Personal viewpoint generously added to article syntheses
We, the people of the United States of America, should have been taught that foreign policy is a pivotal aspect of international relations that seeks to protect national interests with diplomacy and discussion. Our interactions with other nations should come with words, not weapons. But for hundreds of years, the American government has misunderstood foreign policy. To apply our country’s foreign policy to easily understandable situations, the inability to comprehend what my teacher is lecturing about would result in sudden lead poisoning, and a justification for my unfinished homework would be to torch the assignment altogether. “Acta non verba” is a Latin phrase that means “action, not words.” The mantra is best popularized by the EA DICE video game Battlefield: Bad Company, but Washington seems take this phrase much too seriously.
Foreign Policy agrees.
No, foreign policy is not an entity that can make decisions. Foreign Policy, as in the American magazine dedicated to political affairs, especially of those outside or between the United States. Owned by the Washington Post Company, the bimonthly periodical features a host of acclaimed writers and does not exhibit a clear political leaning, just like the Washington Post newspaper itself. While they seem nonpartisan enough, their views on foreign policy are unusually fatalistic – as if America bears little foreign policy as well. Their stance, I can agree on, if the preceding argument did not explain anything. I found several articles on foreignpolicy.com compelling, but others were downright befuddling – or disturbing, to be exact.
Our “Foreign Policy”
It is unmistakable that the United States has an apparent lack of actual, diplomatic foreign policy. Foreign Policy (hereafter, FP) thinks it’s simply military policy with military bases and soldiers over embassies and ambassadors. The argument is incontrovertible. Our militarized responses to nearly every problem that has been thrown at us (or that simply lies there, in the case of the Cold War), have resulted in billions in dollars allocated for weapons research and development and military defense. This, of course, is all paid for by dutiful taxpayers that cannot tell the government we don’t need to defend ourselves against all 200+ nations in the world or endlessly pester small nations to dismantle nuclear weaponry as if we were poking them on Facebook. In “The Empire at Dusk,” the writer investigates these deep problems in our “foreign policy.” He accurately explains that the United States faces staggering economic crisis – as if we’re not in crisis already – by playing national defense insurance agent through installing expensive military bases and sending soldiers to stand guard against perceived “threats” in random places across the planet. Stephen Glain also discusses the methods in which we addressed the numerous problems America faced after World War II, from the gross overreaction towards the Soviet Union’s development to our massive military campaigns against terrorism under the Bush Administration. In reality, the self-defense we played against Iraq to dispose Saddam Hussein and his “weapons of mass destruction” was really a preemptive strike against...uh, nothing. It ended up as another way to promote “the American way” of democracy and whatnot – best demonstrated with the failed “government in a box” plan in Afghanistan. It is important to note that the “war on drugs” took a similar path – one of small arms. Is it no surprise, then, if we were told that the State Department seems grossly underfunded, understaffed, and undertrained when compared to the Department of Defense? It’s not just because learning how to talk is that much harder than shooting a gun.
What I believe is the most crucial parts of the article are the final segments, which explain the outdated and overambitious ideology that America should maintain armed forces across the world as to maintain global control against any threat. We are a big target, but we may have inflated our size, and even more so after a harrowing 9/11 that threw the American people off severely – most Americans support the Patriot Act, which gives the government the ability to infringe on the constitutional rights of residents in exchange for ‘defending national sovereignty’ and other patriotic jargon. The most relevant – and at the same time scariest – example proposed to such is America’s problem with China. We are deeply troubled at the rise – for the first time since we attained superpower status post-World War II – that there is a potential competitor to our global military-political-economic hegemony on the rise.
Asian Defense
From the Pentagon’s narrow-minded trigger-happy perspective, the logic is impossible to challenge. China is rapidly developing advanced weapons systems capable of destroying America’s. China possesses nuclear weapons. China has a massive standing army. This is enough to convince the DoD that China is ready for war, whereas China is merely on the defensive. (More reasoning for China’s defensive position will come later.) Whatever actual diplomatic relations the United States has established in Asia have almost entirely been dedicated to forming a defense perimeter around the People’s Republic. It doesn’t matter if you go left-to-right on the map or vice versa. The United States has maintained close and cooperative ties with Japan, which we have subordinated into ideological followers after exporting democracy there in the postwar era. South Korea enjoys a positive relationship with America; we gave them capitalism after the Korean War (following a similar path as Japan) and now they love us, be they the citizens or government officials. While opinions of America from the Middle East are at depressing all-time lows, Korean opinion of America and its superpower status is among the highest of the world – this is coming from what surveys and statistics show to be one of the most culturally arrogant nations on earth. In the 2011 Pew Research poll on US favorability, Japan was one of the few countries to bear a higher percentage of favorability than Korea. Washington maintains relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan) despite our abidance to the One-China policy, in which we recognize the People’s Republic of China as the only China there is – thus, one China. Relations with Taiwan are mutually positive and we have sold the tiny island entity weapons and military vehicles – including F-16 fighter jets – as recently as last year, when President Obama presented a 6.4 billion USD weapons deal to the Taiwanese (much to China’s utter dismay). Taiwan’s far-right Progressive Party (despite their liberal ideas, they should be labeled conservative; Taiwanese do not differentiate between the left and the right) believes in maintaining strong ties with the United States to achieve independence – even more than the dominant Nationalist Party (Kuomintang). The irony of the nature of our relations with Taiwan is imminent – it gives us the ability to block China’s front door from what we believe will be some arbitrary naval attack. The Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea remain the two most strategically vital maritime regions of East Asia – something FP takes note of as well.
