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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SirRealist who wrote (11433)	11/24/2001 4:52:35 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

What I thought he was saying is that foreign policy primes the business pump repeatedly, and when the pump starts drying up, Well, it certainly doesn't hurt. But I believe that what's driving this more is that throughout the world we're seeing a hesitancy amongst foreign investors to put capital at risk overseas. And this is partly due to the growing level of turmoil that has been developing as the US has politically decoupled itself from playing the lead in world affairs, despite our place as the only superpower remaining. And this is traditionally American.. We remain engaged so long as global events effect our national interests and security. As part of this decoupling, we've seen the US ability to guide global foreign policy along our own interests deteriorate as former allies seek to go their own way and assert their own foreign policy, now that the threats that previously tied them to the US at the political "hip" have evaporated. we have to create bogeymen enemies to maintain the flow. The bogeymen already exist. And they often only have been kept in check due to pressure from the former rivals of the cold war. The Russians were had every interest in assisting Nasser and Sadat to quell Islamic fundamentalism. And they had every interest in creating regimes like those in Syria and Iraq, both spawned from Baathist socialist/marxist movements, and heavily arming them so they could subjugate their dissident elements, including Islamic extremists. What I perceive as being more at stake here, is that we must assist the muslim countries to fight their own battles against Islamic Extremism. Such extremism is preventing investment capital from migrating their to build their local economies. And this plays right into the hands of those elements who seek to subvert the current secular regimes and replace them with theocratic Islamic government and economic policy (which has proven to be as much a disaster as marxist). So to truly get the "business pump" flowing, we need to create the global conditions of political stability for economic growth in peripheral economies. And Islamic extremist networks such as Al-Quaida recognize that for Islam to rise, the western economic system must collapse. And if they are able to create collapses in some of these economies, they can win their war, nation by nation. That's why the US is taking this battle beyond Afghanistan and to other nation's that create economic instability for their neighbors (like Iraq) and for the rest of the world. The greater threat is global deflation created as a result of insecurity and political and economic disorder. Creating the impression that political and religious terrorism is "on the run" from the US war against it, can create the conditions for reassuring global capital that they can feel safer putting capital at risk overseas. But that's just my opinion. Hawk