Friday, January 2, 2004

An End to Evil? (2)

My review of An End to Evil (2003) by David Frum and Richard Perle will considerably exceed the 2500-character limit of single posts right now in AOL Journals (until the February upgrade). It's in a total of 11 posts, with numbers 2-11 running consecutively, with the first post having been made earlier.

The previous post provides links to discussions of some of the most newsworthy policy recommendations in the book. Here are my own formulations of the more concrete policy proposals for the United States.

United Nations: Force it to recognize American's right to conduct whatever military operations we want against whatever nations we choose. If the UN doesn't go along, "we should formally reject the UN's authority over our war on terror." (p. 271)

Europe: Actively promote divisions within the European Union and NATO to make them weak and ineffective. Regard France as essentially a hostile rival and "force European governments to choose between Paris and Washington." (p. 249) Block European efforts to create a common defense force. In particular, prevent Britain from becoming part of such a force and try to keep it outside the EU governmental structure.

China: Regard China as a better friend than France or Germany in the immediate future, but position the US to switch to a policy of military hostility at a time of America's choosing.

Pakistan and India: Keep Pervez Musharraf in power in Pakistan as long as possible. Accept India and Pakistan as permanent nuclear powers. Try to ignore the Kashmir conflict.

Russia: Start isolating Russia but keep on dealing with them not as "an alliance, not even a friendship, but rather a series of transactions" (p. 265) until US priorities change to allow us to become more hostile to Russia without inconveniencing higher priorities.

Iran: Regime change, probably through US military invasion, more-or-less immediately.

Syria: Regime change, probably through US military invasion, more-or-less immediately.

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