Just came across this, which brought out a number of things that make sense to me:
> I wrote: <snip> >The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, >and indeed might be another enemy. It appears to me >that this possibility has been sadly overlooked in > US foreign policy during my entire life. Fareed Zacharia: How To Change Ugly Regimes Washington has a simple solution to most governments it doesn't like: isolate them, slap sanctions on them and wait for their downfall. ...What's striking about these two countries is that we have had different policies toward them. Simply put, we have tried regime change with Iran and conditional engagement with Libya... ...It isn't just these two countries where you see this pattern. For almost five decades the United States has put in place a series of costly policies designed to force Cuba to dismantle its communist system. These policies have failed totally. Contrast this with Vietnam, also communist, where Washington has adopted a different approach, normalizing relations with its former enemy...For the average person in Libya or Vietnam, American policy has improved his or her life and life chances. For the average person in Iran or Cuba, U.S. policy has produced decades of isolation and economic hardship... ...Who would have predicted that Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan would see so much change in the past year and a half? But these examples only prove my point. The United States had no "regime change" policy toward any of these countries, and it had relations with all of them. In fact, these relationships helped push the regimes to change and emboldened civil-society groups... [China and Nixon are discussed also] ...I realize that it feels morally righteous and satisfying to "do something" about cruel regimes. But in doing what we so often do, we cut these countries off from the most powerful agents of change in the modern worldcommerce, contact, information. To change a regime, short of waging war, you have to shift the balance of power between the state and society. Society needs to be empowered. It is civil societyprivate business, media, civic associations, nongovernmental organizationsthat can create an atmosphere which forces change in a country. But by piling on sanctions and ensuring that a country is isolated, Washington only ensures that the state becomes ever more powerful and society remains weak and dysfunctional. In addition, the government benefits from nationalist sentiment as it stands up to the global superpower. Think of Iraq before the war, which is a rare case where multilateral sanctions were enforced. As we are discovering now, the sanctions destroyed Iraq's middle class, its private sector and its independent institutions, but they allowed Saddam to keep control. When the regime was changed by war, it turned out that nation-building was vastly more difficult because the underpinnings of civil society had been devastated. [me: Well, that and massive misplanning on the US govt's part, both decades ago, under the "enemy of my enemy" meme, and the current military engagement.] ...In a careful study, the Institute for International Economics has estimated that U.S. sanctions on 26 countries, accounting for more than half the world's population, cost America between $15 billion and $19 billion in lost exports annually and have worked less than 13 percent of the time. But what if it's even worse? What if our policies have exactly the opposite effect than is intended? Look around the world today, and you will see regime change in places where Washington has no such policy and regime resilience in places where it does. So: My enemy may not be my enemy if I engage er correctly. Negates the need for the enemy of my enemy nicely. Debbi But I Still Will Carry A Big Stick, And Know How To Use It Maru ;P __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
