Giuliani's Foreign Policy Experience

Hizzoner says he's got more than enough, but this comment says otherwise --

"We should open the organization's membership to any willing state that meets basic standards of good governance, military readiness (and) global responsibility, regardless of location," [Giuliani] said. "I think we should consider countries such as Australia, Singapore, India, Israel, Japan ... and there are probably a whole group of others that we could put on that list," he said.

On what basis will American citizens accept going to war if India is bombed (by, uh, our non-NATO ally Pakistan)? How are we to respond according to the NATO charter every time Israel suffers an attack? By turning the Terrorists' War on Us into Our General All-Purpose War, I suppose, which will have the benefit of already being on by the time any event triggering our collective defense obligations would take place.

Whose idea is this -- Norman Podhoretz's? Even a stalwart pro-Israeli strategist with an ounce of common sense can recognize the vast benefits to be derived from permitting broadly divergent foreign policies between very close allies. Including Israel in NATO would prevent the US from enjoying the proxy-like dividends reaped by the IDF, which can attack, bomb, and destroy American enemies (like Hezbollah) that we can't -- and shouldn't -- touch. Worse, any American action abroad that would fail to harm Israeli interests would seem designed transparently to advance Israeli interests. We already suffer this inconvenience now; under Giuliani's plan it would be elevated to the plane of national policy.

Poulos couldn't be more correct in his critique of Giuliani's statement. An invitation to each of the countries he sites has its own problems, and Poulos does a good job of pointing out some of the more offending issues, but what strikes me is the cavalier attitude that Giuliani seems to have for NATO. He seems to blithely offer a membership card to anyone without even considering what it might take to get NATO countries to sign off on such a project. And it's not only that he seems ignorant of the diplomatic effort needed to open NATO in this manner, but it also looks like Giuliani's under the impression that the alliance is some sort of American play thing (a neocon fantasy that makes for the pretty good shot at Norman Podheretz).

On a related note, Team Giuliani announced more foreign policy advisers today:

Carlos Eire, now a senior foreign policy advisory board member for the campaign, is a history and religious studies professor at Yale who in his spare time is a spokesman for the liberation of Cuba.

Kenneth R. Weinstein joins with the title of foreign policy advisor. Weinstein is Chief Executive Officer of Hudson Institute. According to the release sent out by the campaign, he has been decorated with a knighthood in Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication as a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Stephen Yates, a fluent Mandarin Chinese speaker and senior fellow in Asia Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council joins as Senior Asia Advisor.

The senior Western Hemisphere Advisor is Stephen Haber, is a Hoover Institution scholar.

Lisa Curtis, a CIA alumnus and frequent commentator on television news shows, joins as senior South Asia advisor. She's from the Heritage Foundation, where she studies Pakistan and other countries in the region.

David R. Cameron is given the title of European Advisory Board Member. he's an expert on the European Union who teaches at Yale.

And Gerard Alexander, a visiting American Enterprise Institute scholar and expert on democratization joins as a European advisory board member.

MORE: More from Daniel Larison:

On its face, this means that any state in the world that meets these criteria can belong to the alliance and would presumably be entitled to the same security guarantees as any other member. In the new, global “NATO,” on what basis would you make security guarantees to Poland and Latvia and not to the new members? Giuliani lays out activities for the “new NATO,” but says nothing about the benefits of membership, except saying that “America can assure them that we will be there for them in times of crisis.” Is it not safe to assume that the benefits of mutual defense remain? And if America will “be there for them,” are major European states not going to “be there” for the new members and vice versa? Of what use is the alliance to eastern European states if those security benefits disappear with the “transformation” of NATO into GloboLegion?

EVEN MORE: Shorter Ross Douthat: Why should we even bother expanding NATO?