Differnce Without Distinction: McCain's Foreign Policy Would Mirror Mr. Bush

unilateral

Main Entry:

uni·lat·er·al

Pronunciation:

\ˌyü-ni-ˈla-tə-rəl, -ˈla-trəl\

Function:

adjective

Date:

1802

1) a: done or undertaken by one person or party b: of, relating to, or affecting one side of a subject : one-sided c: constituting or relating to a contract or engagement by which an express obligation to do or forbear is imposed on only one party
2) a: having parts arranged on one side unilateral raceme> b: occurring on, performed on, or affecting one side of the body or one of its parts <unilateral exophthalmos>
3): unilineal
4): having only one side

— uni·lat·er·al·ly adverb

Neither respected nor feared
Opinion

By Geoffrey Wheatcroft

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

BATH, England:

In an exalted phrase, the keynote speaker at the Republican convention reviewed the record of the administration, and asked, "When have we rested more secure in friendship with all mankind?" That wasn't in St. Paul, where the Republicans are gathered this week, but at the 1904 Republican convention in Chicago, when the speaker was Elihu Root, a past Secretary of War and future Secretary of State.

His words were sonorous then, and they are haunting now. They will not be repeated this year, because they could not be. A senior American politician might have said something similar in 1920, or 1945 or 1960. But no Republican now - and no Democrat - could utter Root's words without inviting utter derision.

Today there might be a more bitter question: When has America rested less secure in friendship with all mankind?

And that explains the intense interest which this year's presidential election has inspired beyond the shores of the United States. It's not just Obamania - there's no point in denying that Senator Barack Obama is the man most people outside the United States would like to win - but he was one of three potential candidates until Senator Hillary Clinton conceded defeat who were all fascinating simply in personal terms: a septuagenarian war hero, a woman, a black man.

The election absorbs us in Europe - and others in Africa and Asia - because we can see that a general crisis spreading around the globe is directly linked to the follies and failures of American policy. In his new book, "The Much Too Promised Land," about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which he used to be engaged as a State Department official, Aaron David Miller puts it with lapidary succinctness.

Having stumbled for eight years under the Clinton administration over how to make peace in the Middle East, and then for eight years under the administration of George Bush the Younger over how to make war there, the United States finds itself "trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot abandon." Still more to the point, throughout that region, for all of her seeming might, America is "not liked, not feared and not respected."

And not only in the Middle East. The theme of these past years has been American arrogance followed by American incompetence leading to American impotence.

From one side of the world to the other the story is the same, whether it's Vladimir Putin being told by Bush to leave Georgia, or Israel being told by Condoleezza Rice to desist from building more settlements on the West Bank, or China being told by Washington to behave better in Tibet, or even the European Union being told by any number of American politicians and pundits to accelerate Turkish membership.

All these American strictures are vaguely listened to. And then, as the late George Brown (a sometime British foreign secretary who shared Bush's verbal infelicity) might have said, the rest of the world treats them with a complete ignoral. After all, they come from a supposed hyperpower which in practice is neither respected not feared.

That is a direct consequence of what Washington has done. President Theodore Roosevelt said that America should speak softly and carry a big stick. President George W. Bush speaks loudly and waves a small stick. Stalin and Khrushchev had limits placed on their actions by awareness of what America might do if those limits were overstepped. Putin can do exactly what he likes in Georgia, since he knows that Washington is powerless to stop him.

One stock response from the bedraggled and diminished band of Bush supporters is that to say that all this is no more than "anti-Americanism." Prejudice against, and resentment of, America is indeed far from an imaginary phenomenon, in Europe or elsewhere, on right as well as left, and for generations past.

But today that stock response quite misses the point. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times (himself no radical extremist) has said very truly that attitudes toward America that were not long ago confined to the hard left in Europe are now found across the political spectrum. "Nous sommes tous Américains," the Monde bravely exclaimed after Sept. 11; seven years later it would be an exaggeration to say "We are all anti-Americans now," but not a wild one.

In any case, the whole-hearted enemy of America is the one who ought to be delighted by the eclipse of American prestige, and drink a toast to the Bush administration for bringing it about. It's those of us who believe that the United States needs to be constructively engaged in the world, and respected by it, who have most cause for dismay.

When Tony Blair said in early 2002 that he was worried about a drift towards American unilateralism, and that he wanted to "keep the United States in the international order," the diagnosis wasn't stupid. What was utterly preposterous was his subsequent reasoning that, in order to achieve this, he had to give unconditional support to every American action, above all the Iraq war a year later. As a result, the United States soon stood further still outside the international order, while in the end American power was gravely weakened.

