U.S. Foreign Policy
This is a big consideration as the globe shrinks, especially
since America’s gone from world producer to world middle man and consumer. That
is, our largest US industry is finance which is really just shifting around and
reassigning wealth. Followed by shipping. Then there's our exporting of culture but, hell, if it wasn't for Apple would we have any exports the rest of the world wants (yes this is hyperbole)? But still, our top money maker is finance and this makes the greatest gains when played against the
hundreds of trillions of dollars that make up the global financial system. Add
in our struggle to establish some real export presence and all the money that
trickles down through such transpo ventures as oil (in which gast station
companies pay large chunks of money to middle-easterners for fossil fuel
resources we can then consume) and the simple fact that American ports are
still major global hubs for supply chains and the shrinking globe is in many
ways more important than domestic issues. That is, the way we handle ourselves
internationally not only can assure or reduce our safety as American citizens,
it will also dictate the future well-being of this country’s GDP.
So here’s the current international policy buzz phrase: THE INNOCENCE OF MUSLIMS.
This is possibly one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. The
acting is horrible, the brown-face is laughable, and the scenes where they
blatantly dubbed comments about Muhammad so the actors wouldn’t realize they
were involved in one of the most defamatory videos about Islamists are so
poorly dubbed one would need to be an idiot to think this is anything but a sad
attempt by a crazy Coptic Christian to get some attention and maybe just let out some of the virulent faith-based hate that's boiling inside him. I mean, seriously, I’ve seen
better acting, special effects, and storyline in a Skinemax flick about a group
of sorority girls who get sent to an alien planet for some reason and have to
fuck their way out of a spaceship of male and female humanoid aliens.
Seriously, the anger from the Muslim community should not be at the portrayal of
Muhammad in such a bad light but instead should be that in America, especially in Los Angeles, a land with
so much money and access to quality film equipment and out of work actors, a
movie about Muhammad is made so POORLY.
Still, that’s the problem with the internet, it allows a
movie that looks like it was written, directed, and designed by a
10-year-old to be sent all over the world, including to a region where people
don’t understand that THIS IS NOT HOLLYWOOD. And as such, they think “Oh, this
movie reflects America since they are watching it and since our governments regularly restrict what we can see the fact that the American government has not forced them to take it down must mean that they support it so we must kill America.”
Leading to anti-U.S. mobs running rampant from South Asia to North Africa,
killing one ambassador and swarming many others, burning American flags as they
chant. So much hatred in the world is so frightening but even more frightening
is that they blame us for their shitty situation. Which leaves only one real
response: we bomb every Muslim country into the dirt, turn the middle East into
an amusement park called oil land, and go on vacation in the nice, dry arid
seaside deserts. Just kidding here, folks. That’s not an option, at least not
if America wishes to appear like the “good guy” – perhaps a bit of an asshole,
certainly the head jock in the school but not necessarily a bully. And even if we didn’t care
about our reputation, genocide is never the answer. So that leaves us with 3
options:
- Increased military presence. Though that hasn’t worked in Afghanistan. Nor did it work in Iraq the first few times. In fact, were we to launch an all-out war right now we’d be bankrupt before it was over. Because as it stands, many Muslim countries are currently struggling with their own shortcomings – low rates of literacy, especially among women; in general limited rights for women; a blind belief of everything told them by their religious leaders; and regular skirmishes between ancient tribes, hell between neighborhoods, many of which erupt into violence – this has more in common with feudal Europe than the modern day idylls of Democracy. So how are we supposed to bomb and shoot them forward through 1000 years of the most expansive social and artistic evolutions known to man? The answer: we can’t. Just think of all the Americans who, even with access to the Internet, a high rate literacy and our modern ideas of democracy and equality, still believe in biblical pronouncements which oppress others. Best case scenario, we vaunt an upper class elite into power and when we leave they get over-run but the easily-controlled (thanks to the specter of organized religion) multitudes. Which brings us to the second solution:
