The Kerry Doctrine

J

John Uskglass

Venerable Relic of the Wastes
The Kerry Doctrine

By Robert Kagan
Sunday, August 1, 2004; Page B07

Someday, when the passions of this election have subsided, historians and analysts of American foreign policy may fasten on a remarkable passage in John Kerry's nomination speech. "As president," Kerry declared, "I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation." The statement received thunderous applause at the convention and, no doubt, the nodding approval of many Americans of all political leanings who watched on television.

Only American diplomatic historians may have contemplated suicide as they reflected on their failure to have the smallest influence on Americans' understanding of their own nation's history. And perhaps foreign audiences tuning in may have paused in their exultation over a possible Kerry victory in November to reflect with wonder on the incurable self-righteousness and nationalist innocence the Democratic candidate displayed. Who but an American politician, they might ask, could look back across the past 200 years and insist that the United States had never gone to war except when it "had to"?

The United States has sent forces into combat dozens of times over the past century and a half, and only twice, in World War II and in Afghanistan, has it arguably done so because it "had to." It certainly did not "have to" go to war against Spain in 1898 (or Mexico in 1846.) It did not "have to" send the Marines to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Nicaragua in the first three decades of the 20th century, nor fight a lengthy war against insurgents in the Philippines. The necessity of Woodrow Wilson's intervention in World War I remains a hot topic for debate among historians.

And what about the war Kerry himself fought in? Kerry cannot believe the Vietnam War was part of his alleged "time-honored tradition," or he would not have thrown his ribbons away. But America's other Cold War interventions in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East are also problematic. Most opponents of the Vietnam War, like Kerry, believed it was symptomatic of a larger failure of U.S. foreign policy stemming from what Jimmy Carter memorably called Americans' "inordinate fear of communism." The other Cold War interventions were premised on the same "misguided" anti-communism and the concomitant democratic idealism, that pulled Kerry's hero, John F. Kennedy, into Vietnam. The United States, by this reckoning, did not "have to" go to war in Korea in 1950. Nor could a post-Vietnam Kerry have considered Lyndon Johnson's 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic necessary. Or has Kerry now retroactively accepted the Cold War justification for these interventions that he once rejected?

Then there were the wars of the post-Cold War 1990s. The United States did not "have to" go to war to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. No one knows that better than Kerry, who voted against the Persian Gulf War, despite its unanimous approval by the U.N. Security Council. Nor could anyone plausibly deny that the Clinton administration's interventions in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo were wars of choice. President Bill Clinton made the right choice in all three cases, but it was a choice.

Why is Kerry invoking an American "tradition" that does not exist?

Perhaps he's distorting American history simply to cast the Bush administration and the war in Iraq in the harshest possible light. But maybe Kerry is not being cynical. Perhaps, finally, he is saying what he really believes and not what American policy has been, but what it should be.

The doctrine Kerry enunciated on Thursday night, after all, was the doctrine initially favored by the antiwar movement and the mainstream of the Democratic Party after the debacle of Vietnam. "Come home, America" was the cry of those who believed America had corrupted both the world and itself in "wars of choice" in Vietnam and elsewhere.

Advocates of this doctrine did not propose a "return" to some mythical American past. Rather, they proposed a radical departure onto a very different course in American foreign policy. Their goal was a retraction of American power and influence from around the globe. Nor did they have any doubt that their view of America was patriotic. They would cleanse America of its sins.

Would it really be surprising if John Kerry, whose life and thought were so powerfully shaped by his Vietnam experience, now returned to the view of American foreign policy which that experience led him to three decades ago? There seems to be a conspiracy on both sides in this campaign not to take Kerry seriously as a man of ideas and conviction. But the fact that he has waffled so visibly on Iraq may be the best proof of his commitment to the beliefs about American foreign policy he came to hold in the 1970s.

