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Indeed it seems useful to despise <br>
the despicable individual leaves of the tree but<br>
sooner or later one has got to get at the root.<br>
<br>
The players change but the programme does not.<br>
<br>
Most Americans are at least secretly if not overtly pleased to<br>
ride on the great ship of the amerikan empire and they<br>
are willing to support it with their substance and feed <br>
their offspring to it.<br>
<br>
Why?<br>
<br>
Because they perceive (correctly, I might add) that supporting<br>
the empire benefits them personally. <br>
<br>
They don't give a ripe red rat's ass where the meat came from.<br>
<br>
Don't ask what it is.<br>
<br>
Just give us another bite and keep it coming, James.<br>
<br>
After all, why should we blame the Schicklgrubers <br>
for teutonism? Surely Obot didnt invent anything.<br>
It doesnt matter if he is a murderer because he has a grocery list<br>
of victims or because he can make a bomb off the shelf at Farm &
Fleet.<br>
<br>
There is something fundamentally wrong in the society that urges <br>
war and imperialistic greed. McCain is a puppet, Graham is a
puppet.<br>
Obot, Karl f'n Rove, Bush, all of them -- puppets.<br>
<br>
At least Pinocchio had originality in his blossoming nasus and
nostrum.<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
<br>
On 05/16/2014 10:58 AM, David Johnson via Peace-discuss wrote:<br>
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<header id="main-content-header" class="clearfix">
<h1 id="page-title"> The Aptly Named Anne-Marie Slaughter </h1>
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<div class="field-item even"><big><big><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2014-05-15T00:00:00-05:00">May 15, 2014</span></big></big></div>
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<div class="field-item even"><big><big><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/7563">Steve
Breyman, Environmental Protection Agency,
Administrator</a></big></big></div>
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<blockquote>
<p><big><big> <em>"Political language . . . is designed
to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of
solidity to pure wind." ~ George Orwell</em> </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>Rise to Prominence</strong></big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Anne-Marie Slaughter had a successful
academic career at elite institutions. After
receiving degrees from Princeton, Harvard Law, and
Oxford, she taught law at the University of Chicago
and Harvard University. She was the first woman Dean
of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. Slaughter
is currently President of the New America
Foundation, a centrist DC think tank (Google’s Eric
Schmidt is chairman of the board of directors which
includes Fareed Zakaria, Steven Rattner, Jonathan
Soros, Francis Fukuyama, and James Fallows). <em>Foreign
Policy</em> named her to its annual list of the
Top100 Global Thinkers in 2009, 2010, and 2011.
Slaughter lectures widely, is a member of the
Trilateral Commission, and pens a monthly column for
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.project-syndicate.org">Project
Syndicate</a>.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Slaughter, an international law and
international relations specialist, is best known to
the public for her essay “<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/">Why
Women Still Can’t Have It All</a>” in <em>The
Atlantic</em>, a discussion-stimulating piece (“by
far the most popular article ever published in that
magazine” according to Wikipedia) that she later
turned into a TED talk. The essay sprang from her
stint as the first woman Director of Policy Planning
at the State Department (2009-2011), a job once held
by George Kennan. It was, according to Slaughter,
her “foreign policy dream job,” which she left for
work-life balance reasons (she was mother to an
unruly teenager) and because Princeton, like most
universities, limits professional development leave
to two years.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>She did something courageous early in her
career: as a student, Slaughter was part of the team
headed by her mentor Abram Chayes that helped the
Sandinistas ‘successfully’ sue the US in the World
Court for supporting the Contras and mining the
country’s harbors. The Court ruled in 1986 against
Washington on all sixteen counts, but the Reagan
administration refused to acknowledge the court’s
jurisdiction. US Ambassador to the United Nations
Jeanne Kirkpatrick dismissed the Court as a
"semi-legal, semi-juridical, semi-political body,
which nations sometimes accept and sometimes don't."
