American and Missing Foreign Policy

Consider the American foreign policy disaster under President Donald Trump. As the president spent his first year blaming the North Korean dictator, this country has moved rapidly to its nuclear programme, while the United States has moved closer to a war that no one wants.

In Syria last April, U.S. forces have attacked government installations with a single-time bomber attack, without any political or diplomatic efforts, and thus achieved nothing. Similarly, after arming Kurdish militants to fight I SIS in their name, the United States has been lagging behind them and watching Turkish attacks on the same men and women.

As a result of the withdrawal of the Trumpet of Restrictions Administration that had been imposed in Obama's era for the use of air forces, the United States-led coalition led to a victory in Mosul, Iraq, causing thousands of innocent civilian victims and leaving a large pile of ruins. As in Vietnam, America had to destroy the city in order to save it.

Meanwhile, the administration has deployed thousands of American troops in Afghanistan, but without worrying about drafting a political strategy to emerge from the deadlock there.

Under Trumpin, the United States has also become a very strong supporter of authoritarian regimes from Saudi Arabia to the Philippines. And in Europe, leaders of the extreme right in Poland and Hungary are eagerly walking in the same steps as Trumpi if not one or two steps ahead of him.

In Israel, the United States has effectively linked itself to the movement of the locals and to the government of the extreme right, thus opposing the dream of the old seismists for a small “Israel.” In fact, on his last trip to Israel, Deputy President Mike Pence even refused to speak to the leader of the opposition Labour Party.

The United States has opposed some of its closest allies, weakened NATO's alliance, and its presence on the world stage is xenophobia and fanatic. How should liberals and left respond?

The left of us oppose everything Trump said or did. Yet, none of us have offered a satisfactory and consistent alternative. We haven't even talked about foreign policy at all, or we've just disputed any use of force everywhere, going towards another version of isolation.

But isolationism is just another way of not having any foreign policy at all. Vermont's Senator Bernie Saunders made the campaign very strong and effective in 2016 addressing internal issues. But while racing to become president of a global hegemony, he had nothing to say about international politics.

First and foremost, the left should think seriously about using force, which is the central issue in foreign policy debates. It is right to use force to protect yourself or to protect others. It's wrong when it's used to convert regimes, in support of authoritarian governments, or against the national movements that have won the battle for their people's “

Another fundamental question that worries is how strength should be used. But this is easy: it should be used with definite restrictions to minimize the deaths of innocent citizens. No hard questions, but when we take them seriously, they can lead to very complex political positions.

For example, the United States was wrong when it was invaded by Iraq in 2003, but it was good for them to join in the fight I SIS, and rescue the jazids from a massacre. It was right to attack the occupied city of Mosul, but it was wrong to turn the whole city into dust.

It was also wrong to prove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's collapse because the forces opposing Assad were lacking sufficient popular support, and the US was not ready to help them gain that support. On the other hand, helping the Syrian Kurds America did a good thing because they were fighting effectively with strong support from their own people; and they would probably never have been saved under the ISIS California.

It's also fair to strengthen the defense of North Korea and Japan, but it's obviously wrong to threaten nuclear war. Nuclear weapons cannot serve human purposes. But there's no truth about all the guns, and the left should agree with that. We cannot be pacifists when people around the world live in fear of mass killings because they belong to a certain ethnic or religious group, or who believe in the wrong “ideology”, or who live in weak places beside the revolutionary powers.

At the height of the Cold War, many left are opposed NATO. And in recent years, politicians like Jeremy Corbyn [sees translators: head of the Laborist Party in the United Kingdom], before becoming party leader, have supported his country's withdrawal from the alliance, precisely because it is committed to using force as a means of mutual protection.

His initial commitment to protecting the Soviet Union is now directed against Vladimir Putin's Russia. The American left-wing should address the situation by questioning the leftist ones in Poland, Lithuania, or Ukraine, where tensions are high. I'd guess many of the leftists in Eastern Europe are backers of Natto, and I'd like America to support the alliance, too. We should not always do what our friends want us to do, but we should always listen.

The old principle of leftist ideology says capitalistic hegemonic countries like the United States can never behave well in the world. But that's wrong. After all, the United States has played an important role in defeating Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, two of the most brutal regimes in world history.

In fact, the United States can do good things for the world and sometimes even do them. The American left is supposed to demand that their country behave well, and we have to resist when it's done badly. But we cannot ask or oppose anything until we form a consistent view of international politics.

D'oh!