WHAT NEXT? Taking up my own challenge from a couple of days ago, some thoughts on how to proceed with respect to foreign policy:
1. There needs to be serious rapprochement with Democratic governments around the world, key among them France, India and Japan*. If the first Bush term was about exposing how corrupt and impotent current international institutions and norms are, the second term needs to be about building both up so that other nations and future American leaders will have something to help guide them.
2. Some second-level threats need to be dealt with, particularly Syria and Saudi Arabia, but through diplomacy and not military intervention.
3. The Bush administration (or perhaps a combined US-UK-Polish-French? group) ought to be willing to put in writing some of the larger conceptual goals which inform particular action, so that in dealing with particular states, their violations and our hopes for the future can be clearly articulated. In other words, there needs to be a more-or-less comprehensive statement about what we believe in and why it leads us to act.
*France because Chirac is canny enough of a politician to realize the value of being willing to go along with the US now, India because a strong and stable democracy whose values mirror our own in the middle of Asia could work strongly as a stabilizing force (especially against regional threats posed by China), and Japan because they're going to be key in dealing with China, whenever that issue comes to the fore on the international stage.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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