People don't understand that a unipolar international systems cannot have it's unipole simply "drop out of the running" without complete chaos. North Korea is not a isolationist power: extreme belligerence constrained by lack of ability is hardly isolationist. Neither is repeatedly provoking South Korea. Switzerland is closer to a "complete" isolationism, but when you are small and irrelevant you can do that, especially when you have a noted track-record of being those things. Besides, you all have this simplistic notion of "gosh wouldn't it be great to not deal with this" which is as childish and unhelpful as thinking we should glass the middle east.
So objections:
This is sure looking more and more like McCarthyism. The US did concentration camps during WWII for japanese descent americans. Are we really suggesting doing this again? seriously, this guy thinks the McCarthy era was good or something? jesus h christ on a pogostick.
Point of Order: McCarthyism is not the same as, not even contemporary with, Japanese internment during WW2. For example, one was racial, the other was ideological. This is both and neither, which, even assuming your analogy is correct, is much more complex
The US does not need pure isolationism. That's what North Korea has, and it's bad.
As I explained above, that's not what North Korea has.
What would be "healthy" for the US, would be to stop trying to pretend that we own the damned world, and axe the nauseating "We're number one!!!" elitism bullshit. The only thing we are number one at is military spending.
I'm going to assume you aren't confusing American Exceptionalism for domestic political consumption with American Exceptionalism as a foreign policy (I don't know what you mean by "elitism" here). The former is annoying, but really irrelevant.
The United States is a Unipolar power. It may be a declining Unipole, as some have argued, but it remains so since the fall of the soviet union. Other powers have regional presence, the US has global presence. The "rogues gallery" of US policy is China, Russia, Iran; all of these are really regional powers, and while they might contest the US in their sphere of influence, they do not do so outside of it to any meaningful extent. The US can contest globally, and contests each power within their sphere. Who contests the US in the western hemisphere? That is a Unipole: the US sphere of influence is the world. China understands this, and attempts to establish itself as Superpower by contesting the US in other regions (Africa, South America), but currently their influence is still profoundly limited. That makes the US important.
And on the other side of the coin, the US is the world largest economy. That's kind of a big deal in a global economy. It gives it political, diplomatic, and economic weight, but more importantly just makes it a BFD (Big Fucking Deal) that would still matter if the US tomorrow embraced pacifism. The US economy could, conceivably, be extracted from the global economy (and is certainly more capable of doing so than any other), but the effects both in the US and outside of it would be catastrophic. Just think of the places outside the US where the US dollar is the primary form of currency. Think about why Wall Street was able to crash the world in 2009, and why the US recovered before everyone else did. That is a BFD.
We need, desperately, to accept that the world does not exist for our pleasure, and to just live in that world like all the other "not number one" countries. You know, a normal country, and not the jingoistic sideshow we currently have.
Arguing that America is the only country with Exceptionalism sounds really, American-centric, actually. Are you arguing in favor of "normal" countries? Tell me, what does a generic country look like? Is it European, Asian, African, or American? How big is "normal"? In any case, you are just moralizing at this point, not offering policy. The US cannot engage in the international arena today without the fact of its unipolarity being obvious, even if it didn't claim to be so. The world is not naive. Regardless of your pretensions, America is the most important country on earth today, and I might argue that that legitimizes American politics as important and serious, rather then American Politics de-legitimizing the US as unimportant and ridiculous. Beyond a vague opposition to Jingoism, you aren't saying anything real. You seem to be confusing American politics with American Policy: they are inter-related and influence each other, but as with all countries all over the world, they are
NOT one-and-the-same.
Other countries engage in international commerce without the kind of we cause. We should do it like they do.
Perhaps you long for a system where that is not the case. Perhaps you long for the glorious system of international capitalism mixed with the constant warring of multipolar international systems, with climate change thrown in for spice. But unless you summon your magical genie and simply make it so with a wish, it will not happen; or if it does, it will be chaos and violence.
Or you shrug and hope the isolationism interest wins out, maybe hellfire people who need it. Oil and banana wars are both reasonably annoying
If you think about it, banana wars worked out fine. All that was needed was a disregard for the lives of others. Today we are concerned about "regimes", and "democracy", and "human rights". Things were simpler before.
That's mostly impossible *because* of the commercial bits. The first time ISIS takes over a refinery belonging to ExxonMobil, you can be damn sure we're not staying isolationist.
Precisely, but I'll take it one step further: diplomatic, economic, and military power are less separate then we are used to thinking. At a minimum, The US wants to defend its interests to maintain its current economic power and quality of living (certainly no one wants it to go down), but how do you do that? Be so inoffensive as that no one will bother you? Even assuming that silly ideal, the US will be attacked and competed against simply because it has things that other people want. So what, do you just let the world have its fun? Maybe. But that's not on the table until US really begins to decline, USSR-style. And as we all remember, the collapse of the Soviet Union worked out so well for the people of Russia.
I really hate when I end up writing these long answers, and I think I tend to regret them, but I spent like 45 minutes working on this while tired, so by God I will post it anyway.
Author
Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1576091 times)