Numerous attempts by Nicaragua to have the UN
Security Council enforce the ruling were vetoed by
Kirkpatrick. This instance of righteous action is a
rare occurrence in Slaughter’s career.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>By 2003 she was splitting hairs in a <em>New
York </em>Times <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/opinion/good-reasons-for-going-around-the-un.html">op-ed</a>
over whether the invasion of Iraq was “illegal” or
“illegitimate.” The piece was a stomach-turning
attempt to justify the invasion while appearing to
uphold respect for multilateralism and international
law. “Overall,” Slaughter concluded, “everyone
involved is still playing by the rules. But
depending on what we find in Iraq, the rules may
have to evolve, so that what is legitimate is also
legal.” This after admitting earlier in the essay
that Bush initiated Shock and Awe by his lonesome,
without allies or UN approval, which she—the
renowned international lawyer—fails to rightly
describe as a crime against humanity and a war
crime.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>Reflecting on Five Years in Iraq</strong></big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>The occasion of the fifth anniversary of the
invasion found Slaughter <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/annemarie-slaughter/stop-gotcha-politics-on-i_b_92593.html">whining</a>
about how Tom Hayden and others had misinterpreted
some overly nuanced position of hers about
preemption. Her real lament was that “gotcha
politics on Iraq” outside the Beltway overshadowed
what any fair-minded establishment observer should
see as an <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/Inside-the-Fanciful-World-by-Steve-Breyman-Democracy_Empire_Hegemony_History-140503-34.html">Excusable
Foreign Policy Error</a>. </big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big> "Hayden's post and many other commentaries
surrounding the fifth anniversary of the invasion
are a microcosm of the problem with our Iraq
policy as a whole. The debate is still far too
much about who was right and who was wrong on the
initial invasion and far too little about how, in
Obama's formulation, to be as careful getting out
of Iraq as we were careless getting in. That does
not mean that those of us who were wrong about
Iraq -- with whatever nuances, explanations, and
justifications we might care to offer -- do not
have a great deal to answer for. We do. But it
does mean that until we can fix the mess we are
in, everyone who cares about what happens both to
our troops and to the Iraqi people should force
themselves to face up to the hard issues on the
ground rather than indulging in the easy game of
gotcha.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>I'll start by offering a metric for how to
assess any candidate -- and any expert's -- plan
for Iraq. The test for the best policy should be
the one that is most likely to bring the most
troops home in the shortest time (to stop American
casualties, begin repairing our military, and be
able to redeploy badly needed military assets to
Afghanistan), while also achieving the most
progress on the goals that the administration
stated publicly as a justification for invading in
the first place: 1) ensuring that the Iraqi
government could not develop nuclear or biological
weapons of mass destruction (done); 2) weaken
terrorist groups seeking to attack us (this goal
was based on false premises then, but is highly
relevant now); 3) improve the human rights of the
Iraqi people; and 4) establish a government in
Iraq that could help stabilize and liberalize the
Middle East. No policy can possibly achieve all of
those goals. But the policy that offers the best
chance on all five measures is the policy we
should follow, in my view. And applying those
measures to concrete policy proposals is the
debate we should be having." </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>For Slaughter, the “problem with our Iraq
policy as a whole” was not the sum of the ongoing
and disproportionate application of historically
destructive military force, Petraeus’s lethal
counterinsurgency doctrine, house raids, daily
instances of “<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0">Collateral
Murder</a>,” Abu Ghraib, porcine contractors
snorkeling up ill-gotten gains while wreaking havoc,
untold corruption both public and private,
conspicuous <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://original.antiwar.com/steve-breyman/2005/09/01/a-question-of-competence/">incompetence</a>,
or a hundred other glaring and irreparable flaws. It
was that critics of the war needed to “face up to
the hard issues on the ground.”</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Slaughter has the audacity to lecture her
critics through a set of goals the achievement of
which she fails to see is made impossible by the
continuation of the war. It’s stunning, and telling,
that her metric relies on the disingenuous post hoc
war aims of the Bush administration. She counsels
renewed destruction of Afghanistan (which
foreshadows Obama’s two surges, and which she surely
recommended while in office). She does not see that
to “fix the mess we’re in” is an invitation to
endless occupation. She fails to understand, as a
large number of us who opposed the war in the first
place did years earlier, that <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.antiwar.com/orig/breyman.php?articleid=7095">immediate
withdrawal</a> was the only sane Iraq exit
strategy.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>Libya as Strategic Interest</strong></big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Slaughter was back in 2011 with several