Maybe Kerry's real act of cynicism was his vote for the Iraq war in the fall of 2002. With that vote, he ignored everything he believed he had learned from his Vietnam experience. In retrospect, he may feel that he sold his soul to make himself electable. In the months since the war, Kerry has had to pretend he did the right thing, not only because a politician dare not admit error but because his political advisers believe that in a post-Sept. 11 world most of the electorate does not want an "antiwar" president. Throughout the long months of the campaign, Kerry disciplined himself to sound like a hawk. But in his heart, based on all he learned during the formative years of his life, Kerry is not a hawk. At the Democratic National Convention, John Edwards followed the script. Kerry followed his heart.

The ironies abound. Three decades ago, Kerry came out in opposition to the war he had fought in Vietnam. Today, Kerry extols that service so that he may safely, patriotically distance himself from the war in Iraq that he had supported.

If Kerry has revealed himself in an unusual moment of honesty, it's time everyone took an equally honest look at where he would lead the country if elected. Kerry's "doctrine of necessity," if seriously intended, would entail a pacifism and an isolationism more thorough than any attempted by a U.S. government since the 1930s. It would rule out all wars fought for humanitarian ends, all interventions to prevent genocide, to defend democracy or even, as in the case of the Persian Gulf War, to uphold international law against aggression. For those are all wars of choice.

For someone who professes to seek better relations with the rest of the world, Kerry's doctrine of necessity would base American foreign policy on narrow, selfish interests far more than the alleged "unilateralism" of the Bush administration. Some Europeans have been quietly worrying that what they consider Bush's overambitious foreign policy will be followed in the United States by an isolationist backlash. After hearing Kerry's speech, they may worry a bit more.

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.
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No one liked the convention

Poll: No boost for Kerry after convention
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Last week's Democratic convention boosted voters' views of John Kerry but failed to give him the expected bump in the race against President Bush, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds.
In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, Kerry trailed Bush 50%-46% among likely voters. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was at 2%.

The survey showed Kerry losing 1 percentage point and Bush gaining 4 percentage points from a poll taken the week before the Boston convention.

The change in support was within the poll's margin of error of +/–4 percentage points in the sample of 763 likely voters. But it was nonetheless surprising, the first time since the chaotic Democratic convention in 1972 that a candidate hasn't gained ground during his convention.

USA TODAY extended its survey to Sunday to get a fuller picture of what's happening.

A Newsweek poll taken Thursday and Friday gave the Democrats a 49%-42% lead. Over three weeks, that reflected a 4-point "bounce" for Kerry, the smallest ever in the Newsweek poll.

Among registered voters in the USA TODAY poll, Kerry and Bush each had 47%. Bush was up 4 points, Kerry unchanged from the pre-convention survey.

Analysts say the lack of a bounce may reflect the intensely polarized contest. Nearly nine of 10 voters say their minds are made up and won't change. "The convention, typically a kicking-off point for a party, is now merely a reaffirmation" of where voters stand, said David Moore, senior editor of the Gallup Poll.
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John Kerry said:
"As president," Kerry declared, "I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation."
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The article is right. It's not a time honored tradtion but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be.
 
It should'nt be. We've saved millions of lives in WW1, Haiti and the Phillipeeens. I don't see it as a matter of discussion. We need to be involved in the world actively.
 
Actually, the US has always been slow to enter military conflicts. The most unpopular wars have always been those that have been looked upon as unnecessary. If Germany would not have asked Mexico to invade, Wilson would not have put us on a war footing in WW1. Even in WW2 AFTER Pearl Harbor, there was some relectance to get involved in a distant European conflict (many were all for going after the Japanese but a large plurality were on the fence with regards to Hitler - the Administration had to make the case which is why they hired Capra to make "Why We Fight").

I would say the Kerry Doctrine actually has considerable historical validity and ties in very closely to traditional US isolationist and nonantagonistic attitudes. More importantly, it reflects our dogged contempt for all military action that is not ultimately seen as worthwhile. Moreover, though getting involved in the world community has come to be seen as a virtue, one could also argue that wanton unilateralism has been seen as a vice.
 
John Kerry wrote:
"As president," Kerry declared, "I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation."


is he saying that we went to war for nothing?? am i the only one who still remembers 9/11? most people forget that we were justified to go to war with the taliban.
 
