Sarah Palin seems to be the topic of the week as the country prepares for the vice-presidential debate tomorrow. The debate is highly anticipated and many are saying that it may well be most watched debate in television history. I’m not going to give into the temptation to stray into partisan territory here, and instead will focus on our topic of foreign policy, specifically U.S. relations with Pakistan. As this article in Foreign Policy makes clear, Palin's recent comments on the subject proved to be controversial for the McCain campaign and raised larger issues involving international law and state sovereignty (Sarah Palin's Hot Pursuit):
A recent series of raids and missile strikes by U.S. Special Forces against Islamic militants in the lawless tribal areas along the Durand Line have strained U.S.-Pakistani troops to the breaking point. Pakistani paramilitary troops are even rumored to have shot at U.S. helicopters. And throwing more gas on the fire, vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said she supported the controversial strikes, a view at odds with that of her running mate. In a Sunday interview with ABC's This Week, John McCain clarified that her comment was not a "definitive policy statement."
Though the Alaska governor's off-the-cuff remarks were widely seen as a gaffe, Palin‚ and before her Barack Obama, who was pilloried for saying much the same thing in August 2007‚ may have inadvertently stumbled upon one of the key unresolved questions of the brave new world of terrorism, international criminal networks, and drug traffickers: Should a country be allowed to temporarily violate another country's sovereignty to go after, say, wanted terrorists or war criminals?
The article goes on to note many examples of such border violations and considers the legal basis of the right of “hot pursuit” as it relates to cross-border raids without really answering these questions. We can hope that such important questions will be addressed in the appropriate international forums by diplomats and military experts and that the world will not be alarmed that matters of policy will be based on campaign slogans and bellicose rhetoric.
