Understanding how other countries see the world does not mean one need agree with them, but there is nothing in Moscow's actions that suggests that it is trying to re-establish an "empire," as Obama characterized its behavior in his recent speech to the UN. When Hillary Clinton compared Putin to Hitler, she equated Russia with Nazi Germany, which certainly posed an existential threat to our national security. But does anyone think that comparison is valid? In 1939, Germany was the most powerful country in Europe with a massive military. Russia has the 11th largest economy in the world, trailing even France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Brazil. Turkey has a larger army.
Power's view of what is good for the Russian people is a case in point. Although one can hardly admire the oligarchy that dominates Russia -- and the last election would seem to indicate considerable voter apathy in the country's urban centers -- the "liberals" Power is so enamored with were the people who instituted the economic "shock therap y" in the 1990s that impoverished tens of millions of people and brought about a calamitous drop in life expectancy. That track record is unlikely to get one elected. In any case, Americans are hardly in a position these days to lecture people about the role oligarchic wealth plays in manipulating elections.
The View from China
The Chinese are intolerant of internal dissent, but Washington's argument with Beijing is over sea lanes, not voter rolls.
China is acting the bully in the South China Sea, but it was President Bill Clinton who sparked the current tensions in the region when he deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups in the Taiwan Straits in 1995-96 during a tense standoff between Taipei and the mainland. China did not then -- and does not now -- have the capacity to invade Taiwan, so Beijing's threats were not real. But the aircraft carriers were very real, and they humiliated -- and scared -- China in its home waters. That incident directly led to China's current accelerated military spending and its heavy-handed actions in the South China Sea.
Again, there is a long history here. Starting with the Opium Wars of 1839 and 1860, followed by the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 and Tokyo's invasion of China in World War II, the Chinese have been invaded and humiliated time and again. Beijing believes that the Obama administration designed its "Asia pivot" as to surround China with U.S. allies.
While that might be an over simplification -- the Pacific has long been America's largest market -- it is a perfectly rational conclusion to draw from the deployment of U.S. Marines to Australia, the positioning of nuclear-capable forces in Guam and Wake, the siting of anti-ballistic missile systems in South Korea and Japan, and the attempt to tighten military ties with India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
"If you are a strategic thinker in China, you don't have to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist to think that the U.S. is trying to bandwagon Asia against China," says Simon Tay, chair of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.
Meanwhile in Latin America...
As for Venezuela, the U.S. supported the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez and has led a campaign of hostility against the government ever since. For all its problems, the Chavez government cut poverty rates from 54.5 percent of the population to 32 percent, and extreme poverty from around 20 percent to 8.6 percent. Infant mortality fell from 25 per 1,000 to 13 per 1,000, the same as for Black Americans.
And the concern for the democratic rights of Venezuelans apparently doesn't extend to the people of Honduras. When a military coup overthrew a progressive government in 2009, the United States pressed other Latin American countries to recognize the illegal government that took over in its wake. Although opposition forces in Venezuela get tear-gassed and a handful jailed, in Honduras they are murdered by death squads.
Power's view that the United States stands for virtue instead of simply pursuing its own interests is a uniquely American delusion. "This is an image that Americans have of themselves," says Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, "but is not shared, even by their allies."
The "division" between "realists" and R2P is an illusion. Both end up in the same place: confronting our supposed competitors and supporting our allies, regardless of how they treat their people. Although she is quick to call the Russians in Syria "barbarous," she is conspicuously silent on U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's air war in Yemen, which has targeted hospitals, markets, and civilians.
The argument that another country's internal politics is a national security issue for the United States elevates R2P to a new level, sets the bar for military intervention a good deal lower than it is today, and lays the groundwork for an interventionist foreign policy that will make the Obama administration look positively pacifist.
Looking Toward November
It is impossible to separate this debate on foreign policy from the current race for the White House. Clinton has been hawkish on most international issues, and she is not shy about military intervention.
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