Our substantial ties with countries in Southeast Asia – some of which are competitors for ownership of parts of the South China Sea – further demonstrate the strategic military defense the Pentagon has created. Although Vietnam is a communist state, the United States extends cordiality with demonstrations of our naval power and competence. Vietnam and Taiwan both claim the South China Sea to be their naval territory, making an American relationship more crucial and ominous. All across the islands of Southeast Asia, the United States’ military influence is undeniable and highly visible. The United States has supplied defensive measures to numerous countries in the region. Longtime ally and American imperial brainchild Philippines has US-sponsored naval defense. America has offered extensive military assistance, equipment, and training to Thailand, which includes an extensive military exercise program. Their government allows our Navy to make pit stops on their coast, which features one of the best naval facilities in Southeast Asia. We have run extensive military joint exercises with Brunei and Malaysia. America has trained and supplied arms to economic power nation-state Singapore, which also enjoys a free trade agreement. Many Southeast Asian countries have free trade agreements with the US, but free trade with China has long been stalled despite calls for economic partnership, partially due to the volume and profits involved in the trade. Military bases in Guam allow America to oversee these activities fairly easily. Draw the line: it makes a neat defensive curve blocking the United States from China.
While the United States has itself well-defended from a hypothetical Pacific encroachment from China, we have further ensured our defense with preemptive protection to the south and west of China’s borders. Our cordial relations with many of China’s immediate bordering countries – and the guns we have there, from military bases to counterterrorism operations in Central Asia – serve to finish sealing up China in a defensive bubble. Widely publicized weapons deals totaling over seven billion USD were mentioned in President Barack Obama’s state visit to India last year. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have declared India’s profound importance as an American strategic partner – which really means, “I like how you guys are right next to China and that we’re giving you guys some weapons at the same time.” Cool story bro.
Under the guise of counterterrorism – much of it legitimate – the United States has also managed to usher in extensive military firepower to countries within firing range of China. The long-running counterinsurgency operation in Afghanistan is a prime example. Other counterterrorism/defense/aid efforts with Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan serve to seal the ultimate defense perimeter against China. Vice President Joe Biden’s state visit to Mongolia this week may also include defense talks.
China’s military expansion can be easily explained: they are a rapidly growing country that needs to know how to be able to defend itself. Dreadful mistakes dating from the Qing dynasty era have traumatized China; the Chinese Communist Party knows that defense is a necessary investment however much disappointment that brings to Washington, who still secretly hopes nobody will ever wield a stick that comes close to ours in size. Still, China’s military expenditure as a percentage of GDP is half of America’s; gross spending is more than six times as less. Coming from China, a country with a population quadrupling ours, the United States’ fears are almost irrational and a waste of taxpayer dollars. We pay far too much for peacetime at home. The greatest irony in America’s lavish habit of protecting one-third of the world and helping every country in proximity to China for our apparent benefit is that, well, China is helping us pay for it. America is swiping its credit card like mad to buy guns just to point them at the credit card company’s headquarters. And all the creditor has to do is ask for their money back.
Sino-American Conflict?
The above analysis of the situation, the Pentagon’s actions, and FP all point to the fact that Washington seems to be hell-bent on promoting perpetual defensive measures to be taken. It doesn’t help when you stumble across another article that describes in detail the impending naval clash in the South China Sea. A sensationalist title, nevertheless. The Sea is described as an incredibly strategic region for the volume of passing trade, the sheer populations of the countries that surround it, and the nature of developing economies to stake claims over some of these waters. The fact that almost all the aforementioned countries that surround the sea rely on America for financial and military assistance does not help the matter. The writer notes a parallel between this scenario and late 1800s America in the age of neocolonialism, when we projected power towards the Caribbean and garnered international strength via the Panama Canal. He makes an important point that China’s naval expansion is simply a historical reaction – a refusal to be exploited by Western bullies once more. With China being the obvious contestant for regional hegemony, the writer again attempts to use US parallel to explain the situation: China will exert ‘soft’ imperialism over its neighbors. This is a bad comparison – the Chinese think nothing like the Americans. As clueless as the writer seems to be on China’s actions to come, he does explain that America should stop trying to flex its military muscles all over the world; it’s simply too much. Let the neighbor take care of his front lawn.
