Quote:
Originally Posted by hoyacoug
None of those cultures ever adopted that point of view, and each of their empires subsequently collapsed. You haven't given me a great example of how their foreign policy led to preservation!
You are failing to see that promoting law and order and human rights can also promote selfish interesll. Countries that observe law, order and human rights also tend to be more stable economically and, thus, better trading partners. They also pose less of a threat to our security interests. Same thing with BP, for example, who is spending billions of dollars on finding alternatives to oil. It is great for the world that they do it, and it is also great for them because then they will have a product that they can profit from at the end.
Another example: dolphin safe tuna. People got angry that tuna nets were killing dolphins, so corporations made their nets dolphin safe. You almost can't buy tuna today that doesn't say "dolphin safe" on the label. They did something good at considerable expense which then came back to be beneficial for them in the end (by attracting customers again).
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Nothing created by man will last forever. You assume, falsely, that foreign policy led to their downfall. Usually, if not always, it was internal policy that failed these cultures. They did last hundreds, if not thousand of years. How much longer should they last?
That naive approach is simply cart before apple, which is my objection to Bush's approach. You don't give democracy to people wanting stability, economic success and who are not educated.
You must also engage in a costs benefit approach in light of very limited dollars.
An approach of curing the world's ills does not create stability as there is not enough money anywhere to solve ills.
For a society to become stable, it needs these things created internally, not externally.
First, economic viability, economic freedom and resources or skills which one can market. Without that, that society can never succeed.
Second, it needs to have a reason to exist. Many of the world's nations have been forced together unnaturally by colonial powers. Artificial nations are less likely to last.
Third, the internal structure of governance must mature as the people become more educated.
Fourth, the society must protect itself from outside predators.
It is naive, costly and will not ever succeed to think we can solve any or most of Africa's problems. It is a collection of feudal nations, a greatly illiterate populace, with badly allocated resources, and horrible governments.
The naive police advocated since Carter will simply send our nation reeling sooner than natural causes will incur it.
We cannot impose civility in the Sudan, Somalia or any where else for that matter. Until the internal population consent to be governed, no amount of police force can succeed.
Until the people consent to governing themselves intelligently, no amount of AIDS expenditures will succeed.
I doubt many of those cultures will survive, as they lack the internal characteristics for them to survive.