By picking Biden, Obama seems to have try to placate the right wing of his party and those who think that he is weak on foreign policy by picking someone, who seems to repeat the right's talking points when it comes to Russia. Both Biden and Brzenzinski, who is one of Obama's adivisors, seem to be old Russophobes who want to refight the Cold War. If Obama gets elected who will have to decide which foreign policy goals to attain. The Biden and Brzezinski one which is to refight the Cold War is counterproductive for US relations not only with Russia, but also with China and Western Europe. Or should Obama go for his original goal which was to  all eliminate nuclear weapons in the world. This would actaully improve the American standing in the world and leave Obama with a positive legacy. But the views on Russia that Brzezinski and Biden share may hinder that goal. It seems to me when Obama speaks from his gut such his first statement about the Georgia crisis he is usually more right than his foreign policy advisors. I just hope that if Obama gets elected that he listens more toward his own judgement and not the foreign policy advisors around him.

Why does McCain want the draft back? What countries does McCain want to fight in order for the draft to come back?  Does McCain want to ignore the new SOFA and the wishes of the Iraqi government by having US soldiers stay for a hundred years? Does McCain want to go to war with Iran?  Or is McCain insane enough to go to war with Russia? In that case I believe that we would all be nuked before they implented the drafted. So far the MSM has not asked these difficult questions for the supposed master of foreign policy.

It seems to me that Bush and McCain do not take the threat of terrorism seriously. Instead they use the "war on terror," as a campaign slogan. An example of this lack of seriousness about the terror threat is the new FBI guidelines that make it easier for them to invade everyone's personal privacy through phone taps and looking at e-mail. You really don't  need these new rules to find evidence about any forthcoming terrorists attack. Good intell and having could mulitateral relations with countries such as Syria, Iran, and Russia, in sharing intelligence  would be useful in preventing the next terrorist attack. Instead Bush and McCain have constantly talked about going to war with all three of these nations. The only reason why I think Bush adminstration wants to loosen these FBI rules is so that they spy domestic political opponents. For Bush and McCain it is not the "war on terror," rather it the war on Democrats and former Cold War enemies.

I personally believe that NATO expansion will be regarded as a bigger strategic blunder than the invasion of Iraq. First NATO expansion only reinforced Russian nationalism. When Gorbachev allowed those states in the Warsaw Pact to succede from the Soviet orbit, he thought that they would basically be neutral and unallied with NATO. However this did not prove to be the case and it only strenghened the position of hardliners in the Kremlin, who thought Gorbachev was wrong to end the Cold war. The end result was a Russia that is rightfully distrusful of the West. The second effect is that it once again turned Eastern Europe into a politically unstable region. Without the idea of NATO expansion in the early nineties, the Russians might have been able to pressure the Serbs to sign a ceasefire in both Bosnia and Kosovo. But because of their anger at NATOs move east the Russians were in no mood to help resolve the conflict in the Balkans and instead took to strongly supporting the Serbs. NATO expansion made the Georgian president believe that Georgia would be a member of NATO and would back him up in attacking that country's northern provinces. The inclusion of Poland into NATO could be explosive in that Poland favors the western Ukrainians over the eastern Ukrainians, who are backed by Moscow. So NATO could find itself in a dangerous  position should a Ukrainian civil war break out. Finally NATO expansion also has had a negative impact on events in China. The way Russia was treated after it introduced democracy to its citizens was to be punished and humilated by the West through NATO expansion, probably made a lot of reformist members in Chinese Communist Party and ordinary citizens rethink positions on political reform in China.  So far the foreign policy experts still believe that NATO expansion has been a positive development for America's strategic position in the world. The foreign policy establishment really needs to rethink their triumphalist view of the world.

Since McCain is probably going to pick Lieberman, I think that Obama should chose Chuck Hagel. I know that progressives do not like his pro-gun and antiabortion stands, but I think that it is time to put these issues aside and have a VP candidate that who could successfully argue against McCain's reckless foreign policy. Could you manage how well Hagel would do against Lieberman in a debate! I think there would no contest whatsoever. Moreover Hagel would attract swing voters and counteract McCain's claim to bipartisanship.

