By Edmond Y. Azadian
Call it with whatever you wish but realize that an intensifying Cold War is looming on the horizon. The East-West confrontation is gaining momentum and further developments in that direction may soon get out of hand.
The mid-term elections in the US in early November and the ensuing Republican landslide may hasten that confrontation, especially when Arizona’s Sen. John McCain takes over the Senate Armed Services Committee chairmanship. He will certainly endorse a further arms buildup and logic tells us that the arms build-up can be justified only when there is a war or a looming threat of war.
The US economy recovered remarkably during the last six years, unemployment was down, the US achieved energy self-sufficiency, yet President Obama’s rating suffered at home and around the world and some analysts believe that the election results reflected a referendum on Obama’s performance. Others believe that low turnout at the polls — two-thirds of eligible voters stayed home — and the Republican efforts in portraying Obama’s performance as a failure contributed to the further loss of House and Senate seats for Democrats and the resulting takeover of the Republicans in the Senate.
Senator McCain was already a vocal critic of President Obama’s cautious foreign policy, but now that he will be empowered with the Senate committee chairmanship, he will convert his words into action and force the lame-duck presidency into international adventures. A recent article in the New York Times, describing Mr. McCain’s policies stated that the latter did not see a war that he did not like. However, there is a mood swing in the US and even a potential Democratic candidate like Hillary Clinton has been playing up her hawkish credentials to enhance her chances. In a recent interview given by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, he characterized US actions in Ukraine as a “fatal mistake” and added that the resulting Cold War may prove to be “tragic.”