So here are the approaches to US foreign policy. Which one sounds the most reasonable to you? There is no correct answer to the question since this all lies in the realm of personal preference. I have traveled through pretty much all of these positions in the course of my life, so I won’t judge anybody for liking any of them.
1. The US should concentrate on its own internal problems and stop trying to “improve” the lives of people around the world. It’s the children of the working poor in the US who are sent to die in Mogadishu for causes that don’t in the least benefit them. We should concentrate on fixing poverty at home and let everybody else sort out their own issues. The rich and the powerful keep involving the US in these endless foreign adventures because it isn’t their kids who will die in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2. The well-being of other countries is a fundamental national goal for the US. It is crucial that all countries enjoy growing prosperity because that’s the only thing that will create conditions for global stability. The US should promote international organizations that will control multinational corporations, protect the global environment, and stop nuclear proliferation. Economic stability on the global scale is needed for international peace. The US has neither the legitimacy to be the world’s policeman nor the money to be the world’s banker. Only multilateral institutions (like the UN or NGOs) can carry out these crucial tasks.
3.We can’t know what the “correct” political system is for non-Western countries, so it’s best to just leave them alone and stop promoting democracy in them. All we can realistically hope for is the stability of the system of states. Nobody should be the unilateral leader of the world. It is crucial that no single state becomes powerful enough to tip the balance of the entire world system. It’s best for the US to stay out of the “Third World” and let the people there decide on what works best for them. The US should closely watch the global scene and manipulate it in a way that will prevent any single state from becoming too powerful.
4. It is crucial to bring democracy to every country in the world because that is the only way to guarantee world peace. Democracies don’t go to war against each other, so if the US wants to prevent war, the best thing it can do is promote democracy everywhere. Since there is no democracy without free markets, they also should be promoted. The old adage that states have no permanent friends, only permanent interests is not true! Democratic states are by their very nature each other’s permanent friends irrespective of which party comes to power in them. Now that the US is somewhat in decline, it makes every sense to surround ourselves with states whose political system and values are aligned with ours.
5. The NATO and the UN are just a fiction, a fig leaf that conceals the indisputable reality that the US is the world’s sole remaining superpower. American global dominance should be promoted and maintained through selective military intervention. Sometimes military intervention is good just to show the rest of the world who the boss is. There is no possibility that the US will prosper economically without maintaining world hegemony. Want to maintain your own personal standard of living? This will only be possible if the country remains the world’s only dominant force. America’s foreign wars are the pillar of the country’s prosperity.
6. The world has grown too complicated for a single policy to exist. Situations arising on the world arena should be approached on a case-by-case basis. We are wasting out time trying to develop a coherent strategy in the face of a reality that is getting more complex and unpredictable every day. Let’s just see what happens and then proceed to react.
See whose ideas you share under the fold.
1. Your political thinkers are Patrick Buchanan and Alan Tonelson.
2. You are a follower of Zbigniew Brzezinski and James Chace.
3. You like Henry Kissinger’s ideas.
4. You are a fan of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
5. Your best friends are Charles Krauthammer and George W. Bush.
6. Your idol is Madeleine Albright.
The descriptions I provided in the first half of the post are all pretty much direct quotes from these politicians.
Clarissa's Blog 
You are a follower of Zbigniew Brzezinski and James Chace.
AND
Your idol is Madeleine Albright.
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Interesting. I would say I’m some combination of 2 and 6. 🙂
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Nobody will dare admit that he or she chooses version 5. However this is what the US practically does. Not too compatible with the PR baloney they promote though.
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These are all pretty much direct quotes from the people mentioned in the answers. Number 5 is the approach very openly promoted by the American ultra conservative channel Fox News.
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#5 is what the US practically does and this is why I am afraid to choose #2 — I am afraid it is just the polite way to talk about #5.
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My policy is, of course, a mish mash of different elements of different approaches.
I think the primary policy goal of any country is to maintain and improve the well-being of existing citizens. On the other hand the world is a big complicated place and playing turtle isn’t a real option.
