talkpolitics | America's Role In The World

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America's Role In The World

What is America's role in the world? I'm the first to jump on the America bashing bandwagon, so one could expect me to come up with a suitably cynical snark response to this. But I won't.

America's role in the world is to be a leader.

In most ways, America is the most powerful nation in the world. Militarily, it's not hard to think that America could fight off every other nation in the world if we all tried to invade at once. They have used this military to become the unquestioned economic and political power in the world as well. Colonial wars have been fought in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America, not to rule directly, but to install governments that will allow for a favourable economic environment for US corporations. Why the hell would you want to run a country when you could just be extracting their natural resources and abuse their labour?

America has actively worked to become the leader in the world. It has been an act of conscious free will. It has been the stated aim of generations of political leaders and the desire of the electorate that votes them in. "We're #1" they cry after singing the national anthem at a "World Series" to find a the "World Champion" in a sport in which pretty much only they play in which only teams from America compete.

With great power, comes great responsibility.

Because the creation of US world supremacy has been a conscious act of free will, then the responsibilities that come along with that power are non-negotiable and must be entered into with a sense of duty, not obligation. The President of the United States has been called the "Leader Of The Free World" (and I've noticed, is still called, which I find a bit of an anachronism). The Constitution is, rightly, held up as one of the grand achievements of humanity. Americans like to believe that the ethics and values of their nation, that all men are created equal, that we have the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If this is so, then their act of conscious free will to become the world leaders and the responsibilities that are the duty of the power that comes with such power, then they must lead with these values in mind as well as in practice.

Acts like unilateral military action and avoiding international treaties that are in the global interest, but may be questionable for the national interest, is failing these values.

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Uhm, a duty is an obligation.

Am I to take it, then, that the premise of your post is that the U.S. is not living up to the responsibilities you perceive it to have?

who decides whats in the "global interest"?

Ah, the newest flavor of Marxist thought...

So you completely discount dialectical materialism as a valid way of viewing the world, bully for you. Let's thank zeus you aren't an Historian then. Not that I discount other, valid, lenses through which to interpret the world, but to discount an entire field of knowledge because of ideology seems a bit ignorant to me.

Unilateral action is the realm of any state. Should a state have to seek authority from other states before it acts? Uh...sovereignity.

I specifically avoided using words like obligation and law in favour of duty, responsibility and values. I wasn't trying to say that a state shouldn't have the right to act unilaterally, I was perhaps waxing too poetically...

Doing the right thing, outside of the opinion of others, should be the goal.

... is, in essence, what I was trying to say. If you have the ability to act unilaterally, and choose to act unilaterally, then you absolutely must be doing the right thing. The values that the US sells to the world as the pinnacle of human achievement and the values they practice are very wide apart. If all men are created equal, and we have the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness then when the US's actions cause untold suffering to a multitude of people, then they are in violation of their responsibilities.

Iraq- Nah, not so friendly. And absolutely no threat to anybody but themselves. Afghanistan- Totally justified by any definition of war It's good to know you think harbouring a criminal is a justifiable reason to invade a nation. We have a guy in prison here, who committed a murder here, who has served his sentence here but is now being extradited to the US to face the case again (interesting since both of our countries have double jeopardy laws), but if the US government don't agree to take the death penalty off the table, we won't send him. Should the US invade Australia? Hyperbolic, I know. But where do we draw the line? Because someone commits an attack on the US? What does this mean? If a guy in Melbourne organises for his friend in the US to blow up a building (and fails, or not, doesn't matter), and we won't extradite him because you won't guarantee not to kill him, should we expect the US fleet on our doorstep?

If all men are created equal, and we have the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then there is absolutely no justification for the invasion of either Iraq or Afghanistan. This comes even before the very arguable opinion that the wars have made the problem worse (on top of being humanitarian disasters).

Japan, the EU, many Eastern European nations, many African nations, Australia, New Zealand, The Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and many other nations are all on quite friendly terms with the United States, and many would be in serious trouble if their security were threatened by an outside power.

And this is exactly why I want the US to be a leader. If the way the world works is that middle powers cannot defend themselves, then out of all the viable options, I'll take the US over the rest. This is because I believe in the core values and is why I get so angry when they are violated. I'm happy with the US's role as a superpower (although I don't like the US hegemony), I was not trying to argue otherwise.

If America were run solely for the basis of profit, would it not pick on more profitable places than...Afghanistan? Would it even bother with places like Somalia, or any other action abroad?

Afghanistan and Somalia are two vitally strategic regions! From one you can control Central Asia, vitally important for any successful war in the region. From the other you control all traffic through the Suez. Not the best examples... Perhaps you should be asking about US involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan if you think the wars you're fighting are virtuous.

To imply all actions abroad are simply at the behest of corporations is marxist bullshit.

