From post #73 in this thread:
I'd read this as a general statement of non-interventionism.Mike: I totally agree that it is not our call to shape governments for others. My comment is only that the tried and true foreign policy TTP of nurturing and supporting foreign despots is obsolete and also the primary reason that nationalist insurgents sign up for the AQ road team to bring violence to America. This was becoming apparent in the information age of Steam and teletypes when the British Empire rolled up in the face of popular pressure. It is far more true today. Now, if a populace WANTs a dictator, the US should not interfere with that either. To pick such a leader, if done openly, is a form or self-determination and democracy. Not our call to judge.
But then this from post #23 in the Egypt thread:
I'd read this as a general statement of interventionism (Wilsonialism[*]) - perhaps, even an "on steroids" version if the last sentence is taken literally.Legal, trusted, and certain means of influencing government are far superior to illegal means. But when Illegal means are the only option, they are far superior to oppression and despotism. But this could go bad in a 100 different ways to be sure.
The only thing worse than acting out illegally in the pursuit of liberty is to do nothing.
That being said, your posts (and Wilf's also) have had one virtue. That virtue has been to solidify in my mind my own general positions and the exceptions to those general positions. "Never Again, But...." does have that "But" in it.
Regards
Mike
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[*] "Wilsonialism" (not an extensively used term) was defined here, Trine Flockhart, The Europeanization of Europe: The transfer of norms to Europe, in Europe and from Europe (DIIS Working Paper no 2008/7) (p.31 pdf):
Wilsonialism can be rather easily viewed as a form of neo-colonialism, albeit overtly expressed in very benign terms. Note that a "Creed" is a belief - one cannot argue with a belief. So, to a non-American (not raised on that "Creed"), Wilsonialism may well appear to be based on arrogance and hubris.The new ideas, which were now diffused into Europe came from the United States and were based on the American creed [20] and on an American notion of world order based on anti-imperialism and pro-nationalism, most famously expressed in the Wilsonian agenda of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Arguably the ideas were based on an American, and much more liberal, interpretation of the ideas of the Enlightenment, and as such do have a European origin, albeit in a different interpretation. The ideas expressed in Wilsonialism are basically part of an American belief in its own exceptionalism on the one hand, and in the universalism of its ideas on the other.
With the changed balance of power in the post WW1 period and the discrediting of the European idea set, initially in the slaughter of the First World War and later in the atrocities of Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism, and on the latest occasion, in the violent nationalisms during the break-up of Yugoslavia, the setting was in place for a moralistic and ideological foreign policy involving a conscious transfer of the American idea set into Europe.
The ideational content of Wilsonialism has been refined and further specified throughout the 20th century, but its essence has remained the three core notions of democracy, open economic markets and international institutions.
20 The text of the American's Creed is: ‘I believe in the United States of America as a Government of the People, by the People, for the People; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; A democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many Sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of Freedom, Equality, Justice, and Humanity for which American Patriots sacrificed their Lives and Fortunes’. Page 1917. Of course the ideas contained in the American Creed and in Wilsonialism are based on mainly European enlightenment ideas, but their emphasis is on the liberal interpretation of the Enlightenment rather than the rational interpretation.
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