On The Newstand: Commentary on the Bush Doctrine, Kaplan and Hanson
Commentary magazine, the birthplace of neoconservatism, marks its 60th year with a symposium on the Bush Doctrine. I've honestly not had the opportunity to read all of the contributions - there are 36 in all. There is literally not a dull bulb in this batch - you don't even need first names for half of the contributors - Buckley, Kristol, Podhoretz, Pipes, Pipes, Perle, Kagan, Fukuyama, etc. Try not to be surprised but the review of Imperial Grunts is not favorable. Here's another surprise they did like Victor Davis Hanson's new book on the Peloponnesian War (God I hate spelling that word).
posted by theCardinal @ 11:02 PM
5 Comments:
The review of Kaplan's book was especially illuminating. It notes that the Pentagon has identified as trouble spots Colombia, the Horn of Africa, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Mongolia and the Philippines.
But presumably the US arrangements for dealing with these areas are due for a rethink. The ongoing Quadrennial Review will doubtless take into account that, with US agreement in September 2005, the United Nations will now have a Peacebuilding Commission of its own. This evolution at the UN should give a new lease of life to security alliances such as NATO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the African Union - and may even provide cental funding for them.
Of the security alliances mentioned only NATO has proven itself in the field of peacekeeping. The AU seems to be botching its first attempts and the idea of the SCO deploying anywhere is bound to set off alarm bells in the Pentagon.
As always I wholeheartedly support the US working through security alliances and even the UN. I just don't think that we can expect the UN the AU or anyone else for that matter to be terrible effective right away in the most difficult situations. Then again we're not necessarily setting the standard in Iraq.
Whether the new Peacebuilding Commission will rear security alliances and have them operate to UN/NATO's standard - soon enough - is an interesting point.
The House of Lords in the UK debated this month the outcome of the UN 'Millennium Review Summit' in September. One member was sceptical about what was agreed: "Will the peacebuilding commission get off the ground eventually? There is room for serious doubt on that as well."
And the unity of the alliances will be a problem. This website tells us that a country aspiring to EU membership has bad memories of NATO, which was an enemy in the very recent past.
Honestly it is difficult for the Ukraine feeling somewhat ambivalent towards NATO. Nonetheless it would behoove the alliance to expand its security umbrella in this respect. Being the Realpolitiker that I am it just makes sense to have (the) Ukraine in NATO to more or less cripple any aspirations of great power status for the Russians allowing us to concentrate on other parts of the world.
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