Instead of promoting wars around the world, US foreign policy should focus on doing things that actually benefit other countries and their citizens — a foreign policy focused on benevolence. Ultimately, that would also be in OUR best interest.
Category: Foreign policy
Afraid
You get afraid when you realize the leadership in Washington today are a bunch of dolts who make decisions based mostly on wanting to win a popularity contest rather than rational decisions based on the best possible outcome.
We are facing imminent food shortages, the erosion of our currency, an economic collapse, and horrible decisions in foreign policy that have driven our two most consistent adversaries — Russia and China — into a mutually beneficial alliance hostile toward the US.
Hard times are coming to this country…hard times, and much of it is our own doing.
“Evil Empire”
Reagan called the Soviet Union the “evil empire”. But if you look at the international relations of the United States in the last 70 years, the litany of terrible outcomes and consequences is almost breathtaking — Vietnam, El Salvador, regime change in Iran, second Iraq war, Afghanistan. I’m sure this short list is missing other significant fiascos. So the bottom line might indeed be that today’s “evil empire” is not them but us — we are the evil empire!
At the very least, I think it is time that the United States government seriously reevaluate its goals relative to international affairs, and make the key objectives not exploiting weaknesses of other countries for some illusory gains for the US, but instead rectifying potential areas of conflict between nations so that peace and prosperity world-wide are assured.
Instead of jockeying for some questionable advantages, a more high-minded diplomacy on the part of the US would be, for instance, to seek ways to peacefully unravel the conflict between North Korea and South Korea so that that potentially explosive issue just melts away. Ditto the issue of China and Taiwan. Not gain specious advantage from these situations but actually solve them so they go away.
Wouldn’t it be a huge sea change if US foreign policy were to pursue goals that were on the side of the angels rather than policies that, in the last 70 years, have led inevitably to the death of millions, devastation of whole nations, and terrible unintended consequences — the heritage of our evil empire.
So this brings us to the present moment and the Ukrainian situation, which isn’t fundamentally about Ukraine at all, but instead the uneasy relationship between an expanding NATO and a Russia with security concerns, having been invaded by Europe twice in history.
A high-minded diplomacy on the part of the US would have the US seek to bring these two parties together to work out an agreement that would leave both feeling secure and respected, so that the world could breathe easier and enjoy peace and prosperity.
But what has the US done instead? It has elected to exploit the Ukrainian situation in a proxy war to debilitate its supposed enemy Russia. The end result is not hard to see. Ukraine will be decimated, many there will die, and the relationship between NATO and Russia will deteriorate, perhaps to the breaking point, with the specter of nuclear war rising up once again.
All of this because the cognoscenti in the US see Russia as the enemy, even though, around the world, there are actually very few points of direct contention between the United States and Russia — the Arctic region being the conspicuous exception. That this is so is probably a consequence of geography, as the two countries are, after all, on opposite sides of the globe. And there are many similarities between the two countries — both are threatened by Muslim extremists, both are principally Christian, both are ostensibly democratic, with elections, both are capitalist.
Yet we are led to believe by our leaders in the US that Russia is the enemy. Why? And what will be the net result, but another decimated country called Ukraine, decimated as much by the narrow-minded and short-sighted diplomacy of the United States as by Russia.
Add yet another country to the list of countries victimized by the current evil empire, the United States.
Vendetta
The US/NATO vendetta against Russia using Ukraine as the pawn will lead to the destruction of Ukraine. It also brings in the nuclear specter. And by the way, the sanctions mean starvation around the world. The Russia-haters in the US and NATO don’t care.
Zero Diplomacy
The United States has suffered from its lack of a true diplomat. The last real diplomacy to be pursued by the US happened under Nixon/Kissinger with their initiative with communist China. They realized that the US faced a menacing communist coalition between the Soviet Union and communist China, so Nixon, despite his anti-communism, did something about it. In an unprecedented and unanticipated move, he went to China and extended the olive branch to the Chinese — with the obvious intention of creating a fissure between the Soviet Union and communist China in their relations with the US.
That is called DIPLOMACY. It is a mixture of both vision and practicality — the vision to see what is indeed a better outcome than the current set of circumstances and the practicality to see how to make it happen. To be an effective diplomat — not a partisan ideologue pushing a questionable agenda — but a true diplomat, you need both. Missing either and you are spinning your wheels.
