@blatham,
blatham wrote:
No. There are two different and not mutually exclusive aspects here. One is the hegemonic nature of the US's role in the world (spelled out explicitly in the PNAC documents which Dick Cheney, for one, was signatory to) and which is driven most acutely by business interests. The other is the moral obligation of any nation to attend to injustices, tyranny and suffering outside its own borders. As you know, the US has propped up many tyrannies because US businesses operating in those places profited from that situation.
This statement is replete with familiar phrases ( "memes"?) that are inaccurate, in some cases unknowable, and for which Blatham has offered no proof, no specific examples, indeed no support at all.
The US does indeed play a major role in the world , as do China, the major European powers ( which by his standards are hegemons for the rest of Europe), India and others, simply as a result of the size and reach of their economies. We do not exercise hegemonic control over these other powers, and we do not even attempt to do so, though we do (as do they) seek to protect our own interests, those of our allies, and preserve a relatively peaceful balance among them.
Instead of repeating these nonsensical platitudes Blatham should specify what he would have us do differently with respect to these powers.
The various European Powers managed to demolish the wealth and power of centuries in a totally useless and meaningless war in 1914 which directly led to Marxist revolutions in Russia and later China and a Second round of war in Europe and the world. In the 1918 negotiations in Paris they capped it off with a "peace" treaty and a rearrangement of colonial empires that ensured the enmity of then rising Japan ; the eventual eruption of religious conflict and later anti Western jihadist revolution across the Muslim world; and even the creation of a Marxist revolutionary movement in Viet Nam (Ho Chi Minh was physically present in Paris in 1918 seeking home rule within the French Empire for his country. He was scornfully dismissed, and we all know the rest.)
The United States was a reluctant and late participation in both wars, but once in, we did our best. (The America First or "isolationist" movement in this country in the 1930s and afterwards was an obvious and direct consequence of popular revulsion with the behavior of the European powers in the aftermath of WWI.)
After WWII Europe ( including a militarily triumphant USSR) was awash in devastation, displaced peoples and rising poverty. The United States, alone in the world, had an intact, high capacity industrial and economic structure. We were, at that moment, apart from a largely political threat from revolutionary Soviet communists, trolling throughout Europe and its disintegrating colonial empires, the undisputed masters of the World. That was a very revealing moment for our real intentions and natures.
What did we do? We contributed hundreds of billions (much more in today's currencies) to the reconstruction of Western Europe and its economic life. We encouraged (with limited success) the British, French, and Belgians to liberate their former Asian and African empires ( but did enable Australia, Canada and New Zeeland to escape the British economic chokehold of the Sterling Union). We led in the efforts to give a voice to peoples across the world in the United Nations, and in encouraging the efforts of European leaders towards union, initially with the European Coal and Steel Community.
Confronted with a rising political and military threat from an obviously aggressive USSR, which was pillaging the economies and suppressing the cultures of its captive satellite nations in Eastern Europe, we supported the creation of NATO ( exercising a lot of pressure to get Denmark and Norway to join it instead of a proposed Swedish neutral Scandinavian Union)
In short we went to great lengths to assist in the creation of our principal competitors today. Real hegemons don't do that.
We did however repeat SOME of the errors of our hapless predecessors in the Western world. The British specialized in the creation of positively unstable colonial entities (India, Iraq, and Nigeria are obvious examples) which facilitated their ability to control them with minimum cost and effort. Very effective colonial policy, but one that led to dysfunction and mass exterminations with the end of empire. We foolishly intervened in Iraq and are living with other consequences of British exploitation in India/Pakistan and Africa.
We tolerate obviously hostile but ineffective and self limiting tyrannies in our neighborhood (Cuba and Venezuela). Both have brought tyranny, oppression and poverty to their peoples, and are excellent examples of misrule. ( However even many rather sappy, inconsequential leaders of friendly, even neighboring nations describe them as islands of liberty led by revolutionary heroes.) The entirely unnecessary suffering and tyranny to which the peoples of these nations are subject is rather obvious, but we have not intervened. What would be Blatham's prescription for our (or Canada's ) moral responsibility to bring peace and prosperity to them?
One could go on but this is enough. Blatham is very effective in repeating ( to his credit, usually with acknowledgement of the source) the stuff he reads in blogs and magazines. However he fails to consider or sufficiently understand the underlying issues. Instead he merely rationalizes the information and understanding he has, all in terms of a rather superficial contemporary political formula, and ignoring anything that might complicate his superficial and often fatuous formulas.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/do-we-have-lift-off
