"We are now more than a decade beyond the Cold War and as yet our political leadership has failed to provide a comprehensive sense of America's role in the post-Cold War, early 21st-century world. For almost half a century our central organizing principle, upon which both a foreign policy and defense policy were built, was "containment of communism". The world in which we now live defies the simplicity and predictability such a doctrine offered. And even containment of communism left unanswered the question of how to achieve that goal, a question that often divided our country deeply, not least between those advocating the use of power to promote our interests and those advocating adherence to human rights as defining of our values.

But rather than presenting a new foundation and framework to define America's role in the world, our current administration has embarked on a dangerous effort to apply power without relationship to America's principles. Its doctrine seems to be that we are powerful enough to do as we wish, and those not with us are against us. A world divided between pro- and anti-Americans is not a world in which we will hope to be secure.

Moreover, the administration's preoccupation with military superiority erodes our greatest strength—the admiration the world has for the American character. We drive the world's prosperity. We are the champions of the ideal of democracy. We are the world's greatest source of optimism, energy, and hope. Global citizens by the hundreds of millions say that they disagree with the United States government but like the American people. To compromise that goodwill through belligerence is to squander our greatest resource.

In direct contrast to a policy featuring force, and to replace a decaying Cold War-era debate between interests and values, today I would like to propose a foreign policy based upon principle, indeed a set of principles upon which I believe America should base its relations with the peoples of the world in this new century, principles representing the best traditions and beliefs of the American people."

Presented yesterday at a World Affairs Council event in San Franciso, Gary Hart reveals his foreign policy platform and outlines the principles that would guide it:

• First, our alliances, both old and new, should be characterized by equality of status, common interests, and greater shared responsibilities, and participation in these alliances should not require compromise of our principles;
• Second, we must resist imperial designs by others without seeking empire for ourselves;
• Third, our economic strength, arguably our greatest strength, should be used to help create opportunity and open societies for those nations left behind;
• Fourth, our military power should be used only to defend our nation, protect our justifiable interests, fulfill our alliance commitments, and prevent imminent attack.
• Fifth, with our allies we must seek to prevent the failure of states or, if they fail, seek to manage their peaceful restructuring;
• Sixth, we should encourage democracy—especially among regional powers—including forms of democratic government possibly different in design and structure from our own;
• Seventh, we should adopt a new definition of security in an age where the nature of conflict is rapidly evolving;
• And, eighth, we must explore new areas where international cooperation may relieve disproportionate burdens on U. S. economic and military resources.

He goes into MUCH greater detail and I won't attempt to summarize since I'm not sure I could do all his ideas justice.  Some of the highlights in my view

• Replacing "top-down" foreign aid with more grassroots efforts focusing on micro-loans, empowering the women of the third world, agricultural technologies and opening the US market to third world products.
• Ensure corporate America behaves as well abroad as they are expected to at home.
• Establish clear standards for the use of military force
• Stop allying ourselves with the "enemy of our enemy" and reform existing alliances to make them more relevent to the 21st century
• Encourage democractic evolution in Russia , China and India and, recognizing their key regional leadership roles, assist their integration into the emerging internation system and encourage their emergence as regional powers.
• Recognize that nation-state sovereignty is changing under the pressures of globalizing economic forces and there is nothing that can be done to stop this process.  New sovereign international organizations must be carefully constructed to deal with the resulting issues.

If you have any interest in the future of foreign affairs, even if not in Hart the candidate, you need to read this document.  He effectively distills the most progressive forward-thinking ideas in foreign affairs into a policy that I feel could make a real difference both in the wider world, and here at home.  He finishes with the following, which I could not agree with more fervently.

"Perhaps most importantly, all Americans must now become engaged in America's conduct in the world. Our foreign policy, our relations with the peoples of the world, is no longer the province of so-called experts. The forces of globalization, the spread of American commercial and cultural influence, the internationalization of the Internet, the immediacy of travel, the rise of a global environmental common, all now require the engagement of the American people. We must not let our role in the world be dictated by ideologues with their special biases and agendas, by militarists who long for the clarity of Cold War confrontation, by think-tank theorists who grind their academic axes, or by Americans who too often find it hard to distinguish their loyalties to their original homelands from their loyalties to America and its national interests.

As war is too important to leave to the generals, so, in the 21st century, is foreign policy too important to be left to specialized elites and interests. In the 21st century, the veil separating the foreign policy priesthood from the people must be removed. We, the people, must insist that our nation's finest principles characterize our dealings with our global neighbors. In this new age, our policy toward the world must be the policy of the American people—a policy that reflects our belief in our freedom, a policy that shows our desire to be friends and helpful neighbors, a policy that makes us proud of our heritage when we meet our foreign neighbors abroad and when we greet them here at home, and most of all a policy that leaves a legacy to our children that makes them proud of us.

Gary Hart
Kittredge, Colorado"

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  This man gets it.

"FRANCE BLOCKS NATO WAR PLANNING, blares a February 10 CNN.com headline. But click through and you find a story about how France, Germany, and Belgium vetoed moves to prepare Turkey for war with Iraq. The headline is startlingly inaccurate, but in today's climate not at all surprising. With baseball's opening day still almost two months away, Americans in recent weeks have adopted an off-season national pastime: France-bashing.

Jonah Goldberg of National Review has revived the phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" from its Simpsons provenance to describe the French, and now bloggers can't get enough of it. George Will, who doesn't often borrow from Rush Limbaugh's lexicon, recently called foreign minister Dominique de Villepin "oleaginous" and quipped that de Villepin's response to Colin Powell at the United Nations Wednesday showcased "the skill France has often honed since 1870--that of retreating, this time into incoherence." The New York Sun published a column last week claiming that France's "Last Great Coup" was the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928, which "roped" the United States into defending France from Germany. Richard Perle has groused that France has lost its "moral fiber." And on and on. All this obsessive loathing sounds oddly familiar. It reminds one of, what is it again? Oh, right--France's purported obsessive loathing of the United States. "

As I mentioned yesterday, France-bashing is one thing that Americans of all political persuasions take some pleasure in.  Today, Economist's countries editor, Robert Lane Greene explains why at The New Republic Online.

"This is a video taken in 6000 feet of water.  An undersea robot is sawing a 3mm wide slit (1/10th of an inch ... remember that width) in a pipeline. The pressure inside the pipeline is 0 psig, while the pressure outside is 2700 psi, or 1.3 tons per square inch.  Then a crab comes along.... "

[via BoingBoing]

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"DR. PATRICK WALSH, a urologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital who pioneered the safest form of prostate removal, said Kerry, 59, who is otherwise fit, had a 95 percent rate of being cured. He said the senator should be back at work in a couple of weeks after the surgery.
       Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who was elected to the Senate in 1984, scheduled a news conference for 5 p.m. ET to announce his diagnosis. Aides said the surgery would not effect his presidential campaign. "

Well that was quick.

There will be an announcement this afternoon (I believe, at 5 PM EST) that will -- temporarily at least -- shake up the Democratic presidential race. Because it's health-related, I'm not going to say more than that. But keep your eye out later this afternoon.

The obvious candidate would be Graham, he just got out of the hospital last week, but I've seen a few articles today talking about him getting his paperwork in order to begin fundraising.  Hmm.