It's an ambitious project to set out to be policeman for the world ... a minefield of problems, a huge array of ancient rivalries and private agendas with which the cop must deal fairly, and all the intertwinings combined with the law of unintended consequences pretty much guarantee that you're going to screw up if you take on the job ... i wonder if, if i were an american, i might not find myself in the isolationist camp, in the sense that word was used in the 30s.
There are clear times to stand up on your hind legs and fight - the invasion of Poland in '39 was such a time ... if not that then certainly the invasion of western Europe in May of '40 ... but your isolationists were strong then, and you didn't fight until your own ox was gored at Pearl Harbour ... there's definitely been a change since, something of an erratically swinging pendulum [thinking of Kosovo when i typed 'erratically']. US diddling in Latin America, though, has been a constant theme since long before William Walker and John O'Sullivan ... it is deeply resented by the great majority of inhabitants ... many are the pieces of literature on the self-serving hegemony of the 'anglosajones'.
Any nation overwhelmingly more powerful than its neighbours is going to be concerned with what goes on in its vicinity, and will regard its vicinity as its sphere of influence. That's inevitable. But - some of the actions it takes will be more effective than others, and some will be absolutely criminal cockups.
Eisenhower could have had Castro eating out of his hand in the spring of 1959, but coming as did the cubana revolucion in the decade of the McCarthy witchhunts just as the russians seemed to have the upper hand in the sputnik race, and Castro's rhetoric being what it was at the time, and the torturers and jailers of Batista having the american connections they did, Eisenhower chose to drive Fidel into the hands of the russians, so we end up where we are now ... it could have been different - the US could have recognised that cubanos wanted change, they could have influenced that change in a positive manner. This is true again now, imho.
As a canadian taxpayer currently, i vote that my tax dollar go towards ammunition to be used against this RUF in Sierra Leone ... that's no people-supported revolucion, that's just thuggery, like that of the Batistas and the Somozas and the Pinochets. |
