Foreign Aggression & US Foreign Policy

Despite media rhetoric, foreign policy has never been separated very far from domestic policy in U.S. administrations. There are always multiple ways in which they are intertwined, so that decisions in one arena will have serious ramifications in the other. It is certainly not essentially a question of there being only so much pie to divide, as would have been thought a century ago, because some kinds of spending stimulate the economy more than other kinds do. Instead, the basic question now is: what sort of foreign policy will have the greatest long-term benefits for the United States and its people?

This question could hardly have been asked before World War I. Despite its generally ill-advised adventures in the Pacific and in Latin America, which saddled it with responsibilities for various small countries, the U.S. simply did not yet conceive of itself as a great world power. There were a few thinkers who foresaw that it was becoming one, but they did not have the ear of the decisionmakers. Only after the Armistice forced upon Germany by America's belated entrance into the war did

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Madeleine Albright, the first woman Secretary of State, has announced that Russia will be given a voice, though not yet a vote, within NATO. One can suppose that it is now only a matter of time until Russia is invited to join as well. What will the purpose of NATO be then? It already appears to be serving as a peacekeeping force in situations where full U.N. cooperation is too difficult to obtain. It might become a bulwark against aggression by China or any of the nations along the "Moslem belt" from North Africa to Indonesia. It clearly could serve as a mini-U.N. for the democracies of the Americas and Europe. America's military defenses for half a century were shaped in terms of the Cold War, of the specter of international Communist aggression, of a possible nuclear holocaust. The world is now clearly much safer. Russia is no longer a threat, and some people wonder it ever really was or whether their rhetoric was always mostly a bluff. America's military establishment can be safely downsized and, in the process, modernized. But how safe is the world? How far back can America's defense capacities be cut before the U.S. begins to look like a sitting duck to some of the hungry predators that are still active in the wor
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Approximate Word count = 1887
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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