The problem is. 9/11 had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, except for a bloodthirsty feeling that everybody had afterwards.

I just think it's funny that anti-war/bush people are so adamant about voting for Kerry, when he has almost the same foreign policy.
 
No, he does'nt, that's a big part of the point. He claims to, but he does'nt. Take him at his actiions, not rhetoric, there's a reason he talked about his 20 years in the senate during the DNC for 26 seconds. He voted against the first Iraq war, he spent his youth as a peacenick on par with Jane Fonda,etc...baisically, if you're a Democrat and you have trouble winning Massachucets you have a problem.

Frankly, I would have voted for Dean or Dukakis before I voted for Kerry, let alone Clinton. Myself, and alot of Republicans, are'nt particularly fond of Bush, but the Dems pulled a McGovern out of thier asses. Hell, worse then McGovern maybe. McGovern was likeable.
 
Actually, Kerry was very much in favor of action against Saddam well before 2001 and since. He repeatedly called for increased attempts to fund insurgencies against Saddam and increased international pressures with regards to inspections. Im not sure why Kerry voted against action in the first Gulf War but it should be noted that several people were on the fence on that one and that many had serious qualms about the results should the Administration go after Saddam instead of just pushing him out of Kuwait (see Schwarzkopf's take: http://www.bushflash.com/wmf/Schwartzkopf.WMV ). Of course, its much easier to label people as peaceniks and hippes rather than look at the facts.
 
Well, this would be as good a time as any...

http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2941359

WHO IS JOHN KERRY?

JOHN KERRY is the purloined letter of American politics. In Edgar Allan Poe's short story, a French minister steals a compromising letter from the royal palace and hides it in plain sight above the fireplace, while the police tear up floorboards, furniture and garden to no avail. Mr Kerry has been hiding in plain sight since 1969, when he returned from Vietnam to lead Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

This year he won the Democratic primary earlier than usual. He was smothered with some of the most flattering media coverage a candidate has ever got. His advertising and fundraising efforts have shattered records. Yet according to a poll for The Economist by YouGov, almost half of American voters say that they still have no idea of who he is or what he stands for.

Next week, Democrats flock to his home town, Boston, for their party's convention with one overriding aim: to rescue their stealth candidate from his obscurity, define him more clearly and sell him to voters. It will not be easy.

Mr Kerry's politics are still undefined. Republicans say he is the Senate's most left-wing member, an archetypal “Massachusetts liberal”. Yet he has been close to the Democratic Leadership Council, the party's moderate, pro-business wing, for years. He has spent almost two decades in the Senate yet has no major items of legislation to his name: his time was spent investigating government abuses rather than making law.

His personality is ill-defined, too. Despite millions of dollars of biographic advertising, he does not connect with voters. He is an aloof Boston Brahmin. Other American aristocrats became successful politicians by reinventing themselves, some as an average Joe (George W. Bush), others as stars (John Kennedy), others as unapologetic sons of privilege (Teddy Roosevelt). Mr Kerry is none of these.

Even his friends and allies provide few clues to his personality. During his 19 years in the Senate, he has established few political friendships: he is close personally to John McCain, a fellow Vietnam vet, but their legislative records are far apart. His campaign team is neither a close-knit group of friends and advisers from his home state (like President Bush's), nor hired Washington hands (like Al Gore's when he ran for the presidency in 2000), nor a coterie of former advisers to ex-President Bill Clinton. Instead it consists of all three. They circle him like out-of-work actors round a casting director, wary of each other and greedy for his attention. By his friends, ye shall not know him.

Mr Kerry revealed corners of himself during the primaries. In winning the first two contests, he showed he is not easily stampeded by setbacks. A month before his first triumph in Iowa, his campaign was being written off. He fired his campaign manager, but otherwise stuck to his strategy. He refused to panic, revealing that he has a calm grasp of his long-term interests and is not easily distracted.

His stump speeches are eye-crossingly dull. He expresses simple ideas in weird, circumlocutory ways, showing special fondness for multiple negatives. Yet his choice of the fluent, charismatic populist John Edwards as his running-mate suggests he is unafraid of his weaknesses, and does not worry about being upstaged. His self-confidence is steady.



