without once mentioning American blunders – here.
Posted in Politics & World Affairs
4 responses to “An elder statesman reminisces and cautions …”
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“This is no time to get caught up in gratuitous chest-thumping. We need to continue our efforts to build bridges to the Islamic world.” –James Baker
On foreign policy matters, I have a lot of respect for James Baker. His personal relationship with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze assuaged the fears of the old Russians in the Council of Ministers that we might exploit the dissolution of the Soviet empire. The Russians went ballistic over the German military crossing outside its own borders when Germany changed its constitution to allow its soldiers to support NATO in the first Gulf war. Baker cooled the situation, masterfully, because everyone trusted him.
Baker delivered a direct warning – I think it was face-to-face – to Saddam Husein that any use of WMD on his part in the first Gulf War would mean that nuclear weapons would be an option for the coalition [read, the United States.] This is probably the last time ever, that the US made a direct threat to use nuclear weapons in war.
Though this may sound like the saber rattling of a war monger, he and George H W Bush dismantled the 700 neutron bombs [keep the buildings but kill the people] built and stockpiled by Reagan. Baker is a senior statesman to whom we should listen when he speaks.
OBL is dead. There will be others who will try to perpetuate the delivery of mass destruction to the United States, Europe, and other Islamic countries that displease them. These are not religious warriors. They are nihilist psychopaths who do not put themselves in harms way, when they can find impressionable minds to kill and be killed in their place.LikeLike
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Norman, James Baker III is one of those calm, educated, polished men of the establishment who are commonly described as “patrician.” I am sure he is as shrewed in public matters as he is decent in private life. That is not my point. The whole article does not once mention US adventurism in Afghanistan during the Reagan-Bush years, the folly of which has come to bite us in our backside in the form of the recently departed OBL and his ilk, some of whom currently populate Gitmo while others are still plotting and planning within “compounds” located mostly in Pakistan. Along with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, that too was one of our cleverly conceived diplomatic steps to curb communism, as was Vietnam before that. Then of course there was Iran-contra, support for multiple killer regimes in Latin America and most recently, Bush-Cheney’s disastrous Iraq War redux which diverted our attention from chasing the real terrorists when the opportunity was there. There is more. Just because Baker speaks admiringly of selective facts about US policy to soothe and encourage, it doesn’t mean that he is telling the unvarnished truth.
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Ruchira, It will not surprise anyone to know that few politicians can survive, unscathed, a comprehensive assessment of their work. Some, of course, cannot even survive a decent averaging over a career. One thing I learned about national politicians, from friends and colleagues who had worked with them, is that they are very good at compartmentalizing their lives, their decisions, and the issues they deal with.
Realizing that, you come to find that few politicians are as consistent as you might have expected them to be. This was back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so I forget some of the examples. As I was writing my positive view of Baker’s perspective on global matters, I thought about the fact that he led the Bush-2 fight against the Florida vote re-count.
Bush-1 was appalled and seriously worried about the intemperate cadre collecting around his son. He tried to insinuate the influence of more level headed people like Brent Scowcroft and James Baker into the White House. Considering Junior’s higher Father issues, we all know how that turned out. There is every reason to believe that if the views of Scowcroft and Baker prevailed (they never got an airing, anyway,) we might have avoided the invasion of Iraq.
One thing I admired about Baker’s comments in the article, was that he had the common sense and humility to say that he does not know how things are going to turn out as a result of killing OBL. “Bin Laden’s death raises as many questions as it provides answers. Will it dampen the spirit and effectiveness of the leaders and followers of al-Qaida? Hopefully. Might it simply motivate al-Qaida leaders to respond with greater vengeance as they keep an eye on potential martyrdom? Hopefully not.”
I suppose I could be accused of grasping at straws. When I find an influential ‘senior statesman’ like Baker being more right than not in advising the country, I’ll cheer him on. It was only less than three years ago when no one, nada, not a single person in government said anything good for the country that deserved a cheer.LikeLike
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Norman, as a happy immigrant, I have many good things to say about this country. My focus here is solely on our wrong headed foreign policy, particularly where we have tried to control other people’s problems by means of agression. At a time when even most of the Dems kept their mouths shut with a few exceptions like Ted Kennedy, Brent Scowcroft was one of the very few veteran GOP public figures who had the courage to oppose the Iraq war regardless of his loyalty to Bush-I. In that he turned out to be a more “honorable” statesman than Baker who kept his thoughts to himself, as far as we know and continued to behave as the “super fixer” on behalf of the Bush dyanasty. Baker’s instincts therefore are more lawyerly than statesmanlike. But all that is water under the bridge.
This article is specifically about terrorism and how to curb its spread, a tricky and dangerous undertaking. It is important that in such pursuits, a 360 degree view of our foreign policy triumphs as well as failures are taken into account. Nothing unpatriotic in that. Baker’s lecture struck me as “think positive” pablum while ignoring the glaring and criminal mistakes we have made in trying to ensure that our ideology is spread by force rather than by persuasion. I wish our politicians, especially when they are retired and don’t have to pander to public opinion, would speak boldly for the future and not paper over past mistakes, including their own and those of the sons of their friends.LikeLike
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