No one who has followed the election campaign can be confident that there will truly be a new beginning in the new year. Electioneering puts reason and restraint at a discount and invites boastful bluster. John McCain's "we are all Georgians" is a fine example and obviously empty rhetoric. Even he ought to have worked out by now that his fellow-Americans, "Georgians" or otherwise, are not going to fight for South Ossetia, and Putin knows it.

Obama took an almost more damaging misstep when he said that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided" - something not even Bush has said. If taken literally his words would mean an end to any imaginable settlement of that bitter and intractable dispute - and they raise once again questions about the fitness of the United States for world leadership, under any president.

Whoever wins in November should pause and take stock. The United States has rarely faced greater challenges with the domestic economy but still more in international affairs. Why does America enjoy so little friendship with all mankind? And is there nothing at all that can be done to restore her standing?

Geoffrey Wheatcroft's books include "Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France 1903-2007," "The Strange Death of Tory England" and "Yo, Blair!"

last updated: July 9, 2008 Randy Scheunemann John McCain 2008 Presidential Campaign: Senior Foreign Policy Advisor Project for the New American Century: Former Director Committee for the Liberation of Iraq: Former Head last updated: July 9, 2008 John McCain 2008 Presidential Campaign: Senior Foreign Policy Advisor Project for the New American Century: Former Director Committee for the Liberation of Iraq: Former Head A well-connected lobbyist and political insider who serves as an advisor to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign, Randy Scheunemann is the founder and president of the public relations firm Orion Strategies 1 and was an active supporter of advocacy groups aimed at building support for the invasion of Iraq. His firms have represented various military contractor and oil interests. Along with neoconservative figures like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, Scheunemann served as a director of the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a letterhead group that played an important role in building support for the Iraq War and an expansive “war on terror.” 2 He also headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), a post-9/11 advocacy outfit that pushed for war in Iraq. Like PNAC, CLI played a key role forging a coalition of Beltway figures who supported a Middle East agenda that had at its core toppling Saddam Hussein. 3 CLI members included McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). 4 Scheunemann has served as senior foreign policy and national security advisor to McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign since 2007. In May 2008 the New York Times reported that Scheunemann had been working as a lobbyist for foreign governments as a “registered foreign agent” at the same time he was advising McCain. 5 “Over the past several years, Mr. Scheunemann met several times with Mr. McCain to discuss his clients’ interests. He introduced the senator to the foreign ministers of Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia as they tried to win admission to NATO, and a representative of Taiwan as it lobbied for free trade, records show. Mr. Scheunemann also accompanied Mr. McCain to Latvia in 2001 and Georgia in 2006,” the Times reported. 6 In March 2008, Scheunemann ended his registrations with several countries, according to the Times. A new McCain policy prevents campaign workers to be paid for lobbying work, but volunteers need only disclose it. However, “they are not allowed to participate in any campaign conversations about the issues for which they lobby, which would seem to pose a conflict for someone like Mr. Scheunemann. His work as a foreign agent could overlap on any number of issues with his foreign policy advice.” 7 According to the Lobbying Registration office of the U.S. House of Representatives and the watchdog group OpenSecrets.org, Scheunemann's lobbying firm, Scheunemann & Associates, has for several years represented the National Rifle Association. 8 In 2005, the firm also represented the Caspian Alliance, a consortium of oil- and gas-producing nations from the Caspian region. Scheunemann has also led the lobbying firms Orion Strategies (which he owns) and the Mercury Group. The Mercury Group, for which Scheunemann served as president, has lobbied on behalf clients that include Swiftships Shipbuilders, Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, BP America, Air Force Memorial Foundation, Lockheed Martin, National Shooting Sports Foundation, and Sporting Arms and Ammunitions Manufacturers. 9 Scheunemann told the New York Sun that despite a number of “realists” such as Brent Scowcroft among McCain’s other foreign policy advisors, his own influence, as well as that of other like-minded advisers like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, has been paramount. "I don't think, given where John has been for the last four or five years on the Iraq War and foreign policy issues, anyone would mistake Scowcroft for a close adviser," Scheunemann said, adding that even if Scowcroft were close, McCain "was not taking the advice.” 