Hagel on McCain and Russia
Connie Bruck takes a look at Chuck Hagel’s steady alienation from the GOP national security mainstream. Iraq, of course, played a big role but apparently in was John McCain’s decision that he wanted to take neocon policy and start applying it to great powers like Russia that was really the last straw:
Hagel, citing McCain’s repeated calls for Russia to be expelled from the Group of Eight, the association of major industrial democracies, said, “You’re not going to isolate Russia—that’s completely crazy!” He told me that McCain’s approach to Russia was one of the reasons that he could not endorse him. [...]
Critics have suggested that McCain’s League of Democracies could diminish the role of the United Nations. When I mentioned this to Hagel, he said, “What is the point of the United Nations? The whole point, as anyone who has taken any history knows, was to bring all nations of the world together in some kind of imperfect body, a forum that allows all governments of the world, regardless of what kinds of government, to work through their problems—versus attacking each other and going to war. Now, in John’s League of Democracies, does that mean Saudi Arabia is out? Does that mean our friend King Abdullah in Jordan is out? It would be only democracies. Well, we’ve got a lot of allies and relationships that are pretty important to us, and to our interests, who would be out of that club. And the way John would probably see China and Russia, they wouldn’t be in it, either. So it would be an interesting Book-of-the-Month Club.”
It’ll be interesting to see where traditional Republican realists go over the next couple of years. At the moment, an awful lot of the most prominent and most committed of them — Hagel, Jim Leach, Colin Powell — are neither de facto or de jure supporting Obama. Will they be able, post-election, to take control of their party again and steer it off the neocon course? At this point, it seems more likely that they’re going to wind up defecting en masse to the Democratic coalition, even as the Democratic Party’s own neocons-lite scramble aboard the bandwagon.
49 Responses to “Hagel on McCain and Russia”
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October 27th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Hagel, Jim Leach, Colin Powell — are neither de facto or de jure supporting Obama.
Not a classic–there’s no possible “secret” meaning available, as far as I can see–but worth noting.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I think you mean, “either,” not “neither.”
October 27th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Um… Shouldn’t that be “either”?
October 27th, 2008 at 10:53 am
I think it’s silly to speak of lightweight whores like O’Hanlon in the same post as Colin Powell or Hagel.
Atlantic’s Michael Kelly was a deceitful ass but at least he had the decency to go to Iraq and get blown to hell by an IED.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:01 am
The “traditional Republican realists” have been voting lock step with Bush / Cheney for the last 8 years.
Hagel’s words are nice. But if he and Olympia Snowe and the rest of that gang are going to continue to be part of that block, then what difference does that make.
Republicans like to talk about personal responsibility. So it’s high time they demonstrated some individual initiative.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Presumably, Israel will not be in the League of Democracies as long as the so-called Settlers get a vote and their Palestinian neighbors do not.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
“You say neither and I say either.” (Paraphrasing George & Ira Gershwin. Though the humor may be lost on Matt, who has almost certainly never seen Fred and Ginger sing it, though he may have caught Lucy and Ethel).
Seriously, this is yet another in a frequent series of Matt proofreading failures, or failure to proofread, that will almost certainly go unacknowledged and uncorrected, and transform his meaning 180 degrees. Intellectual hubris or sheer sloppiness? You decide (Both is an acceptable answer.)
October 27th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Picking a fight with Russia is just super dumb. Russia isn’t going to remake itself to our blueprint. They don’t give a crap and there’s no reason they should. The whole world knows how we’ve run our own country into the ground so maybe we should STFU and try to fix things at home.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Re ndm
Settlements today, settlements tomorrow, settlements to the far horizon.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Hagel is almost certainly in line to be at least offered a job in the Obama administration; with Powell you can scratch the “almost.”
You can alienate your moderate supporters as much as you want and they’ll have to keep eating it, as long as you keep your hold on the White House. Once your opponent wins it, and there are lucrative jobs available in the other camp, they jump and stay jumped.
If the executive changes hands, the GOP is likely to be decimated by this phenomenon.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
De facto/de jure? Wouldn’t unofficially/officially work a lot better there? After all, the “de facto” part works okay, but there’s nothing “by law” about their support.
Though this way is clearer I guess you don’t get to show off the fancy Latin.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
What the hell is with the bipartisan enthusiasm for expanding NATO into Eastern Europe? NATO was founded as a military alliance in opposition to Russia. Doesn’t it make sense that Russia would be slightly upset about them setting up shop next door?
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