The China Divide and the Future of the GOP
By Edited by Michael Flynn November 16, 2011
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Edited by Michael Flynn
FEATURED ARTICLE
The China Divide and the Future of the GOP
By Robert Farley
The issue of whither U.S. relations with China is an important test case for observing the divide between the free market and neoconservative wings of the Republican Party. Thus far, the GOP presidential candidates have largely failed to articulate a vision of China that comes anywhere close to reflecting the complexity of U.S.-Chinese relations. Among the leading candidates, Mitt Romney has arguably been the most aggressive in his discussion of China policy. Yet, his embrace of a hawkish line towards Beijing would appear to indicate that President Obama’s would-be challengers have not yet found an alternative vocabulary for talking and thinking about one of the critical foreign policy issues of the 2012 election. It seems clear that even though neoconservatives lack grassroots support, they offer what is effectively the only option for an “establishment” GOP candidate, a fact that could have lasting impact both on the viability of any Republican Party foreign policy platform as well as future U.S. decision-making vis-à-vis other hotspots like Iran, Israel, and North Korea. Read article.
MILITARIST MONITOR
While neoconservative commentators have been clamoring that diplomacy doesn’t work with Iran, their allies in Congress have set to work ensuring that it won’t.
FEATURED PROFILES
Middle East Media Research Institute
The “nonpartisan” MEMRI, which has received funding from the U.S. State Department and dozens of U.S.-based foundations, has drawn fire for its ties to neoconservative and anti-Islamic organizations, as well as for producing selective and at times inaccurate translations of Middle Eastern sources.
Meet Herman Cain’s foreign policy guru.
The controversial Mideast adviser to the Obama administration announced that he was stepping down for family reasons and that he would take up his former perch at the “pro-Israel” Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Based at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, James Kirchick appears to want the U.S. military to be in a state of constant mobilization, continually seeking out “monsters” across the globe—though perhaps especially those threatening Israel—to destroy.
Lee Smith, a writer at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is perhaps best known for accusing critics of hardline Israeli policies—and U.S. support for them—of being “Jew-baiters.”
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Another supposedly “non-partisan” think tank aligned against “militant Islamism,” the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies has established itself as a powerful repository of right-wing hawkishness, especially with respect to Israel and Iran.
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