So vaguely speaking where do I stand on foreign policy?

 With all of this Israel talk, I want to explain where I stand on foreign policy.

I'm gonna be honest, I don't care about foreign policy much. I'm someone who is quite hands off, and doesn't want to get super involved with everything, but at the same time, I feel like we are ultimately forced, due to the nature of international politics, to get involved. 

I largely support our post WWII strategic alliances with NATO and eastern Asia, and do believe we need to support those to offset geopolitical rivals like Russia or China. For the record I agree with Trump that I would like to see European nations pay a bit more for their own defense so we can spend less, but unlike Trump I largely support these strategic alliances and believe they are very good for our interests. 

My biggest fear on the world stage, is Russia and China. I believe they are the only nations that truly serve as rivals to the US on an international stage, and believe they have far different values than us, much for the worse. For all the flaws the US has, they are essentially authoritarian states who, without US intervention, would likely control the Eurasian sphere of the world, which would be disruptive to our allies in Europe, and our long term economic interests. 

Like it or not, the world is a giant geopolitical chess game between great powers, with smaller countries being the pieces on the board. I don't like this, I understand how morally questionable a lot of our decisions over the past 70 years have been, but at the same time, if we don't play the game, we lose the game, and losing is better than not playing at all.

In playing the game, the US does a lot of crappy things. Overturning Iran's government, Vietnam, backing countries like Iraq before they turned on us, invading Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting countries like Saudi Arabia, israel, etc. We can go on and on about why this is bad and why that is bad, and blah blah blah, and you know what? The left making these arguments often have a point. But say we followed their advice. Congrats, we just shot ourselves in the foot. Other nations start getting aggressive, more wars happen, Russia or China swoop in, gain access to natural resources, and they become the world power and we do not, and trust me, they're way crappier than we are. 

There's just no winning. 

At the same time, I do believe we could've done things differently. I think invading Iraq was a mistake. We should've left Afghanistan 10 years ago. We shouldn't be as involved overseas. We should probably scale back our military involvement. We don't need to spend $700 billion to defend ourselves. We will probably always need to spend at least $300-400 billion to be competitive against all of the threats we face, but at this point our military is so bloated and overkill that no nation dares even come close to us. So we do overdo it. And I do believe we should do less. A lot of conflicts we shouldn't be involved in. Clinton libs wanted to get involved in UN peacekeeping operations in the 90s. That just led to money being spent and American servicepeople dying. We shouldn't be getting involved in foreign wars more than necessary. Keep in mind even though I believe we need to "play the game" of foreign policy, which is a glorified version of Risk, that doesn't mean that we should get involved in every conflict. War is expensive, I value American lives, and I do think getting involved actually makes things worse. So I prefer a hands off approach. But that doesn't mean we should demolish the military and do nothing and get so hyped up about all of the "war crimes" we commit like the hyperbolic left likes to talk about. They're naive, I'm realistic, but also still a bit idealistic.

Really, if I had my way, I'd just go back to isolationism and leave the world alone. That's what I really WANT to do. I just believe we're forced into this sick game of international relations and failure to play essentially means a forfeit. Yeah we might do crappy things along the way, but this game is very morally opaque and to some extent it's dog eat dog. I believe the world is sometimes cruel, and sometimes there's no helping it. If we could never do anything wrong, and not get involved in anything and spend all our money on UBI and healthcare, I would be so happy. We just don't live in that world. And I do believe we need to look out for our interests, no matter how morally dubious doing so is sometimes. If that means we support Israel, a country that adopts western values on paper but acts like an apartheid state, against a bloc of muslims who hate our guts and we gain nothing from switching sides, so be it. 

I know a lot of the left will be displeased with my views. Well, again, I actually see where the left is coming from morally. But I just don't believe we can live in the idealized world they want. If we did, Russia would start rolling Europe, and China would expand throughout Asia and into Africa. This would leave us isolated into our hemisphere, and they likely would forge alliances here too, like they've tried with countries like Cuba and Venezuela in the past. So we would be isolated, and in a very weak position. It's better we control the world than someone else. Our culture, our way of life, and our economic prosperity are at stake.