Who?
Why do so many people on the right and the left turn into John Galt when it comes to foreign policy?
I am steadfastly opposed to sending ground troupes to the Middle East. They are annoying and would only serve to piss off the locals. Unless they are mimes, of course. Send all you can and let ISIS take care of them. If I was running a prison full of mimes, I might slit my own throat.
I think the OP provided all you need to know for the purposes of this discussion. If you want more background, you can google it.
I think it was really Iraq that did the humanitarian interventionists in. Remember that it was the left that was interested in intervening in Bosnia and Somalia, and wringing its hands over what it should have done in Rwanda.
After Bush started a war and killed tens of thousands of people for no useful purpose, interventionism stopped being cool.
Woosh!
Who is John Galt
:smack:
And the answer to that question, as always, is not you.
Why would libs hide their true concerns when talking to other libs on lib blogs? They’re not trying to convince conservatives of anything.
That is what a debate is actually like.
As a liberal internationalist I firmly agree with the OP. I think many liberals have had their thought shaped by the strategic errors of Vietnam and the second Iraq War, hardening them against any sort of intervention. Yet it is clear that overall American and allied military power is a positive that has succedeed in bringing about an unparalleled period of relative peace and stability in world history. We should be strengthening this informal world order further by encouraging our allies to do their share (Japan is promising in this regard and additionally it would probably allow us to at least somewhat reduce military spending, including developing countries such as India and Brazil in it, and by formalizing a doctrine to the effect that no act of genocide and ethnic cleansing anywhere will be tolerated and will be met with anything necessary to stop up to and including direct military intervention.
While there hardly is a world government, I would say that there is something of a world order which is enforced by the United States and other liberal democracies which has been successful in deterring or stopping most of the worst abuses as exemplified in the former Yugsoslavia.
That is why consistent liberal internationalists and humanitarians advocated interventionists in places such as Rwanda and the Balkans where there was no immediate strategic interest.
But there are varying gradations of grey-even with Soviet totalitarianism, its clear that the evil of our Axis enemies were far worse in World War 2.
This calls for caution and learning from our past mistakes rather than rejecting it completely.
That calls for listening to experts on the culture and politics of the country in question. The diversity and breadth of academic knowledge is tremendous-probably almost every language in Papua New Guinea with a few hundred speakers has some linguist who has command of it for instance.
It indicates we should have intervened earlier before the Iraqi military collapsed and surrendered its equipment.
Best exemplified by World War 2. Yet that war was clearly justified.
The borderline pacifist lefty liberals are usually louder than their numbers-most Democratic administrations and the experts they employ tend to be more nuanced on intervention even if not liberal internationalist.
The vast majority of America’s current military budget has to be maintained no matter what, at least unless our allies start to step up to the plate more.
Which is one of the more unfortunate intellectual tendencies of modern liberalism. Certainly they don’t accept it with regards to our own reactionaries in the South and rightfully so-sometimes chauvinism is based on reality. A culture that implements liberal democracy with racial, religious, and sexual equality and has landed man on the Moon is superior to one that still practices female genital mutilation-and we shouldn’t be afraid to say this.
Which calls for wisdom and learning from them rather than developing a phobia to it.
The question is academic since the ChiComs obviously do not have the strategic capability to land troops in Mexico. However, assuming this case we must look at factors such as whether Mexico’s government invited intervention, whether nearer powers could also have done the intervention, and what Chinese goals besides the stated one there is.
Thankfully and there needs to be more of them. One of American liberalism’s worst problems was the largely false perception that they were all peacenik hippies which extended from the Cold War into the War on Terror. President Obama has fortunately been doing much to correct this misconception.
I would never say that the rest of the world is not our problem. They’re our fellow men. I would say we should generally stay out of their problems because we’re bad at fixing them. I would have been in favor of intervening in, say, the Rwandan genocide.
The abuses in the former Yugoslavia happened because of the collapse of Yugoslavian Communism, which had held together the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians etc. under a firm hand. The collapse of communism was something the United States had been pressing for for decades (and yes, of course Yugoslavia was not a member of the Warsaw Pact and was traditionally anti-Soviet; nevertheless, the Cold War definitely had ideological as well as geopolitical elements, and I doubt that American elite circles weren’t thrilled when communism collapsed there as well).
