Wednesday, March 3, 2010

I'm tired of being informed

I have read I think like twenty sources. Each source saying something or another about foreign policy, and that is great, it means that there are a ton of sources to read from. At the same time all of these sources happen to be either very ambiguous, in what they are trying to actually contribute to the conversation on foreign policy, or they just give a crap load of information telling me about how they came to their conclusions about Foreign policy.

For all of those who like to talk a little about politics, here is some stuff to chew on.

Every country that the U.S. is involved with regarding trade, politics, and the like. All of these nations have some kind of treaty signed with the U.S. The U.S. has lobbyist that come to the terms of what that agreement should look like, and then send that to the nation that we want a treaty with, and they add or take away what they think should or should not be on the treaty.

If we are to trade with only certain countries which I understand, because there are just nations that the United States cannot support in good conciouss. If we are to trade with these nations then shouldn't all these countries get the same treatment? for instance instead of saying, hey we are going to trade this with this country, and this with another country, couldn't we just make it easy and make a broad statement saying yes we will trade what you are willing to trade, just don't send anything that you know is illegal in our freaking country. If this option was given to every country it would be easier. Another scenario, instead of saying to only Russia that we want them to lower the amount of nuclear arms that we have in their country, we talk to all of the nations and come up with a satisfiable agreement for everyone, and if any one nation doesn't want to comply, then they simply won't be apart of our treaty? If we listened to other countries demands and at the same time took our own security, and our own well being into account then everyone would be playing on a relatively level playing field.

There will always be conflict, because I believe that people in power will want more power, but as I have said before, the power lies in the people, and if you have nine countries saying, sorry charlie, but you broke the rules, that would be a troublesome state of affairs.

I wanna hear some people views on unilateralism ( the idea that the United States should work alone independant and sovereign of all nations), and their views on multilateralism ( the idea that the United States would interact with and be subject to the discressions of the nations in which it interacts with.)

Personally I believe in Multilateralism- I don't think that america can operate independently anymore, only because of the fact that we rely on so much of other peoples resources. If we were to cut our revenue from some countries, their lives would become chaos, and in turn our lives would hurt from the lack of their contributions. It only makes sense that if we are going to wheel and deal with other nations, give and take, then we should give and take equally, not distribute it to people we like better, just because they are nicer, but we should give the same advantages to everyone... I mean isn't that what capitalism is, everyone starts on a level playing field, and the dogs fight it out to see whos on top in the end...

This is a big debate in foreign policy it is important because some people view the U.S. as a superpower that can't be touched, and that we are the good guys, but look at it from other peoples point of view and most often we are the people to pick a fight, to say no, or to stick our nose where it doesn't belong.

lol comments are appreciated, tell me what you think



4 comments:

  1. I'm glad you brought up this topic and put it into the discussion board, I believe you will get some good comments back after people read. However, I feel that only people with extremist views are going to respond; people that feel they are right. In this type of post people who are in the middle persay are probably keep to themselves but I would definitly like to add my opinion in all of this.

    On the part of nuclear arms. I believe any country should be able to invest time and research into the ordeal. To limit nuclear activity of other countries is limiting their ability to create energy. As America has many nuclear power plants, if we limit other countries abilities to research nuclear technologies we limit their ability to produce energy. By doing so, we limit them to the use of nonrenewable resources that almost every country uses on a daily basis. The use of these resources entirely will begin to dwindle the suppy and in turn create a higher demand. Prices will continue to go up while supply cannot be "produced" by chemical means. America is still moderately dependant on these resources so citizens will in turn end up having to pay the price. Limiting countries ability to nuclear research is a matter of dollars and cents. We will have to pay to hault other countries development. However, I ask the question is that fair or contradictory to our personal constitution. Countries that pose no threat to us shouldn't be barred from nuclear research, whether on an energy level or weapons level; particularly because they go hand in hand. If we continue to limit the nuclear research of other countries, I believe we may bankrupt our nonrenewable natural resources in the long run.

    On the view of commerce and trade with other nations, I believe America has pinned itself in relying on other countries. Some view this good and some view this bad. I believe it is a mix but the negatives outweigh. With dependence on other countries we no longer can claim to be this "superpower" that we have said over and over again. We are in the hands of other countries and without them, we would have nothing. I believe we need to make a move back to unilateralism on the grounds that jobs are continuously moving out of the countries for financial reasons of gain. This will continue to erode our job pool and only harm American citizens. If we were to increase tariffs on imports, minus raw materials or resources needed for production, and lower tariffs on exports, we would be able to bring back jobs into America and at the same time help tax relief that has plagued us since the Bush administration. I know I am somewhat moving off topic into politics, that is the field in which this issue lies in however.

    I like your topic and I believe others should promote their ideas on this topic as well.

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  2. Just a fun idea I was toying around with at work the other day, it's not a serious idea or even realistic but it would be interesting to see what would happen: What if we decided one day to just simply shut our borders, force every foreign national out, close all overseas bases and bring all those people back here, and more or less block all foreign media and do this for ten years, strengthening our infrastructure and focusing on our own issues. While the US is indeed a selfish country, many of the things we do help a lot of people out. Many of those people aren't part of our country and won't ever help us out, in fact they bitch about it to CNN or go as far as bin Laden and actually turn on us. So what if we go 100% US interest for US people only for ten years. Then after ten years we open back up and see what happened to the world while we were out of the picture. I know for you and me and our past experiences and the specific duties we each had what that would look like, but I do occasionally wonder how many other people out there truly understand how much we(as a country) do and how much we're expected to do.

    Like I said, not a serious idea, and it doesn't really have a whole lot to do with what you were asking us to talk about. So to bring it all in, this could work if we stopped fucking outsourcing everything, which in turn would create more jobs, which in turn would turn us back into a self-reliant superpower, and strengthen and reform our own government before we re-emerge as that almighty juggernaut of a nation that we claim and should be.

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  3. And the problem with other countries going nuclear is the fact that we want to stay the strongest, its like if you walked into class with a bucket full of candy and handed it out as you see fit to your classmates, you would gain a degree of "power" (obviously nothing substantial but its just an analogy) and you did this everyday for a couple of weeks, you'd be pretty pissed if the guy that sat across the room from you brought a bucket of candy in one day and began to hand it out. He'd be taking away from your "power" over your classmates that you're the candyman.

    In the end, the US wants to stay the candyman as much as it can and keep as much of a hold on the power it has as it can. While it's wrong and silly to go about it this way instead of allowing every nation develop they'd rather hold them 50 years in the past. Stupid analogy I know

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  4. nah it's a good analogy... thanks both of you now, however I have more questions than I had before... damnit lol

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