Kerry's many images
He makes few mistakes. Unlike Mr Gore, he has been disciplined about his campaign image. He does not show up in earth tones one day, blue suits the next. But while his campaign has avoided the abrupt shifts of mood and image, it has not been consistent.

At different times, the Democratic candidate has campaigned as Cautious Kerry, the moderate challenger to fiery Howard Dean; as Veteran Kerry, the war hero who would go toe to toe with Mr Bush; and as Competent Kerry, the technocrat assailing the president as the bungler who messed up the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the occupation of Iraq. Recently. he has campaigned as Conservative Kerry, challenging Mr Bush on God and country by claiming to represent “conservative values”.






To some extent, these changes reflect the inevitable development of the campaign itself. Still, there has been no compelling message. That, argue Republicans, is because there cannot be. Mr Kerry is hard to define because he lacks a centre of gravity, any deeply held set of convictions. He has shown personal, not political courage. He wants to straddle both sides of every issue. On his return from Vietnam, he dramatically threw his medals over a fence in protest against the war. Only later did it turn out that he kept his Silver and Bronze stars, throwing away his ribbons and the medals of a fellow veteran.

He voted against the first Iraq war, in favour of the second, and against the $87 billion Iraqi reconstruction package. He opposes gay marriage personally but favours its legalisation by states. He described affirmative action as “inherently limited and divisive”, but then supported it. There is much about Mr Kerry that does not quite add up. He is war hero and war protester. A notable political comeback, he is determinedly unexciting. He is a policy expert who sells himself on his biography. As Richard Nixon remarked in 1971, “Well, he is sort of a phoney, isn't he?”



He never quite belonged
Nixon was too harsh. Mr Kerry's personality seems undefined partly because it is rootless and impermanent. In their excellent biography, “John F. Kerry” (Public Affairs Books, 2004), three Boston Globe reporters quote his reaction to a meeting in honour of Joe Moakley, who represented the close-knit neighbourhood of South Boston. “I felt a pang as I listened to him talk about the lessons learned in that community,” Mr Kerry said. “Because one of my regrets is that I didn't share that kind of neighbourhood. My dad was in the foreign service. We moved around a lot.”

This put him out of step with his colleagues. It was another Boston Democrat, Tip O'Neill, who said, “all politics is local”. Massachusetts politicians tend to be deeply rooted in their neighbourhoods. Mr Kerry is not. He has never quite lived down his reputation as a carpet-bagger, earned in his early days. Searching for a congressional seat to contest, he registered addresses in three different districts.

And just as he did not fully belong to the traditional world of Massachusetts politics, so he was never wholly part of Boston's aristocracy either. Through his mother, he is related to two of America's oldest families, the Winthrops and the Forbes. But his grandfather was born in what is now the Czech Republic, leaving to escape anti-Semitism. He lost two fortunes and shot himself after losing a third.

Mr Kerry is now rich, having married wealth (his second wife, Teresa, is worth about $1 billion of Heinz money). He went to elite schools (St Paul's, Yale) and joined elite clubs (Yale's Skull and Bones, as did Mr Bush). As a young man Mr Kerry went sailing with John Kennedy and dated Jacqueline Kennedy's half-sister. But his family was still seen as a recent member of that exclusive bunch.

He has also had a slightly awkward relationship with the national Democratic Party, though this tells as much about the party as it does about him. The Democrats are now united in the aim of getting rid of Mr Bush, and this has superseded their own ideological debates. Hence, the appetite for intra-party confrontation is lower than it was. But the leader still needs to put on different masks to please different constituencies. In responding to this need, Mr Kerry has been neither coherent nor brave.

But he has been successful. Democrats have rallied to him—and not entirely out of hatred for Mr Bush. Anger was strong against Mr Bush at the 2002 mid-term election, yet the Democratic leadership at that election was a disaster, and the party was slaughtered. Its leaders could not agree whether to support or condemn the Patriot Act, whether to support or criticise the new Department of Homeland Security, whether to encourage or restrain the movement to war. Mr Kerry's undivisive leadership, and ability to avoid bad mistakes, deserves more credit than it has got.

