[PEN-L:1647] Re: Re: George Kennan

[Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Nothing personal, Brad, but I  find it hard to believe that people can be
>THAT naive.  Do you really think that the country as committed to
>imperialist expnasion as the US, whose major export item throughout this
>century is war, would allow "idealists" to participate in foreign policy in
>the capacity other than window dressing?  Or you are just playing a devil's
>advocate on this list?
>
>regards,
>wojtek

"Countries" aren't conscious beings with objectives that "allow"--such
patterns of thought have been a principal cause of a lot of atrocities in
this century, as people who should know better believe that by killing
civilians in large numbers they are teaching a lesson to something called
"Iraq" or "Germany" or "North Vietnam." There are factions within the U.S.
government and within U.S. political society that take democracy, human
rights, and economic development very, very seriously indeed.

As to the principal export of the U.S. in the twentieth century being
war... Well I certainly think that U.S. military intervention in Latin
America helped make a dog's breakfast of an already bad situation, I don't
think that Woodrow Wilson had any business getting into World War I without
much more thought about what the purpose of the whole enterprise was, and
Vietnam was a criminal disaster.

But World War II--destroying Adolf Hitler and Japanese militarism?
Korea--saving forty million people from the benevolent rule of the Great
Leader? Taiwan--using the seventh fleet to save a few more people from the
Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution? NATO--it seems to me that
western Europe has been a much more pleasant place to live than eastern
Europe since WWII, and that NATO has had something to do with it.

It seems to me that any evaluation has to conclude on net that the
projection of U.S. military power in the twentieth century has been a
positive force--unless the person doing the evaluation sees positive
aspects to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao that I do not see.


Brad DeLong