- Ignore them. Wouldn’t it be great if we just pulled out, let them have their revolutions and fighting on their own? Let them fall back into being a bunch of mud-dwelling nomads and city-states like before we "civilized" them? The problem is, we can’t for a number of reasons. The most obvious, of course is oil. Recently there have been a lot of developments made with churning shale into gasoline and between that and our own oil wells America could theoretically be independent of the middle-east within the not-so-distant future, especially if instead of trading the oil out we just kept it here for our own consumption. The thing is, even if we didn’t have oil interests, we still have allies over there who are important for our international interests in general. Israel, for example, and Saudi Arabia – even if they didn’t have oil they have wealth and as the world’s wealth manager we need them to trust us. Not to mention shipping ramifications should the Middle East erupt full-bore into one massive sectarian mini-world war and shut down the Suez. And finally, there's the fact that if we let them fall into war and poverty now, after having introduced them to Facebook and XBox, their resentment will grow and terrorist organizations will have lines of angry, abandoned one-time-pro-western Muslims wrapping around the block. Which brings us to a third approach
- Diplomacy. Not all Muslims hate us. There are well-educated Muslims in the middle east who want their countries to embrace the freedoms of the Western way of life. And yet our embassies are getting attacked, our flag burnt, and everybody is clamoring to kill U.S. infidels. Strangely enough, this current outbreak is due to some video put up by some wackjob who doesn’t even have the balls to go in public and apologize for this piece of trash that's getting muhfuckas killed. But if one wants to see why there’s such deep-seeded hatred of the US, it’s because we have a history of going into countries, changing them so they suit us, then leaving them to fall apart until they get our attention by putting a dictator into power whose interests are American liquor and uranium enrichment. Like the kid who has to take a gun into school to get their parent's attention that, hey, I'm being bullied and I'm weak and you just kept telling me "it'll get better" but it hasn't. Take Afghanistan, for example. We came in to use them as a tool against the Russians. After we won that round we left them to their own devices and all these well-trained warlords felt jilted, thus founding the Taliban. Then we went in and routed the Taliban in 3 weeks just after 9/11 but immediately turned our attention to Iraq and left our allies alone to fight the Taliban virus as it rebuilt itself into the juggernaut it is now. Even at this point Afghanistan is unstable, not sure whether they want us there or not, what with our military burning Korans and that wackjob who went on the killing spree around his base. So really, what we need is consistency. And we need to show that we’re not trying to hurt them, we’re not just using them for their resources and connections. Show them we want to be friends. But do we?
- The solution, one would think, is a combination of the three, which we've been trying to do the last few years. Certainly a massive military presence does nothing as our prolonged occupation of Afghanistan has shown. Strategic strikes against terrorist leaders has been working to, for example, destroy Al Qaeda but we have to augment these strategic attacks of bad cells with support for good cells. And this is much easier said than done.
Right now we’re at a strange place
in international policy.The US has invaded countries to put new people in charge and take them out of power so many times over the last 50 years nobody knows whether to trust us or not - including ourselves. We have some new allies, like for example Egypt, run by member of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Morsi who has already deployed troops against Islamic terrorists who attacked Israel and denounced Syria's regime while a guest of Ahmadinejad in Iran, no less (though he's admittedly in a tough situation with this IOM video situation - he's denounced the video but could not do so for the resulting violence, probably for fear of being called an Uncle Tom). And of many of the other Muslim countries, while they claim to hate us, burn our flags and attack our embassies, they would all be bankrupt without our help - for example, the US gave about $25B in humanitarian and social aid to Afghanistan between 2001 and 2010 (not to mention the $27B in aid to form and train their military) and, in fact, Afghanistan's current GDP is about 90% foreign aid; we give Egypt about $1.5B a year, Libya $200M a year. Yet these people want to kill us. On top of that we have to borrow to take care of ourselves so why are we supporting people who want to kill us when we can't support ourselves? Because if we pulled out and they had nothing, most likely shit will just get worse. And our credit is better than theirs.
Now let's change directions and look to Europe. Britain is still an ally, always will be. Germany's aid packages are similar to America's usual calls for austerity when it administers aid and seemingly neither work (Greece got WORSE under Merkel's austerity). So if we did this If the Muslim countries are the angry, hunched-shoulder goths who smoke cigarettes in the corner of the schoolyard and plot lead-jock-America's downfall, England is our cousin who's mostly friends with everyone but still has our back, Europe is part of our same popular clique, and Russia is our rival only because he's the only dude on the playground as big, strong, and tough as us.