Perhaps the difficulties in identifying his core beliefs are largely a consequence of his habits of thought and mind. In making decisions, his approach is deliberate. He marshals material exhaustively, immerses himself in details, and forms judgments on a balance of competing evidence. At their best, such thought processes reveal a wide-ranging, diligent mind, sensitive to nuance, complexity and fine distinctions. At their worst, they can be nitpicking and ambivalent, unable to see the wood for the trees.

Mr Kerry marries flexibility of thought with secretiveness in decision-making. He conducted his long search for a running-mate in private. He consulted widely but was in no hurry to announce his choice. That is consistent with his modus operandi in the Senate. Though he held long question-and-answer sessions with aides, they frequently did not know his decision until he delivered his vote on the floor.

The contrast with Mr Bush is instructive. The president tends to go back to first principles. He strips each issue down to its essentials and presents arguments in black and white, right or wrong. He makes decisions easily, and moves on.

Which habit of thought is superior is a matter of opinion. Mr Bush appears principled but simple-minded; Mr Kerry knowledgeable but wanting to have it both ways. Judged as a presidential manner, Mr Bush's crisper cast of mind is usually seen to be better. It is the distinction between legislative and executive abilities. Senator Kerry still has a way to go before convincing voters he can make the transition.



Looking at the record
In trying to identify a set of principles, the most obvious place to start is Mr Kerry's voting record. Yet this is less simple than it sounds. Is he a liberal? The Republicans say bluntly yes. And it is true that the National Journal, a magazine that keeps score of legislative records, calculated that in 2003 Mr Kerry had the most left-wing record in the Senate. But this is misleading. Out campaigning, he missed most of the crucial votes that year on foreign policy and social matters; his record reflected only his anti-tax-cut votes (which are scored “liberal” but might with equal justice be deemed “fiscally conservative”).

The truth is that Mr Kerry's voting record has changed. He did have the most left-wing record of any senator in three of the six years of his first term (1984-90). But he later moved to support more robust policies. He bucked his party's line on trade with China, which he favoured, and on education, which he said was “imploding” because of “stifling bureaucracy”. Facing down opposition from the unions, he proposed to make it easier to hire and fire teachers. This year, he proposed a watered-down version of those reforms.

During the second half of the 1990s, he was, on average, the 15th most left-wing senator, poised between the party's liberal and moderate wings. This record reflects less an ingrained liberalism than a move from representing liberal Massachusetts towards the national stage.

But in seeking to answer the question “what does he stand for?”, Mr Kerry and his advisers must focus less on what he has done than on what he promises to do, ie, on his platform. Here, some firmer conclusions are possible.

The 2004 election is the first presidential contest since the attacks of September 11th, and the first vote since the Iraq war. Understandably, it seems a momentous occasion, raising profound questions of national security. It is also the first election since Mr Bush's huge tax cuts and the last before the baby-boomers start to retire, so it also raises big issues of domestic policy.



Left fork rather than left turn
On both sides, politicians are painting the contrasts between the candidates in the starkest terms. Mr Kerry, Republicans say, would turn American security over to the United Nations, cut and run in Iraq, raise taxes and generally prove a pre-9/11 tax-and-spend peacenik. Some left-wingers hope that is true. Yet Mr Kerry is offering a mid-course correction, a left fork rather than a sharp left turn (and still less a U-turn, go back to 2000 and start again).

AP


An acute sense of America's fallibilities



His team says that a Kerry administration would spend about the same as Mr Bush on national defence. He will not give Mr Bush a monopoly of running as a war president: a quarter of the Democrats' policy platform is devoted to security. Arguing that the armed forces are stretched too thin, he proposes to increase active-duty military strength by 40,000. This is a rebuff to the notion, put forward by Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, that the future lies in smaller, smarter forces.