South America. I know you know what I mean, and I know we'll both disagree with the real truth of the matter, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Using terms like "Marxist" and "Leftist" really make your ideology show.

No, a duty is a sense of moral commitment, an obligation is a requirement to take a moral or legal action. I'm trying to amplify a very subtle distinction I'm trying to make that has, in my opinion, very different outcomes.

Yes, that's the premise of my post, but the conversation I'm trying to have is about whether or not the US should consider individuals outside of their own population when they act. I think the truth is self evident (boom tish) that if the values espoused in the constitution and other places that make up the US canon are to mean anything, then they have to apply to people outside the US. I'm not saying that it is therefore right for the US to force its values on others, but that when it acts it has to consider the consequences of its actions on others and apply their morality appropriately.

My point about that the US's power is through an act of free will is important. The US doesn't have to have the power it does especially when we consider the military. It's either there to enforce US interests or to act as the world police. So either you agree that it's a tool of colonialism or you have to agree that no one voted the US that power (quite the opposite) and that through excercising it you are doing so through a free choice that you could be making otherwise. Any denial of this is an act of bad faith and goes to the very core of my argument.

I'm trying really hard to make myself clear here. From what I know of you I don't think we'd necessarily be in too much disagreement over these points...

The vast majority of both the population and political interests of the world have decided that climate change is a problem. If these are not appropriate ways of deciding then your belief in democracy is either jingoistic selfishness (my guess) or a sham.

We have reached a point that due to technological innovation there are some issues that effect the entire planet and have to be solved as a planet. Who would you suggest makes these decisions?

"If a guy in Melbourne organizes for his friend in the US to blow up a building (and fails, or not, doesn't matter), and we won't extradite him because you won't guarantee not to kill him, should we expect the US fleet on our doorstep?"

It would help at this juncture to be a mite bit transcendent and put yourself in the other man's shoes for a minute and ask yourself what your response would be to a 9/11 type action on your own soil?

Mind you, from my own personal perspective, the reaction would have been better handled strictly by the CIA and perhaps covert forces, but say that your condition is that extradition is indeed untenable, are you prepared to shrug the whole matter off?

When I swear an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, I am taking on a voluntary duty, legally obligating me to take action in the case of some threat to the Constitution.

I only wish at the time of taking that oath I had fully understood how many enemies, foreign and domestic, the Constitution actually has. But that is a conversation for another day.

whether or not the US should consider individuals outside of their own population when they act.

Yes, of course. But that doesn't always mean consideration for those individuals always wins out, depending on the situation. I have the impression you are speaking primarily in a military sense. Consideration for non U.S. citizens in that realm would generally be covered by the Geneva conventions, I believe.

if the values espoused in the constitution and other places that make up the US canon are to mean anything, then they have to apply to people outside the US.

The values espoused in the U.S. Constitution would have prohibited the U.S. from having enough of a standing Army to take on its current role as a world police force. And I am told, often by members among "the left", that it is pretty foolish of me to look, in this day and age, to the wisdom of the Constitution for guidance. That aside, I disagree with you. The U.S. Constitution applies to U.S. Citizens. The sovereignty of their own government, and their own Constitutions, covers non-U.S. citizens.

I'm not saying that it is therefore right for the US to force its values on others, but that when it acts it has to consider the consequences of its actions on others and apply their morality appropriately.

And I say the rest of the world "likes to have its cake... and eat it too" at our expense. But if your point is that you would like the U.S. to stay out of foreign entanglements, then I could not agree more. To the point that we should stay out of it on the day our involvement suddenly becomes convenient for you.

If I had my way, there would be no U.S. troops on any foreign soil that wasn't under occupation.

My point about that the US's power is through an act of free will is important. The US doesn't have to have the power it does especially when we consider the military. It's either there to enforce US interests or to act as the world police. So either you agree that it's a tool of colonialism or you have to agree that no one voted the US that power (quite the opposite) and that through excercising it you are doing so through a free choice that you could be making otherwise. Any denial of this is an act of bad faith and goes to the very core of my argument.

Both the U.S., and its military, have both been under the sphere of influence of interests counter to the best interests of both its own citizenry and the citizenry of the rest of the world, for quite some time now. Those interests use the military for their own gain, not mine, and not yours.

And I distinctly remember being the target of much vulgarity when arguing against the use of the military to further those interests from both "sides" approximately nine years ago.

Also, why is this post locked? Out of curiosity- not as any sort of criticism.

the reaction would have been better handled strictly by the CIA and perhaps covert forces

I agree with you. At least if we were serious about ending- or at least minimizing- the threat Muslim extremists pose. But a full scale war is so much more profitable to the interests I allude to in my comment below.

"The vast majority of both the population and political interests of the world have decided that climate change is a problem. If these are not appropriate ways of deciding then your belief in democracy is either jingoistic selfishness (my guess) or a sham."

