That is pretty much politics for you. All the talk about democracy stablity and what have you is just talk. It all boils down to what is the best(in the eyes of the leaders anyway) course of action for (USA), (China), (India)...
errrr.....promoting stability and democracy in the world? what about when the u.s. kicked out leaders of countries(e.g. Latin American countries)who were popular and voted by the people, who were doing a good job but refused to kowtow to the u.s.? you know what the CIA did? kicked them out of power and put dictators in charge. promoting stability and democracy huh? kinda like back then when white settlers thought it was their right to invade/conquer mexican and native american territory and that their goal was not necessarily conquest but to bring civilization and Jesus to mexicans/native americans. american citizens are very lucky to have a democractic government and freedom, but when it comes to american foreign policy, it is a different story....democracy and freedom for americans we support for sure....that's good that americans get to vote, elect leaders, have a justice system, bill of rights, etc...that's kool and that's very good. for other people errr......as long as their leaders serve our interests.....they can do whatever to their people they want, that is according to american foreign policy. for example, Saudia Arabia has a terrible human rights record. bad very very bad. women there get treated pretty bad. people there get executed in public, people get their heads chopped off in public and get stoned to death. does the u.s. criticize them? not really.....as least we don't hear it very often in the media, if at all. heck i didn't even know about it, never heard it on the news at all. why? because saudia arabia has a ridiculous amount of oil(25% of the world's petroleum reserves) and access to bases. in contrast, contrary to media impressions, china is trying to improve its human rights record. President Hu Jintao has called for a better more efficient, more transparent government and fight corruption. The percentage of people in jail in China is way less than in comparison to the u.s., and yeah china has lots of executions but it is not that bad considering murderers, rapists, drug lords, and corrupt people are the ones getting executed. forced abortions? it has happened but very uncommon, rare....China is far more open that before....just take a browse through chinese media and you see news about bill gates, tom cruise, some hollywood stuff, chinese movie stars, etc... .yet it gets constantly bashed for its human rights record. why does it get bashed so much? because it is a rising power and will compete for resources and so we can get a negative impression of the chinese, and picture them as a "threat to Asia and the rest of the world". see, a country's motivations usually dictates the action/behavior it will take. you can't take everything just by face.
Which means the spread of democracy and free markets. Would you prefer something else? Of course we are spreading OUR influence. Don't act so surprised. Would you rather we try to help Al Qaeda spread its influence or something?
Uh, we have had those bases for decades. Actually, we've been cutting back on much of our presence in the region and opting to station long range assets at places less likely to incur political heat from the locals, like Guam, for example, which we own. Diego Garcia is a long-standing example, if you need another. It's owned by our close ally, Great Britain and, like Guam, has a negligible local population to complain about anything, and they enjoy, for the most part, the jobs those bases give them. Keep D&D Civil!!
Oh really? Go check my first post. I wasn't talking about Asia. YOU are the one who brought Asia up. Right... where as you are very educated on Asian matters because you watch FOX NEWS. I'm sure SK would rather build up its own army than to have the US in its territory. Would you like a Japanese base in the middle of Houston? No one would. Point is, some bases, such as those is Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have been shown to be unncessary. Yet, the US doesn't leave. And it's fairly obvious why. So you are opposed to my idea that USA should work WITH other countries when dealing with threats and problems as opposed to stationing military bases all around the world. Instead you would rather threaten any country that opposes us? So...you must like this current administration in the White House.
ok well the article was about sino-russian matters. secondly here is your first post in this thread... It's only a matter of time before USA ceases as the sole superpower in the region. I wonder what USA will do then, when it does not have such a powerful edge over not only nations, but entire groups of nations. A lot of USA's policies might come back to bite us in @$$. tell me how i am supposed to know that you are not talking about asia or that you are not making comments with respect to the 2 parties involved in the article that the thread was started for. i don't even have cable. i only educated on it because i was lucky to have some very good profs on it before i left UT. an american who lived in guangzhou for about a decade, a visiting prof from beijing who is a diplomat that works with ASEAN (do you know what ASEAN is?), and another american who was a Ummmm...NK has plans to use its army to overrun SK and nuke the capital. The American presence is a significant deterent to NK doing anything crazy. They have made it quite clear that they want to reunite Korea and are not afraid to use force. SK does not have the capability to defend itself if NK wants to completely overrun it. Even if they can defeat the North Koreans there is still no point in pulling out of SK and showing any sort of weakness. I think you forget exactly what North Korea's goal is with that army. Japan is only allowed to have a defensive fighting force. We are in Japan as leftovers from WWII, the same way as we are in Germany, since we fought a war with Japan and they lost. We are pulling out of Germany. I believe we have significantly scaled down our forces in Japan too....So I don't get your point. I was being sarcastic when I made that comment. Come on man...when you make a ridiculous comment about how other nations should blow off the US then I'll make one right back.
