Found a very good piece on a website new to me as well.
Foreign Policy.com appears to be quite the well of information in the form of news and opinion, including conservative opinion, when it comes to, you know, foreign policy. It examines the actions, behaviors, and policies of the United States and just about every other country to get mentioned in the news.
Anyhow, this story by Michael Mandelbaum is pretty good, examining the U.S. hegemony, its differences from previous hegemons, and the global envy or hatred of America today. Here are a few good exerpts:
Michael further goes on about the good things the U.S. provides, but rarely get mentioned:The rest of the world complains that American hegemony is reckless, arrogant, and insensitive. Just don’t expect them to do anything about it. The world’s guilty secret is that it enjoys the security and stability the United States provides.
Widespread complaints about the United States’ international role are met with an absence of concrete, effective measures to challenge, change, or restrict it. The gap between what the world says about American power and what it fails to do about it is the single most striking feature of 21st-century international relations. The explanation for this gap is twofold. First, the charges most frequently leveled at America are false. The United States does not endanger other countries, nor does it invariably act without regard to the interests and wishes of others. Second, far from menacing the rest of the world, the United States plays a uniquely positive global role. The governments of most other countries understand that, although they have powerful reasons not to say so explicitly.
... countries with opposing aims often simultaneously attempt to persuade the American government to favor their respective causes. That has sometimes led the United States to become a mediator for international conflict, between Arabs and Israelis, Indians and Pakistanis, and other sets of antagonists. That’s a role that other countries value.
The United States makes other positive contributions, albeit often unseen and even unknown, to the well-being of people around the world...For instance, U.S. military power helps to keep order in the world...The United States has also assumed responsibility for coping with the foremost threat to contemporary international security, the spread of nuclear weapons to “rogue” states and terrorist organizations. In many parts of the world, the United States serves as a convenient scapegoat for governments, a kind of political lightning rod to draw away from themselves the popular discontent that their shortcomings have helped to produce.
The next exerpt can be applied to domestic entitities such as looney leftist moonbats, as well as foreign countries:
You can read the whole thing here.Acknowledging [support for America's global role] would risk raising the question of why those who take advantage of the services America provides do not pay more for them. It would risk, that is, other countries’ capacities to continue as free riders, which is an arrangement no government will lightly abandon.
There is also a good piece on the NRA playing global politics. Check it out.
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