Personality and Foreign Policy

9/14/13

Personality and Foreign Policy

I “love” (or do I?) the way liberals resort to the boo-hoo “You just don’t like Obama” routine when they are losing an argument with a conservative.  Juan Williams did it when he and Michelle Malkin were on Sean Hannity’s program the other night.  I could cite others.  No, Mr. and Ms. Liberal, conservatives do not dislike President Obama as a person.  They dislike his agenda to transform the greatest nation in the world into the very thing the Founding Fathers wanted us to get away from.  Conservatives don’t want the United States to be transformed into a Euro-Socialist State that will wind up like Greece and other European nations.  I, for one, like President Obama for a number of reasons but I don’t like his politics.  I could imagine that President Obama had a lot of friends as he was growing up because of his glowing personality.  He also shows himself to be a devoted family man.  But I shudder to think of what this country will be like if he succeeds in bringing about the transformation of it that he envisions.

That glowing personality can achieve only so much.  I notice the hearty handshake he greets President Putin with as he shakes Putin’s hand like he’s trying to separate Putin’s arm from his shoulder while he presents the heartiest smile he can muster.  I’d love to know what Putin is thinking at that time.

The foreign policy of every nation is guided by its own unique set of interests.  In Russia’s case one of the most important reasons for its coziness with Syria is that Syria provides Russia with a Western seaport.  Another thing important to Russia is oil.  The only commodity Russia has for export to feed its economy is oil.  The more turmoil there is in the Middle East the better the chance is that oil prices will be high.  It’s hardly likely that Russia will do much to keep the peace there and will most likely be very measured in how unstable it wants the region to be without seeing the start of another World War.  One thing that would be particularly devastating to the economies of Russia and the Middle East countries is for the United States to be independent of any need to be supplementing our oil needs from hostile countries in the Middle East.  If I heard right, and I’ll have to do some research to check, is that we supplement 40% of our oil needs with imports from the Middle East.  When K. T. McFarland was on a Fox News program recently she said that the United States has more oil than Russia and the Middle East combined.  Although oil is found in almost every state in the union, she most likely was talking about Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota and vicinity.  It’s shale oil that would require massive amounts of water to mine.  We have an ocean of water just a few hundred miles away.  If we can build an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast and leave the area environmentally sound as we go, we surely ought to be able to run a water pipeline the same way.  “What would Poor Robin do then?”  Western nations would be buying their oil from the United States instead of the tumultuous Middle East.  The price of gasoline for the American consumer would be what it is in Saudi Arabia.  The current price there is 61 cents a gallon.      

   

With the robust economy energy independence would bring about through the development of our natural resources, revenue would flow into the Government coffers that would provide the funds for the research and development of solar and other renewable sources.  This is the completely opposite way of striving toward being able to have our energy needs satisfied by solar and other renewables than deliberately driving the cost of fossil fuel sources up so renewables can be competitive with them.  The choice is to get there ruining the economy in the process or bringing about a thriving economy that would give us the means to fund development of solar, wind-power and other renewable sources.