So Russia, that's tricky because we had a 3 decade Cold War with the Russians following WWII during which, without the Reds destroying Germany, it could very easily have gone another way (as Stalin put it, "The Americans paid in money, the Russians paid in blood, and the British kept the whole thing going.") They're also a bigtime player in oil. And they're the only nation with a nuclear arsenal comparable to ours. Not to mention they're cool with the goths, have a long history with our clique, and, again, were our strongest allies during the Great War. Yes, their government is edging closer to the former socialist/dictatorial paradigms it once proclaimed proudly to the world, what with Putin essentially in power since 1999. And yes, they at times ally against America (like when they joined forces with China against the UN's Ameri-Europe suggestions for supporting the militias) almost seemingly just to be adversarial and refuse any type of US international hegemony. Basically, Russia's our nation's greatest frenemy - we both inhabit the top sphere of popularity and strength but we each think we're better than the other. And just walk around Beverly Hills or Las Vegas and you'll find more than enough rich Russians spending their money here so it's obvious they're not all bad, nor do they think Americans are that evil.
And then there's China. Just recently Romney has begun chastising Obama for allowing China to routinely break international laws, everything from China's falsely holding down the value of the yuan so that internationally they can continue to sell their shitty goods for rock bottom prices to allowing them to pass massive taxes on imports so as to preclude their people from buying foreign goods from countries like, for example, US. And when today Obama announced he's filing with the WTO to take China to task for low-balling its auto parts, a trade imbalance made possible by heavy government subsidies of its parts industry (a convenient announcement for Obama while in Toledo, home of auto parts manufacturers), Romney said it was just a publicity stunt. But here's the more in-depth truth:
So, to summarize, what do Obama and Romney propose for America's foreign policy?
Romney proposes an augmentation of military spending coupled with America taking a tougher stance on Russia, China, and Libya and Syria and other similar nations (I'm ignoring his asinine statements that Obama brought about the Muslim riots I talked about at the top of this article as ).
Obama is calling for increased diplomacy, still hoping that'll work against growing evidence that the Muslim world seemingly doesn't want to play fair (Obama trying to reach across the aisle to an increasingly hostile group that's unwilling to make concessions and quick to turn angry after the slightest mix-up, even when he had nothing to do with it? Where have I seen that before?). Militarily his plan, to minimize shock-and-awe massive ground attacks in exchange for higher investment in drones and intelligence/special forces working together has already proved to be more effective in killing our enemies (and for cheaper, might I add) though one has to wonder about the long term effectiveness against terrorists in general (since it's a psychological war even more than a physical war).
And I'm not gonna talk about immigration because we already know where both candidates stand and I can see both sides - Obama, yes there are a bunch of people here and we need to allow productive members of American society try and become American, especially since that was how our country became great. But Mitt, yes there are too many damn people, do we really need more? Even more, should we allow people to become citizens when they seem to refuse to adopt elements of American culture like football and speaking English?
In the end, though, even Romney, after all his grandstanding about China and about the middle-east and all admits that Americans don't really care about the rest of the world, or at least our "enemies" as he's spent so much time trying to drive home.
So tune in next week for a little rundown of the economy - where we've been historically, where we've been recently, and where we're going - including an analysis of Obama's and Romney's plans.
- Ryan
Now let's change directions and look to Europe. Britain is still an ally, always will be. Germany's aid packages are similar to America's usual calls for austerity when it administers aid and seemingly neither work (Greece got WORSE under Merkel's austerity). So if we did this If the Muslim countries are the angry, hunched-shoulder goths who smoke cigarettes in the corner of the schoolyard and plot lead-jock-America's downfall, England is our cousin who's mostly friends with everyone but still has our back, Europe is part of our same popular clique, and Russia is our rival only because he's the only dude on the playground as big, strong, and tough as us.
