Philosophy Now Forum

President Obama announced yesterday that America will cut back on its military spending, inducing many commentators to suggest that this reflects and will result in the decline of America's influence in the world. This is probably true, like Britain's power and influence declined. Nevertheless, America, like Britain, will leave a lasting legacy that will require less of its power and influence in the world since now the world has become more like it, also wanting peace and prosperity.

That led me to this thought:
The Arab world is finally becoming politicized. As recent events have shown it has becoming more politically active. We can see this with the Arab spring movements that have sprung up recently. This is a good thing since politics is the alternative to war.

The development of the Mideast has always been stymied because it lacked political networking and activism. Now a culture of politics is beginning to take hold that in the future should contain further warfare among nations in the region, while building a more homogenous citizenry in those nations.

Politics is a pragmatic way to go in comparison to its alternative, war. The seeds of pragmatism were sown in the Mideast by America when it started engaging the region in a peace process (mainly between Egypt and Israel) dating back to the 1970s. Today this process is beginning to bear fruit, mainly due to the influence America has held in the region. In a sense the region is now beginning to walk on its own, therefore no longer necessitating America's guidance and influence like before.

So if America's influence appears to be diminishing in the Mideast it is not because it is being sidelined or its military clout is declining. It is because the region is growing up, growing more politically astute, realizing that America's philosophy of pragmatism is the better way. Thus America's power and influence in the region should not be viewed as diminishing but thought of as a transition that is giving fruition to a nascent political culture that will eventually bring more stability to the area. America, then, in a sense, has won in the region by default, by leaving a legacy of pragmatic and political examples on which to build on.

What a great post!

The American influence has been largely malignant.
The USA has propped up a long list of dictatorships that have suppressed decent and political freedoms.
It is doubtful whether the US will easily release its strangle hold.
But any move in that direction will be welcome.

Great? But naive.

"You study, you learn, but you guard the original naivete. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover."
Henri Matisse

Great quote but utterly irrelevant.

We can all play that childish game with as we have the Internet.
I'm surprised you did not find:"Every true genius is bound to be naive."
Friedrich Schiller.

The fact is that I was being kind calling you naive. What you are an example of is the product of your own county's propaganda which paints itself as pure white , when it has in fact blood on its hands over the middle east. It is your ignorance that is to blame, and your blinkered acceptance of a foreign policy which is morally bankrupt and misrepresented.
But you are young. Sadly I doubt that age will inform you, but there is always hope.

chaz, I am sorry I even responded to your comment. I was naive to do so. Your comments are generally garbage anyways.

Apology accepted. You can't help it.

My comments are pearls before swine.
You are ignorant of the foreign policy if our country in regards to the middle east and are just re-gurgitating the Fox News line, without any critique.
The cultures there are 5000+years old and do not require your patronising comments on their recent progress.

Since you British are always making snide remarks about Fox News, why don't you spend your time watching the BBC? I know the answer, it's because you'd fall asleep watching it!

Yawn!

See, you're probably watching BBC right now. Go back to Fox News so at least you can stay awake. No, on second thought, go back to BBC!

The idea of a legacy implies a situation which has past, US hegemony continues to be a bull walk against against democracy and any idea of progressive movements in the middle east.
Where democracy has emerged as an indirect result of US intervention ie Afghanistan, it has been a post facto add on to what was originally and act of aggression by the US.
Chaz is correct in that the US has propped up and continues to prop up anti democratic regimes-currently Saudi Arabia, Bahrain to name just two where protest and democracy is ruthlessly suppressed. In fact the US position with favoured dictators is to support the dictator while he's playing ball (that means supplying the US with oil in this context), if the population try to seize power hold the line, and at a critical point at which the dictator is about to be overthrown switch sides to support the people.
Unfortunately for the US, UK and much of the West democracy in the middle east would be bad new for the US, opinion polls throughout the region consistently and overwhelmingly show opposition to the US role in the region, not surprising given the US's cynical approach.
Iran-the current focus of US and therefore western attention, is in no small part a US construct and expression of US hegemony.
The US/UK backed overthrowing of the tentative democracy in the 1950's, the installation and maintaining of a brutal, pro-western Shah, supplying intelligence and support for Iraq in it's war against Iran, and the current military pincer movement that sees US military forces surrounding Iran on all sides justifiably feed anti US opinion, and fuel religions extremism as a rallying point for anti US sentiment.

Nicely put.
If Western domestic policy aspirations were matched in foreign policy decisions the world would be a very different place.
Even Ho-Chi-Minh who was educated in the US, inspired by the US anti-inperialist revolution hoped that the US would assist him in the overthrow of the French oppressors.
Had the US done so, then the they would have had much more influence in the eventual independence of Vietnam, than a failed war, millions of deaths and waste of resources. One can only imagine how much better the entire region would have been for millions of lives that were destroyed by the conflict and the destabilisation that enabled Pol Pot to take control in Cambodia.
As a consequence of that war children are to this day still suffering from UXB in Laos as the US dropped more ordinance on them than Germany received in WW2- even though the US did not even declare war on them!

Just imagine that I am right. That me and the other people that agree with what are simply basic facts are true.
What does that say about the propaganda and indoctrination you are being exposed to in your own country about the aims of foreign policy throughout the world?
You seem to think that the US supports democracy in other countries? yes?
Well - show me some examples please.
Then we can discuss facts.


Google Alende!

Chaz is 100% correct, we should stay out of other countries and let the British figure out what to do when the terrorists come knocking on their doors!