Situations need to be handled on a case by case basis with the bottom line being maintaining US domestic interests and not scheming for the sake of scheming or visions of empire or other neo-con madness (I detest the neo-cons more than any other aspect of modern US politics).
I believe there is a democracy threshhold (of combined income and education and maybe cultural factors) that many countries fell well below. Democracy is a process, a side effect of civil society culminating in national elections not one time super-president elections carried out under occupying guns. Imposed systems will fail unless you’re willing and able to keep imposing it for a few generations and it starts to deliver real tangible benefits relatively soon (like post WWII Germany and Japan).
Immigration should exist but in much lower numbers than at present. We’re ultimately not helping countries if we let countries expell those citizens who most have the potential for improving things.
NATO and the UN and similar organizations are okay but the latter shouldn’t be given more than it can handle (which is not much) and the former should not make promises it’s not prepared to keep (hint Baltic States).
In the few cases the US is going to get involved it needs to do so in a firm, decisive manner and not prance around in a reactive fashion hoping that they’ll like us.
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“We’re ultimately not helping countries if we let countries expell those citizens who most have the potential for improving things.”
At least you shouldn’t act as if you did it for the interest of others. That would be the minimum of correctness on behalf of a country that holds itself in such a high moral esteem as the United States.
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Immigration into the US is mostly closed. There are tiny exceptions for the following categories:
That’s it. There are no other means of emigrating into the US. Let’s not get derailed into discussing such a non-issue.
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// Immigration into the US is mostly closed.
I discuss immigration to the West in general in my previous comment.
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I only brought it up in that one good judge of US policy is whether it causes a flood of refugees into the country (which happens a lot more than at a chance level). It’s the old “invade the world, invite the survivors” policy, or as it was referred to in the Carter years: lose a country, gain a new cuisine.
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I referred to the American rhetorics that is so frequently used, and I find very harmful. You (not you as cliff arroyo, but the American propaganda machinery) make many people believe that Americans want to help them, then when they take it seriously, and react accordingly there comes the big surprise that Americans actually see them as a dangerous plague. Not really an attitude that people bound to their crappy countries need, it only wastes their money and time, and deliberately humiliates them. Also not a very good international PR to the United States itself. Sorry, but when I hear that the US wants to “help” others, I always have to laugh very hard.
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Oh, the US is a terrible, terrible ally and the US government should absolutely not be trusted by people in other countries or believed until it actually delivers on what it just said (and is already trying to get out of). That’s one of the reasons I tend to be a bit more isolationist in some of my views than is currently fashionable.
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“I have altered the deal — pray I don’t alter it any further.” — Lord Vader
(cf. suggestion “A” below for actual American foreign policy directions)
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Yes, this is it, actually — I’ve heard this referred to as “restaurant diversity”.
Choose one item from list A, two items from list B — that’s a good lad.
Let’s put French cuisine on the left plate, German cuisine on the right plate, and a bottle of Alsace wine in the middle that they can fight over. 🙂
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“That’s it. There are no other means of emigrating into the US. Let’s not get derailed into discussing such a non-issue.”
So do you want to deprive poor Americans of their scapegoats? So they will have to look at the mirror? How cruel one can be? 😎
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Earlier versions of Robert Young Pelton’s “The World’s Most Dangerous Places” put the matter in a matter-of-fact way: “There are over seventy types of visas for entering the United States, and they are all meant to keep you out.”
[politely mumbles something about evil people sneaking into the United States on “J” visas and leaves it at that …] 🙂
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// We’re ultimately not helping countries if we let countries expell those citizens
If countries want to expell some citizens, they will do so anyway OR kill / imprison them.
// At least you shouldn’t act as if you did it for the interest of others.
When do Americans say so? Could you give an example?
Looking at Russia and a few failed states in the Middle East, I think that sometimes a low % of people is advanced, while the majority aren’t ready for democracy or any development in general. Letting this minority immigrate helps them and the countries of destination, w/o hurting countries of origin. Since nothing may help the latter till most people become ready for the change.
