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

To: Bilow who wrote (130779)	5/1/2004 8:12:42 AM
From: h0db	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Carl, how do alliances fit into your neo-isolationist Utopia?

To: Bilow who wrote (130779)	5/1/2004 11:37:46 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Carl, Despite the dustup with the Mexicans, (which can partly be blamed on the fact that the Mexicans weren't democratic at the time that we fought them), we had a perfect reputation as non colonialists for most of the 19th century. We were, in fact, a former colony. Then we took the Philippines from Spain and stupidly decided to democratize the place. The resulting guerilla war was called the Philippine American War: Well, I think your history needs a little correcting. We may have had a reputation for being "non colonialists" during the 19th C, but it wasn't because we weren't colonizing, LOL. The whole West was being taken from the people (and of course, the animals like the buffalo that were slaughtered) who lived there and colonized. That kept us plenty busy. In 1892, Frederick Turner wrote his essay declaring the "frontier" closed, and our attentions began to be directed southward to Central America and the Caribbean, and westward toward Asia. That was why we attacked Cuba to get rid of Spain in the "Splendid War" of 1898, as the Secr of State Hayes called it, and why we insisted on 'getting" the Philippines from Spain, despite it being clearly outside of our "sphere of influence" in the Western Hemisphere. True, some meddling in Central America occurred before the West was "settled" (i.e., populated by European types). Partly as a matter of transportation to aid business (the Panama Canal), but mostly because Mexico claimed land that our notions of "Manifest Destiny" said was "ours." The Mexican War had little to do with the fact that Mexico "wasn't democratic," as you say, and a great deal to do with the fact that--we wanted the land. So for the whole 19th century, we were damned near friendless. Being friendless, we were able to sit out most European wars, though we managed to get involved with Britain again in 1812. Other than that, we were quite diplomatically isolated, a bad boy, but too big to beat, peopled by a population too mean to conquer, but with little ability to win friends and influence people. In short, we were isolationist. It wasn't just that we were "friendless" and "too big to beat." We were a convenience for Europeans. They profited from our natural resources. They profited from our desires for their goods. They profited from our being a safety valve for many of their poor and their discontents, who would come here and get swallowed up in this vast territory and thereby not make trouble over there. They profited from being able to send people here to work for anywhere from 6 months to several years, send money back home, and then, if they didn't like it here (as many didn't), return there. There were actually a fair number of people who came here from various countries in Europe for 6 months a year to work, and then return home, year after year.