essays defending NATO’s air campaign against
Gaddafi, and the US role in it (several months after
she quit Hillary Clinton’s State Department to
return to the academy). <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/18cb7f14-ce3c-11e0-99ec-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk">One</a>
of them celebrated the toughness of liberal
interventionists like her who pushed the bombardment
of Gaddafi’s forces not just “for moral reasons” but
also for reasons of “strategic interest.” She
defines strategic interest in this case as support
for “democracy and human rights.” “This value-based
argument,” claims Slaughter, “was inextricable from
the interest-based argument. So enough with the
accusations of bleeding heart liberals seeking to
intervene for strictly moral reasons.” It’s bold to
argue via omission that the invasion of Iraq—or the
overthrow of Gaddafi—was not about oil (a word that
does not appear in the essay). The interventions
Slaughter supports tend to leave other peoples’
hearts bleeding.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>She’s giddy about the early progress of the
successor regime (much better than the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Iraq, she thinks): “The <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d5c8fff6-ce5a-11e0-99ec-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1ViWIrOy4">National
Transitional Council</a> has a draft
constitutional charter that is impressive in scope,
aspirations and detail – including 37 articles on
rights, freedoms and governance arrangements.” Her
incaution and enthusiasm for military action (on
behalf of both values and interests) doesn’t merely
stand out now, it was notable then too. Slaughter
then blasts those of <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-in-africa-somalia-mali-and-the-war-powers-resolution/5319069">us</a>
who complained that NATO’s bombing onslaught
exceeded the pertinent UN Security Council mandate
(consequently souring the Russians and Chinese on
any armed United Nations-backed intervention in the
Syrian civil war), and that the Obama administration
ought to have abided by the loose strictures of the
War Powers Resolution. </big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big> "The sceptics’ response to all this, of
course, is that it is too early to tell. In a
year, or a decade, Libya could disintegrate into
tribal conflict or Islamist insurgency, or split
apart or lurch from one strongman to another. But
the question for those who opposed the
intervention is whether any of those things is
worse than Col Gaddafi staying on by increasingly
brutal means for many more years. Instability and
worse would follow when he died, even had he
orchestrated a transition.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>The sceptics must now admit that the real
choice in Libya was between temporary stability
and the illusion of control, or fluidity and the
ability to influence events driven by much larger
forces. Welcome to the tough choices of foreign
policy in the 21st century. Libya proves the west
can make those choices wisely after all." </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>It’s not “too early to tell:” Libya has
indeed disintegrated into the chaos of tribal
militias, armed Islamist groups and criminal gangs.
It’s not possible in this essay to assess whether
Libya is better off without Gaddafi than with him.
It’s clear however that “instability and worse” has
followed since his downfall made possible by NATO
aerial intervention. That was evident virtually
immediately, we do not need to wait a decade.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>On a deeper level, the ‘better off’ question
is not the right one, especially for international
lawyers. The flippant attitude—‘regardless of
illegitimacy or illegality, let’s wait till the dust
settles and the blood dries before passing
judgment’—is common to Slaughter’s popular foreign
policy analyses. It betrays an unprincipled
ruthlessness prized in Washington that explains her
rise to and continued prominence. Transparently
imperial US international policy, whether in Iraq,
Libya or Ukraine, requires dressing up. Slaughter is
a leading member of a class of professional
apologists: the imperial costumers.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>The “real choice” in Libya was between
letting Libyans solve their own problems and great
power intervention on behalf of domestic elites soon
overrun by forces NATO could not control. There was
no “illusion of control:” it’s precisely because the
West could not control Gaddafi that he had to go
(recall Reagan’s bombing of the despot’s desert
tents in 1986), Tripoli’s rendition of the Arab
Spring provided the opportunity and excuse. Note the
absence of similar interventions in Egypt, Bahrain
or Tunisia. NATO’s “ability to influence events
driven by much larger forces” is today close to
zero.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>Iraq Ten Years in - Re-Roll the Film</strong></big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>On the tenth anniversary of the George W.
Bush’s aggression against Iraq, Slaughter was party
to <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112701/iraq-war-10th-anniversary-symposium">one</a>
of several loathsome public displays of ersatz
contrition (or worse) by pundits and policymakers,
writing:</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big> "Looking back, it is hard to remember just
how convinced many of us were that weapons of mass
destruction would be found. . . . I now see the
decision to invade Iraq as cynical, tragic,
immoral, and irresponsible to the point of folly.
