I've written before that much of American foreign policy is determined by domestic attitudes and politics, in a society driven by the fantasies of adults who never want to grow up, rather than by the complex realities of the world.
How else do you explain the perverse and destructive nature of so many of America's interventions in the world after World War II? America is like a big, thoughtless kid kicking at colonies of birds' nests, destroying lives and community without noticing anything much more than the exhilarating time he's had doing it.
Meanwhile, where great power might really have achieved something worthwhile, generally, it has gone unused. I refer to the several genocides that occurred in the last third of the Twentieth Century, not using that word genocide loosely as it often is used in America but to describe massive, blood-soaked horror inflicted on a class or type of people, such as in Indonesia, Cambodia, and Rwanda - each of these involved upwards of half a million people being slaughtered by their own countrymen. In each case, America never lifted a finger.
The rivers of Indonesia ran red and thick with gore at the end of Mr. Sukarno's regime, but the American government thought that was fine since it was presumed members of the Communist party were having their throats cut en masse.
How else do you explain the perverse and destructive nature of so many of America's interventions in the world after World War II? America is like a big, thoughtless kid kicking at colonies of birds' nests, destroying lives and community without noticing anything much more than the exhilarating time he's had doing it.
Meanwhile, where great power might really have achieved something worthwhile, generally, it has gone unused. I refer to the several genocides that occurred in the last third of the Twentieth Century, not using that word genocide loosely as it often is used in America but to describe massive, blood-soaked horror inflicted on a class or type of people, such as in Indonesia, Cambodia, and Rwanda - each of these involved upwards of half a million people being slaughtered by their own countrymen. In each case, America never lifted a finger.
The rivers of Indonesia ran red and thick with gore at the end of Mr. Sukarno's regime, but the American government thought that was fine since it was presumed members of the Communist party were having their throats cut en masse.