Reading popular thought is notoriously fraught with peril, exponentially so by the time it reaches the political interests you mention because of the numerous filters, personal bias, and tea-leaf reading it goes through before reaching your ears in the form of a report, a study or a poll. For what it is that is being attempted, these things are almost inevitable.

"We have reached a point that due to technological innovation there are some issues that effect the entire planet and have to be solved as a planet. Who would you suggest makes these decisions?"

In short: everyone - but by not having those decisions filtered through politicians.

Regardless of what technological advancements have contributed to the nature of world issues or not, there have been no subsequent advancements in the capacity of a relatively small subset of the human population to steer the much larger part of it towards or away from danger via the grandiose decisions they would make.

There are simply many decisions for which human beings are ill equipped for making at all, as formal groups or individuals, insofar as they seek to manage problems on the scale you are talking about.

What I mean by 'everyone' is in the sense that we all participate in markets. For all the ridicule they receive, there is little better way to resolve matters of large-scale priority decision making than through market initiative. When someone believes in a solution enough that they and enough others are willing to put their own money where their mouth is, when something personal is being risked by proponents of a solution to a problem, and under a set of a few specific circumstances, it will quite often 'make' a decision that balances out positives and negatives more agreeably than others.

the reaction would have been better handled strictly by the CIA and perhaps covert forces

You raise an interesting thought. I don't know if I would have a problem with that. I'm not saying there should be no judgment, and I don't think violating another sovereign nation's borders and dealing with that judgment in a precision manner is necessarily violating the values I'm talking about, but I don't think carpet bombing a country was really necessary.

Cos I forget to turn it off :P Thanks, I'll edit :P

Ummm...is there are any actual real objection to the historical record of the U.S. actively and aggressively encouraged and coerced and overthrown foreign governments, in order to install governments more economically and politically favourable?

I mean, seriously, does anyone dispute that this is a fact?

Those who organised 9/11 new exactly what the response would be from the worlds most powerful, tweak my tail? ROAR ROAR ROAR and plunged into a world whose multicultures it new fuck all about.You are opening Pandoras Box it was warned, bunch of cowardly cheese eating monkeys was the scornful response.
Tens of thousands killed and maimed, a generation of children traumatised by war with hatred in their hearts.
America is now saying, hey guys we should talk to these guys.
World leader my arse

When I swear an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, I am taking on a voluntary duty, legally obligating me to take action in the case of some threat to the Constitution.

You take a duty and an obligation. It really is important to understand the distinction I'm making here.

But that doesn't always mean consideration for those individuals always wins out, depending on the situation.

I don't want to sound inflammatory with you, but I can't see how saying "our values matter, depending on the situation" is anything other than an act of bad faith. And considering the point I'm making here is essentially a moral one, then this is a vital point. The only alternative is to concede that the USA is an immoral nation, and that opens up a whole other hornets nest.

That aside, I disagree with you. The U.S. Constitution applies to U.S. Citizens. The sovereignty of their own government, and their own Constitutions, covers non-U.S. citizens.

Yes, I tried to make that point clear. I'm absolutely not saying that the US Constitution should apply to non-U.S. citizens. I'm saying that the values espoused in the constitution should guide how the US behaves when it interacts with non-US citizens. This is not about the relationship between any state and its citizens, but the relationship between the US state and non-US citizens.

And I say the rest of the world "likes to have its cake... and eat it too" at our expense.

I direct you to my "who voted you world police" section of my OP. The most significant military conflicts in the world right now are either unilaterally declared by the US (Iraq), multilaterally declared to fight for US interests (AfPak). The exception is Somalia, where the US's behaviour seems to me to be quite exemplary. From my understanding the US's role there is to assist the African Union in peacekeeping. This I can get on board with. I think it is perfectly within the values of the US to assist, along with other nations, to maintain peace whilst helping the two sides of a civil war work out how things are going to operate (I've got issues with telling people how things should operate). But I think we may be in agreement on this point.

Those interests use the military for their own gain, not mine, and not yours.

You dirty Marxist you! :P

Also, I want to note that I am well aware of how idealistic all of this is, and how so much of what you're saying is coming from a point of pragmatism, but the point of this post was one of ideals. That doesn't necessarily mean I disagree with your pragmatism.

Reading popular thought is notoriously fraught with peril, exponentially so by the time it reaches the political interests you mention because of the numerous filters, personal bias, and tea-leaf reading it goes through before reaching your ears in the form of a report, a study or a poll. For what it is that is being attempted, these things are almost inevitable.

First, you really need to check the idea that I don't understand information dissemination at the door with me, I do source evaluation for a living.

Second, That's fine, but it's a necessary presupposition of my thesis that we believe in democracy. If you don't, that's fine, but then we're having a different discussion. In which case I might argue for a totalitarian state that has the power to just up and listen to the freakin' scientists already.

