Friday, February 11, 2005

Class is in session!

I like this article about Secretary Rice's "The Education of Europe tour."

Some good quotes:

"There cannot be an absence of moral content in American foreign policy," she says. "Europeans giggle at this, but we are not European, we are American, and we have different principles."

"How, then, has America allowed itself to be seen as interested chiefly in oil? Partly, it must be said, because Miss Rice's predecessor, Colin Powell, only half-believed in what his President was doing. His own approach - and that of the State Department generally - was in fact rather European.

He was ready to appease tyrants in an old-fashioned, Cold War way ("He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch"). Miss Rice, by contrast, understands that dysfunctional states teem with terrorists, however notionally pro-Western their leaders ("He may be our son-of-a-bitch, but he's a son-of-a-bitch")."

I think the article is a bit hard on Powell, but it does make a good point. Powell and most of the European political intelligentsia do follow the Twentieth Century manifestation Realpolitik that is often associated with Morgenthau or Kissinger.( Twentieth Century Realpolitik is not the real, Bismarckian Realpolitik, but that is another post) What we see coming from this Administration is a relatively new manifestation of Foreign policy. Rather than dealing with any country, despite their own political corruption or oppression, this administration believes that democracy and freedom are in the best interest of the nation. I tend to agree with them. Free democracies do not attack other free democracies!