This BBC poll shows the results of polls in numerous countries around the world as to the peoples' preference in the U.S. Presidential election. These polls are consistent with the reported reaction around the world to Barack Obama's election in 2008. This virtually universal feeling was also reflected in President Obama's certainly premature selection for the Nobel Peace Prize early in his first term. What does this tell us as Americans about our previous elections and our upcoming election? What it tells us is that the belligerent, warmongering policies of the Bush II Administration, and the only slightly less belligerent, warmongering policies of the Bush I and Clinton Administrations were extremely troubling and frightening to the rest of the world. And look what countries are at the top of the above chart. France, Australia, Canada, and the U.K., along with some smaller countries. These countries are not our adversaries. They are our closest allies.
A few weeks ago I posted the following words on Facebook: "Full Spectrum Dominance." I was curious as to whether anybody would bite on that. Not one person did, not even to chide me as I probably deserved being chided for dropping something so heavy into Facebook. Some of my office staff did see that on FB and inquire as to what it meant. I told them to go look it up. If you are not familiar with the term "Full Spectrum Dominance," you should be. In 2002 the Bush Administration issued new national security standards for the United States. The "Bush Doctrine" was a part of that new standard. Most people other than Sarah Palin are probably familiar with that term. The Bush Doctrine basically says that we can invade any country that we perceive as a potential threat to our national security. That was the stated basis for the invasion of Iraq. "Pre-Emptive War" is another term that has been used to express this idea. "Full Spectrum Dominance" was announced in 2002 as the national geopolitical goal of the United States, meaning that we intend to dominate and enforce our will on the rest of the world in every area: economic, military, cyberspace, space, you name it. I really don't remember voting for that. This was your infamous "neocons" at work. Somehow the media in the United States did not really pick up on this sea change in American policy, or at least revealed American policy. But the rest of the world did hear about and understand this new American approach to world affairs. Harol Pinter, a British actor, director, playwright, and political activist, referred to the term in his 2005 Nobel Prize (Literature) acceptance speech:
"I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources."The invasion of Iraq was the first exercise of this new American policy of the unilateral use of our military might based solely on our own subjective judgments about what relates to our "security." Numerous surveys taken in the past few years have indicated that most of the world sees the chief threat to world peace to be the United States of America.
What the election of Barack Obama represented to the world, and has in fact proven to be, is a tempering of America's previously stated goal of total world domination. I choose the word "tempering" carefully. However, at the least, President Obama has not invaded any new countries. He has ended the misbegotten war in Iraq. He has set a date for troop withdrawal in 2014 from the "nation building" effort in Afghanistan. He carefully limited our participation in the Libyan civil war and only agreed to participate after the U.N., the Arab League, and other world and regional organizations came to the consensus that intervention was needed on humanitarian grounds to protect the people of Libya from the retaliations of Mommar Gadhafi. Another positive step was the suspension of the Bush plan to place a missile defense system, so called, near the Russian border in Poland. The paper thin excuse for the planned installation of this system was the claim that the system was meant as a defense for Iranian missiles fired at the U.S. and our allies. It's not hard to see through that and the Russians certainly did. It's difficult to see why we would want to go stirring them up at this late date. And of course, Governor Romney, so recently presenting himself as a virtual peacenik, previously had blurted out that Russia is our main geopolitical foe. Even fellow Republicans called him out on that brain cramp. So there have indeed been positive indications that President Obama will pursue an international strategy based less on belligerence and military threat and more on diplomacy and mutual cooperation. This less belligerent approach has been noticed by the world and appreciated. In the larger view of things, that has to be a good thing for us. And cheaper for us. We need to divert some of the billions spent on trying to dominate the world and do some "nation building" here in our own country.
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