Sunday, May 03, 2009

State Department Juxtaposition

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, May 2, 2009: "Clinton said that the growing influence from China and Iran in Latin America is 'quite disturbing. They are building very strong economic and political connections with a lot of these leaders. I don't think that's in our interest.'"

And

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, April 1, 2009: "We will work with the Beijing leadership to build a positive, cooperative and comprehensive U.S.-China relationship for the 21st century. That’s why just a few hours ago, President Obama and President Hu announced the launch of our Strategic and Economic Dialogue headed by Secretaries Clinton and Geithner on our side, and State Councilor Dai Bingguo and Vice Premier Wang Qishan on the Chinese side. This high-level Dialogue will serve to coordinate our policies and seek to solve regional and global problems."

3 comments:

Justin Delacour 1:04 PM  
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Justin Delacour 1:06 PM  

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, May 2, 2009: "Clinton said that the growing influence from China and Iran in Latin America is 'quite disturbing. They are building very strong economic and political connections with a lot of these leaders. I don't think that's in our interest.'"...

I suspect that Hillary was going off talking point when she included China in that little spiel. Chinese economic influence is something that the establishment is concerned about (not for security reasons but rather because it crowds out economic opportunies for the U.S. establishment's own corporate patrons), but American statesmen aren't really supposed to talk about that. Hillary has always been a bit of a loose cannon on foreign policy. She really doesn't know very much about the world, so she's a weird choice for Secretary of State. I suspect this was all just part of a deal that Obama felt he had to make to hand over foreign policy to the Clintons and the Democratic Leadership Council types, who are almost as hawkish as the neocons.

Gabriel 7:44 PM  

I admit I dont get this whole "China is taking over the world (and Latin America)" approach. They are simply not that important yet.

What is fascinating is listening to Chavez look to China as an example. China, which is more capitalist than practically all of Latin America! But I guess they do share that both (China and Venezuela) depend economically on the US consumer.

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