So Russia, that's tricky because we had a 3 decade Cold War with the Russians following WWII during which, without the Reds destroying Germany, it could very easily have gone another way (as Stalin put it, "The Americans paid in money, the Russians paid in blood, and the British kept the whole thing going.") They're also a bigtime player in oil. And they're the only nation with a nuclear arsenal comparable to ours. Not to mention they're cool with the goths, have a long history with our clique, and, again, were our strongest allies during the Great War. Yes, their government is edging closer to the former socialist/dictatorial paradigms it once proclaimed proudly to the world, what with Putin essentially in power since 1999. And yes, they at times ally against America (like when they joined forces with China against the UN's Ameri-Europe suggestions for supporting the militias) almost seemingly just to be adversarial and refuse any type of US international hegemony. Basically, Russia's our nation's greatest frenemy - we both inhabit the top sphere of popularity and strength but we each think we're better than the other. And just walk around Beverly Hills or Las Vegas and you'll find more than enough rich Russians spending their money here so it's obvious they're not all bad, nor do they think Americans are that evil.
And then there's China. Just recently Romney has begun chastising Obama for allowing China to routinely break international laws, everything from China's falsely holding down the value of the yuan so that internationally they can continue to sell their shitty goods for rock bottom prices to allowing them to pass massive taxes on imports so as to preclude their people from buying foreign goods from countries like, for example, US. And when today Obama announced he's filing with the WTO to take China to task for low-balling its auto parts, a trade imbalance made possible by heavy government subsidies of its parts industry (a convenient announcement for Obama while in Toledo, home of auto parts manufacturers), Romney said it was just a publicity stunt. But here's the more in-depth truth:
- We have gently ribbed China about suppressing the yuan. On one side, their releasing it will certainly give the yuan a much greater value against the dollar, ideally opening it up for trade. On the other, it will make any future borrowing from China much more expensive. Should we be borrowing so much from China? No. Has it put us in a tough situation as far as our ability to chastise them for unfair practices seeing as it's hard to take somebody to task if you owe them a lot of money? Yes. And is the ensuing trade gap thanks to these practices, $294B in 2011, very bad for America? Yes. And I'll get deeper into this next week, when I talk about economics.
- One has to wonder at the convenience of the announcement and surely this was in the back pocket waiting for a time like this. On the other hand, the US has regularly lodged complaints against China, including for example as recently as July and March and back to December 2010 and beyond. And interestingly enough, China filed one against us today as well, showing that we all have to walk a fine line between what strengthens our nation's exports against another's and what the rules are which we've agreed to play by. America was the beneficiary of high import tariffs and government subsidy of development and industrialization, we're just mad now that somebody else is doing it.
So, to summarize, what do Obama and Romney propose for America's foreign policy?
Romney proposes an augmentation of military spending coupled with America taking a tougher stance on Russia, China, and Libya and Syria and other similar nations (I'm ignoring his asinine statements that Obama brought about the Muslim riots I talked about at the top of this article as ).
Obama is calling for increased diplomacy, still hoping that'll work against growing evidence that the Muslim world seemingly doesn't want to play fair (Obama trying to reach across the aisle to an increasingly hostile group that's unwilling to make concessions and quick to turn angry after the slightest mix-up, even when he had nothing to do with it? Where have I seen that before?). Militarily his plan, to minimize shock-and-awe massive ground attacks in exchange for higher investment in drones and intelligence/special forces working together has already proved to be more effective in killing our enemies (and for cheaper, might I add) though one has to wonder about the long term effectiveness against terrorists in general (since it's a psychological war even more than a physical war).
And I'm not gonna talk about immigration because we already know where both candidates stand and I can see both sides - Obama, yes there are a bunch of people here and we need to allow productive members of American society try and become American, especially since that was how our country became great. But Mitt, yes there are too many damn people, do we really need more? Even more, should we allow people to become citizens when they seem to refuse to adopt elements of American culture like football and speaking English?
In the end, though, even Romney, after all his grandstanding about China and about the middle-east and all admits that Americans don't really care about the rest of the world, or at least our "enemies" as he's spent so much time trying to drive home.
So tune in next week for a little rundown of the economy - where we've been historically, where we've been recently, and where we're going - including an analysis of Obama's and Romney's plans.
- Ryan
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