The Hysteria-Based Foreign Policy
Matt Welch has an excellent little reason article putting John McCain’s heated Georgia rhetoric in the context of McCain’s larger record of overreacting to every international event. He wasn’t just worried by North Korea’s nuclear program in 1994, he called it “the most dangerous and immediate expression” of “the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today.” He didn’t just favor military action over Kosovo, he wanted “infantry and armored divisions for a possible ground war” thrown into the mix as part of “an immediate and manifold increase in the violence against Serbia proper and Serbian forces in Kosovo.” But he also thinks that Islamic radicalism is “the transcendent issue of our time” and also that the standoff with Russia is the first “serious crisis internationally” since the end of the Cold War, since Russia is aiming “to restore the old Russian Empire.”
In short, not only is Russia on the march beyond Tbilisi to Ukraine, Finland, and substantial swathes of Poland but that’s not even the transcendent issue of our time. And North Korea’s nuclear program is “the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today” but that’s not the transcendent issue of our time. And Islamism is the transcendent issue of our time, but not a serious international crisis or an especially great challenge to U.S. security and world stability. Now of course there’s no way to make sense of that, because it’s not supposed to make any kind of sense. McCain just thinks that overreacting is the right reaction to everything. It’s a hysteria-based foreign policy.
53 Responses to “The Hysteria-Based Foreign Policy”
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August 19th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
John McCain, with his hysterical bloviating about the constantly incipient demise of the U.S. at the hands of evildoers, is exactly like the unhinged platoon commander in Generation Kill, “Captain America”.
Every threat is immediately existential and should best be answered by a volley of wildly misdirected gunfire. I’ve never agreed with Sen. Thad Cochrane on anything, but the idea of this profoundly unbalanced man as President gives me the willies.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
It occurs to me that the MSM treats every single event pretty much the same way… it’s always “biggest/greatest [insert crisis] of the last [insert epoch]“… maybe that’s why they get along so well, and the press always gushes about his manly manliness when he says insane things? They have exactly the same world view.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
J.W. Hamner,
I think that is a good point, but I wouldn’t dignify the media’s approach by calling it a “world view”–they are just trying to sell their product.
The thing is, I get the sense McCain might actually believe this stuff, at least as he is saying it, which does in fact make him a dangerous fellow.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR MCCAIN!!!
August 19th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
what he says does not matter…no matter how hysterical…because he was a pow. jesusgod don’t you have any respect?
August 19th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
The Russian Empire included Alaska as well before Seward’s Folly. Time to start militarizing the Bering Strait.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
# J.W. Hamner Says:
August 19th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
It occurs to me that the MSM treats every single event pretty much the same way… it’s always “biggest/greatest [insert crisis] of the last [insert epoch]”… maybe that’s why they get along so well, and the press always gushes about his manly manliness when he says insane things? They have exactly the same world view.
***************
Yep.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Pulling those quotes together in an ad would be quite an effective rejoinder to McCain’s foreign policy rep (especially if there’s video of all of them).
August 19th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I hear we have lost contact with Ice Station Zebra . . .
August 19th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
He wasn’t just worried by North Korea’s nuclear program in 1994, he called it “the most dangerous and immediate expression” of “the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability today.”
Is this wrong? Maybe Serbian actions in the Balkans were the greatest threat to world stability in 1994, and maybe you want to go with al Qaeda or Islamic terrorism or something, but honestly in 1994 North Korea’s nuclear program probably was the greatest challenge to U.S. security and world stability. Now it follows from this that the greatest challenge was nevertheless somewhat minor, but so what?
Also, you can’t really be claiming to find contradictions between what McCain though was a great challenge in 1994 and what the thinks today? The Russia or Islamic terrorism, it can’t be both (and might be neither) is really much more fertile ground.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I’m looking forward to the day that President McCain makes me wish George W. Bush still held the job.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
This is an important article and snippets of McCain’s hyperventilating need to be made into a major pro-Obama commercial.
