"Brother, can you spare a dime..." American inside joke. Except it's not funny...Originally Posted by Bob's World
That is arguably true but I take exception to "these days." That usage implies that there was a time when there was no bit of tarnish on the old escutcheon. I don't think that's ever been the case though I certainly acknowledge many would like to believe that.And while "brand America" is a bit tarnished these days, it is still a brand that carries a very positive connotation in most communities.I think that's a quite idealistic appraisal. Most people in the world -- to include inside the US -- aren't terribly concerned with our supposed former ideals. They are concerned with themselves and today.What is often cast as "anti-Americanism" is more often a rejection of current U.S Foreign Policy that is often coupled with a sense of betrayal/disappointment that that policy as applied to their people and their nation has drifted so far from the ideals that the nation was founded upon.Which aspects of the heritage? Which words? The words come from Politicians who cater to a domestic audience. The heritage includes over 200 years of interventions, raids and chicanery most aimed to advance US commercial interests.Simply aligning our actions more closely with our heritage and our words will be a big step in making this happen.
Note that I think neither of those things is terrible. Politicians are weasels and live for double speak. That's reality, I don't like it but it's acceptable because they are mutually constraining and / or self defeating more often than not. Our strong push for commercial freedom and dominance has in the former aspect been beneficial to the world and in the latter beneficial to us. So that's okay as well. I mention all that only to suggest that belief in the myth of an America that played nice and did only decent things is woefully incorrect. We play rough and we should.
Fuchs said: ""Yet, once don't do dirty things and are just a distant country with lots of distant friends and a large economy, you're not that special or important any more....You stopped playing great power games then."" That too is mythical. Not doing "dirty things" would have meant that we were a vassal of someone who did do "dirty things." We are indeed a distant country from all save Mexico and Canada, a large country -- quite large, almost overly so -- and do have a large economy. What that means, as I suspect he knows, is that we cannot stop playing great power games. Much as I personally wish we would and could, we cannot -- until we reach that vassal level of existence and fragment which is going to happen eventually but is highly unlikely in our lifetime or that of our children. So we're going to keep playing "dirty things"; no choice.
The "dirty things" in my comment are in quotes because 'dirty' is a state of mind, in the eye of the beholder and a relative term. The "dirty things" we have done -- and they are many -- are quite benign on a World scale in comparison to those of many others. We are and were not perfect, not by a long shot -- but we've done far better than most....
So we're going to keep doing things. That doesn't mean we cannot go about it more intelligently than we have these last 30 years...True and I think we've finally figured that out...But the US possesses the full bag of carrots and sticks that make up DIME... Simply picking some strongman and supporting him through thick and thin is only one COA, and not the most creative one, and certainly not one that is nearly as effective as it used to be.
The acronym DIME places its constituent values in an order. That order is the order in which we should place our efforts in international engagement. Unfortunately, we have since the time of the phrase with which I started this comment but certainly in the last 30 years tended to operate on the concept of EMDI. Phonetically, that's 'empty.' A DIME isn't much, empty is less...
Much as I'd like to see us disengage from a lot of things, we cannot. What we can do is improve our engagement levels and who does the engaging -- the CoComs should go...
We also need to adjust our engagement capacity and capability by avoiding direct involvement of the GPF in FID and such like, developing an ability to perform strategic raids -- using that GPF and several other things. Mostly, we just need to play to our strengths instead of to those of others as we have done for the last 50 plus years.
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