Guest Post by Dr. Philip C. Bom
Senator Obama could well become our first planetary president.
Traditional bipartisan US foreign policy has been one of collective international security of independent nation states. In other words, nations cooperate together as independent countries to maintain international peace. This is in direct contrast to the world-order concept of “common security.”
Candidate Obama heralds change and hope, but his ideological message reads like a “copy and paste” from documents written by socialists of the past century. He presents himself as a new politician but has adopted an old “world order” agenda. Obama’s policies will certainly produce change—but a fundamental change which will shock most Americans.
The Democratic Party’s platform (authored by Senator Obama’s policy director) reads like a planetary manifesto for a new global order.
Senator Obama himself has said he seeks to provide “a world that stands as one” with “global leadership grounded in the understanding that the world shares a common security and a common humanity” (Berlin speech and Foreign Affairs article, July/August 2007, FA). As president, Obama promises to “strengthen our common security by investing in our common humanity.”
Obama adopts the old framework of international socialists. He jettisons the traditional meaning of security and adopts the view of democracy as social economic democracy. In his writings and speeches, Obama consistently calls for “building just, secure, democratic societies (FA).”
Senator Obama ties the concept of national security to global poverty. In the FA article, Obama claims that “the United States has a direct national security interest in dramatically reducing global poverty and joining with our allies in sharing more of our riches to help those most in need.” He has the audacity to proclaim:“Like it or not, if we want to make America more secure, we are going to have to help make the world more secure” (AH, 304). For him, global security means eliminating world poverty.
According to the 1995 Commission on Global Governance (CGG), “…the security of people must be regarded as a goal as important as the security of states.” In addition, “The primary goals of global security should be … the security of people and the planet.” The Democratic Party platform adopts this definition of national security (encompassing environmental security). The platform proudly promotes “Protecting our Security and Saving our Planet” as if they are one and the same. “We understand that climate change is not just an economic issue or an environmental concern—this is a national security crisis.”
Yet, while Obama promises to protect the American people, how often does he promise to protect the USA as an independent nation state? Following the ideology of CGG, he blurs the distinction between our national homeland and “our human homeland.”
As noted, however, Obama’s political ideas are hardly novel. Concepts and phrases (e.g. common humanity; common security; one world; economic security) in his speeches and in the platform can be found in the agendas of international socialists like the late Willy Brandt and Olof Palme. Even Obama’s words of “change” and “hope” date back to 1981.
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