Thankfully, I think we are just a few weeks away from that being an irrelevant comparison.
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I think that for a country like the US, on whom so much is expected and required, the whole of foreign of policy is often a case of that, yes. It is often a case of choosing between shit option 1 and shit option 2 and trying to decide which is the least shit and which has the least negative blow back on other areas. One of the other things many who came out of the Obama administration have talked about is related to the comment @Alright_Now just made - foreign policy initiatives tend to require a perspective of a much longer timescale than even a 2 term president and so you are always playing on the field you inherit and conscious of the fact that you’re not going to be able to finish the job either.
Yemen became a real mess, but I think it has to be evaluated in the context of what the alternatives were. Our engagement with Iran seriously complicated things and meant a decision to stay on the sidelines would have been as a stronger signal of shifting alliances through the region than we wanted to give. There were concerns about how that would affect our diplomatic power in the region if the GCC countries read this as further cosying up to Iran, which they would have. So, knowing that the Saudi’s were intent on going in there and fucking shit up anyway, we tried to thread the needle on an approach we hoped would minimize the damage the Saudis would do if left to their own devices. I think the strategy made sense, but maybe not with a military as notoriously inept as the Saudis. Ultimately I have room for understanding the initial approach than I do with how slow they were to try to change course when it was apparent it was not going to plan.
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‘Oversight’ is a nice way of putting it…
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Sort of my point wasn’t it? Kind of funny how everyone on here is always lamenting polarization and tribalism, while not allowing any debate to go beyond ‘but the other side is worse’.
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To be fair, i haven’t read any of the replies to your question as being a ‘but the other side is worse’ response.
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To be fair, at least in this iteration of the discussion, it went that way because of positive words about the benefits of Trump’s isolationism as a comparison.
Whataboutism is a shitty defense for anything, but comparisons are important as a way of setting the benchmark for what par should be. Without that you’re operating in an unrealistic absolutist framework in which everyone will be judged a failure.
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That’s a smart way of pre-emptively covering for any criticism, I give you that. My guess is it will probably be used by the same people who constantly talked about how Trump was so out of the ordinary, so out of the norm of US politics.
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Yes, but it will be a relief to go back to the usual ‘it doesn’t really matter, they are all the same anyway’. At least that is more stable.
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I don’t think the snideyness is necessary.
It’s very easy to piss on someone else’s decisions, but it doesn’t carry much weight unless you’re willing to offer alternatives with serious consideration for how they would have played out. If we take Yemen as an example that you’re keen to criticize, what should we have done about Saudi’s involvement?
And if I answered we’d be in a wonderful game of hypothesis, as I’m sure you will claim to know exactly how alternatives would have played out to piss on my opinion. No, I don’t think the US should have supported the Saudis in the first place. Now tell me how that would undoubtedly have lead to a more disastruous outcome.
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I take a different view on war.
I prefer a US that will intervene and cooperate. For me China is an increasing threat, conflict over their expansionism likely to occur (building islands to claim resources, disputing seas and other islands). Their massive build-up in military spending (spending as much as UK, France, Russia, Japan, and Germany combined) is imo part of a long-term strategy. I think we will see China flexing its military power over this next decade.
The US is the only strong counter that will prevent China or Russia acting as they wish.
The world also needs the US to be an active member of Nato. Whilst i have lots of criticism of Nato they form a highly important role in peacekeeping and preventing humanitarian issues.
The British/US intervention in the likes of the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, ending the bloodshed in Sierra Leone positive examples. For me the failure with Afghanistan was not the war, but the lack of exit strategy.
I am not saying i want the US to be war monger, but we live in a world of dictators, religious and racial intolerance, and increasingly limited resources. Bad leaders are going to act in their own self interests and for me its morally worse not to intervene.
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Just to add, i do belive Iraq war was a mistake (false pretence used)
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This is now about the 4th dig in this conversation about my motives and ability to debate reasonably on the subject. So, let’s just shelf this unless you’re willing to engage in better faith than that.
The feeling is mutual, so yeah probably best to shelf it.
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Yeah, a bit of whataboutism going on. I think we all agree that Trump is a horrible cunt who did nothing to better things, but hopefully we’ll soon see the back of him, so we discuss what comes next.
Is it a good idea to take the exact same people who continued to make a hash out of the Middle East after the terrible Bush era? Do we trust them to have learnt a thing or two from their past errors or not? Do they even acknowledge that they made errors? I don’t trust them to be honest.
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Indeed, but who put them in their brilliant current position in the first place? The US, and especially the Obama administration. China’s influence literally sky-rocketed during his eight years in charge. Of course, the willingness to cooperate with a murderous autocratic regime comes from before Obama, but he did not only nothing to stop that tendency, but enforced it.
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So the question becomes - among US foreign policy academics, Beltway thinkers, politicians, and the State Department, who would you think would be a better choice.
The simple fact of the matter is US foreign policy orthodoxy isn’t going to make a lot of people particularly happy, but we can perhaps hope for a reversion to the Bush Sr.-Clinton era of orthodoxy to some degree. You can more or less expect them to be bastards, but there is something to say for stable bastards.
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Yeah I agree and appreciate your previous posts on this topic btw. Of course, any US administration will be composed of bastards, and I’d not expect anything else from them. But if they could at least show some restraint and dignity while doing their bastardly things, that would be some progress.
But again, putting the same people in charge than four years ago and expecting another result… I don’t know. Hopefully they’ll prove me wrong.
Edit: I’d add to the above that one thing which the Obama administration did well is to build a serious diplomatic relationship with Iran. Trump’s disengagement was a disgrace, but there’s hope that the new administration might try to rebuild some of the destroyed bridges.
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Arms sales.
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