Posted on 08/15/2016 8:01:03 AM PDT by pinochet
A number of foreign policy experts came out against Trump. Any American who has travelled to a foreign country knows something about foreign policy. Ordinary Americans are popular and well liked around the world. It does not matter whether they travel as tourists, exchange students, missionaries, residents of military bases, aid workers, etc. Ordinary Americans have a very good reputation in foreign countries.
But American foreign policy is hated. This is because foreign-policy experts engage in foreign social engineering, trying to change foreign cultures and overthrow foreign governments. Americans hate domestic social engineering, when it is carried out in America. Foreigners hate foreign social engineering when it is carried out by foreign policy experts.
It is foreign policy experts who cause America to be hated by foreigners, not average Americans.
Instead, modern American foreign policy is grounded on two principles that do not always go down well with foreign governments and peoples: (1) maintaining and extending the post-WW II political, economic, and security institutions like the UN, IMF, World Bank, NATO and the like that keep the world from blowing apart; and (2), preserving America as a military, economic, political, and cultural superpower and preventing the emergence of a peer competitor or of a hostile alliance system.
Human nature and the sad record of history being what they are, we are far better off with this as a national strategy instead of merely seeking popularity and avoiding trouble. If we do not provide order to a world boiling with thuggery, fanaticism, and menace, no one else will. Of course, for bad actors around the world, that makes America the enemy.
“There are Analysts who can rattle off all of the family acquaintances of obscure Kuwaiti emirs, and can tell you where they live, what they do for a living, how they react to things, etc. We know foreign policy, and we know the global playing field. You just don’t see those people.”
And that is PRECISELY the problem. The exact opposite is what we need. These Kuwaiti bastards should be memorizing OUR names, learning what we want, etc.
There is a story from the Reagan years where diplomats were asked to point out their country on a globe. They were always corrected and told that the USA is your country.
Knowing these foreign nations so slavishly is exactly the wrong message. We teach them that THEY are primary and that we will adjust to their every custom, whim, and feeling. Obama bowing is an example. Hillary wearing a headrag. Bush holding hands with a Saudi man as they walk along.
Why wasn’t the Saudi king told not to take an American mans hand will make him think you are a homo?
Diplomacy will be done correctly when we see them kissing our ass, not the opposite.
“I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
-William F. Buckley, Jr.
“institutions like the UN, IMF, World Bank, NATO and the like that keep the world from blowing apart”
Every one of those spreads misery, war, loots America, and destroys freedom. Each of those mostly provides full employment for legions of EU bureaucrats. Sad that anyone still sees those as making a better world.
Expert, huh? The definition of an expert is anybody, on any topic, more than 200 miles from home.
red
I hadn’t heard about that; but the ambassador conducted a gay marriage ceremony at the embassy, which my friends in the Dominican Republic considered a very “in-your-face” insult.
Granted, all of those institutions are flawed -- in some respects deeply so -- but they are ultimately supported by the US for strategic reasons, not emotional or romantic ones. Thus the Reagan administration kept them, reformed them to a degree, and used them -- successfully -- against the Soviet Union. The same can and should be be done to curb both Islamic radicalism and Chinese expansionism. I trust that you would support those objectives at least.
Been to France?
Some Latin Americans also hate norteamericanos.
Sure, you can always attribute that to foreign policy, but ordinary Americans aren't necessarily popular and beloved by foreigners.
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