Josef Joffe writes: The “indispensable power” cannot take time off—that is the bitter lesson of Obama’s two terms. Yet the candidates, left or right, are talking like Jefferson and J.Q. Adams. Hillary Clinton may be the odd woman out. But if she is, she isn’t exactly banging the drums. While America’s earlier bouts of “inwardism” have been short, as after WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, this time, the global power game is is up for grabs. Ambitious players like China, Russia, and Iran, not to speak of ISIS, have never seen a vacuum they did not like. As a result, the future that the new isolationism promises us is likely to be nasty, brutish, and long. - Tablet
India: Fixing Central Bank Mandates
The lower house of the Indian parliament, Lok Sabha, on Thursday approved legislation giving the central bank a mandate to target inflation through monetary policy (Reuters, LiveMint). The bill, which is being called the Finance Bill, sets up a seven-member monetary policy panel that will include three representatives of the government, three representatives of the central bank and the governor of the Reserve Bank of India. The panel will set interest rates through a majority vote, a practice followed by major central banks globally. At present, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India is the sole authority to decide monetary policy. The panel will be reviewing inflation targets every five years. Interview: R. Nicholas Burns, an Atlantic Council board director who served as the State Department’s number three official in the George W. Bush administration, offered a searing critique of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s April 27 foreign policy speech in an interview with the New Atlanticist’s Ashish Kumar Sen. – Atlantic Council
Editorial: One line in Mr. Trump’s speech did have the ring of truth. Having elsewhere stressed the need for consistency and reliability in U.S. foreign policy, he blurted: “We must as a nation be more unpredictable.” It’s a good bet that the United States under a President Trump would be just that — to the peril of itself, and the rest of the world. – Washington Post Charles Krauthammer writes: Trump’s scripted, telepromptered speech was intended to finally clarify his foreign policy. It produced instead a jumble. The basic principle seems to be this: Continue the inexorable Obama-Clinton retreat, though for reasons of national self-interest, rather than of national self-doubt. And except when, with studied inconsistency, he decides otherwise. – Washington Post Dov Zakheim writes: At bottom, Trump needs to convince not only the American electorate, but leaders around the world, that he is serious, that he actually thinks seriously about international security and economic issues, and that he will continue to reflect and indeed, improve upon, the positions he staked out at the Mayflower Hotel. To do so, he must not lapse back into the nativism, racism and isolationism that propelled him to the top of the heap among Republican candidates for the presidency. – The National Interest Peter Feaver writes: Trump left unclear how he would carry on a philosophical struggle without a guiding philosophy. Some speculated that Trump — who has sometimes been accused of sympathy with white nationalism or even neofascism — simply has a different guiding philosophy than liberalism in mind. – Foreign Policy’s Shadow Government |
CategoriesArchives
February 2024
EXAMPLE OF SUCCESS IN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY ACE VENTURA
PAUL RAHE: REALISM IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS, SPARTA
CONSCIENCE & TEMPORAL AUTHORITY
SHAKESPEARE
POSITIVE LAW vs. CONSCIENCE
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