With only a few days to go in the US presidential election - perhaps, then, a more normal life will return and the media focus on other things going on in the world - a piece "Virtual JFK: The 44th President’s Foreign Policy Challenge" on truthdig.com by James G. Blight and Janet M. Lang assesses the foreign policy challenges the new president will face:
"After the Nov. 4 election the new U.S. president, either Barack Obama or John McCain, will face a bewildering array of dangerous foreign policy crises. To have any chance at successfully managing these crises, the new president must bring two qualities to the job, both of which are reversals from the norm established during the administration of George W. Bush: (a) skepticism about the utility of military solutions to political problems; and (b) the willingness and the ability to inform and instruct the American people as to why, as Churchill once put it, “to jaw-jaw is better than war-war.”
The historical precedent for such a president, we argue, was President John F. Kennedy, especially in his approach to the crisis he faced over what to do about the disintegrating situation in Vietnam. Understanding how JFK dealt with Vietnam helps us understand what we call virtual JFK: what JFK probably would have done in Vietnam if he had not been assassinated. The degree to which the next president emulates JFK’s success on both points—resistance to military solutions and the capacity to explain this resistance to the American people—is, we believe, the degree to which the president we elect on Nov. 4 has a chance of success.
For a presidential candidate, all politics is local. In this respect, running for president is rather like running for mayor of America. The candidate is expected to promise to make his constituents’ lives better, safer, richer. This is why the leading issue in the current face-off between Barack Obama and John McCain is the economy. The banking crisis has only added to voters’ concerns about the usual bread-and-butter issues.
Once elected and inaugurated, however, a U.S. president’s politics become global literally overnight. At that moment, issues of war and peace come to the fore for the new commander in chief. This was true during the Cold War. It is still true now, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Shortly after noon EST on Jan. 20, 2009, either Obama or McCain will be thrust headlong into a withering array of foreign policy crises, whose number and potential threat to U.S. interests around the world rival those faced by presidents during the darkest days of the Cold War."
Continue reading here - with the piece looking at each "issue".
"After the Nov. 4 election the new U.S. president, either Barack Obama or John McCain, will face a bewildering array of dangerous foreign policy crises. To have any chance at successfully managing these crises, the new president must bring two qualities to the job, both of which are reversals from the norm established during the administration of George W. Bush: (a) skepticism about the utility of military solutions to political problems; and (b) the willingness and the ability to inform and instruct the American people as to why, as Churchill once put it, “to jaw-jaw is better than war-war.”
The historical precedent for such a president, we argue, was President John F. Kennedy, especially in his approach to the crisis he faced over what to do about the disintegrating situation in Vietnam. Understanding how JFK dealt with Vietnam helps us understand what we call virtual JFK: what JFK probably would have done in Vietnam if he had not been assassinated. The degree to which the next president emulates JFK’s success on both points—resistance to military solutions and the capacity to explain this resistance to the American people—is, we believe, the degree to which the president we elect on Nov. 4 has a chance of success.
For a presidential candidate, all politics is local. In this respect, running for president is rather like running for mayor of America. The candidate is expected to promise to make his constituents’ lives better, safer, richer. This is why the leading issue in the current face-off between Barack Obama and John McCain is the economy. The banking crisis has only added to voters’ concerns about the usual bread-and-butter issues.
Once elected and inaugurated, however, a U.S. president’s politics become global literally overnight. At that moment, issues of war and peace come to the fore for the new commander in chief. This was true during the Cold War. It is still true now, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Shortly after noon EST on Jan. 20, 2009, either Obama or McCain will be thrust headlong into a withering array of foreign policy crises, whose number and potential threat to U.S. interests around the world rival those faced by presidents during the darkest days of the Cold War."
Continue reading here - with the piece looking at each "issue".
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