I hardly think the US and NATO deserve any credit for stepping in to help mop up a problem that only existed because of an outcome they had helped to bring about.
Personally, I fail to see why intervening to impose liberal democracy is any better or worse than intervening to steal resources. It’s worth mentioning that, for example, European colonization in Africa and India was often undertaken with idealistic justifications as well (in Africa, for example, to end slavery).
Libertarians always forgets that sometimes, trash needs to be picked up and toilets need to be scrubbed
It makes all the difference in the world, it’s the difference between blood thirsty conquistadors or Belgians in Africa vs Japan.
People always point to Iraq as the great failure of American policy, and that might be true. But the flaw in this assumption is that it was purely a function of our intervention that led to the current issues. I think it had to do with the type of clay being molded as well. There are a lot of backwards beliefs flooding the minds of the people in that region, beliefs that make certain types of liberal democratic enterprises inherently less likely over short time scales Americans are willing to put up with.
But The two biggest successes of American intervention are rarely if ever mentioned. Japan and S. Korea. Fortunately we did not have to content with puritanical interpretations of Islam:
What would have happened had the US never bothered to intervene in S. Korea and shore that nation up? It could have been a unified N. Korea, a land of literal darkness
Even Vietnam where we pulled out and lost is not an ideal example for what happens to the people. They suffered under communism, and though they are growing now, the yoke of the communist idea set held them back for decades. Now some might argue that even if that’s true, that the long arc of history sometimes leads to the same result without our getting involved. So why bother? Because sometimes we want to accelerate the transition away from inhumane regimes and butchers if we are able to.
Glenn Beck’s realtor.
US foreign policy and attempts to export our ‘values’ poisoned the politics of the entire continent of Latin America for about a century, Indochina for a couple of decades, to a certain extent you could throw in places like Greece and parts of the Middle East as well, and then there’s Africa. I’d say in all of those places, an interventionist US foreign policy was very, very much an overwhelming negative. On the flip side, you have…Japan and South Korea? (I’ll be charitable and throw in Taiwan as well). I hardly think you have a good case for the US being a benevolent superpower. This was true long before Iraq, by the way. At least in Iraq (unlike in Cuba, Nicaragua, Greece and elsewhere) we had the excuse that we were trying to get rid of a really bad guy.
As for Vietnam, yes, they were really a shining success under Diem, Ky, and the rest of those clowns, too bad the communists had to come along and ruin everything.
And again, the line between ‘humanitarian’ intervention and resource extraction colonization is not all that distinct. I’m hazy on the details, but I vaguely remember that one of the ‘justifications’ for Mussolini’s conquest of Ethiopia was that slavery was still going on. (Ethiopia abolished slavery ten years earlier on paper, but I’m sure some was still going on). And that’s just one of the more egregious examples.
I was against the Iraq war, I did not think weapons of mass destruction being held by Sadaam, even if true, was enough of a reason to invade the country. But I NEVER bought into or understood why people were so convinced that the reason Bush went into that war was because of some fiendish desire out of cartoon villainy to steal oil. Millions of people on the left in the US believed that though, and still do. I think Bush’s primary rationale was that he bought into the idea that the problem of the middle east and why it turned into such a messy swamp that exported terrorism was because there was so little freedom and democracy. So it was his duty to bring it to them by toppling a dictator that never had any real legitimacy in the first place (kind of the definition of a murderous dictator). Now you may think that belief was idiotic, but that rationale is NOT the same as going in to steal their stuff like some old colonial power. What did the US get out of occupying Japan? A naval base and a close ally that prospers? Some promises not to be aggressive in the future? A desire to see the Japanese people live and be well?
These intentions and goals are NOT the same, they are not malevolent. Russia is not so benign in it’s intentions. We have allies of convenience like Sauda Arabia, we have to, but that is not the same thing as going out of our way to just flat out pillage other nations. NO ONE wants us doing that. Literally no one.
