The United States and Foreign Policy Today

Well, for my first real blog post I want to start by delving into something that has started to bother me more and more as time goes on. U.S. Foreign Policy is too idealistic and dangerous in its current form that we need to have a change immediately. The ideals of the New American Century group have gotten us into a quagmire in which there is no easy escape. No matter if you are Republican or Democrat, we have to admit that America's dominance is coming to an end, and if it isn't than we are charging headlong off that cliff soon enough. We need a more pragmatic approach to help further our interests abroad, if even that at all is important anymore. The current primary races between the political parties in our nation have underlined a key fact, the economic crises weighs heaviest on the voters minds, not an idealistic crusade to further our economic interests.

When you look at the ideology of the Project for the New American Century, what many consider the foundation of modern neo-conservative thinking, the idea that shines through is that the authors had no sort of inclusive world view in mind. In fact, one of the prime tenants of their philosophy is the idea that acting unilaterally is acceptable, especially if it gets the job done. When the Bush Administration finalized their plans for the war with Iraq, remembering of course that both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld signed off on the PNAC, this doctrine of pure brashness showed us the folly of our new foreign policy.

What the Iraq War has taught us, or should have taught us, is that we cannot even begin to think that we can extend ourselves across the globe. We all know the war was a massive mistake, the Bush administration had no right whatsoever to invade Iraq. The occupation has proved equally fruitless, with estimates of the war reaching to 3 trillion dollars at the extreme end, this war has proved a massive shock to the American system. We can no longer see ourselves as the cavalier gun-totting cowboy, not if we want to maintain any semblance of respect from the international community. Whatever pre-conceptions we may or may not have about the superiority of American values needs to be thrown out the window immediately.

We kid ourselves into thinking that what we are doing for the rest of the world is doing them a service, in fact, in many cases it can be seen as a gross disservice. While the IMF and the World Bank push free market economy on the developing world (as a way of paying back the massive debt they've saddled these countries with no less) even though, the United States and the rest of the Western Powers do not practice anything close to a free market system. Developing nations need to be able to decide their own fate, without interference from the outside. As bystanders to their cultures, we have no right to claim that a system we don't even use is going to magically fix their economy. Much grittier work needs to be done from the bottom up if anything is going to be salvaged in these countries.

The argument against this, however, is what is to stop the countries being dominated by small groups of people, or on the flip side, they descend into violence. Well, that is what has happened when we have implemented these IMF and World Bank policies. Look at nations like Kenya today, where the idea of free elections has turned into a farce, with the free market being dominated by the ethnic group in power. The seething resentment of the other ethnic groups was bound to boil over at some point, indeed the New York Times reported that the marauding death squads in Kenya were beginning to be organized even before the election results were released. The multitude of ethnic conflict that exists in the world precludes being able to claim that the free market method is in fact the best method.

What is important to note in all of this is that the idealism has been hijacked by ambitious people looking for ways to make a quick buck. These ideas of free markets are only in place to make to make exploitation easier. The IMF certainly doesn't provide developing nations an easy way to escape the debt they are saddled with, because otherwise the IMF would run out of money, pure and simple. The idea that we can push our own ideals on the world is going to be ruinous if it is allowed to continue, our credibility in the world is at an all time low and if we keep pushing this system we will only make it worse. As a nation we need to make sure that the government knows that we won't tolerate this sort of war-mongering any longer, especially now that problems within our own country need to be addressed....