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This is a great article. Obama's characterization of meetings as Putin as "businesslike" in their meetings is interesting, its another confirmation that the Russian elite understand their diminished position and aren't seriously trying to challenge American dominance. Recent Russian war-mongering in Crimea and Syria is more for domestic consumption and to prop up remaining "influence", and Obama correctly determines that it has probably costed more than it's worth.Juffo-Wup posted:I'm interested in this. A lot of my current views on foreign policy first developed while reading Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. I recall one of the chapters was on the Iraq war and subsequent reconstruction, the upshot being that there was an enormous amount of Iraqi enthusiasm for the reconstruction program, which had been billed as a sort of new Marshall Plan, that gave way to anger and violence when tangible benefits failed to materialize. This, Klein said, was because the purpose of the reconstruction program was to transfer enormous amounts of wealth to large American firms, which is why there was so little investment in Iraqi firms, and why the relevant American firms were much more interested in maximizing their costs (which were guaranteed to be covered) than in actually accomplishing anything in the region. Klein's analysis of Iraq is very good in showing how capitalists took advantage of the invasion and occupation to profit, and to some extent how this kind of profiteering is inevitable in a capitalist society/world. You say that intervention "done right, with right incentive structure" is worth considering, but I'd argue Klein convincingly shows that this is politically impossible at present and capitalists will always find a way to exploit a crisis. In some cases the humanitarian benefits of intervention will outweigh these drawbacks, but the debate over intervention will always include some arguments motivated by profit-seeking instead of humanitarian concern. Iraq was a case were the motivations were nakedly opportunistic from the start, and has resulted in a public more critical of US interventionism.
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Mar 10, 2016 16:32
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Juffo-Wup posted:I get that, but to say 'wealthy interests will always corrupt even good intentions so it's better to not even try' seems more like it's giving up on trying to have a foreign policy at all, rather than recommending any particular such policy. And if it is the case that well-intentioned interventionism will always be corrupted, how do we explain the success of the actual Marshall plan? (Unless you think it wasn't successful, in which case, fair enough). I didn't argue that "wealthy interests will always corrupt even good intentions so it's better to not even try", just that profiteering will always be one of the motivations pushing the US to war. Your original question was "Was Klein's analysis totally wrong, or are the lessons of Iraq being distorted?" and the answer is no, Klein's analysis of how profit-seeking behavior drives and exploits crises is convincing. It is one of many motives including humanitarian concern, "nation building", American security and military dominance. One lesson from the Iraq invasion is that the profit-seeking motivation can easily become dominant, and will co-opt humanitarian arguments and invent security risks wholesale (WMDs). This is not an argument against all "interventions", but it should cause Americans to be more critical of the arguments for war. Another (obvious) lesson is that Americans as a whole are easily convinced to support military action, and this is reflected in the politics of invasion. In a just world supporting the Iraqi invasion should be a scarlet letter that dooms a politicians career, but in general politicians who supported the invasion have not been punished by the electorate. Another lesson is that once you go to war you should not act surprised when people exploit the resulting crisis for profit, it's inevitable and part of the package. A further lesson is that modern America's ability to "nation build" is limited. I don't like drawing broad historical parallels and am not a historian, so I won't try to discuss the Marshall plan. Unrelated to this point, I do like how Obama cites climate change as an existential threat while ISIS is not. I'd argue this reflects a better understanding of America's long term interests than optimal handling the next crisis in the middle-east (there will always be another crisis). Nocturtle fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Mar 10, 2016 |
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Mar 10, 2016 17:51
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