So, thinking through the previous discussion on foreign policy, I've come to realize something about foreign policy in recent years. We are having a realignment there. The last time we had a realignment with foreign policy, it was in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. We shifted from having a bipolar world, to a unipolar one, meaning we shifted from having 2 great powers to only 1. The US won the cold war, its ideology reigned supreme, and Russia became capitalistic. And in the years after, the US suddenly had to ask what should they do as the sole world power, what was the role of the United States in this environment?
In the 1990s, we had a lot of discussions. The liberals imagined us as a world police where we were interventionist and did nation building, and Clinton did get us involved in a lot of conflicts like Somalia, and Rwanda, and Yugoslavia. And these interventions were less than popular. Somalia actually ended up being a disaster for us due to the "black hawk down" incident, where US service members died in a conflict that was none of our business, and the conservatives ended up being very anti multilateralism. They ended up having a foreign policy that is reminiscient of Trump today, where we're isolationist, but we're strong and if anyone messes with us, we F them up.
In 2001, someone came after us. Bin laden, himself driven by an anti US interventionist ideology, attacked the US due to its involvement in Saudi Arabia. He had previously fought the soviets in Afghanistan, and in the 90s declared war on the US. He did some terrorist attacks then, but 9/11 is what REALLY got us going. So 9/11 happened, the towers fell, and we were MAD. And suddenly, the argument became, we gotta go after the bad guys who attacked us. We were ignorant and naive. We claimed they hated our freedoms, they were wanna be tyrants, and we had to defend ourselves. I'm not saying going after Bin Laden was a bad thing, but we did kind of exaggerate his motives a bit.
Anyway, at that point, the neocons took over the republican party and THEY wanted to nation build, whereas the liberals wanted to also nation build, but to it more multilaterally. Conservatives in the post cold war environment were really much the whole epitome of "America F yeah" and they basically wanted to do what they wanted while giving the finger to our allies.
As the war on terror proved to be a massive, costly mistake, I kind of shifted my ideology to be more isolationist myself, but I also ended up taking on the more liberal attitudes of multilateralism. I felt at home with the Obama administration foreign policy wise. He wasn't "weak", but he wasn't the rabid pitbull that was the GOP on foreign policy. He wanted to work with allies, defend the US, but also scale down interventions. he got out of Iraq, and ISIS took over, a sign that deposing of Saddam Hussein was, in fact, ill advised.
Quite frankly, the war on terror drove much of the left to an anti war standpoint, and it seemed like we couldnt do anything right. Any time we intervened, we screwed things up worse. And I was pretty much in the whole yeah "we should do less overseas" camp. Foreign policy has always been a bit of a "ugh do we have to?" thing with me.
Going into the Trump administration, Trump actually attracted a lot of the "anti war" crowd on the left and is why weirdos like Jimmy Dore and Tulsi Gabbard ended up shifting back to the right. Because they actually seem to align more with Trump and his brand of isolationism on foreign policy.
Meanwhile my views were more like Obama, where I wanted a responsible moderate foreign policy that didn't screw things up. I would say I was critical of free trade. That's one thing I am discounting. Liberals were pro free trade agreements, and so were conservatives, but Trump in 2016, and Bernie kind of put an end to that era, with us rejecting neoliberalism and international markets that couldnt be regulated and are actually quite bad for workers.
Which brings us to the Biden administration. And honestly, I think the Biden administration is actually the really pivotal foreign policy realignment that I dont think most have realized happened yet, but I think it's worth mentioning.
First and foremost, Biden brought an end to the 20 year war in Afghanistan. We went in in 2001, and Biden pulled out in 2021. And the fact that we were ceding control back to...the Taliban really says it all as far as what a disaster that was. The anti interventionist side was right, and suddenly, because democrats pulled out, the right cried a lot of crocodile tears about it and Trump is using the pull out being a mess as an attack against him before he dropped out.
But yeah, 2021 was the end of an era. I say this not just because of Afghanistan, but also because of Russia invading Ukraine. Because people have wondered in recent years, do we really NEED NATO, what is its role in the 21st century, blah blah blah? And the invasion of Ukraine has kind of really rekindled in me a desire to defend democracy, similar to the cold war. And if anything, with the War on Terror era finally closed, it seems like suddenly the big foreign policy issues of the day are things like Russia in Ukraine, and what if China attacks Taiwan, and stuff like that. Israel is having its own war on terror moment, and we're passively supporting them economically, much to the chagrin of leftists in the US.
The left seems stuck in its own world. They still seem stuck in this era of "interventionism is bad, remember the war on terror when we couldnt do anything right?" and I agree, as far as nation building goes, yeah, we're terrible at that. Intervening abroad, deposing of dictators, trying to build up these third world countries with no real love of western democratic values is a failure. let them figure stuff out for themselves, and while injustice happens, well, not our problem.
What IS our problem is when people mess with our allies and threaten democracy. Russia and China represent an ideological and military threat to the west and the US in the long term. Russia, maybe not so much, but they are big and powerful enough to cause issues with Europe, and I think stopping them in Ukraine is an important proxy war we need to have to contain them and stop them from just rolling into Europe. We need to stop China from messing with Taiwan, and North Korea from messing with South Korea and Japan. And I hate to say it as I know I get a lot of crap from this from the left, but it makes more sense to defend Israel than Palestine. Hamas, who is the political entity that controls the Gaza strip, is a radical islamic terrorist group that wishes genocide upon the Israeli people. They dont believe in coexistence. And to be fair, I know Israel doesnt really believe in coexistence with Hamas either, hence their heavy handed war, but we gotta think about this rationally. I fully admit what Israel is doing is wrong. They're not just defending themselves, they're going too far. But at the end of the day, who do we really want controlling the region? I say israel. It makes no sense, as an American and as a westerner to put a radical islamic group in charge over a semi western country that is a flawed, apartheid democracy. Foreign policy is complex, full of trolley problems, and this is one of those situations were someone is gonna be run over and it's better its the faction that doesnt share our western values.
Obviously, I do support the US reining in Israel and putting a stop to hostilities. But at the same time, push comes to shove, i dont want to make this more business than it has to be. Why should we play the world police? Im not for the US being the world police. Im for the US defending itself and its allies. And Israel is higher on that totem pole than palestine is any day. So...it is what it is.
But yeah. This represents a break from the previous world order that existed before Biden was in office. We're moving out of an era where anti interventionism makes sense and into one where we kinda gotta return to cold war footing...because we ARE, de facto, in a new cold war. Unlike the cold war of the past, this isn't primarily based on economic ideologies, even though China is communist. It's about liberal democracy vs authoritarianism. That is the divide between east and west these days. The west has values in liberal democracy, rule of law, human rights, the east is basically a bunch of authoritarian strong men who basically are just like "how dare the US tell us what to do." And I get it, we should mind our own business, but no, China and Russia want to spread their own influence throughout the globe. THey want to gain power and one day be the big dog like us. And we don't really want that, because it makes us weaker, and thus, threatens our way of life long term.
The reason I am an interventionist, like Biden, like Harris, like the democrats, is because we need to counter these threats. We cant just sit on our laurels and do nothing. Russia wants to roll through europe, china wants to expand into the south china sea, the rest asia, and ultimately, beyond. And the islamic countries, they wanna eradicate israel. So, yeah. It is what it is. I dont think anti interventionism makes sense in this new modern world. It makes sense in the post cold war world, but not in this cold war 2.0 world. We closed that era in 2021, and yes, we very much need interventionism now. Break over, get back to work, because we dont want to be toppled as top dog of the world because that would threaten our way of life long term.
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