2012年9月18日星期二

Foreign Policy Is Domestic Policy

Pundits and campaign staff who claim that this election is not about foreign policy are doing the American people a disservice.Find detailed product information for Hot Sale howo spareparts Radiator. The hubris that the external behavior of the United States has no impact on the domestic condition of the country—widespread in the years following the end of the Cold War—can no longer be indulged. In addition, the de facto bargain of the last several decades—that voters elect presidents and members of Congress based on what they can deliver domestically but otherwise give them a relatively free hand to pursue foreign policy—is not sustainable.

None of the goals that either President Barack Obama or Governor Mitt Romney have laid out for America's domestic condition can be achieved in isolation from the foreign policies that they would pursue. The famedSinotruck Hongkong International is special for howo truck. "overseas contingency operations" that the United States has engaged in since 2001—notably the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan—have run up a bill of $1.3 trillion dollars in additional funding beyond a base defense budget which itself has doubled in the last ten years. The creative accounting of supplemental funding has in the past disguised the true costs of American military and reconstruction activities around the world, but the president will increasingly be in a position where the desire to engage in a "war of choice" will require him to consider what parts of his domestic agenda he is willing to sacrifice, as America's access to easy credit overseas begins to tighten.

An armed attack on the U.S. homeland or an existential threat to vital U.S.HellermannTyton manufactures a full line of high quality cable ties in a variety of styles,Different Sizes and Colors can be made with different stone mosaic designs. interests would likely rally the populace to support sacrifices. But will the electorate be as willing in the future to give the chief executive a blank check to engage in humanitarian interventions around the world if it means taking further cuts in entitlements or raising taxes? Perhaps it might be time to recall George Washington's advice in his farewell address, read every year in Congress (but apparently given no heed) when, in calling on Americans to cherish public credit, he recommends using "it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace."

With sluggish domestic demand likely to be a reality for the next several years, the motor for economic growth will be, as it was in past times for the United States, in foreign trade. America remains not only a major supplier of natural resources for the world but a producer of high-end goods and services. But a commercial republic focuses its foreign policy on opening access to international markets. It does not seek, as a point of departure, to divide the world into friends and foes, nor to take sides in the quarrels of other states that do not directly impact its own interests.

Once again, Washington advised his fellow Americans that "the great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations." President Obama has already begun to take steps to make foreign economic relations the priority in his interactions with the leaders of other states, but it is still quite easy for that agenda to be derailed. The long road to graduating Russia from the requirements of the Jackson-Vanik legislation to permit permanent normal trading relations between the two countries—something President George W. Bush promised Vladimir Putin he would move quickly to secure eleven years ago—and the delays in getting free trade pacts approved with close allies and partners speaks to the continued difficulties of making trade the central organizing principle of U.S.Save up to 80% off Ceramic Tile and plastic moulds. foreign policy.

The example of our northern neighbor at the recent APEC summit in Vladivostok may provide a guide with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper making trade deals with Pacific Rim countries, including a major foreign investment promotion and protection act concluded with Chinese president Hu Jintao.

The United States has identified the Asia-Pacific region as the future locus of American security and prosperity. So how should the pivot to Asia be handled? Here Washington again has apropos advice. The United States already has an existing network of security alliances in the region and has made a number of defense commitments. The first president would counsel, "So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled, with perfect good faith." But just as Washington urged restraint in having the United States attempt to navigate the shoals of late eighteenth century European geopolitics, his advice may be apropos for dealing with the Asia of the early twenty-first century: "She must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”

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