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

To: h0db who wrote (130820)	5/1/2004 11:59:50 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi hodb; Re: "Carl, how do alliances fit into your neo-isolationist Utopia?" I didn't call it a "utopia". Those are your words, not mine. I don't believe that a utopia is possible on this planet, so I'm not willing to send US soldiers to die in a hopeless attempt to make one. By "alliances", I assume you mean "military alliances". I don't think we should be isolationist as far as non military alliances. Military alliances are needed for war, and for the threat of war. At this time, we have no war, and no threat of war. If something pops up like Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, we will still be able to put together an international coalition to take care of it. In that sense, it is not necessary that we have alliances prior to that event. We are enough of a power in our selves to get the ball rolling. What you need longstanding alliances for is to prepare for very big wars. Our NATO and other anti-communist alliances were of that type. The recent collapse of Communism leaves us with no reason to keep our alliances active. That is, we should have friendly relations with Britain, France and Germany, but we have no reason to combine our militaries into some sort of super super power. We're already the sole superpower, that's enough. Even after there is another superpower, we do not need alliances (just as we did not have alliances between 1800 and 1917), unless that superpower threatens us militarily. And by "threatens us", I mean really threatens us, not in the sense of the utopic definition of threatens: "could possibly do the least little amount of harm to us". So in some ways, I approve of Bush's many destructive actions against our longstanding alliances with powerful nations like France and Germany. By alienating these countries, Bush has done much to bring about the military isolationism that I wish to see. He's already pulled most of our troops out of Saudi Arabia. The infinite sink in Iraq will force him to pull out of places like South Korea and Germany. And the eventual pullout of Iraq will leave us with the least number of military alliances we've had since 1941. That's one of the reasons I will probably be voting for him again. -- Carl