So how has diplomacy in the last 60 years or so been such an absolute failure? You merely have to look at all the current serious situations that have continued to fester without any clear resolution in sight to realize this. What are they? Not hard to identity. China/Taiwan; North Korea/South Korea; North Korea/Japan; Europe-NATO-US/Russia; Pakistan/India over Kashmir; Israel/Iran. The China/Taiwan situation has the possibility of bringing the US into a nuclear confrontation with China. North Korea/South Korea ditto. North Korea/Japan ditto. Europe-NATO-US/Russia a nuclear confrontation between the two sides. Pakistan/India colossal loss of life and economic devastation for the two countries and ultimately the world. Israel/Iran can bring the US and Russia into direct and inescapable conflict.
Very serious consequences for all of these situations. Yet there has been no diplomat worth his salt to come up with a vision and the practicality to resolve any of them, and these situations are all very long in the tooth — decades — and festering…perhaps “smoldering” is the right word here. Many of these situations, like the entangling alliances that led to World War 1, could lead to a world war that none of us could even imagine.
So where is our Metternich of the 21st century to lead the world out of its darkness and away from the abyss, away from a second Middle Ages and the destruction of our very civilization? Nowhere to be found. And the clock keeps ticking on all of these situations, like a bomb, a very big bomb.
Absence of Diplomacy
NATO’s reckless expansion east to the doorstep of Russia is what has caused this war in Ukraine. Russia has been pleading with NATO since the questionable coup in 2014 for Ukraine to remain unaligned, but their pleading fell on deaf ears. So now we have war. A war that should have been avoided, had we had a single worthwhile diplomat in NATO/US. But there are none. They have ideologues, not diplomats.
A true diplomatic would have seen the far greater value in establishing congenial relations between Europe and Russia compared to further expansion of NATO — because to any reasonable person the former is much more important than the latter. Therefore, you do what needs to be done in diplomacy to ensure the better outcome. But that isn’t what our “diplomats” did.
And now the West makes the incredibly hypocritical claim that this war is Russia’s fault. Duh.
American Hatred of Russia
The hatred of Russia by the US government and the American press has just had the effect of driving Russia into the arms of China. It is the polar opposite, diplomatically, of what Nixon did with his trip to communist China, which was a ploy to separate communist China from the Soviet Union or at least create a small fissure in that relationship.
And so, to any rational person, this virulent hatred is immensely counterproductive, and yet it dominates our State Department and American foreign policy. And Americans, having been drummed into their heads that Putin is this veritable anti-Christ by both our government and the press, never entertain anything that doesn’t fit this narrative — they are brainwashed.
This will not end well for the United States.
Taiwan
Seems to be escalating rhetoric over the issue of China taking over Taiwan — escalating rhetoric on both sides, including some war talk coming out of Australia.
What makes this situation different now is that China may calculate the Biden administration is a paper tiger, and that calculation might induce them to act. They wouldn’t have make that assumption with Trump.
What a black swan an invasion of Taiwan would be, despite the issue being a real one now for decades! The “surprise” that everyone saw coming — eventually.
If there were an invasion of Taiwan by China, what would that circumstance induce North Korea to do?
Free Trade Isn’t Free
Democrats think free trade — where the US doesn’t use tariffs to protect domestic industries, as Trump did with steel and aluminum — is good for the country, but they don’t get that it produces unemployment in those areas affected by cheap foreign imports, and what you end up with is a huge rust belt of poverty and hopelessness. Free trade isn’t free.
Terrible At Governing
Democrats are almost a year in office, with control of both houses, and still haven’t passed the infrastructure bill that everyone, including all Republicans, wanted.
The bonanza bill to spend money on “clean energy” boondoggles will require huge increases in taxes and result in vast government waste on projects with little chance of actually affecting climate change or energy production — a case of government deluding itself into thinking that it can change our use of fossil fuels, for they haven’t admitted to themselves that the alternative sources of clean energy like solar and wind will never really amount to much percentage-wise. That’s the hard reality. Currently, all the renewable energy sources produce a mere 12% of total US energy consumption. I suppose that could eventually get to a whopping (sarcastic here) 15%.
Has anyone asked the question whether we really need to send our 3 and 4 year-olds to school? Whether this is really in our and their best interest? It smacks me of robbing toddlers of their carefree childhood.
The one idea that the Democrats have put forward that has real merit is the required 15% percent minimum tax on corporations. Long overdue that the government put a stop to corporations that make billions paying no taxes because they have an army of tax attorneys who can game the system.
So what have been the real downsides. We have a government that incentivizes illegal immigration. Our border with Mexico is chaos. We have witnessed a terrible exit from Afghanistan that encourages all our adversaries to see the US as a paper tiger. We now have a government that offers Europe no barrier to dumping steel and aluminum into the US — back to Democratic policies that lead to a rust belt in the US and loss of jobs, all for the sake of “free” trade that ultimately corrodes our economy. In other words, relative to trade policies, the Democrats have learned nothing.
Henry's Views 