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

To: frankw1900 who wrote (97714)	5/9/2003 9:36:19 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 281500

The United States, just like every other country in the world, is first and foremost is concerned with its own interests. I see nothing wrong with that and don't see why one should apologize for it. If you look at the track record of United States objectively, you will see that during the past 60 years US supported "democracy" whenever it was against communism and supported dictatorship whenever it was against communist (or even socialist)movements. So the key here was self interest and not democracy. As an example, I'll be happy to discuss actions to Reagan's "freedom fighters" with you if you are interested (or many other examples around the world). > you suggest the Southerners go through ten years of misery... I have made no such suggestion. I have said that with the fall of communism, smaller countries can no longer be seen as launching platforms by the soviets and therefore they are not as much of a threat to us as they used to be. Therefore I think it is reasonable to rethink the positions we have taken towards them during the cold war and see if those positions can be changed. > But Canada isn't going to invade Iceland. Of course not. But the point of that discussion was to illustrate the unlikelihood of going to war against our largest trading partner for a relatively insignificant piece of land just because that land had democracy. If you don't like this example, pick any other two countries where one is important to US and the other doesn't really matter and see if we'd bomb our interests in order to protect the other, even if the other side was democratic. > Your real point in your post is that the US has not been consistent the last x years. Actually US has been very consistent in its actions. They have all been based on self interests. In the same way that the communists justified their actions as coming to the rescue of the "workers" US justified its actions as coming to the rescue of "democracy". It has been a propaganda campaign, one which we are happy to accept because it makes us feel righteous. Whatever complaints I have about US foreign policy, self interest is not one of them. In fact my biggest complaint is that the actions have not been in our self interest over the long run. The natural analogy is to compare the country with oneself. It is obvious that whatever you or I or anyone else does is primarily for our own self interest (and that of our family's). Yet most of us understand that it is not in our best interest to lend our support to whoever pays us off best. Nor are we generally willing to commit murder and rubbery unless we absolutely have to. In fact most of us would not do so even if there was major police force at the time. > Actually, the US is the final guarantor of democracy - the UN and EU certainly are not. In reality nobody is the guarantor of democracy. It is not a UN mandate. It is not an EU mandate. And it appears nowhere in the constitution that we are obligated to do so.