I do not think that the thousands of U.S. and
allied lives lost were lost in vain: Only time can
tell what Iraq will become; how the Iraqi people
will look back on the toppling of Saddam Hussein
and the ensuing ten years of violence; and what
role Iraq will play in the larger Middle East. It
is very difficult to imagine any transition from
Saddam to post-Saddam without some violence and
political upheaval in a nation as fractured
religiously and ethnically as Iraq. But in
hindsight, the U.S. decision to spend tens of
billions of U.S. dollars; to ignore all knowledge,
planning, and expertise about Iraq with regard to
what should happen when the bullets stopped
flying; and to ignore the opposition of many of
our closest allies in deciding when and how to
take action is virtually indefensible. And I could
not in good conscience look an Iraqi widow,
parent, or child in the eye and tell them that the
tens of thousands of Iraqi lives lost served a
larger purpose, which is a burden that every
American who did not actively demonstrate against
the war must carry. </big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>In the end, Iraq served as my political
coming of age in the way that the Vietnam War was
a coming of age for the generation ten to fifteen
years ahead of me. Never again will I trust a
single government’s interpretation of data when
lives are at stake, perhaps especially my own
government. And I will not support the
international use of force in a war of choice
rather than necessity without the approval of some
multilateral body, one that includes countries
that are directly affected by both the
circumstances in the target country and by the
planned intervention. If the situation on the
ground in a country is not bad enough to mobilize
at least some of its neighbors to action, then it
should not mobilize far away military powers.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Iraq remains a country in pain. The United
States will be paying its financial and human
debts from the Iraq war for decades to come. If I
could re-roll the film, I would stop the invasion.
Instead we should mark a sober anniversary by
reflecting on all that the U.S., its allies, and
the Iraqis have lost. We can only hope we have
gained a lesson in humility." </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>There’s nothing “hard to remember” about how
easily academics and pundits fell for the
distortions, exaggerations and inventions of
Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Judith Miller.
It remains a wonderment eleven years later. Had
Slaughter been paying attention, she’d have seen it
before in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic in the
sixties, Cambodia and Iran in the seventies, El
Salvador and Guatemala in the eighties, and Iraq and
Panama in the nineties, Afghanistan and Iraq (again)
in the aughts. And she’d be seeing it once more in
Ukraine today. The song remains the same, only the
singers have changed.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>In her defense of NATO’s action in Libya, and
again here, Slaughter falls back on the ‘there
would’ve been violence anyway’ claim regarding
regime change in both countries. What this
rationalization obscures is the significant
difference in moral, political, and yes, strategic
terms of indigenous vs. external regime change. The
same goes for revolutionary vs. expeditionary
violence. The legitimacy of a government brought to
power by the intervention of foreign powers is
inferior to that which took office through its own
agency. Violence to topple a leader considered
unfriendly by leading powers is not the same
violence of domestic actors forcefully overthrowing
an autocrat.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>W’s Iraq adventure was the “political coming
of age” for someone—with advanced degrees in
international relations—forty-four years old at the
time of the invasion? This self-characterization
unintentionally doubles as admission of extreme
egotism, civic somnambulism, and/or ideological
blindness that helps explain why Slaughter, despite
her promises, repeats her mistakes.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Smart of Slaughter to take the long-view as
to whether dead US soldiers and Marines died in
vain. She’ll lionize American war dead but not Iraqi
war dead? Reversing Slaughter’s valence, she could
“in good conscience look an [American] widow,
parent, or child in the eye and tell them that the .
