Say Anything Blog

"America must always do what is best for itself in the world.”

Please tell me you are not serious.

Can you imagine the chaos that would result if every single country in the world applied this philosophy? Do you really think it would be a good idea if each nation set out to do what was best for itself?

The correct response to any corruption at the UN is to advocate reform (the funding the US provides to the UN is surely an adequate lever).

The incorrect response is to throw the baby out with the bathwater, andd provide carte blanche for nations worldwide to advance their own interests irrespective of the total anarchy that would result.

Please tell me you are not serious.

Please tell me you don’t expect America to put the interests countries like France, Germany or China ahead of its own.

And I’d temper my statement by saying that forming strong alliances with other nations and working together with them to accomplish like-minded goals is important to America, but in the case of the UN it too often feels that America is providing the primary funds for an organization that is almost dependably against American interests.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Rob -
Where did I say I was expecting America to put France’s interests ahead of her own?

Nowhere.

Please respond to the points I am making without resorting to hysterical claims about subjugating America to the will of cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

What I am suggesting is that each country (even just the ones which are democratic and peacable) subscribing by the philosophy you suggest would result in total chaos.

Suppose we have a party of twenty teenagers on a school trip, who end up marooned on an island. The teacher looking after them is pretty useless; all the teenagers agree that doing what he tells them to do is going to get them nowhere.

Your response to this dilema - each teenager will do what is in his or her interest, regardless of how that affects every other teenager.

Crazy.

cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

This made me blow Coke out of my nose all over my keyboard and monitor.  Thanks for that.

And you probably have a point.  I’ll grant that the UN is a good idea in theory.  In practice, however, it hasn’t been very useful at all thanks to greed and corruption.  So the solution to the problem is, as you say, reform.

But I still think that, when it comes down to the bottom line, America has to do what’s best for itself.  If America’s leadership feels the UN is going down the wrong path we should be free to take what we deem to be the “right path.”

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Sorry Rob. Hope there’s no damage.

You say that in practice the UN ‘hasn’t been very useful.’ I wouldn’t necessarily be so quick to write it off.

Since its inception, wars around the world have, in the great majority, been fought intra-state, rather than inter-state. More importantly, we have mercifully not seen any of the horrendous global conflicts that wracked the early twentieth century.

This may be, in large part, due to the hegemony of the United States - but surely the UN has also played an important role. So I don’t think it should be written off so quickly, particularly when its role is placed in the context of the volatility of international relations prior to its inception. I don’t think we would ever want to go back to those days.

As regards the point at which it becomes correct for a nation to diverge from UN policy and do what it considers right; well, this is obviously a highly tricky area. Would you be so keen on France going off and doing its own thing, in contravention of the UN, when its citizens and its government believe that France is doing the right thing, and the UN (and other nations of the world) the wrong thing? Probably not.

This issue is not one that will go away; China will undoubtedly become more powerful, and if that country decides to do its own thing when it doesn’t think the UN is going along the ‘right path’, the consequences could be very serious indeed.

Am I glad that at present, the most powerful nation in the world is one that happens to represent the values I largely believe in? Absolutely. Is America generally a force for good in the world? Yes.

Nonetheless, we should be very careful about the arguments we put forward in justifying our foreign policy, because they can very easily be used against us.