Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: bamacre
A better question is, why in the hell are the Republicans and Democrats trying to poke the bear by expanding NATO to its borders? And why do the Republicans and Democrats have a hard-on for Iran?
This imperialistic and interventionist foreign policy shared by the two parties is greatly weakening our nation.
I think it's because the default mode for any major power is to pursue more power. Some nations learn not to, or are unable to. Few major powers are so restricted.
This is how unwittingly, we can move more and more towards ventralized global power (currently the regions are consolidating - Europe now Asia and Americas more and more).
There are 'interested parties' from the Pentagon to the arms industry who have real business issues involving these things, and the power to do something about it.
Eisenhower wasn't trying to be funny when he spoke about this, and neither was FDR when his plan for for the Pentagon to be a temporary building because he said if they got a big permanent base outside the watchful eyes of elected government, they could get out of control. The idea of saying "you know, the world's political structure is probably better for the human race if we hold what we have" doesn't come up much in the meetings of the leaders.
The ironic thing is, even while I'm opposed to a lot of the power building, I'm also and perhaps more exposed to other worse regimes doing it, which can happen if we don't.
The world's power structure isn't just shaping up around regional governments, though, it's a whole lot around the big businesses, who are set to ally as the real 'world government'.
And their enemy is often democracy, who can thwart their interests, and again and again you will see measures put in place that cripple the power of elected governments.
Until we find ways to set up power to prevent nations from pursuing their 'interests' with violence, we'll likely continue to see these things happen, including form the US.
On a more dangerous note, increasingly the US's leading advantage in the world it its military, and that unfortunately may make it more likely it'll get used more.