Kerry's "Global Test" Process?

[adios]

What is the process implied by Kerry's "Global Test" comment?

From the transcript of the debate:

What is your position on the whole concept of preemptive war?

KERRY: The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control.

No president, though all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America.

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations.

So before the U.S. could undertake a preemptive war, the U.S. must prove to the world that the reasons are legitimate according to Kerry. In order to prove to the rest of the world that the reasons are legitimate I think it's safe to assume that the evidence would be presented to the U.N. Security Council, a resolution would be drafted and the Security Council would vote on it, with 4 other countries having the veto power.

I suppose Kerry proponents have no problems with this process. If you can't convince other Security Council members that your reasons are legitimate, ignore the threat to your security that you perceive. Just one member with a veto can scuttle such a resolution.

[1111]

I think you are completely misinterpreting what Kerry stated. Obviously the process of taking a proposal to the security council for a vote would not take place in a pre-emptive US attack. Kerry makes that point very clearly in the beginning of the excerpt. His main point is that we cannot attack without some sort of justification which the rest of the world can at least find semi-plausible, unlike our ever changing justification for the Iraq mess. I realize that many Americans feel we can do whatever the hell we want in foreign affairs, but the reality is, we do need to maintain strong alliances in order to maintain our enormous power. Kerry seems to understand this...Bush does not.

[adios]

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I think you are completely misinterpreting what Kerry stated. Obviously the process of taking a proposal to the security council for a vote would not take place in a pre-emptive US attack.

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So you're stating that Kerry would not have followed the course that Bush took leading up to the war in Iraq, a preemptive war? Here's what Kerry stated:

But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

How would Kerry prove to the world that the reasons are legitimate? How would the Kerry process for proving to the world that the reasons are legitimate differ from the steps that Bush followed?


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Kerry makes that point very clearly in the beginning of the excerpt. His main point is that we cannot attack without some sort of justification which the rest of the world can at least find semi-plausible, unlike our ever changing justification for the Iraq mess.

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Bush took his case to the U.N. before launching the attack on Iraq, where were you? U.N. security council members like France didn't buy it.


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I realize that many Americans feel we can do whatever the hell we want in foreign affairs, but the reality is, we do need to maintain strong alliances in order to maintain our enormous power. Kerry seems to understand this...Bush does not.

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Thirty countries in the coalition however what you write here more or less proves my point. The Kerry stance is if you don't get approval from the U.N. Security Council you don't fight the preemptive war.

What is the Kerryp process for passing the "Global Test" if I'm misrepresenting it? It's really a very simple question that you failed to address.

[GWB]

Kerry doesn't want to be President.

He wants to be Governor of the US, with Kofi as the President of the world.

[MaxPower]

Kerry could not have convinced the world that our reasons for pre-emptive war in Iraq were legitimate because THEY WERE NOT LEGITIMATE.

The UN inspectors were all over Iraq looking for these weapons and they could not find any. Meanwhile Cheney is saying they did have WMD and we knew where they were. If we knew where they were, why didn't we just tell the inspectors where to find them? Because we didn't know. Despite what you think the leaders of other countries are not dumb and they did not fall for the nonsense that the Bush administration was putting out.

Yes, Iraq was a potential threat, but a minor one which we had contained and was weakening every day. Bush promised to exhaust all dimplomatic efforts before going to war and he failed to do that. He didn't even allow the weapons inspectors to finish their work.

What Kerry meant is that in the case of pre-emptive war the potential threat should be clear enough that most of the worlds nations will see our actions as credible. He is not saying that the UN has to vote on it.

[vulturesrow]

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Because we didn't know. Despite what you think the leaders of other countries are not dumb and they did not fall for the nonsense that the Bush administration was putting out.

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Im sure it had nothing to with the fear of losing their oil for food cash cow. And the inspectors were not given complete and unfettered access as they should have been. That calls their conclusions into question. The US wasnt the only country with intelligence indicating that Saddam had WMD. France actually told Colin Powell at one point they were willing to back the US as long as he went through the formal process at the UN of creating (yet) another resolution. We all know how that promise turned out. Also the French for all intents and purposes said their opposition to the war was to weaken US influence in the world.

[MaxPower]

If the threat were clear enough and of the highest priority, France and other nations would have backed the invasion despite whatever benefits they hoped to gain from the lifting of sanctions.

[vulturesrow]

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If the threat were clear enough and of the highest priority, France and other nations would have backed the invasion despite whatever benefits they hoped to gain from the lifting of sanctions.

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It is possible that France and Russia didnt feel threatened by Iraq because they had been in bed with them for so long? Maybe they felt that Saddam was only a threat to the US. And make no mistake, France didnt want to lift sanctions either. They wanted to maintain the status quo wherein they could continue to benefit from the oil for food scam and selling prohibited weapons systems to the Iraqis. And again, as I said, France opposition was based primarily on the desire to diminish American influence on the global scene.

[anatta]

I agree with your analysis of global test. This is another scare tactic of the Bush campaign. "Kerry doctrine" my ass.

[vulturesrow]

Here is Max's "analysis".

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What Kerry meant is that in the case of pre-emptive war the potential threat should be clear enough that most of the worlds nations will see our actions as credible. He is not saying that the UN has to vote on it

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So yes, Kerry believes we need world approval to conduct a preemptive mission. The forum where said approval is obtained is irrelevant IMO. What happens if Kerry were President and decided that we needed to make a preemptive strike somewhere and it didnt pass the global test? How many countries have to approve before it passed the Global Test? Could the Global Test be subverted by opposing US interests? I dunno, say a bomb in a train station in any country that voted yay on the Global Test?

I have confidence that Kerry has the intestinal fortitude to make a decision that would make other countries unhappy with us. The Global Test ridiculousness is more proof of that.

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This is another scare tactic of the Bush campaign. "Kerry doctrine" my ass.

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Kerry was the one who said we needed to pass a global test, not Bush. And if Kerry says it will be his modus operandi, is it false to say it is the "Kerry doctrine". Or are you paving the way for yet another Kerry flip flop?