The Spectacle Blog
The NY Times has an article today on our new Secretary of Defense. According to the article, he's a hawk:
But a hawk may not be all he is. His favorite
quotation from history, he told reporters traveling with him this
week for meetings with allies and commanders in Europe and the
Middle East, is from Frederick the Great, the 18th century Prussian
monarch and gifted musician: "Negotiations without arms are like
music books without instruments."
Or, put another way, it takes military power to create the leverage necessary to make negotiations fruitful.
Will we be seeing another application of Reagan's "peace through
strength doctrine"--more muscular use of our military followed by
diplomacy? The article also points to signs that Gates differs with
Rumsfeld on troop levels and has been a supporter of sending more
troops to Iraq. That's one welcome change, in my view.
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More Blog Posts by Philip Klein
http://spectator.org/blog/2007/01/22/gatess-hawkishness
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