Author Topic: What's wrong with U.S. foreign policy?  (Read 1122 times)

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Offline waldo

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Re: What's wrong with U.S. foreign policy?
« on: June 06, 2019, 10:36:23 am »
What I have noticed about foreign policy in the U.S. is that it's quite fluid. You make an agreement with the U.S. and it has a maximum shelf-life of 4 years, 8 if you're lucky. In other words, the life of one particular administration.

During the Cold War there was a "bipartisan consensus" on most foreign policy issues. But the Cold War is over, and the parties today disagree on what to do about just about everything in the world.

The U.S. government is notoriously short-sighted. We think in terms of the next midterm election, the next few years, the next fiscal quarter.

I think we'd **** a lot less people off if we were a little more consistent, and honored agreements in the long term instead of having them more or less expire every time a new bunch gets in the white house. The lesson other countries would learn from this is, "don't make an agreement with the Americans, the next president won't honor it."

I admit that I'm not an IR professor or anything like that, but it's something I've just noticed over the years.

Thoughts?

you mean all the stupid shyte the U.S. does around the world... failed nation-state building... presuming to extend upon self-serving agenda-driven "American/western values"... oil security couched in "regime change", failing to honour agreements it does sign, bullying NATO to extend upon so-called American foreign-policy, strutting around the world in the name of self-proclaimed American exceptionalism......... like that? Is that what you call, as you say, "fluid"?

and then there's Trump! Paris Climate agreement - scratch! Iran nuclear deal - scratch! TPP - scratch! You know, cause Obama!!! As much as Canada is quite obviously influenced on so many fronts by American intrusion into Canada (overt and subtle), Trump raised the profile on that to the nth degree. Nothing said it clearer than the U.S./Trump admin imposing tariffs on Canadian steel/aluminum... claiming Canada as a national security threat to the U.S.!

PM {Pierre} Trudeau captured it most succinctly in 1969: