US Election Special In The EXile

And yet, McCain still has Cold War instincts, even if he doesn't have obvious Rambo issues. These residual cold war instincts become most inflamed not over China--the Vietcong's primary patron--but Russia. Distrust of Russia and a hard-line against the Kremlin have been motifs of McCain's Senate career. In the late-80s, he was one of the skeptics that, having completely missed the coming changes in the Soviet system, steadfastly refused to accept the massive reality-shift in front of his very eyes. When Gorbachev unilaterally announced a major drawdown of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe, less than a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, McCain's first thoughts were, "Don't trust the lying commie bastard." In a New York Times interview in 1988, he opined, "[Reducing Warsaw Pact forces in Eastern Europe] is clearly a very intelligent move on the part of Gorbachev. I don't think it poses an immediate impact on the defense budget, but over time it can certainly have a significant effect if the perception of the Soviet threat is diminished.'' McCain was never excited about that damn "peace dividend." During the 90s, McCain was a gung-ho William Safire conservative on missile defense and Western aid. More recently, McCain's pet issues are kicking Moscow out of the G-8 and establishing a League of Democracies, which would basically be a League of America's Bestest Friends. McCain is a big fan of new, more selective alliances. He's also proposing a new quadrilateral security partnership in Asia that includes Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. The purpose of both the G-8 and LoD plans is to shore up Western solidarity to Cold War levels (a comparison he has explicitly made) and sideline Russia (and China) by attacking the legitimacy of important forums in which they are equal members. How dangerous is John McCain's notoriously short fuse? Exile experts forecast various scenarios and outcomes: ... (2 more pages) http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=16471 US Elections Special Part II: Fear Of An Obama Cabinet By Mark Ames Barack Obama has pulled off one of the most amazing feats in contemporary politics: without staking out a single concrete position, he's managed to pass off tired cliches about "change" and "hope" as something new, substantive and inspiring. The problem with Obama is that nobody knows what he stands for. The only thing he stands by was his speech against the Iraq War in 2002, but since coming to Congress, he's gone from prescient anti-war activist to hyper-cautious Iraq War moderate. By not taking a concrete stand on any issue, Barack Obama has positioned himself anywhere and everywhere along the Democratic Party spectrum, from the progressive wing to the centrist Clintonite wing. To anyone who remembers Putin's deft political maneuvering in 1999-2000, this vague all-things-to-all-people strategy may sound familiar. It should also be a warning, because eventually, all politicians are forced to define themselves and to be defined. So what might this mean for U.S.-Russia relations under a President Obama presidency? First, of course, the specter of a black American president will find its way into Anshlag, Comedy Club, and every bad anekdot imaginable. However being the butt of a bad racist joke won't upset President Obama. Fuck with his ambitions, and you'll soon be staring down the tip of a Trident II. Make a racist joke , and he'll assume you're not a real player, that's all. Once the rocky honeymoon wears off, Obama will start to look to his chosen foreign policy advisers to help navigate what will inevitably become the most dysfunctional relationship he's had since kicking coke, and turning his back on the homies from that scene. Russia will play the role of the drug-casualty-buddy-you-can't-ignore, making him all the more dependent upon his advisers for help while he tries to get his head straight. [See eXile comparison chart below] The eXile, in the Obama spirit, moves past the divisions and finds all that American blacks and Russian Russians have in common: ... So, who are Obama's advisors? This is where it gets a little scary. Obama has surrounded himself with a combination of the cream of Bill Clinton's foreign policy team, a few gold-medal liberal hawk fanatics, and, worst of all, the obsessively Russophobic Zbigniew Brzezinski and his power-lawyer son Mark. That's bad news for Russia, and ultimately for everyone. Brzezniski-pere is a Polish refugee who like so many East European immigrants brought his Old World hates to the New World as a guiding principle. He recently revealed his Dr. Evil plot from the late 1970s: he had personally instigate the the Soviet-Afghanistan war in order to bleed his nemesis dry. Considering that the policy eventually led to the Taliban and 9/11, it's a rather odd bragging right to claim. Unless your goal was to bite your host America's nose off to spite your old enemy Russia's face. ... http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=16479

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