that I'm ESPECIALLY interested in what you guys have to say.  As non-Americans, you have a lot of knowledge of how our foreign policy impacts the rest of the world.  I'll try to include as many of your questions as I can.

ProgressiveHistorians: History For Our Future

Wow!  Congratulations!  A great example of all our "work" here actually starting to make contact (and hopefully influencing) the "real world" of policy making.

I very much look forward to the discussion on this and to the outcome of your exchange with Governor Richardson.

I encourage you to go shopping more. -- George W. Bush

Congratulations!

I'm American, but I offer these interview suggestions, because one way or another it is my right to determine if Richardson will be president. i'm well aware he's comfortable being a consultant and has cultivate personal relationships to mitigate abusive official policies.

Drill into exceptionalism. This foundation is so wrong in principle on so many levels of diplomatic relations, excluding FUBAR congressional oversight.

• We need an international coalition for peacekeeping in the Middle East. Why? What is his value driver? And how does the US benefit? (Isreal is our "friend"  and ME "stability" is an insufficient explanation, to my mind, absent a fully formed vision of a Palestian state.)


• Prioritize resources to fight Al Qaeda and Jihadist terrorists and the most urgent dangers, such as nuclear terrorism. Al Qaeda and "jihadist" are transnational, mobile individuals. What does his recipe of ME military intervention have to do with territorial US security, law enforcement, investigation and prosecution of terrorist activity? Why is his focus international and "preemptive"? How is this strategy efficient, when six years of US military action and EU, especially GB history, surveillance has proved it is not? Can it ever by executed without coercing conformation/abrogation of sovereignty by multiple nations?
• How does he imagine Iran's nuclear capability will transform dirty-bomb production by "jihadist" moles in the US?

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Thanks for posting this here. As you may remember, I got to meet Bill Richardson last year at YearlyKos, as he joined us for the energy panel:

Naturally, I'd like to ask him whether and how he would proceed with an attempt to create a global carbon emissions deal. It's good to see him put energy as his first priority, and an additional mention of climate change as a specific topic, so it's obvious he is thinking about it, but what would he do to make it happen on the international scene?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

The 1st questions I would ask would be :

What would change in the present policy towards Israel ?
What would change in the present policy towards Palestine ?

That means a new strategy for success in Iraq that allows us to redeploy our troops.

This does mean, "declare victory and go home", right? Not another lunatic scheme to win, win, win.

Five, we need to pay attention to Latin America, our own back yard. The key is passing a comprehensive immigration plan now that includes enhanced border security, a path to legalization for the 11 million immigrants already here, and sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The House should stop holding these silly hearings. Mr. President, your good words on immigration should be followed by deeds to pass a comprehensive plan.

What about USA's policy towards Latin American countries and adressing the situations people run from? And let me be clear that I would like to see the US stop their interference in Latin American politics, not changing its direction.

OK, this is not terribly well thought out, but I'm short on time this week so I might as well pound this out while I'm still up finishing my glass of post-dinner wine.

So my question(s) would go something like this:

Governor Richardson, the second element of your "new realism" foreign-policy plan involves "re-build alliances and reinvigorate our allies."  But do you understand that in many cases, U.S. "support" for our "allies" (however we define them) actually weakens them because the United States' credibility is at an all-time low?

And how will you be defining who our "allies" are?  In the Middle East, and in other regions, the United States has a long history of befriending and backing regimes that are far from democratic and far from egalitarian and far from basically all of our values.  Our "closest allies" in the region practice torture against their own citizens and against citizens of other countries who happen to be ensnared in their prison systems, including those who have been "renditioned" by our own intelligence services.  Previous pushes for "democracy" or "reform" in the Middle East have foundered upon fear that Islamist movements might be elected (or, in the case of the Palestinian Authority, were elected) if free elections were to be held.

Will you continue the Bush Administration's apparent policy of believing that any and every Islamist group is dangerous and should be subverted, regardless of its level of popular support or its actual stated policies, and will you continue the Bush Administration's practice of failing to differentiate between Islamist groups that advocate the use of violence and those that just dislike us but do so peacefully?  

Would you continue with the longstanding practice of protecting "stability" in the Middle East even at the cost of dictatorship?  And do you recognize that this much-vaunted "stability" we have been seeking has not in fact emerged from our policies, that on the contrary, our policies have been destabilizing?

How will you approach the regimes of the Middle East that happen to be our closest allies, including Saudi Arabia and the so-called "moderate" governments of Egypt and Jordan and Morocco?  Will you encourage their reform, and if so, how, and if not, why not?

How will you engage Syria and Iran in an effort to bring a solution to the seemingly endless troubles in Iraq?