Where’s Our ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech?

[Valin]

Around Asia:

 

Gordon G. Chang

10/11/12

 

In recent weeks, President Obama and Governor Romney have, directly and through surrogates, sparred over Iran, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Each has, in different ways, told us how he would deal with terrorism. Both have talked about China when discussing jobs. On Monday, Mitt Romney gave his first major campaign address on foreign policy.

 

Yet there is one thing that both the incumbent and challenger have largely ignored. Neither of them has given the American public context, an explanation of why there are so many crises at this moment. Winston Churchill in 1946 supplied context with his Iron Curtain speech, and we need a speech of this kind for our times.

 

What is the context for the second decade of the 21st century? What makes the world so challenging these days is that two authoritarian giants, China and Russia, are empowering rogues and other dangerous elements. So in a sense, we do not have a Syria problem. We have a Russian one. Similarly, we don’t really face intractable challenges from Iran’s “atomic ayatollahs” or North Korea’s Kim dictators because, more fundamentally, we have an all-encompassing disagreement with China’s rulers, who back these rogues. To put this another way, we could solve many global problems in short order if we could take Russia and China out of the picture.

 

(Snip)