More reasons for U.S. foreign policy foolishness
The writer who pens the "Democracy in America" blog at The Economist has taken mild issue with my post from earlier this week on the negative consequences of America’s extraordinarily secure international position. It’s a thoughtful comment and well worth reading. I had argued that the national security debate in this country tends to be ...
The writer who pens the "Democracy in America" blog at The Economist has taken mild issue with my post from earlier this week on the negative consequences of America's extraordinarily secure international position. It's a thoughtful comment and well worth reading.
The writer who pens the "Democracy in America" blog at The Economist has taken mild issue with my post from earlier this week on the negative consequences of America’s extraordinarily secure international position. It’s a thoughtful comment and well worth reading.
I had argued that the national security debate in this country tends to be irresponsible in good part because the United States is so secure. As a result, politicians and pundits can take all sorts of foolish positions (such as opposing the innocuous New START treaty) for partisan political reasons. The "Democracy in America" blogger concedes that point, but argues that many GOP positions also reflect the lingering effects of various pernicious ideas, many of them arising from U.S. neoconservatives.
Of course, the truth is that we’re both right. I’d be the last person to downplay the damage that neoconservative ideas have done to U.S. interests, and they continue to exert far more influence on U.S. foreign policy than is healthy for our republic. But one of the things that allow bad ideas to flourish and endure in the United States is our extraordinary power and built-in security, which insulates most Americans from the direct effects of foreign policy blunders. And because there is little or no accountability in American public life, architects of disaster rarely suffer any personal consequences themselves. Instead of being marginalized in our policy discourse, the people who drove us off the cliff in Iraq and elsewhere just returned to the usual think tanks and inside-the-Beltway sinecures, where they continue to peddle the same familiar nostrums and await the opportunity to return to power and screw things up some more.
Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. Twitter: @stephenwalt
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