10 Scheunemann has criticized the other presidential contenders, sometimes charging them with having a “September 10 mindset” that was not suited to fighting terrorism. 11 While commenting on former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's support for "timetables and milestones" for the Iraqi government, Scheunemann asserted that McCain "does not believe in timetables or deadlines, secret or otherwise. He has made it clear that setting a timetable or deadline is nothing more than setting a date certain for surrender." 12 In mid-2007, Scheunemann called the idea of withdrawing troops from Iraq as “ludicrous. Because the idea that we will be able to better prevent sectarian violence and fight al-Qaida better from Kuwait than how we are doing it now is laughable." 13 Scheunemann worked previously for McCain as an advisor for the senator’s failed 2000 presidential bid during a period when the candidate’s views on foreign affairs evolved dramatically. 14 John Judis writes that the candidate began "seeking to differentiate his views from those of other Republican presidential aspirants and from the growing isolationism of House Republicans ... [placing] his new interventionist instincts within a larger ideological framework. That ideological framework was neoconservatism. McCain began reading the Weekly Standard and conferring with its editors, particularly Bill Kristol." Shortly after his staff consulted with Kristol, McCain hired a bevy of neoconservative-aligned operatives, including Scheunemann, Marshall Wittmann, and Daniel McKivergan. 15 The impact of this group of advisors on the senator's thinking was revealed in early 1999, Judis reported, when McCain spoke at Kansas State University using a speech Scheunemann helped draft. In it, McCain echoed the neoconservative idea of "national greatness conservatism," arguing: "The United States is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history.... [W]e have every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity's benefit." Judis reported about the stumping, "The centerpiece of the speech was a strategy that McCain called 'rogue-state rollback,'" a term Scheunemann claimed to have created based on rhetoric used by critics of 1950s Cold War containment strategy. 16 Scheunemann has experience on Capitol Hill dating back to the mid-1980s, when he began working for a number of congressional committees. According to his biography on the PNAC website, between 1986 and 1993 Scheunemann "served on the staffs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the House Republican Policy Committee." 17 He then became a senior advisor to Republican presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) in 1996, served on the 1996 Republican Platform Committee, and between 1993 and 1999 was national security advisor for Dole and Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS). 18 In 1997, during the time he was working as a congressional aide for Lott, Scheunemann reportedly forgot to remove a shotgun from his car after a duck-hunting trip; when he drove up to the U.S. Capitol to report for work, he was arrested for possession of an unregistered firearm. 19 Scheunemann's PNAC bio states that during his time working on the Hill, he "was involved in Senate deliberations concerning the use of American military power in Somalia, the Korean Peninsula, Iraq, Haiti, and Bosnia. He also served as coordinator for Senate Republican policy on UN reform, congressional-executive war powers, NATO enlargement, global climate change, economic sanctions, ballistic missile defense, and technology transfers to China." 20 During this period Scheunemann helped draft the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, which made the toppling of Saddam Hussein an official U.S. policy goal and authorized $98 million for the Iraqi National Congress, a loose grouping of Iraqi dissidents led by Ahmad Chalabi that has been widely blamed for channeling false intelligence about Iraq. 21 Scheunemann also served briefly as an advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld early in the George W. Bush administration as a consultant on Iraq policy. 22 Much of Scheunemann’s work, in both the public and private spheres, has been oriented toward Europe, promoting democratic programs and expanding NATO to former Soviet-bloc countries. A board member (along with McCain) of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a key institutional vehicle through which the National Endowment for Democracy carries out its work, Scheunemann has worked closely with Bruce Jackson, a fellow former PNAC director, on NATO expansion issues, serving as a board member of Jackson's U.S. Committee on NATO and as a registered lobbyist and/or consultant for Georgia, Latvia, Macedonia, and Romania. 