Restrained and Intelligent Foreign Policy

In keeping with a recent tradition of writing an entire post just to announce I'm adding another link to the sidebar on a blog that very few people actually read (ahh! self-deprecation is nice!), I'm announcing that I'm adding a new link to the sidebar and I strongly suggest you click on this one.  The link is to a blog on the website Foreign Policy by Stephen M. Walt.  If you're interests range outside of domestic politics at all, and they really should, then Walt's blog is a must read, in my opinion.

In response to the odious Bill Kristol's recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which uses fear-mongering to lobby for continuing the current insane level of funding for our bloated military-industrial complex, Walt gives several reasons why cutting "defense" spending is necessary but unlikely.  He concludes with this:

Which brings me to my main point. Although it is mind-boggling to realize that five percent of the world's population (the United States) now spends more on defense than the other 95 percent put together, this situation is hard to avoid when you see threats emerging virtually everywhere and when you think all of them are best met by an ambitious and highly interventionst foreign policy. If Americans want to be able to go anywhere and do anything, then they are going to have keep spending lots of money, even if all that activity merely reinforces anti-American extremism and makes more people want to come after us. (And for more on that latter point, read this book).

If you want to cut defense spending significantly, in short, you have to make some non-trivial adjustments in U.S. grand strategy. As some of you know, I think the United States would be both more prosperous and safer if we had a more restrained grand strategy and a more intelligent foreign policy. Until that happens, however, reducing defense spending itself is going to be an uphill fight, and our defense expenditures will be closer to the views of Kristol et al than to mine. Unfortunately.

A Culture of War

Glenn Greenwald has documented the increased desire of America to bomb Yemen.  Jeffrey Goldberg has documented the increased American desire to bomb Iran.  President Obama has committed to escalating the unwinnable war in Afghanistan.  Even though we are told that the combat mission in Iraq is coming to a close, there are still 50,000 troops there and combat will likely continue for a long time.  Meanwhile, experts are warning America that our reaction against the inaccurately-named "ground zero mosque" is fueling extremists.

We are caught in a self-defeating cycle.  Some Islamic extremists hate America and want to hurt us.  So America takes military action against Muslims.  So more Muslims hate America and want to harm us.  So America does something else against Muslims.  So they are more enraged and hate us more.  So we react again.  And so on.  If one didn't know any better one might be inclined to think that we are purposefully created conditions that would justify our ongoing military presence in the Middle East.  But that would be silly.

In any case, we can either let this go on indefinitely until we have an all-out world war on our hands or we can step back and try to regain our sanity and perspective by trying out the role of peacemaker for a while.  We can either be a country that is more and more reliant on a massive military-industrial complex or we can choose to disentangle ourselves from foreign intrigue as George Washington presciently advised.

Frankly, though, I find it slightly terrifying how many people in America support escalating our military presence in the Muslim world.  They are positively gleeful at the thought of bombing Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Iran, and Yemen, oh and Pakistan.  I don't want to live in a world where war is the preferred way to solve our difficult international problems, but that's where we're headed if we don't start actively opposing it.

Opposing Nuclear Weapons

In 1981 the First Presidency, in a statement opposing the storage of nuclear weapons in Utah and Nevada, made the following statement:

First, by way of general observation we repeat our warnings against the terrifying arms race in which the nations of the earth are presently engaged. We deplore in particular the building of vast arsenals of nuclear weaponry. We are advised that there is already enough such weaponry to destroy in large measure our civilization, with consequent suffering and misery of incalculable extent.

It is my feeling that nuclear weapons are evil, and that part of the responsibility of bearing the Gospel of Peace is speaking out against them.  I would love for members of the church to take the lead in opposing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and encouraging the nations of the world to disarm.  This goal can only be achieved through full international cooperation, and since the church is an international entity preaching peace we should have a strong and loud voice.

And there is a lot going on in the world of nuclear weapons these days.  President Obama recently signed a new START Treaty and Protocol with the Russians which will significantly reduce the number of weaponized nuclear warheads in both countries and increase monitoring of the progress of that reduction.

Because Iranians totally wish they were Republican

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Irandecision 2009 - Iranians Support the GOP
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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

I read elsewhere some words of wisdom from Henry Kissinger, who said that Obama is right to not take sides in Iran's current election drama. Without going into it too much here, it's very rarely that I agree with Kissinger on anything. But, quite frankly, his brand of conservative is far more desirable than the current crop who have little to no clue about the intricacies of international relations. Kissinger knew how to dress his deceptions well, and even stumbled across a truth every now and again. Bellowing about Obama's refusal to back Mousavi, on the other hand, fails to take into account how doing so might harm future US-Iranian relations, even if (and especially if) Mousavi is the ultimate victor. In a country where the US is demonized almost as often as Israel, we do ourselves no favors by picking favorites in political disputes. Despite Obama's drastically better grasp of international relations, the image of the US abroad hasn't recovered to the point where we can do anything effective in this situation, other than voice our strong belief that the elections should be judged honestly, and that everyone should have an opportunity to freely speak their mind. It is sad that Kissinger's view on this subject is in the minority in the Republican party -- here's to hoping that won't always be the case.