tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163441833245663827.post8408609823265121496..comments2024-03-28T10:49:14.510-05:00Comments on Horizons: "Without us firing a shot"Nancy LeTourneauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12614317154146836694noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163441833245663827.post-17776197156185303202014-05-30T08:27:31.935-05:002014-05-30T08:27:31.935-05:00I fail to see how the U.S. had much of a role in P...I fail to see how the U.S. had much of a role in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia or Lithuania. Its true that we were players in building the institutions you name. And those have been effective in Europe and in preventing another World War (as did the invention of nuclear weapons - they are why we had a COLD war. The prospect of nuclear annihilation was not something either side ever really wanted to consider). <br /><br />But beyond all that those institutions were pretty ineffective in navigating the challenges that arose as colonialism in South America, Asia and Africa was defeated and countries all over the world became proxies in the Cold War. Between overt intervention (Korea and Vietnam) and covert action, our military and intelligence institutions were engaged in civil wars all over the globe defending unspeakable tyrants in the name of "fighting communism." <br /><br />You're right that in the end, the Soviet Union came out the poorer as a result of the Cold War. Unlike the neocons I don't give all the credit for that to Reagan. Their economy wasn't strong enough to withstand the military interventionism that the Cold War required (Afghanistan?) and they had a visionary leader (Gorbachev) who was smart enough to walk them out of it. <br /><br />In the end, no, I'm not going to anoint Obama the Ur-President. But he is slowly walking us out of the frame left to us by the neocons to replace the Cold War - the "Global War on Terror" - and providing an alternative vision for engagement in the world. After watching our response to both the cold war and the global war on terror, I'm pretty grateful for that. Nancy LeTourneauhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12614317154146836694noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163441833245663827.post-26539722262629022442014-05-29T22:17:51.184-05:002014-05-29T22:17:51.184-05:00"Articulation of international norms
Developm...<i>"Articulation of international norms<br />Development of a global partnership to reinforce those norms via economic pressure<br />The use of diplomacy to identify a "way out" of that pressure via an appeal to the self-interests of the offending country"</i><br /><br />I don't disagree that that is a tidy summary of his modus operandi. But sentences like "Prior to this presidency, our country's foreign policy was mostly limited in these kinds of situations to a response that either ignored the challenge (isolationism) or responded with military intervention." are wildly overstated to the point of being propaganda.<br /><br />I don't remember us firing a shot in Poland. Or Hungary. Or Czechoslovakia. Or Lithuania...<br /><br />And yet they all became members of the European Union. And NATO. And so on. And that seems to have gone largely pretty well. We don't tend to get into a lot of shooting wars with Russia/Soviet Union, and yet Russian interests have just about always come out for the poorer, presumably not by magic or predestination.<br /><br />The UN, the OSCE, the IAEA, the IMF, the G7/G20: none of these things in the President's list were invented in the last five years. I suppose you could try and argue that they were all fraudulent organizations that had never been deployed according to their true principles before 2009, but the more likely explanation is that your propaganda about charting a path between isolationism and wanton militarism has been simplified and obscured to the point of silliness.<br /><br />Is it only a matter of time until you give Obama credit for the sun rising in the morning? Is he the Ur-President, responsible for all things that have ever been or will ever be? It's one thing to point out how different he is from his immediate neoconservative predecessors. It's another to erase post-WWII history (how do you explain the existence of the United Nations? Or the collapse in intrastate warfare over the last 70 years? Or the surge in global health outcomes and economic growth?)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com