I think deep down, what REALLY animates people to be so flippant about US power that involves anything other than some foreign aid, is a sort of callousness towards the plight of other people. Peter Singer talks about expanding the circle, a sort of general concern beyond just your own self and family and nation to other people. He goes a bit off the deep end with the over the top feelings towards the rights of animals, but the idea is that there ought to be a sense that it’s not just about OUR immediate well being. That impulse strikes me as a liberal impulse to its core. And the most bizarre thing I’ve witnessed over the past decade is that more often than not the NEOCONS were the ones more likely to channel that impulse. As much as they might overestimate our own power and capabilities to change things overseas, they at least held onto a sense that it was not just about themselves. I expect the sort of ice veined totally amoral realpolitik from libertarians, because their universe really is only about them. Expanding the circle? Someone in some far off land is being slaughtered? Not their problem. It’s more than just a sense that we can’t do anything, that seems like a decoy argument people often throw out. It seems like a lot of people just don’t want to bother paying any blood/treasure for the sake of someone else. And I think that is a bad impulse.
Because it can lead to just not giving a shit about anyone other than yourself. And convincing yourself that everything the US touches overseas turns to ash sounds like liberally minded people trying to absolve themselves from not giving a damn.
Blaming the locals for things falling apart after America invades is an evasion of responsibility, an embrace of the blaming the victim mentality. It’s funny because one of the reasons Iraq was supposed to be easier to transform into a democracy is because it was more secular than a lot of other ME nations, especially with regards to women’s rights. Reminds me of this IOZ quote:
Why Japan and not the rest of the Axis?
I don’t know if I’d use a country America extensively firebombed and nuked in total war as an example of humanitarian intervention.
South Korea is a straight forward example of coming to another country’s defense. Well, until America tried to conquer NK and sparked a Chinese retaliation, that was silly. And supporting decades of strong men. The SK people rising up gave them democracy and rights, America just wanted an anti-communism counter-weight.
I dig the monkeysphere concept, but it cuts both ways. Maybe other countries don’t want to join America’s Greater West Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Not bizarre to me. “Transform your society to our linking or we’ll kill you because we know best” is fundamentally authoritarian.
I’m a Liberal. I dislike war and wish we didn’t have to do it. I really dislike when we do it anyway but I am not one of these people who feel that war is never correct. Sometimes you have no choice.
At the risk of Godwinning this thread, I will say that Hitler was a justified enemy. I never had an issue with getting involved with WWII. So let’s say that Hitler is the most justified person and regime that we ever went to war against.
The scale probably goes from Hitler to invading Canada for shits and giggles. Just because they talk funny doesn’t mean we should invade them. Justin Bieber? Still not worth it. Besides, we could handle him with a drone…
So on a scale between Hitler and Canada, we can make determinations on what wars are just. Vietnam and Iraq were a lot closer to Canada than Hitler.
After 9/11 I was fine with declaring war on those who did that to us. However it was hard since it wasn’t a country that attacked us, but terrorists. We definitely could have handled it better, of course. Like not inventing a reason to attack Iraq.
And I’m fine with going after ISIS. They are assholes and they are getting bolder and the acts they are committing are beyond the pale. I get that our involvement might have caused ISIS to come around and i understand the argument that we always make things worse but I also think we need to clean up our messes and unlike the past at least now the local governments seem to actually want our assistance.
And I am also fine with us providing aid to other countries. I feel that is the price we pay for being a world leader. Maybe the world doesn’t expect Uruguay to come to everyone’s rescue, but we’re not Uruguay and as such I feel we have an obligation to act like a world leader.
Of course, as a liberal, I decry that conservatives have made it where we had to make a choice between helping Americans or helping those abroad. It wasn’t that difficult before Trickle Down economics, was it? We had a thriving economy, middle class AND we could go help out when there was an earthquake in South America.
And as a liberal, I decry the military–industrial complex that has usurped our foreign policy and much of our budget. War makes too much money these days and also costs too much and it’s almost like we’re dependent on war, and that’s bullshit and unnecessary.
We can do away with half our military budget and still be safe to pick and choose the people we have to fight with and also fight against and have all that money left over to help in ways that don’t involve bombing brown people.