Asked how she felt about the Bush doctrine, Sarah Palin, the running mate of American presidential nominee John McCain, said the other day that she had no idea of what exactly the Bush doctrine spelled out. Quite an answer to a question about the cornerstone of her country’s foreign strategies! Not necessarily an honest answer, though. But, it is worth pointing out that all the participants in the soon-to-be-over presidential race, including the Republican Party’s Ms Palin, manage to make hundreds of speeches without mentioning the most-important Bush doctrine. Senators McCain and Obama are, naturally, familiar with the national security strategy of September 2002, which is better known as the Bush doctrine. The document in question introduces a concept of preventive warfare that allows America to take military action before it happens to come under attack, and encourages unilateral efforts in case attempts to forge alliances yield no result. Planned as a long-term document, this national security strategy is projected into the future. Because of that and because it has never been declared null and void, it will influence the White House’s moves in the post-electoral period. This is all the more reason for pointing to the conspicuous absence of answers to the question of whether one should expect the White House to stick to that pushy doctrine in the years to come.
Eight years ago, the Bush-Cheney Administration decided to resume the once-interrupted arms race on their arrival in the White House. It is on two results of that decision, the growing public debt and the unacceptably-large budget deficit, that influential US-based experts blame the current economic crisis. Will the wasteful and dangerous arms race be continued by the winner of the presidential mandate? Will the enormous public debt and the unbearable burden of budget deficit keep growing in his years in office? Neither the loquacious Senator McCain nor the phrasey Senator Obama has been able to coin befitting answers to those questions. The new arms race will be incomplete without plans for the militarization of outer space. Another brain child of President Bush is called the space doctrine of the United States of America. Congress has, on request from Mr Bush, earmarked a hundred billion dollars for the launch of the Falcon programme, which focuses on the development of space weapons. The US attempts to turn outer space into a third field of combat operations may prove as dangerous as the American decision to use a nuclear device in August 1945. Senators McCain and Obama avoid mentioning this extremely dangerous space doctrine and voicing their view of it as much as they avoid mentioning their country’s security doctrine.
America has had an extremely difficult year. Millions of American lives have been affected by natural disasters; millions of Americans have lost their movables and real property. Celebrated scholars blame the latest natural disasters on the greenhouse gas effect, which is a result of the boost in industrial production, which, in turn, explains the growing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. The United States emits as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as any other country does. A shared desire to avert that growing threat brought 180 nations to sign what is known as the Kyoto Protocol, ten years ago. The United States is still waiting to sign that document. President Bush is a sworn enemy of the Kyoto Protocol, and people of different nations, including his own, have to pay for his arrogance and short-sightedness. Potential leaders of the United States of America are supposed to be worried about this most pressing problem. But, the two frontrunners in the American electoral race prefer to keep their mouths shut every time they are expected to address this or either of the two earlier-mentioned problems. I could list more questions that require clear-cut and unambiguous answers on the eve of the presidential election. But, all attempts to list these sorts of questions exceed the limits of what is known as democracy. Blind luck rules in card-playing. A bet on blind luck is unacceptable and dangerous in politics.
10 October 2008
Valentin Zorin
A View from Moscow
Voice of Russia World Service
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=33573&cid=170&p=10.10.2008 (in English)