23 According to the Financial Times, while serving as "an American adviser to the Georgian government" in late 2006, Scheunemann was critical of the Bush administration during its consultations with Russia in the U.N. Security Council regarding security issues in Georgia. He accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of "appeasement" for acquiescing to Russia’s demand for a U.N. resolution regarding the Russia-supported republic of Abkhazia, which broke away from Georgia, in exchange for Russia's support of sanctions on North Korea in the wake of that country's nuclear test. Said Scheunemann: "What Rice approved was a weak, ambiguous resolution on North Korea. They sold out the Georgians. That was the trade." 24 Affiliations McCain 2008 Presidential Campaign: Senior Foreign Policy and National Security Advisor International Republican Institute: Member, Board of Directors Project for the New American Century: Former Member, Board of Directors Project on Transitional Democracies: Former Treasurer U.S. Committee on NATO: Former Member, Board of Directors Committee for the Liberation of Iraq: Former President and Executive Director McCain 2000 Presidential Campaign: Senior Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor Republican Platform Committee: Member, 1996 Bob Dole Presidential Campaign: Senior Advisor, 1996 Government Service ffice of the Secretary of Defense: Consultant on Iraq Policy, 2001 Staff for Senate Majority Leaders Trent Lott and Bob Dole: National Security Adviser, 1993-1998 Congressional Committee Staffs: Senate Foreign Relations Committee, House Foreign Affairs Committee, House Republican Policy Committee, 1986-1993 Private Sector 25 Orion Strategies LLC: President Scheunemann & Associates: Lobbyist for National Rifle Association, 1999-2002; Consultants to McCain 2008 Campaign Mercury Group: Former President (1999-2000) Sources 1. “Orion Strategies,” Manta.com, http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_754jc. 2. Jim Lobe and Michael Flynn, “The Rise and Decline of the Neoconservatives,” Right Web, November 17, 2006, http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3713.html. 3. Peter Slevin, “Randy Scheunemann: McCain Adviser Campaigned for War,” Chicago Tribune, Trail Blog, June 17, 2008. 4. Jim Lobe, "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq Sets Up Shop," FPIF Policy Report, November 2002. 5. Barry Meier and Kate Zernike, “McCain Finds a Thorny Path in Ethics Effort,” New York Times, May 20, 2008, p. A1. 6. Barry Meier and Kate Zernike, “McCain Finds a Thorny Path in Ethics Effort,” New York Times, May 20, 2008, p. A1. 7. Barry Meier and Kate Zernike, “McCain Finds a Thorny Path in Ethics Effort,” New York Times, May 20, 2008, p. A1. 8. OpenSecrets.org, Center for Responsive Politics, “Lobbying: Scheuemann & Assoc,” http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?lname=Scheunemann+%26+Assoc&year=2002. 9. OpenSecrets.org, Center for Responsive Politics, “Lobbying: Mercury Group,” http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?year=1999&lname=Mercury+Group; Lobbying Disclosure Office of the U.S. House of Representatives, http://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/. 10. Josh Gerstein, " McCain Signals Distance From Bush, Neocons," New York Sun, August 23, 2006. 11. Michael Cooper, “Campaigns in a Skirmish over Law and Terrorism,” New York Times, June 18, 2008. 12. Jason Horowitz, "The Iraq-eteers," New York Observer, April 15, 2007. 13. Quoted in Jason Horowitz, "McCain's Bulldog," New York Observer blog, April 11, 2007. 14. John Judis, "Neo-McCain," New Republic, October 16, 2006. 15. John Judis, "Neo-McCain," New Republic, October 16, 2006. 16. John Judis, "Neo-McCain," New Republic, October 16, 2006. 17. Project for the New American Century, Biography of Randy Scheunemann, http://web.archive.org/web/20070810114215/http://www.newamericancentury.org/randyscheunemannbio.htm 18. Project for the New American Century, Biography of Randy Scheunemann, http://web.archive.org/web/20070810114215/http://www.newamericancentury.org/randyscheunemannbio.htm 19. John McCaslin, “Sitting Duck,” Washington Times, February 5, 1997. 20. Project for the New American Century, Biography of Randy Scheunemann, http://web.archive.org/web/20070810114215/http://www.newamericancentury.org/randyscheunemannbio.htm 21. Jim Lobe, "New Champions of the War Cause," Asia Times, November 6, 2002. 22. “McCain Foreign Policy Aide Outlines Iraq Position,” All Things Considered, National Public Radio, June 26, 2008; Kurt Nimmo, “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq: PR Spinning the Bush Doctrine,” CounterPunch, November 19, 2002. 23. John Judis, "Minister Without Portfolio," American Prospect, May 1, 2003; Mark Benjamin, “McCain: To Russia, Without Love,” Salon.com, June 9, 2008. 24. Guy Dinmore, "Georgia Feels at the Mercy of Big Powers' Maneuvers," Financial Times, October 21, 2006. 25. Mark Benjamin, “McCain: To Russia, Without Love,” Salon.com, June 9, 2008; OpenSecrets.org, “John McCain: Expenditure Details: Media Consultants,” Center for Responsive Politics, http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/expend_detail.php?cid=n00006424&cycle=2008&excode=M50.