(6:15PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
What’s a rational American foreign policy?
Aijaz Ahmad: Start with the question, why does the US have to be the most powerful country on earth?
The United States economy is stagnant and faces the possibility of a real Depression. Its currency has lost a quarter of its value on global markets in three years. No country in the entire history of humankind has ever owed as much money to foreigners as the US does today, and this debt rises by about a billion dollars a day. Its military expenditures are higher than those of the next twenty countries combined. It’s time to question basic assumptions about US foreign policy.
Aijaz Ahmad: What would a rational American foreign policy look like?
Based in New Delhi, Aijaz Ahmad is The Real News Network’s Senior News Analyst; Senior Editorial Consultant, and political commentator for the Indian newsmagazine, Frontline. He has taught Political Science, and has written widely on South Asia and the Middle East.
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Tips for filling my tank, thanks.
Thank you, again.
Reason buys nothing today, except on blogs like this.
This country is fucked.
Look for the exit.
Which means throw away your city or suburban existance, turn off TV, and get away.
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What we need to do is to move from Global Cop to Global Problem Solver.
A cop is supposed to protect and serve his community. A cop that uses his trusted position to protect and serve himself is a dirty cop. A forward deployed active US Military is a dirty cop.
We need to change to Global Problem Solver.
People pay to have problems solved. It is OK to profit from solving problems.
That’s the direction we need to go.
especially in that first video, does a great job of summarizing the problem.
It is the very deeply ingrained idea of US exceptionalism that I think is the root of the problem. I often find it infecting my own view of things.
Even when we’re ready to not see ourselves as the “cops ” of the world – we still cling to the idea that “we know better” what others should be doing and/or continue to want to see the US as the central force for any kind of change in the world.
Sometimes I think the only solution will be a coalition of other countries to say “no thanks” to us and our “help” and use their collective power to challenge us. I see some South American leaders like Chavez, Morales, Correa, and others beginning to do this. And there are times I think our best energies might be spent in seeing if we could find ways to support them.