Krauthammer speech on US Foreign Policy

[Alex Moon]

http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.19912/news_detail.asp

Americans have an healthy aversion to foreign policy. It stems from a sense of thrift: Who needs it? We’re protected by two great oceans, we have this continent practically to ourselves and we share it with just two neighbors, both friendly, one so friendly that its people seem intent upon moving in with us.

It took three giants of the twentieth century to drag us into its great battles: Wilson into World War I, Roosevelt into World War II, Truman into the Cold War. And then it ended with one of the great anti-climaxes in history. Without a shot fired, without a revolution, without so much as a press release, the Soviet Union simply gave up and disappeared.

It was the end of everything--the end of communism, of socialism, of the Cold War, of the European wars. But the end of everything was also a beginning. On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union died and something new was born, something utterly new--a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe.

This is a staggering new development in history, not seen since the fall of Rome. It is so new, so strange, that we have no idea how to deal with it. Our first reaction--the 1990s--was utter confusion. The next reaction was awe. When Paul Kennedy, who had once popularized the idea of American decline, saw what America did in the Afghan war--a display of fully mobilized, furiously concentrated unipolar power at a distance of 8,000 miles--he not only recanted, he stood in wonder: “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power;” he wrote, “nothing. . . . No other nation comes close. . . . Charlemagne’s empire was merely western European in its reach. The Roman empire stretched farther afield, but there was another great empire in Persia, and a larger one in China. There is, therefore, no comparison.”

Even Rome is no model for what America is today. First, because we do not have the imperial culture of Rome. We are an Athenian republic, even more republican and infinitely more democratic than Athens. And this American Republic has acquired the largest seeming empire in the history of the world--acquired it in a fit of absent-mindedness greater even than Britain’s. And it was not just absent-mindedness; it was sheer inadvertence. We got here because of Europe’s suicide in the world wars of the twentieth century, and then the death of its Eurasian successor, Soviet Russia, for having adopted a political and economic system so inhuman that, like a genetically defective organism, it simply expired in its sleep. Leaving us with global dominion.

Second, we are unlike Rome, unlike Britain and France and Spain and the other classical empires of modern times, in that we do not hunger for territory. The use of the word “empire” in the American context is ridiculous. It is absurd to apply the word to a people whose first instinct upon arriving on anyone’s soil is to demand an exit strategy. I can assure you that when the Romans went into Gaul and the British into India, they were not looking for exit strategies. They were looking for entry strategies.

In David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, King Faisal says to Lawrence: “I think you are another of these desert-loving English. . . . The English have a great hunger for desolate places.” Indeed, for five centuries, the Europeans did hunger for deserts and jungles and oceans and new continents.

Americans do not. We like it here. We like our McDonalds. We like our football. We like our rock-and-roll. We’ve got the Grand Canyon and Graceland. We’ve got Silicon Valley and South Beach. We’ve got everything. And if that’s not enough, we’ve got Vegas--which is a facsimile of everything. What could we possibly need anywhere else? We don’t like exotic climates. We don’t like exotic languages--lots of declensions and moods. We don’t even know what a mood is. We like Iowa corn and New York hot dogs, and if we want Chinese or Indian or Italian, we go to the food court. We don’t send the Marines for takeout.

That’s because we are not an imperial power. We are a commercial republic. We don’t take food; we trade for it. Which makes us something unique in history, an anomaly, a hybrid: a commercial republic with overwhelming global power. A commercial republic that, by pure accident of history, has been designated custodian of the international system. The eyes of every supplicant from East Timor to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Liberia; Arab and Israeli, Irish and British, North and South Korean are upon us.

That is who we are. That is where we are.

Now the question is: What do we do? What is a unipolar power to do?...

[Guardsman Bass]

http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.19912/news_detail.asp

Americans have an healthy aversion to foreign policy. It stems from a sense of thrift: Who needs it? We’re protected by two great oceans, we have this continent practically to ourselves and we share it with just two neighbors, both friendly, one so friendly that its people seem intent upon moving in with us.

It took three giants of the twentieth century to drag us into its great battles: Wilson into World War I, Roosevelt into World War II, Truman into the Cold War. And then it ended with one of the great anti-climaxes in history. Without a shot fired, without a revolution, without so much as a press release, the Soviet Union simply gave up and disappeared.

It was the end of everything--the end of communism, of socialism, of the Cold War, of the European wars. But the end of everything was also a beginning. On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union died and something new was born, something utterly new--a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe.

This is a staggering new development in history, not seen since the fall of Rome. It is so new, so strange, that we have no idea how to deal with it. Our first reaction--the 1990s--was utter confusion. The next reaction was awe. When Paul Kennedy, who had once popularized the idea of American decline, saw what America did in the Afghan war--a display of fully mobilized, furiously concentrated unipolar power at a distance of 8,000 miles--he not only recanted, he stood in wonder: “Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power;” he wrote, “nothing. . . . No other nation comes close. . . . Charlemagne’s empire was merely western European in its reach. The Roman empire stretched farther afield, but there was another great empire in Persia, and a larger one in China. There is, therefore, no comparison.”

Even Rome is no model for what America is today. First, because we do not have the imperial culture of Rome. We are an Athenian republic, even more republican and infinitely more democratic than Athens. And this American Republic has acquired the largest seeming empire in the history of the world--acquired it in a fit of absent-mindedness greater even than Britain’s. And it was not just absent-mindedness; it was sheer inadvertence. We got here because of Europe’s suicide in the world wars of the twentieth century, and then the death of its Eurasian successor, Soviet Russia, for having adopted a political and economic system so inhuman that, like a genetically defective organism, it simply expired in its sleep. Leaving us with global dominion.