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“Letting this minority immigrate helps them and the countries of destination, w/o hurting countries of origin. ”
“When do Americans say so? Could you give an example?”
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Looking at the quotations and their authors it is clear that there is a clear change from a more cautious policy based on US geopolitical interests as represented by 2 and 3 which are much closer than it at first appears to a more adventuresome policy based on ideology 4 and 5. In the first one there is a multipolar world that necessitates supporting the structures that grew up during the Cold War to promote US interests vs. the USSR. The idealism of 4 requires the reality of 5 to pursue. There is no conflict between the two the way there is between them and 2 and 3. Part of this is generational. Kissinger and Brzezininski were both refugees from Central Europe who left in 1938. People often criticize Kissinger for being amoral, but I think he accomplished his greatest goal which was to prevent a two possible disasters. The first one being a complete loss of US influence globally due to Soviet success which looked a lot more possible then than now. The second was to prevent any nuclear conflicts from arising in the world at a time when places like China, India, Israel, and South Africa had recently acquired atomic weapons.
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I don’t have well-developed views on the subject, but in a sense, I don’t believe any of these really matter, at least in terms of being on top of the priority list.
Any foreign policy that doesn’t have [i]some[/i] kind of explicit plan for the world as an eco-system and a view of how the way responsibilities for it are distributed among the various world actors is fairly outdated, I feel.
I have not the slightest idea of what that would look like, but there’s this general sense that we’re currently going about this with roughly as much sense as the soviets did with consumer economics.
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My next post on the subject was going to be about how all these are completely outdated and are a throwback to the Cold War times. :-)))))))))))))))))))))))
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\ My next post on the subject was going to be about how all these are completely outdated and are a throwback to the Cold War times.
Why? What is the not outdated proposal?
DWeird’s suggestion of
“explicit plan for the world as an eco-system and a view of how the way responsibilities for it are distributed among the various world actors”
is too good to be true. Nobody will want to pay the price of taking responsibilities. Some countries can’t afford to pay either. In other places, like huge parts of Middle East and Africa, nation states don’t even really exist.
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Just to be clear – a “it’s gonna do what’s it gonna do, and your job is to brace yourself for the impact” is a legitimate plan, as far as I’m concerned. My ‘suggestion’ is thus fairly minimal – to incorporate what seems to be a fairly major issue into the way we handle our affairs instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.
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Unless Russia willingly submits to Yeltsinization, the US ruling elite (unless it itself is replaced) will always employ Cold War strategy. The Anglo-Zionist wings of the Elite here are both Russophobic to the core.
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“Unless Russia willingly submits to Yeltsinization, the US ruling elite (unless it itself is replaced) will always employ Cold War strategy. The Anglo-Zionist wings of the Elite here are both Russophobic to the core.”
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I don’t like any of these positions although they are all, of course, familiar. I am not well enough educated politically. What would be the Anarchist position, or the IWW position on this?
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We are only discussing the approaches that have actually been put into practice at some point in the US history. So until you elect an Anarchist for president, their position is not hugely relevant. 🙂
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Aha. I thought the question was about analysis, what would be the best analysis. None of these have done too well.
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“None of these have done too well.”
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For the world. It is all very imperialistic, yes, and has the benefits of imperialism. And also the disadvantages.
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Of the options, number six appealed me to most. Then it reminded me of this Foucault quote:
“What frightens me, in humanism, is that it presents a certain form of our ethics as a universal model, valid for any type of freedom. I think that our future includes more secrets, more possible freedoms and inventions than humanism allows us to imagine.”
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“The US should concentrate on its own internal problems and stop trying to ‘improve’ the lives of people around the world …”
What a horrid thought.
Nothing will turn the United States into the Grand Penal Gulag of America quite as quickly as having everyone’s attention turned on his or her neighbours. 🙂
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Answer key:
🙂
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