. . thousands of [American] lives lost served a
larger purpose”? Slaughter fails to
understand—perhaps because her political coming of
age is so recent—that those of us who did actively
demonstrate against the war (before the invasion and
after) also carry the “burden” as the calamity took
place in our names, under our flag, using our tax
dollars, and with the lives of our fellow citizens.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big><strong>Stopping Russia Starts in Syria</strong></big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Slaughter’s most recent <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/anne-marie-slaughter-on-how-us-intervention-in-the-syrian-civil-war-would-alter-vladimir-putin-s-calculus-in-ukraine">column</a>
for Project Syndicate revolves around the devilishly
clever idea of punishing Putin for his actions in
Ukraine by pummeling Assad’s forces in Syria. This
course of action has myriad benefits, not least of
which is that it would permit “Barack Obama to
demonstrate that he can order the offensive use of
force in circumstances other than secret drone
attacks or covert operations.” Presidents are not
real presidents unless they send in the 82nd
Airborne. Slaughter desperately misses the
transparent application of American military
violence (Afghanistan doesn’t attract the press
coverage it once did). The opaque, deniable, off
camera variety won’t cut it. War in the shadows
disappoints.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Parsing Putin’s motives for annexing Crimea,
Slaughter rejects the neoconservative claim that
Obama’s reticence to use direct US armed force in
Syria emboldened Russia to grab the peninsula. She
thinks it more likely that Putin wanted to redirect
his public’s attention away from the “country’s
failing economy.” (Wasn’t that what the Sochi
Olympics were about?). She does not imagine that
NATO expansion and US meddling in Ukrainian politics
may have been factors. Unfortunately, Putin now has
the upper hand, and “Western use of force, other
than to send arms to a fairly hapless Ukrainian
army, is not part of the equation.”</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big> "That is a problem. In the case of Syria,
the US, the world’s largest and most flexible
military power, has chosen to negotiate with its
hands tied behind its back for more than three
years. This is no less of a mistake in the case of
Russia, with a leader like Putin who measures
himself and his fellow leaders in terms of crude
machismo." </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>It does not matter that American public
opinion was solidly opposed to missile strikes
against Assad or that Obama was unlikely to receive
the congressional approval he sought. The ends
justify the means for Slaughter.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big> "A US strike against the Syrian government
now would change the entire dynamic. It would
either force the regime back to the negotiating
table with a genuine intention of reaching a
settlement, or at least make it clear that Assad
will not have a free hand in re-establishing his
rule." </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Direct US military action in Syria <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/10/neocons-to-the-front-five-reasons-to-not-intervene-in-syria-now/">would
not have</a>, cannot, and would not resolve the
conflict; its effects would be far worse than “crude
machismo.” Even the indirect sort—supplying
currently preferred rebels with anti-armor and
anti-aircraft missiles—will only prolong the
suffering. Eliminating “Syria’s fixed-wing aircraft”
as Slaughter calls for would make Assad no more
likely to negotiate with the al-Qaeda affiliates
that make up the vast bulk of the armed Syrian
opposition. She likely believes that downing Assad’s
air force can be done ‘surgically;’ she appears not
to understand that even such an ‘easy mission’ would
result in dead babies, collateral damage killed by
errant missiles, crashing planes and misplaced smart
bombs. Nor does she estimate the human cost of
restricting Assad’s “free hand” in the middle of a
heartrending humanitarian disaster.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>There’s the small matter that a US strike on
Syria without the backing of the United Nations
Security Council would violate international law.
Good lawyer that she is, Slaughter believes she’s
found a workaround:</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big> "[E]ven Russia agreed in February to <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2014/sc11292.doc.htm">Resolution
2139</a>, designed to compel the Syrian
government to increase flows of humanitarian aid
to starving and wounded civilians. Among other
things, Resolution 2139 requires that “all parties
immediately cease all attacks against civilians,
as well as the indiscriminate employment of
weapons in populated areas, including shelling and
aerial bombardment, such as the use of barrel
bombs….” </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Too bad for Slaughter that Resolution 2139
does not include an enforcement clause; there’s no
‘by all means necessary’ in the document. The
Chinese and Russians would not permit that provision
given their distrust of Obama following NATO’s
liberal reading of a similar Resolution concerning
Libya. Slaughter conveniently never draws the
connection (it would make demonizing Putin more
difficult), yet proffers the same advice today. No
matter, the US, and perhaps a European or NATO ally
or two, could commence hostilities, get the job
done, and only then evince concern for international
law: “After the strike, the US, France, and Britain
should ask for the Security Council’s approval of
the action taken, as they did after NATO’s
intervention in Kosovo in 1999.” Such approval seems
less forthcoming this time around.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>“In Ukraine,” thinks Slaughter, “Putin would
be happy to turn a peaceful opposition’s ouster of a
corrupt government into a civil war.” Apart from her
problematic description of the opposition, this
assessment conceals that Ukraine is a major Russian
trading partner, and the main country through which
Russia ships natural gas to Europe. Given the
centrality of those gas sales to the Russian
economy, and the near certainty a civil war would
destroy pipelines and other infrastructure, it’s
fair to say Putin would not be “happy” with a
Ukrainian civil war.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big> "Putin may believe, as Western powers have
repeatedly told their own citizens, that NATO
forces will never risk the possibility of nuclear
war by deploying in Ukraine. Perhaps not. But the
Russian forces destabilizing eastern Ukraine wear
no insignia. Mystery soldiers can fight on both
sides." </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Slaughter is unsure about whether NATO should
risk nuclear war by deploying military forces to
Ukraine? Is she calling for the deployment of NATO
special operations forces as “mystery soldiers”?