Mr Kerry has espoused his own version of Mr Bush's pre-emption doctrine. And he has yet to offer a convincing explanation of how his Iraq policy would differ from the president's. The most striking difference between the two on foreign policy is Mr Kerry's commitment to multilateral engagement. There is a chance that a Kerry administration would be able to make a new start in international relations, lessening the tensions with Europe and the Middle East that have grown so acute under Mr Bush's rule.

But the current administration has also been seeking more co-operation with Europe over Iraq. It has found itself largely rebuffed, for there are hard differences of strategy and self-interest between the two sides. Those differences would remain even if Mr Kerry were president, so the possibility of post-honeymoon disenchantment is genuine.

On domestic policy, Republicans call Mr Kerry a tax-raiser. He would indeed repeal Mr Bush's tax cuts on people earning more than $200,000 a year. But he proposes to keep the middle-class tax cuts (as well as cut some corporate taxes). The distributional impact—more taxes at the top, less lower down—is Clintonian. The fiscal impact, says Len Berman of the Urban Institute, would not be a tax rise but a tax cut of $600 billion over ten years.

That is still much less than the $1.4 trillion of reductions that Mr Bush is proposing. Mr Kerry plans to spend all, or possibly more than all, the difference on health care. In simple terms, the election's domestic policy choice is between more tax cuts and more spending on health care.

To expand coverage for the poor, Mr Kerry would have the federal government take over from the states the full health costs of children on Medicaid; in exchange the states would dramatically increase the number of families eligible for the plan. This would bring the long-held aim of universal health care closer: the Kerry campaign says its reforms would cover 95% of the population. The government would also assume the bit of health insurance that covers catastrophic costs. By spreading risks among the whole population, the plan would be more equitable (at the moment, individual insurance policies can be bankrupted by an accident). It might also reduce costs by 10%, say the Kerry team, though others question that.

Whatever the exact cost, the health proposals would eat up the foregone tax cuts on the rich. In other words, the main items of taxing and spending in Mr Kerry's plans cancel each other out, contributing nothing to his stated goal of halving the budget deficit in four years. In this respect, as in others, Mr Kerry is more like the president than he admits. Neither's promise of budget discipline looks plausible, though Mr Kerry seems more likely to forgo his spending plans than Mr Bush his tax cuts.

Judged by his programme, then, the challenger does not appear the unprincipled, indecisive phoney of Republican lore. His foreign policy strikes a reasonable balance of assertiveness and diplomacy. His health plan expands benefits without falling into the trap of over-ambition that undid Mr Clinton. His budget numbers do not add up—but then neither do Mr Bush's.



Seeing what's wrong with America
The question is whether Mr Kerry is more than the sum of all these parts. Can anything be learned from them to explain the persistent puzzle? Arguably, it can. His policies have one thing in common with his record: they all reflect an acute sense of America's fallibilities.

As a Vietnam vet, Mr Kerry gained notoriety, as well as praise, by accusing GIs of war crimes. In his investigations in the Senate he concentrated on government scandals, such as the Iran-contra business. Now, his multilateralism seems to be a way in which America can impose discipline on its own power in the world. And his health-care plan addresses one of America's most shameful problems, the millions without health care.

For Mr Bush, America is always a force for good. The world, in his view, will benefit from the exercise of American power. At home, the country will thrive if entrepreneurial spirits are given free rein. The job of the president is to act on those principles. For Mr Kerry, the task is more downbeat and complex: to use the power of government to temper America's failings as well as to buttress its strengths.

It is not, in some ways, a compelling vision, just as Mr Kerry is not a compelling candidate. But this year, Mr Kerry and his message may appeal to voters who want to pause for a realistic and decent reappraisal of what their country stands for, a respite from four years of heroic, hectic and sometimes heedless history-making.
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Frankly.

Who gives a fuck?

Is this guy prone to send a whole nation to war over corporate money?

Right.
 
ConstipatedCraprunner said:
Wooz, ever read The Possesed?
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No, please bring the intellectual literary dawn on my ignorant vistas, I neither know the author nor the original title of the said book.
 
It's Dostoyevsky. It's along similar lines as Crime and Punishment only it's about a Pan-Slavic group bent on destroying.
 
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