"Bought time for what? What was the reason for buying time with Iran?"
Keeping the status quo between Iraq and Iran. The two never got along and both were roughly equal, so they provided a check on one another.
"A nation instinctively wants to look out for its own self interest and the bigger and more powerful the nation, the more likely that nation will do what it can to protect and enhance that self interest."
Yep. And what is in our greatest, long term self-interest? No wars, free trade, sophisticated consumers, little or no corruption, etc. In short, a world where every country is at or close to the living standards of the West. Note, this doesn't mean they need to be little carbon copies of Southern California, although the pressures are strong. Things like cheap foreign labor, cheap raw materials, cheap goods, etc. are nice in the short term, but the situations that gives rise to those things aren't stable. Our time horizon tends to be 3-6 months. A couple of years, tops. It needs to be much longer or we will continue to get sucked into more things like Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Iraq. Either because we see some short term opportunity or just can't ignore the instability any more. Case in point, Somalia. We went in there to try to stabilize the situation, but weren't really prepared for it. After flailing about a little, we pulled out. So where is Somalia now? Becoming a modern Tripoli. Sooner or later we will be going back, and it will be a lot harder, because the piracy is becoming a major problem. |
