IT’S (STILL) FOREIGN POLICY, STUPID
by By Daniel McGroarty

The Monitor (McAllen, Texas)
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service
September 24, 2008 Wednesday

With Wall Street in meltdown and Main Street bracing for the bailout
bill, pundits have hammered out a new conventional wisdom: the 2008
race for the White House will be all about the economy. James Carville,
mastermind of the Clinton campaign _ Bill’s ’92 victory, not Hillary’s
’08 flame-out _ must regret not trademarking his famous phrase:
"It’s the economy, stupid."

And the organizers of the presidential debates _ with the first
coming Friday night in Mississippi _ must be kicking themselves for
flip-flopping this year’s topics, swapping "foreign policy" for Debate
No. 1 and pushing "the economy" to the third and final matchup in
mid-October. That decision, announced without fanfare in the third
week of August, was a reaction to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. Now
that the credit crisis has pushed Georgia out of the news cycle,
the change of topics is looking oddly out of sync.

But Sens. Obama and McCain needn’t worry they’ll have nothing to talk
about. Iraq, Afghanistan and al-Qaeda are the givens. The challenge
is that the larger global dynamic is changing by the day.

Consider the flashpoints _ some known, others new and rising:

Resurgent Russia. Judging by the TV news and daily headlines,
Georgia seems to be an old story. The real question, however,
is whether Georgia was merely Act I in the reclaiming of Russia’s
empire, with a lively regional game of "Who’s Next?" being fed by
both Russian rhetoric and actions. In the Moscow media, Russian
analysts speculate about a "new iron curtain" cutting Ukraine
in two; President Dmitry Medvedev presents a new doctrine that
includes protection for Russian ethnics _ perking ears in Estonia
(25 percent ethnic Russian), Latvia (30 percent ethnic Russian) and
in Ukraine (10 million ethnic Russians). Russia warns the Poles and
Czechs that signing on as hosts for a U.S. missile defense system _
aimed at the not-so-distant threat of missiles launched from Iran
_ will result in Prague and Warsaw becoming targets for Russian
nuclear weapons. Russia’s warning notwithstanding, Romania floats
the possibility of joining the U.S. missile defense network. How
to shore up Georgia, and backstop Russia’s nervous neighbors from,
well … Stettin in the Baltics to Bucharest and the Black Sea.

Farther north, speculation now focuses on the possibility of bringing
Finland into NATO, with traditionally neutral Sweden taking note. In
the Cold War, once the worry was the "Finlandization" of Europe;
now that we’re discussing the "NATOization" of Finland, what might
Russia do? For now, that’s an open _ and ominous _ question.

Southern Exposure? Forget Charlie Gibson and Gov. Sarah Palin’s set-to
about the Bush Doctrine. Remember the Monroe Doctrine, declaring
the Americas to be thenceforth free from European meddling back in
1823? Now, with Russian bombers landing in Venezuela, Bolivia inking a
multi-billion dollar energy deal with Russia’s Gazprom, and Nicaragua
rushing to recognize Russia’s annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
_ can it be long until Daniel Ortega names Tskhinvali as Managua’s
sister city? _ the United States has to factor for Russian intelligence
operatives fomenting anti-yanqui sentiment on America’s southern flank.

Friendly fire? Even potentially positive international trends strain
our ability to embrace new realities. Take Turkey, for instance, made
all the more critical in the wake of Russia’s Georgian grab. Long
a member of NATO, Turkey remains an outsider to the European Union,
as members of the EU club have been happy to foot-drag on admitting
a Moslem-majority nation projected to reach 100 million by 2050. Now,
in the wake of Georgia, Turkey has new leverage as a bulwark against
Russia hegemony.

But a more prominent Turkey triggers its own new concerns. The Kurds
in northern Iraq _ easily the United States’ strongest Iraqi ally
in that nation’s most stable region _ stoke Turkish fears that a
rising Kurdistan will fuel calls by Turkey’s Kurdish minority for
autonomy or even independence. Will the United States find itself in
the middle of Turkish-Kurdish conflict? Meanwhile, fear of Russia has
sparked Turkey’s interest in strengthening its link to resource-rich
Azerbaijan _ but in between lies Armenia, where memories of Turkey’s
1915 slaughter remain raw _ even as the Armenians and Azeris face off
on the status of ethnic-Armenians in central Azerbaijan. Is there a
possibility for deft U.S. leadership to bring Turks, Kurds, Azeris
and Armenians under one big tent? Only if a new commander in chief
has the policy-bandwidth to make it a priority.

Spin the globe from country to country, and it’s enough to induce a
bad case of foreign policy vertigo: a kaleidoscope of 19 countries and
four continents in this article alone _ and we haven’t even ventured
east of the Ural Mountains or south to Islamabad, scene of the terror
attack on the Marriott hotel.

Yes, health insurance and home mortgages, the credit crisis, the
state of our cities, our schools, our bridges and borders: they all
matter. But beyond America’s borders is a world of change that simply
won’t wait. We’re engaged in a great geo-political game of Risk,
unfolding real-time.

So as we ready ourselves for Friday night at the fights, maybe the
debate organizers got it right after all: "It’s (still) foreign
policy, stupid."

___

ABOUT THE WRITER

Daniel McGroarty, a former White House speechwriter, is principal
of Carmot Strategic Group, an international business consultancy in
Washington. Readers may write to him at Carmot, 1701 Pennsylvania
Avenue NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20006.