the problem is that the U.S. is inconsistent with its ideology and actions. it keeps preaching about spreading democracy and freedom, it has done so like in Japan. however it has also done things(like overthrowing popular democratic elected leaders in latin american countries and replace them with dictators that kiss America's butt but treat their people like garbage) that contradict its ideology of democracy and freedom. usually the u.s. speads the talk of democracy and freedom(or lack of) if there is something of interest(like oil, natural resources, strategic military location). other locations where there are massive human rights violation but has no importance at all, america doesn't care at all.
Not entirely... I think our government prefers to deal with democratic countries because they're more prone to be open markets. There's less uncertainty and more willingness for free trade agreements compared to command economies. Of course, the US also meddles in markets of necessity and to influence regional stability, but they don't do so for occupation. They do it to strike better deals for needed commodities. Does the US protect Taiwan out of an obligation to an old dictatorship even if its a new democracy, or does it protect Taiwan because it's a larger trading partner than France? Probably a little of both.
sorry i didn't reply to your other post but i think i can sum up some points with this one. you are right that america has been inconsistent with its application of ideology in the real world however you also have to remember when many of those decisions were made....during the Cold War. There were many tough decisions made during that time trying to prevent the spread of communism into the sphere of influence of America. I guess the bottom line comes down to whether it would have been better for the world to be under the superpower of the Americans or the Soviets. I think that question is easily answered with how the Soviets ruled their society. America has made decisions that looked somewhat rational at the time under the prevailing flawed thoughts (eg. domino theory) that look horrible in hindsight (eg. Vietnam). I just think a lot of revisionist history is applied to the decisions that the U.S. made that turned out to be horrible mistakes, like the current one in Iraq. Finally, if you think that the U.S. does nothing when there are only massive human rights violations then you should look at Bosnia as a recent case scenario to the contrary. Also, I think people critical of the U.S. often put the U.S. in the position of damned if you do and damned if you don't. Like people call out America for not doing enough for Africa but when we do something more then it's never enough or it's only to because we want to prevent terrorism and not actually stop the suffering there or stop the spread of AIDS or anything altruistic. I think you can take the position all too easily of America only doing things for selfish reasons and kindly brush off every other nation in the world when they do things selfishly. Further, I guess if you want to take that opinion then you are just saying everything is done for selfish reasons. When was the last time China did anything good for any other nation than itself? I guess people take me for some person who only watches Fox News and that I'm some sort of conservative, but I really feel that the U.S. gets unfairly trashed too much and the attitude of 'they get what's coming to them' is taken far too often.
When we start making excuses for supporting bad-guy regimes, do we honestly think that other regimes don't have their own 'excuses'? That is the problem we get into when we say 'yeah they are bad, but... Every bad dictatorship in the world has their own but... We shouldn't make excuses, and we shouldn't take excuses.
If you didn't know what I'm talking about, then why did you respond? Well, if your professor wants to post in this thread that'd be great. Also, did you know ASEAN is only composed of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia? The three strongest nations in Asia (China, South Korea, Japan) aren't even in ASEAN. Shows you how 'important' ASEAN is...[/QUOTE] What? You keep misreading my statements. I never said countries SHOULD blow off the US. I'm saying they WILL blow off the US if the US keeps up some of its controversial policies.
those decisions are still being made today. probably, but the u.s. still could of done a better job. actually, most american history textbooks try to hinder the nation's blunders, shameful policies, and invasions, etc....if you actually read the true history of the u.s, there are some good proud things but some "very bad and embarassed to be an american because of what my country did." i have to admit the u.s. have done some truly messed up things...things that don't make you any prouder waving the american flag and say justice and freedom for all. that's good, but the u.s. needs to do more of that. clinton intervened....he's a smart guy who knows what he's doing. who cares if the guy had a blowjob....every guy wants one right? if you are counting american aid as % of GDP, we are by far the most stingiest of the developed economies. yeah in terms of total dollar amount, the u.s contributes the most, but i think the figure is something like for every 300 dollars we have, we contribute a dollar, we are pretty generous with our money huh? other developed countries contribute 9-10 dollars per 300 dollars they have. as for china, yeah they have given aid to other countries, plenty of time, just not that much but what do you expect they ain't very rich. fox news is a bit biased....you should watch more neutral news stations.