Second, we are unlike Rome, unlike Britain and France and Spain and the other classical empires of modern times, in that we do not hunger for territory. The use of the word “empire” in the American context is ridiculous. It is absurd to apply the word to a people whose first instinct upon arriving on anyone’s soil is to demand an exit strategy. I can assure you that when the Romans went into Gaul and the British into India, they were not looking for exit strategies. They were looking for entry strategies.

In David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, King Faisal says to Lawrence: “I think you are another of these desert-loving English. . . . The English have a great hunger for desolate places.” Indeed, for five centuries, the Europeans did hunger for deserts and jungles and oceans and new continents.

Americans do not. We like it here. We like our McDonalds. We like our football. We like our rock-and-roll. We’ve got the Grand Canyon and Graceland. We’ve got Silicon Valley and South Beach. We’ve got everything. And if that’s not enough, we’ve got Vegas--which is a facsimile of everything. What could we possibly need anywhere else? We don’t like exotic climates. We don’t like exotic languages--lots of declensions and moods. We don’t even know what a mood is. We like Iowa corn and New York hot dogs, and if we want Chinese or Indian or Italian, we go to the food court. We don’t send the Marines for takeout.

That’s because we are not an imperial power. We are a commercial republic. We don’t take food; we trade for it. Which makes us something unique in history, an anomaly, a hybrid: a commercial republic with overwhelming global power. A commercial republic that, by pure accident of history, has been designated custodian of the international system. The eyes of every supplicant from East Timor to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Liberia; Arab and Israeli, Irish and British, North and South Korean are upon us.

That is who we are. That is where we are.

Now the question is: What do we do? What is a unipolar power to do?...

Ok, two things.

First, the "two oceans separate us." That's largely a myth; it didn't stop the English in 1812, or the Japanese in 1945.

Second, "by pure accident America has inherited a place of dominance." I would hardly call 150 of industrialization and military development combined with leadership in the cold war an "accident"

[Ma Deuce]

First, the "two oceans separate us." That's largely a myth; it didn't stop the English in 1812, or the Japanese in 1945.

Second, "by pure accident America has inherited a place of dominance." I would hardly call 150 of industrialization and military development combined with leadership in the cold war an "accident"

Okay, first of all the British in 1812 already had a nice piece of real estate on America's doorstep: Canada (from which most of their campaign was conducted), so the fact that the ocean separated Britain from America is irrelevant. Secondly, the farthest-reaching Japanese attack on the US was Pearl Harbour, which is located about halfway between the US mainland and Japan anyway. If your referring to the Japanese "balloon-bomb" attacks late in the war, those were a pathetic failure: The only reason they killed anyone at all is because a family taking a picnic near where one balloon landed was stupid enough to go messing with it...

America would never have become a superpower if it were not for World War II. Before the war, the country at large was rabidly isolationist, and that attitude would never have changed without some kind of major catalyst (like Pearl Harbour).

[HemlockGrey]

We are an Athenian republic, even more republican and infinitely more democratic than Athens

And just as imperialist as the highly imperalist Athens, or is he forgetting the Delian league and the disastrous Athenian excursions into Sicily? We're more successful, yes, and more republican/democratic, but Athens is really a poor example to use in a paper trying to convince people that the US is not imperialist.

[Guardsman Bass]

America would never have become a superpower if it were not for World War II. Before the war, the country at large was rabidly isolationist, and that attitude would never have changed without some kind of major catalyst (like Pearl Harbour)

In Europe maybe isolationist. Not in the Western Hemisphere. And I wasn't talking about World War II; I simply said that 150 years of industrialization and the leadership of the Cold War is the source of America's dominance; it's not like they just woke up and found themselves "king of the world"

[Tribun]

For many they are only the ass of the world. Self-righteous, arrogant and mad with power. America may be strong in military and economy, but it did have many enemys in both cathegories, and is mostly disliked.

[TheDarkling]

It always amuses me when people talk about the classical land grabbing empires and lump the British empire in there, the last thing the boys in Whitehall wanted was more expensive territory to govern. They wanted strategic outposts (Gibraltar, the Cape) the odd resource outposts (Canada) and access to trade (more or less everywhere else). Where we could get that without having to garrison troops and pay for civil servants we were more than happy as seen in South America (especially Argentina). The main problem was people like Rhodes kept running around planting the flag on stuff and everybody knows the Union flag never retreats.
I could also point out that the US has do a far bit of land grabbing in its time but apparently it isn't imperialism if you don't have to cross water (makes one wonder about Hawaii though).

[theski]

[/b]Tribun wrote

For many they are only the ass of the world. Self-righteous, arrogant and mad with power. America may be strong in military and economy, but it did have many enemys in both cathegories, and is mostly disliked

When you are not the lead dog.... The view never changes....

[Ma Deuce]

For many they are only the ass of the world. Self-righteous, arrogant and mad with power.

You do realize that the major European countries tend to fit all these descriptors except the third (because Europe has little real power to begin with).
America runs the world today. Live with it. When it comes someone else's turn to run the world, then you'll have them to hate, because I doubt any of the candidates (like China) will be any more liked than America if they get the job...

[HemlockGrey]

The main problem was people like Rhodes kept running around planting the flag on stuff and everybody knows the Union flag never retreats

Never ever ever?

[TheDarkling]

The main problem was people like Rhodes kept running around planting the flag on stuff and everybody knows the Union flag never retreats

Never ever ever?

So went the theory at the time, ah the good old days so long past