TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
I assume you meant "Putin-ing", or did you just shorten it?
Typo of writing fast.
I assume you meant "Putin-ing", or did you just shorten it?
I assume you meant "Putin-ing", or did you just shorten it?
Unless a miracle recovery happens, Russia isn't going anywhere before Puting in 2000-2001.
Maybe he made a typo with the G?
Honestly who is gonna be scared of Russia besides the Baltics and Poland and Ukraine?
No one.
snip- good discussion of Pat Buchanan Presidency as a way to realize the ideas in the OP
1992 Presidential hopeful Paul Tsongas was fond of saying, "The Cold War is over. Japan won."
snip - good discussion on why Buchanan might be a way to realize the OP
My reasoning is that you're asking for a really big shift here. Not just "the USA cuts back on its NATO spending and tells the allies to pull their weight" but more "the USA pulls out of NATO in all but name".Why is Buchanan the only way? Why not Perot? I mentioned Tsongas as well earlier, with his swipe at allied free-riding on security while getting ahead economically
My reasoning is that you're asking for a really big shift here. Not just "the USA cuts back on its NATO spending and tells the allies to pull their weight" but more "the USA pulls out of NATO in all but name".
Perot and Tsongas just didn't want that. They'd be game for the former idea, but not the latter. Buchanan, on the other hand, is so isolationist that he has outright argued that the USA shouldn't have gotten involved in World War II. With the Cold War over, he'd be all for getting rid of NATO and turning the USA isolationist and economically protectionist.
I frankly can't think of any other half-way realistic candidate who would support this proposal you have outlined. Perot would support a more moderate alternative, yes, and so would Tsongas. But I don't think Tsongas ever really had a chance, because the Democrats really didn't want his ideas. See how his budget proposals at the convention were shot down. So, really, it's Buchanan or bust to make your premise work.
Well, I already jotted down my general thoughts in post #2 of this thread.Alright, let's set aside politics. Thoughts on substance and allied reactions and this policy's better fit with A2AD technology as its evolved over the last 30 years?
You know, going on about 20 years ago now, I used a variation on this idea. I took as my premise the idea that the engine for all possible foreign change in America is within the Republican Party, the Democrats are basically just in a reactive position.
With that in mind, and looking for a way to partly disentangle the US from its degree of commitments to the Middle East, I hit upon the idea of Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson after the Persian Gulf War bitching and moaning about how the Saudi Arabians had American soldiers hide any religious paraphernalia (crosses, etc.) and not have any religious services while on their soil and defending them. After the war, they raise a stink and say that our troops are brave but these conditions are anti-God and anti-freedom, and they insist we don't station troops in Saudi Arabia for this reason. As a consequence, US troops and bases are withdrawn from Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.
A bit off-topic, but if you're going to overthrow Saddam, the obvious next step is to carve up the country into three parts: a Kurdish one, a Shi'a one and a Sunni one. This would generally prevent insurgencies, although there'd be a fair amount of ethnic cleansing & expulsions going on amongst the three countries. Letting Syria absorb the Sunni part is probably smart, because then it's their problem.This would probably be easier to do if the US would have outright overthrown Saddam Hussein in 1991. But of course if there will subsequently be an Iraqi insurgency, then the Democrats are going to say "We were right! We shouldn't have gotten involved in the Gulf War in the first place!"
A bit off-topic, but if you're going to overthrow Saddam, the obvious next step is to carve up the country into three parts: a Kurdish one, a Shi'a one and a Sunni one. This would generally prevent insurgencies, although there'd be a fair amount of ethnic cleansing & expulsions going on amongst the three countries. Letting Syria absorb the Sunni part is probably smart, because then it's their problem.
But then we get to the problem, which is that Kurdistan's very existence pisses off the Turks, so now you've made an enemy. And Shi'a Mesopotamia is extremely vulnerable to Iranian expansion, so either you have to put troops there forever, or you've given all that oil to the Ayatollahs. (Or you go whole hog, invade Iran, and carve off their Kurds, Azeris, Arabs and Baluchis.)
Obviously, these outcomes are really in opposition to the stated goal of withdrawing from interventionist geo-politics.