Obama needs to attack McCain directly on national security and he needs to stop whining about McCain attacking his patriotism. Don’t call for a debate on policy, make the debate on policy happen by taking charge of the issue.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
McCain is like one of those cartoon characters who jumps up on the table screaming hysterically every time (s)he sees a mouse.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
My friends, I think today’s bombing in Algeria is the greatest threat to our precious bodily fluids that America will face in the 21st century. My patience with terrorists ended on the day my plane went down over Vietnam. It is time to put missile defense systems in North Africa, and grant Algeria membership in NATO, the Organization of American States and the Holy Roman Empire.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Obama needs to attack McCain directly on national security and he needs to stop whining about McCain attacking his patriotism. Don’t call for a debate on policy, make the debate on policy happen by taking charge of the issue.
Exactly, I hate it when Democrats start complaining to the refs about the Republicans violating the imaginary rules of election fair play and niceness. Don’t complain. Go on the attack.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I believe Obama can easily counter McCain’s Bullfrog style kung fu with the Bhudda’s Palm Descending from Heaven.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Precisely. And this, BTW, is precisely why the “McCain is a tool of his lobbyist staff on the Georgia issue” line you were pushing–oh, yesterday–was so weird. McCain needs no lobbyist to respond like this; Ruth Marcus may say it’s in his bones, but I suspect another body part is involved.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Assault victims often initiate violence in order to drum up an opportunity to finally win a fight, what we used to call “getting your own back.”
McCain is running out of time to have a defining crisis, one that will define him more than being a POW defines him now.
As it is, his greatest accomplishment was being taken prisoner.
.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Grand Moff Texan wins the thread. Good analysis. At bottom it’s always a matter of primitive unconscious primate behavior – even when expressed in a more sophisticated manner than McCain seems capable of.
McCain is a thug – bottom line. A military thug. A bully.
The problem for us all is that he’s going to win the election.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Oh, no, he won’t, Richard.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:21 am
I’m seriously surprised that you again bring up Kosovo as a point against McCain. I noted in the comments earlier that your understanding of this is contrary to the history of the conflict. I’ve also got a post explaining why here. Time for you to read up on that war, I think.
August 20th, 2008 at 7:11 am
You don’t seem to udnerstrtand the difference between holding the threat of future ground action in reserve while using other means to resolve the crisis, which is what Clinton did, and an actual invasion with ground troops, which is what McCain wanted.
It’s the same difference found in comparing Clinton and Bush/McCain on Iraq–threatening invasion is sometimes useful, but actually doing it is a disaster.
“The threat is stronger than the execution”–A. Nimzovitch
August 20th, 2008 at 10:43 am
On the contrary, the April 4 1999 issue of The New York Times that Matthew linked to in his earlier post reported McCain as arguing “that America can no longer afford to rule out the use of ground troops in Kosovo.” Clinton and other Nato leaders were ruling out ground forces at that time, but changed their minds as the air campaign went on week after week.
Read the detailed accounts from later that year reported by The Washington Post and The New York Times for more detail. Matthew doesn’t know his history here.
The problem with your Nimzovitch quote is that at the time McCain was the one advocating making a more serious threat. Clinton and other Nato leaders were denying the need for a more serious threat while continuing to execute military action that was proving ineffective. Serbia only capitulated once they came to believe in a threat of ground invasion. If that threat had been made earlier as McCain argued, the war could have been shortened and lives saved.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
For bullies, it’s always all about them — and about using fear to silence the opposition and consolidate support (see chapter 1 of Gore’s The Assault on Reason). In this case, McCain = GWBush on steroids.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
McCain’s got back-up. This weekend George Will wrote a piece that concluded in its second sentence that the American election must now be viewed in light of “a Russian war of conquest in Europe.” Who knew that a country we hadn’t even heard of could hold the balance of Western Democracy in its ultra-nationalistic little hands.
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