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originally posted in:Secular Sevens
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Edited by Diplomat:
5/4/2013 10:12:58 PM
11
White Man's Burden and American Foreign Policy
I've been grappling with this idea for quite some time now, which is the notion that the American foreign policy paradigm is a manifestation of white man's burden. Our country, according to this idea, believes that we have a moral obligation to prevent "lesser" nations from making mistakes. This results in a slew of military interventions (i.e. Kosovo, Libya, or Somalia) and economic assistance (i.e. USAID), because we believe that they are incapable of finding a solution themselves.
I'm not entirely sure if I believe this, but what do you think? If our foreign policy really is a nationalistic offshoot of white man's burden, is it bad? I mean, we are only helping to develop stability in order to prevent the deaths of more people and open up markets for American businesses. Of course, that can easily be misconstrued as civilizing the savages, can't it?
EDIT: I forgot to add in economic reasoning
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Edited by Gabriel Eisen: 5/5/2013 2:24:08 AMThe liberalization of labor, trade and investment have guided American policies, both foreign and domestic, for decades. As mentioned earlier, destabilization (Kermit Roosevelt Jr.'s political action in Iran in the 1950's is a prime example and the template for much of the policies that would follow into the present), aiding and encouraging multiple opposing factions in conflict, and numerous cases where democracy is dumped out the window when it was not useful to these interests (much of Central and South America in the mid to late 20th century) are common elements of the paradigm. White man's burden may be one of the ways these vastly unpopular ideas are rationalized.
