Gautam wrote: > >> That�s ok, but isn�t exactly this what the USSR did? >> Or the Roman Empire? > >> I am objecting to the assertion that the USA is a pure >> force of Good, when the USA is just removing enemies >> and replacing them with allies. > >> There�s no New World Order being created, but just the >> Old World Order with another Empire that wants to >> increase its influence over the world. > > The USA is removing enemies and replacing them with allies. But our allies > are _better_ for the people they govern than the enemies we are replacing. > Are you sure?
But that is not my point. You said earlier that there was a pragmatic justification to replace enemies with allies, and I said that I agree with this; however, don't claim _also_ that this is a moral thing to do. Because if it requires changing an enemy that treats fine his subjects to a genocidal ally, the pragmatic position of the USA _will_ do it. > Are you describing that as morally neutral? It's, to put it mildly, a hell > of a lot better than anyone else in history. The USSR ran Eastern Europe > for its own benefit. > And all Eastern Europe was better under the dominion of the USSR than it was under the previous dominant power [[ok, I'm cheating a little bit in bringing _that_ evil power to this discussion O:-)]] > The Roman Empire ran _all_ of Europe and large > portions of Africa for its own benefit. > And all Europe and parts of Africa and Asia under the Roman domain were much better than they were under the previous despots. > Butchering the population of those > areas was something done as a matter of routine. > AFAIK, this was _not_ done by either the USSR or the Roman Empire as routine. For the latter, I can only think about Carthage and Israel. > I have a fair number of > friends in the Army, I think they would have told me if they had been > shooting European civilians on a daily basis. > But the USA Army did it in Vietnam. Heck, the USA Army is doing it in Colombia right now, using defoliating poisons to destroy the cocaine plantations while poisoning children at the same time. > Are we setting up police states? > I don't remember any in the past 20 years. > Overthrowing free governments? > I don't remember any in the past 20 years > Conducting genocide? > Unless we can count Serbia, no. > Massacring intellectuals? > Directly? No. > Suppressing the press? > Sort of, with all those Digital Communication Acts and RIAA etc. > Hell, Alberto, if we acted like our > predecessors - you'd be dead. Because the USSR, if not checked by the > United States, and criticizied as you criticize the US, would have killed > you. > There's no need to make the USSR look more satanic than it was. The human rights record in East Europe was far better than in Latin America, during the dark ages of the cold war. > Which makes us a little different from them, perhaps. As I've said > earlier the yardstick isn't perfection, because that doesn't exist. This > is the real world, a world that has evil people in it who seek their own > power and are willing to kill casually in order to get it. We do the best > we can. That has, on the whole, been a pretty damn good best. > I _agree_ with that, but don't expect me to say "Amem" to everything the USA does to expand its power - because I know that the USA didn't act rightfully in the past. > I reject entirely the argument that we act in our own interest, and other > people act in their own interest, so we're the same. > I never said that, however, your earlier argument that the USA had to act in its own interest no matter how harsh it might seem _does_ equate the USA to any other Empire. If the USA wants to be a new kind of Empire, there are moments when the USA must _not_ act in its own interest. > Not all interests are > the same, and not all ways of acting in your own interest are the same. > Unless you are suggesting that the Brazilian government should discard its > own interests and the protection of its own citizens when formulating > policy, I suggest you choose a different yardstick. > But that's what the Brazilian government does, sometimes. Sending a few dozen men to East Timor, for example, had no benefit for any br citizen. > _Of course_ we > influence governments to act in our favor. Should we influence them to act > against us? Obviously not. Well, we limit what we do in our own interest > and try to act on behalf of the populations of countries that have set > themselves against us, not just our own. Even more significantly, those > countries that are allied with us are usually good to their domestic > populations, while those that oppose us are not. Birds of a feather flock > together, as they say. > I agree with that. Again, this is not my point. I question the morality of "destroy my enemies and replace them by allies". This policy is amoral, and makes the USA no better than the USSR or the Roman Empire, because sometimes it will make the USA replace benevolent dictators by genocidal maniacs. >> >> OTOH, there�s Argentina and Venezuela, contries that >> were rich some years ago and after having opened their >> economies to the world are quickly becoming rubble. > >I would be willing to bet that neither Argentina or Venezuela has had a >Western-Europe equivalent standard of living this century, or ever, in >fact. > Argentina [and Uruguay] _had_ a Western-European standard of living during the XX century. And Venezuela got enough oil to be able to get it. > In fact, I'd bet that neither has come terribly close to that. > Argentina's collapse, which I've followed very closely because of its > obvious relevance to Russia (my field of professional expertise) was > largely linked to its _failure_ to reform its local governments, which were > sclerotic, corrupt, and massively in debt. What wealth they did generate > over the past 10 years can largely be credited to that opening. > Venezuela's problems are similarly largely a product of internal failures. > Note that South Korea, for example, has already largely recovered from the > 1998 crisis. India was entirely unaffected by it, as was China (from what > we can tell, anyways). Both remained open to the outside world > (relatively, in India's case) and profited from it. Russia, despite being > hammered worse than anyone by the events of 1998, is now _better off_ than > before the collapse. The argument that states that open to the world - and > then adopt unbelievably stupid economic policies against the advice of the > IMF and World Bank - and suffer for it are demonstrations of the _mistake_ > of opening your economy is not convincing. As far as we know, there is > only one path to development. Keeping your economy closed to foreign > investment isn't it. > But Argentina adopted the unbelievably stupid economic policy that was _dictated_ by the IMF. Heck, the IMF even suggested that Brazil should replicate Argentina's currency board! If the collapse of Argentina was that chaos, can you imagine the same thing happening to Brazil? I imagine that by now we would be building A-Bombs and selling them to Iraq Alberto Monteiro
