senseiman
先輩
- 24 Jun 2003
- 628
- 46
- 44
OF course the US isn't the only major player in the international system. The European Union and Japan are very important players in maintaining the current economic system. But it is divided politically and militarily. The US is the global political and military machine that ensures compliance with the rules, rules which the US made, perhaps with some imput from Europe.
I do not at all believe your contention that the Bush administration has been a 3 year abberation in an otherwise isolationist foreign policy. You seem to find the case of the Iraq war very objectionable, presumably because it is the one that most strongly disproves your point, so lets do as you suggest and ignore it.
For starters, your main premise seems to be based on the idea that intervention only occurs when US ground forces invade a country. You say that the US couldn't be cajoled by the Europeans into getting involved in Yugoslavia, but that is patently false. US bombs dropped on the Serbs were key in ending the Bosnian civil war, US military advisors planned the Croation offensives against the Serbs in Eastern Croatia and Clinton spent billions of dollars in bombing Serbia back to the stone age for the Kosovars. There are thousands of US troops in the former Yugoslavia to this day!
Throughout post war history there is a massive list of US interventions not related to the Bush administration that would betray your notion of an isolationist US. Iran, Guatamala, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, The Dominican Republic, Grenada, NIcaragua, Afghanistan, Panama etc. etc. None of these had anything to do with a terrorist provocation temprorarily luring the US out of its shell or anything. It is just the way the US governs its percieved sphere of influence.
Of course the US doesn't act the exact same way as the Europeans ruled their empires a hundred years ago. Times have changed since then. This isn't because the US has different interests than previous powers, its because modern society won't tolerate open colonialism the way it used to. The US doesn't directly control the countries in its 'sphere' but it has a lot of less visible means of control.
Take a look at all of the countries that supported the US in its war on Iraq, for example. In just about all of them the massive will of the public was against the war and against the US, but their leaders supported the war and some even sent troops. Was it because these leaders felt morally obliged to attack a country that had done nothing to them, or was it because they feared US retribution if they didn't fall into line? Even Japan, the second largest economy in the world with about 80% of the population opposed had to support the US because if they didn't, the US would have retaliated in some way with the Korean issue.
In some ways I think you are right about how the US will act after the next election. It certainly won't be undertaking any more Iraq-scale invasions in the near future and the war drum rhetoric will probably die down a bit. But I don't see the US being at all obliged to refrain from its many smaller-scale interventions.
I do not at all believe your contention that the Bush administration has been a 3 year abberation in an otherwise isolationist foreign policy. You seem to find the case of the Iraq war very objectionable, presumably because it is the one that most strongly disproves your point, so lets do as you suggest and ignore it.
For starters, your main premise seems to be based on the idea that intervention only occurs when US ground forces invade a country. You say that the US couldn't be cajoled by the Europeans into getting involved in Yugoslavia, but that is patently false. US bombs dropped on the Serbs were key in ending the Bosnian civil war, US military advisors planned the Croation offensives against the Serbs in Eastern Croatia and Clinton spent billions of dollars in bombing Serbia back to the stone age for the Kosovars. There are thousands of US troops in the former Yugoslavia to this day!
Throughout post war history there is a massive list of US interventions not related to the Bush administration that would betray your notion of an isolationist US. Iran, Guatamala, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, The Dominican Republic, Grenada, NIcaragua, Afghanistan, Panama etc. etc. None of these had anything to do with a terrorist provocation temprorarily luring the US out of its shell or anything. It is just the way the US governs its percieved sphere of influence.
Of course the US doesn't act the exact same way as the Europeans ruled their empires a hundred years ago. Times have changed since then. This isn't because the US has different interests than previous powers, its because modern society won't tolerate open colonialism the way it used to. The US doesn't directly control the countries in its 'sphere' but it has a lot of less visible means of control.
Take a look at all of the countries that supported the US in its war on Iraq, for example. In just about all of them the massive will of the public was against the war and against the US, but their leaders supported the war and some even sent troops. Was it because these leaders felt morally obliged to attack a country that had done nothing to them, or was it because they feared US retribution if they didn't fall into line? Even Japan, the second largest economy in the world with about 80% of the population opposed had to support the US because if they didn't, the US would have retaliated in some way with the Korean issue.
In some ways I think you are right about how the US will act after the next election. It certainly won't be undertaking any more Iraq-scale invasions in the near future and the war drum rhetoric will probably die down a bit. But I don't see the US being at all obliged to refrain from its many smaller-scale interventions.