The writer’s opinions on China are shared by much of the West and exhibit the Westerners’ misunderstanding of East Asian political, social, and cultural philosophies when he asks: What the hell is China up to?
What if I told them they were up to nothing? Laissez-faire – “Let it be.”
Democratization – An American Fetish
The last article on FP.com that caught my attention was a blog post from the “loyal opposition” about China and democratization. These words aren’t to be used simultaneously.
The article details a recent protest – twelve thousand strong – for the closing of a petrochemical plant in Dalian, provincial seat of Liaoning province in northern China, near Beijing. It somehow uses this example to posit the possibility that China will “democratize.” In Dalian, the county government quickly responded by stating that they would take action quickly. The response was indeed rapid: the government and the chemical plant are currently undergoing the appropriate measures to close down. The public outcry on the situation, the government backing down, and the successful result convinced the writer that this is a glimmer of hope for the Chinese people that the coming democratization will come and sweep them out the horrible tyranny that they are being subjected to.
It’s a silly fetish, guys.
The writer falls prey to the usual traps Westerners fall into as a result of their laughable misunderstanding of Chinese political affairs, which really are too dense and multilayered for anyone to understand, including myself. During the Cold War, America never told the USSR to just become a democracy; they knew it was impossible. But why do we do so to China?
The People’s Republic of China during the Mao Era (1949-1976) was full of mass political chaos and social dysfunction. The Cultural Revolution, Mao’s last-ditch effort to instigate social change, was a great socio-political jump so far left that went extended farther than the Great Leap Forward ever did in scope and level of failure. By 1976, social turmoil and a radical amount of Maoist orthodoxy (Read: ideological crap) devastated the Chinese economy to the brink of collapse; Chinese cultural traditions and society almost completely fell apart. (The effects on today’s youth are discussed in brief here.) By the time Deng Xiaoping revived the state and helped regain sanity, China, the Communist Party, and the people were scared doubtless of social tumult. Peace and stability became top priorities, and leaders were willing to pull out all the stops to maintain the status quo that they had fought so hard for. But as soon as China became stable for the first time in 10 years, democratization threatened to have everything come crashing down. When the 1984 Tiananmen Square protests broke, the Central Government was dumbstruck, to say the least. The military crackdown that followed only served as the last-ditch effort– the government could not figure out any other way without to quell the students without threatening national stability.
The petrochemical plant protests and the response that followed served to achieve the same goal. It is a question of stability, not one of democracy or democratization. The blog entry asks a series of questions in the last paragraph, one of them which is: “Will the Chinese come to resent and then to oppose a one-party state that demonstrates that it is not competent to lead them, and that it demands too high a price for the bargain of materialism in exchange for their freedom?” The Chinese are already extremely cynical of the Chinese government, but most recognize the fact that nothing can be done, or more accurately, nothing should be done. The democratization of 1.3 billion individuals, the CCP fundamentally fears (and obviously opposes), will only serve to create more of the crisis seen forty years ago.
However, the bigger idea in all this is that the United States should just stop meddling in other countries’ affairs. The article suggests that our Department of State take action to promote democratization in China, a pathetic proposal that only serves to justify the insatiable desire of the United States to sell capitalist democracy abroad. We do it with “foreign policy” – military action, in many cases – and with too much money. Is it a worthy investment to spend billions on turning Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan into American-style democracies? It doesn’t take an investment banker or an economist to figure out what’s wrong with our foreign policy. It’s too paranoid, too expensive, too overbearing, and too trigger-happy – all without diplomacy, sensibility, or pragmatism in sight. Did you know practicality is a key American social philosophy? The Pentagon doesn’t. I don’t think a five-sided building is practical at all, quite frankly.
SAT Vocabulary: (specialized terms in italics)
- pivotal - adj. of vital importance
- justification - n. vindication
- nonpartisan - n. not taking any sides (esp. in a debate)
- befuddling - adj. confusing
- incontrovertible - adj. indisputable
- hegemony - n. domination over others
- imminent - synonym of impending
- ominous - adj. foreboding or foreshadowing evil
- encroachment - n. the act of unauthorized entry
- preemptive - adj. marked by seizing initiative
- guise - n. external appearance
- expenditure - n. spending, esp. funds
- impending - n. imminent, apparent
- sensationalist - n. style meant to generate startling response
- neocolonialism - n, v. using economic and cultural forces to control a country (as opposed to direct political/military control)
- laissez-faire - n. minimal government intervention in economic affairs
- orthodoxy - n. holders of commonly accepted/dominant ideas
- quell - v. to control or diffuse a potentially explosive situation
- insatiable - adj. incapable of being satisfied
- pragmatism - adj. practicality
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