Re: Fires of revolution sweep the Aran World
Because the terms "pragmatic" and "meaningful" are subjective, perhaps we should take a moment to define these terms in order to have the same understanding of the intended goal.
Most will claim that "pragmatic" means "what works" but without outlining a specific goal for a specific situation, the concept of "what works" is entirely subjective. The same is true for what is "meaningful", we need to establish the specific goal associated with the specific situation to understand the envisioned result in the context of the situation.
I'll be more specific in showing the problem I have in understanding your use of the terms "pragmatic" and "moral" in regards to your examples:
Somalia, the humanitarian mission to save millions from starvation was a complete success while our attempts at nation building were a miserable failure. If feeding starving people was the morally correct decision, we accomplished that mission. In that context, our morally correct decision was also the pragmatic decision, it worked. However, if you consider the decision to nation build in Somalia to be our morally correct decision, obviously that failed, and therefore was not a "pragmatic" endeavor.
OK...I can agree it can be subjective, but looking more into the Somalia example I think it must be pointed out that one of the biggest reasons for mission creep was the initial failure of the humanitarian mission.
The way I see it is that we made a moral decision to intervene in a humanitarian context.. that humanitarian effort was widely failing, so we were forced to change the mission. After the change we can argue over whether it was ultimately successful..we did have some time of relative calm, but we were never really able to solve the warlord problem from the get go.
Therefore, we intervened for a moral reason, that moral reason turned out to be a failure, so we had to change the mission in an effort to preserve the original mission..which ultimately led to total failure.
It's my opinion that we shouldn't give Egypt (or any other country) taxpayer funded aid, which includes financial and military support.
Why not? I don't think the founders would really have a problem with that.. after all they borrowed tons of money to suit their interests, why would their opinion change when the roles reverse?
As for the peace treaty with Israel, I have no problem with using diplomatic measures to encourage peaceful relations between the countries but that does not mean we should pay Egypt protection money in hopes they will not attack Israel.
If the only thing diplomacy has to offer is diplomacy, I don't see how that will really accomplish anything...
NP is the realm of the UN and it is not unilaterally enforced by the US. Can you give me an example of the US acting completely alone and outside of UN authorization to enforce or prevent NP?
Well.. there is no example of the US acting "completely alone" because we would act in the form of bilateral agreements or setting up international agreements to act, which inherently involve other nations... but don't automatically involve the UN.
Our economy runs on oil. Unrest in the ME creates price spikes in the oil futures markets. These spikes have potentially devestating effects on our oil based economy. Therefore the stability of the ME is important to US interests as the region is one of the largest suppliers of the worlds oil.
Would you disagree with any of that? Is there some other reason you would like to add as to why that region is of importance to the US?
Please outline what you see as "American interests" concerning the ME and be specific. For example, if you say "stability" in the ME is part of our American interests, then offer specifics as to why.
Obviously I agree with you on the importance of oil and the reasons that you outline. I would say our other interests include:
1) The War on Terrorism: In order to defeat extremists in many of these nations we are going to have to rely on (and maintain decent relations with) the governments of many nations in the Middle East.
2) Containing Iran: Obviously the nuclear issue is important, but also keeping the spread of a radical Shia agenda into the rest of the Middle East must also play a role.
3) Preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction: Links up with the Iranian issue, but if nuclear capability spreads throughout an already volatile region, it will upset the oil market, and potentially create an arms race in the region.
Those would be the main issues (obviously Iraq could be included, but I think that one might be self-evident) I would want to currently focus on the in Middle East if I were in charge. (Not to say there are not some others, but those would be the main few)