The Atlantic Council had a panel discussion about the situation in Georgia, however it just included Georgians and Americans. There was no Russian or even French and German perspectives on the panel. How is one suppose have a non-partisan approach to foreign policy if you only allow one perspective on the issue.It appears also that the Council wants to make the situation worse by granting NATO membership to Georgia. The Atlantic Council has a history of promoting reckless ideas such as the expansion of NATO that has led to our current bad relationship with Russia. Moreover by ignoring those in Germany and France that oppose an overly aggressive approach to Russia, the Council is only adding to the bad reputation that America has in those two countries.  So much has written about how the Project for the New American Century and AIPAC has ruined America's image in the Middle East but not enough has yet to be written about how the Atlantic Council is being detrimental towards America's strategic position in Europe.

It is obvious that McCain has Churchill as his hero while Obama has chosen Lincoln. It seems to me that Lincoln is a vastly better leader than Churchill. During the Civil War, Lincoln displayed a sense of pragmatism that allowed the Union to win the conflict.Linclon displayed this pragmatism when the first crisis occurred with Great Britain. In 1861 the Union navy intercepted a British ship carrying the Confederate diplomats James Mason and John Slidell. These two diplomats were imprisoned and later released by Lincoln. Lincoln angered many radicals in his own party but his decision prevented a war with Great Britain. Another example of Linclon's pragmatism is that he allowed slavery to continue in the border states even after the Emancipation Proclamation. This policy infuriated the radicals but it prevented the border states from being part of the Confederacy. Finally other than requesting a few troops to protect Washington D.C., Lincoln stayed out of military decision making. This policy proved successful when Grant and Sherman persued their winning strategy in the last years of the Civil War.
        Churchill, on the other hand, was overly romantic in the way that he conducted war. In early 1941, the British army had Rommel cornered, but Churchill sent them to a doomed effort in Greece. Churchill based his decision on a romantic notion that the Greece was the base of Western Civilization and that it should not fall to the Nazis. Chuchill made another mistake in late 1941, when he once again sent a elements of a nearly victorious British Army in North Africa to a besieged Singapore. Churchill was too concerned with saving the prestige of the British Empire in Singapore that he ignored the bigger threat of the Germans in North Africa. Churchill also continued his poor strategic judgement in wanting to concentrate Italy and the Balkans as opposed to landing France, in order in prevent the spread of Soviet influence in that area. But as Olivier Wieviorka points out in his new book, Normandy, that would have allowed the Russians to control all of Germany and perhaps France, if Churchill's policies were implented. Event after the invasion of France, Churchill opposed landings on the southern coast of that country. If Churchill would have gotten his way, the allied forces in France would lack ports in which to land reinforcements and supplies. From their choice of heroes, Obama has chosen the pragmatic approach to leadership while McCain is in awe of the overly romantic traits of Winston Churchill.

The MSM keeps stating that McCain is somehow showing his foreign policy expertise by constantly making hawkish threats to Russia that really can't be backed up unless we could go to war with them. I probably think that the rest of the world believes McCain sounds like a ranting overemotional lunatic who does't understand that Russia has thousands of nukes. I wish that the MSM would really try to take an accurate look at McCain's policies rather than be in awe of his pseudo Churchillian rhetoric.

Some progressives believe that Obama will eventually erase the deficit on national security once he debates McCain. But many in the Democratic Party forget that Kerry dominated Bush in the debates on the issue but still managed to lose the trust of the American people. The Democrats lose on the issue because the Republicans always use the fear card. I therefore propose that the Democrats use the fear card against the Republicans like LBJ did against Goldwater in 1964. 
          Here a couple of ideas for political ads that can truly scare the American people. I think that the Obama campaign needs to use slides from the British docudrama, Threads, which is about the affects of nuclear war, whenever McCain talks about Russia. Or use horror stories about wounded soldiers in Iraq when McCain talks about the success of the surge. If Obama adopted these ideas he could probably win the national security debate.