In short: everyone - but by not having those decisions filtered through politicians.

Or filtered through anything, from what you're saying above. This seems like anarchic chaos to me. Do you really think anything could be done on any global problem without state intervention, or at the very least, acquiescence?

There are simply many decisions for which human beings are ill equipped for making at all, as formal groups or individuals, insofar as they seek to manage problems on the scale you are talking about.

Ya huh, I agree. So if we're unable to make the decisions, and we're not able to filter our desires through politicians, then how the hell does anything get done on this scale?

Zounds!

I was hoping you weren't going to go to "teh MaRkEtZ!" But you went there. Do you really think that corporations are going to be look beyond the next quarterly profit report in order to do something for the common weal? You may argue "they want to still be around in 100 years" but it would be absolute BS. If you believe so you don't understand modern capitalism. Capitalism has become a craps table. No one is interested in long term sustainability because there's a fortune to be made in this lifetime dammit!. No. Sorry, I would much rather trust the future of the world to politicians, who at least have to make a pretense of being in the service of the public, than the corporations, who are legally bound to act in the interests of its shareholders; in other words, make a profit quickly so they can move on.

You freemarketeers act as if the 1860s, 1890s, 1920s, 1980s and the last few years never happened.

Yes. This is what we're dealing with.

"First, you really need to check the idea that I don't understand information dissemination at the door with me, I do source evaluation for a living."

I'm not psychic.

Frankly, I think it is naive to suppose that Americas role is anything but what it, as a nation, thinks it to be.

We must not lose sight of the fact that Americans are people too, so naturally look after themselves first, sometime to the co-incidental benefit of others, often to the detriment of others, just like everyone else does.

That's precisely as it should be. Expecting the U.S. (or any other powerful nation) to take up some self-less role of lord protector to the world, or to believe their own propaganda that that is what they are, is simply asking to be rammed. Hard. When and where it best suits them.

Zoinks!

I was really hoping that you wouldn't go to "teh MaRkETZ R EvULZ!", but you went there.

The markets are not made up only of corporations, and corporations as they are legally defined today, are anti-free market entities. They benefit disproportionally from a preferred legal status, among several other 'less formal' preferences stemming from their attraction to favorable government intervention, and the willingness of the equally fallible politicians in granting favoritism to them.

Markets include all financial decision making processes, which requires one widen their view a bit. Every financial transaction you or I or anyone else makes, makes us an active participant in the market. Taken as the sum of all of our small, seemingly insignificant decisions, we do end up creating a set of powerful priorities.

Those priorities may not be what you think they should be and what they represent may be part of our cultural failings, but there is no replacement for this mechanism in terms of wishing to be led out of the desert from on political high. We draw leaders from within our own ranks. Our failings as a culture are perpetuated in those we elect. If we wish to change our priorities, we must begin with our own, for that we have the most control over, and through our interaction with others we encounter on our day-to-day lives.

"No. Sorry, I would much rather trust the future of the world to politicians, who at least have to make a pretense of being in the service of the public, than the corporations, who are legally bound to act in the interests of its shareholders; in other words, make a profit quickly so they can move on."

A reassuring pretense is still a lie, and using it as refuge from having to confront ourselves from a cultural viewpoint (from the sum total effect of all our decisions and what went into them) only perpetuates and exacerbates the problems.

It really is important to understand the distinction I'm making here.

If by "distinction" you mean "synonymous" then we are on the same page. ;)

The only alternative is to concede that the USA is an immoral nation, and that opens up a whole other hornets nest.

I don't know that it's conceding anything, but government of the U.S. is neither really moral or immoral. It is "the state." And the overriding concern of "the State", more than anything else, is primarily in perpetuating itself. In any nation.

Outside the realm of a Deity or religion, issues of "morality" are really a non issue. Unless we are dealing with a Theocracy. Which I think both you and I can agree the U.S. is most certainly not. Now, individuals within that government and the nation itself act with varying degrees of morality according to their own moral codes.

I'm saying that the values espoused in the constitution should guide how the US behaves when it interacts with non-US citizens.

What values espoused in the Constitution do you feel the U.S. is not being guided by with respect to non US citizens?

I direct you to my "who voted you world police" section of my OP.

Whoever they are, they need to knock it off.

Seriously though, I think it was more an appointment than a vote. And I think it was partly by enough of the world who saw value in the security we could provide. Now much of that world seems to blithely revel in criticism of that security while not even acknowledging how dearly it is costing us. The other part was/is likely elements within the U.S. itself who said "never again" at another Pearl Harbor or march through Europe.

You dirty Marxist you!

I am about as far away from being a Marxist as it is possible to be. I'm also certain you recognize that, however. ;P

ideals

The ideal is the U.S. should refrain from involvement in foreign entanglements. Unless foreigners decide to involve the U.S.

Agreed.

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