leaders in their dealings with the US during the first Cold War. Bush has been a less dangerous president than McCain would be because Bush is a bully who picks only on weaklings like Saddam, whereas McCain seems to have an obsessive hatred of Russia (perhaps he blames Russia for supporting North Vietnam and therefore his imprisonment as a POW) and McCain may well have a dislike of China too (he has not spoken about China lately).

In short, if McCain wins, the safer, internationally cooperative world that Friedman envisions dealing with global warming, energy, and other issues could easily be swept aside by a new Cold War, with the world defined again by rivalries among the military super powers, this time with thousands of nuclear weapons under the control of two leaders (McCain and Putin) who can get very emotional and have tremendous, instinctive dislike for each other. We had better work hard to make sure Obama wins the presidency.

[glowing]

1. Actually, with McCain/ Palin I think it would be a HOT war with Russia.

[David Dunham]

2. I agree a Hot War with Russia is a definite possibility if McCain wins.