On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Matthew Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, May 3, 2011 1:43 pm, Eric Wald wrote:
>> Can we stop being the world's police force? Would doing so reduce the
>> fear and hopelessness that leads to terrorism? Would doing so balance
>> the budget?
>
> Most likely 'no' on the former, and 'it would help' on the latter.
>
> Now, despite it not helping reduce terrorism much, if any, I am a firm
> supporter in
> pulling back all of our forces around the world. However, we can't simply do
> it all at
> once, unless we want to make things much WORSE than they are now. We have to
> stabilize
> the countries that we've 'helped', like Iraq and Afghanistan. If we don't,
> and pull out,
> we'll leave a huge mess behind that will result in new terrorist
> dictatorships.
>
> But we should absolutely pull back from most of our deployments, or at least
> minimize
> them. Why are we still in Japan, for instance? I'm reasonably certain that
> war ended
> approximately 50 years ago.
Well, having bases in friendly (or at least non-hostile) foreign
nations is usually a strategic thing in order to have staging grounds
in various parts of the world that are near not-so-friendly foreign
nations. Japan is in close proximity to China, for example, who we
have an occasionally uneasy relationship with. Do we *need* a base
there? Probably not, but the base does have strategic value. Ditto
for our bases in Germany and Korea.
Maybe pulling out of Saudi Arabia would actually be a good idea. It
is of course highly significant strategically as a staging ground for
action in the middle east, but our presence there is also a major
source of friction with the Islamic nations of the middle east. That,
and our alliance with Israel, but I'm not even going to go there. I
don't spend nearly enough time studying the history and politics of
the middle east to make serious policy suggestions.
Anyway, the neoconservative foreign policy represented by the (now
defunct) "Project for a New American Century" turned out to have a
disastrously naive view of war. Hopefully we've learned our lesson,
again, that despite technological superiority, it ain't a walk in the
park. Overwhelming force and overwhelming technological superiority
only gets you so far.
--Levi
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