Heads of state should probably avoid soliciting
parliamentary approval for such deployments as that
would spoil the mystery. Would she have NATO mystery
soldiers shoot it out with Putin’s mystery soldiers?</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big> "Obama took office with the aim of ending
wars, not starting them. But if the US meets
bullets with words, tyrants will draw their own
conclusions. So will allies; Japan, for example,
is now wondering how the US will respond should
China manufacture a crisis over the disputed
Senkaku Islands.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>To lead effectively, in both the national
and the global interest, the US must demonstrate
its readiness to shoulder the full
responsibilities of power. Striking Syria might
not end the civil war there, but it could prevent
the eruption of a new one in Ukraine." </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Slaughter provides no guidelines for when the
US should meet bullets with bullets, but it appears
to be everywhere all the time lest it appear to
appease tyrants. Obama was recently in Japan to
reassure Abe, in a clear message to China, that he
had Japan’s back in disputes over the small rocky
uninhabited islands. With her call for the US “to
shoulder the full responsibilities of power” it’s as
if Slaughter were auditioning for the title role in
a twenty-first century remake of <em>Dr.
Strangelove</em>.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Despite the pious hope expressed in her mea
culpa on the tenth anniversary of the invasion,
Slaughter did not “learn a lesson in humility” from
Iraq. She is not to be believed when she cries
“never again.”</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<blockquote>
<p><big><big> "Never again will I trust a single
government’s interpretation of data when lives are
at stake, perhaps especially my own government.
And I will not support the international use of
force in a war of choice rather than necessity
without the approval of some multilateral body,
one that includes countries that are directly
affected by both the circumstances in the target
country and by the planned intervention. If the
situation on the ground in a country is not bad
enough to mobilize at least some of its neighbors
to action, then it should not mobilize far away
military powers." </big></big></p>
</blockquote>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Yet we have her advice about how to punish
both Syria and Russia for Putin’s behavior in
Ukraine, a crisis replete with misrepresentations,
misinterpretations, and misstatements emanating from
Washington. And a crisis thus far lacking armed
intervention approved by a multilateral body or
neighbors mobilized to military action. Rather than
an illegal attack on Syria or covert action in
Ukraine, Slaughter should counsel her favorite “far
away military power” to stand down.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>Might Americans (and the rest of the world)
sleep more soundly now that Anne-Marie Slaughter no
longer sits around the tables of power in
Washington? Maybe. There’s also the prospect that
she’s become even more dangerous to world peace.
Obama’s foreign policy is made almost completely
within the White House (the State and Defense
Departments implement but do not make much policy in
this administration). Obama’s White House and
Clinton-Kerry’s State Department are highly attuned
to criticism from Capitol Hill, and work feverishly
to anticipate and head it off it through policies
amenable to John McCain and Lindsay Graham. A high
public profile was not possible during Slaughter’s
government service. Her frequent lectures, TV
appearances and op-eds since returning to the
private sector may propel her voice further and
farther today than ever before. Her post at the New
America Foundation provides the largest public
audience of her career. The “About” section of the
Foundation’s website includes this statement:
“Abroad, the United States has yet to fashion
sustainable foreign and defense policies that will
protect its citizens and interests in a rapidly
integrating world.” Should we listen to Anne-Marie
Slaughter, it never will.</big></big></p>
<big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>~<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://greenshadowcabinet.us/member-profile/7563">
Steve Breyman</a><em> serves as Administrator of
the Environmental Protection Agency in the Ecology
Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet.</em></big></big></p>
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