Lecture 3
(cont'd): Thinking about the National Interest
The news:
- U.S.
Envoy Urges Gaza Cease-Fire NYT Jan 28, 2009
- At
a Border Crossing, Drivers and Truckloads of Aid for Gaza Go
Nowhere,
NYT Jan 28, 2009
- Clinton
Sees an Opportunity for Iran to Return to
Diplomacy,
NYT Jan 28, 2009
- Aides
Say Obama’s Afghan Aims Elevate War, NYT Jan 28, 2009
- Jimmy
Carter with Jon Stewart, Jan 26, 2009
- Jon
Stewart on Obama's Interview with Al-Arabya, Jan. 28, 2009
-
Two years
ago:
From last
class:
"Islam has bloody borders."
- Double standards??
(Huntington says no:
"people apply one standard to their kin-country and a different
standard to others..." p13. Are human rights (and democracy)
viewed as imperialism by those reacting against western values,
p17.and is it possible to modernize but not to westernize?...cf
Mexico and Turkey efforts to be part of Europe, USA..
-
- Alternative visions:
what else, besides
clashes of civilization, shapes our world?
- American empire? :
we have little
appetite, lack the skills, in an unruly world.
- realism:
contending states
and the balance of power - Realpolitik?
- globalization and class
war: trade, mobile
capital, people on the move, communications - and threats to
national sovereignty as Putin
once declared! - but
states survive, especially with the current crisis.
- interdependence:
New World Order (GHW
Bush) - the liberal vision of international relations - Immanuel
Kant, Perpetual
Peace: A Philosophic Sketch (1795)
-
- Major
problems
- environment:
the problem of
global warming
- North-South :
the problem of
economic inequality
- Francois-Rene de
Chateaubriand, 1841: "The too great disproportion of conditions
and fortunes could be sustained as long as it was hidden; but
as soon as this disproportion has been generally noticed, the
death blow has been dealt....what will you do with the human
race, unemployed?"
- anarchy and the privatization of WMD -
see, for example, smuggling
uranium in Georgia
- asymmetrical warfare:
declining utility
of traditional arms and armies
-
- Three kinds of power
(Joseph Nye)
- military
- economic
- "soft" (persuasion - legitimacy - moral
example) - needed for tackling many major problems, including WOT.
Increasingly important with ever faster, deeper communications
associated with globalization.
-
The politics of muddling
through, most difficult in the Middle East where:
- US ethnic interests
- yet world strategic center
is Persian
Gulf region...oil....terrorism?
- For a start: US goals in
the region:
- homeland defense
- Israel
- oil
- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, other
friendly governments?
- justice?
- human rights?
- democracy - the American
beacon?
- Pax Americana?
democracy within and among
nations? Where is your preferred vision of the world - and
America's
role in the world? -
as a start toward - let me repeat - doing
your own foreign policy making.
-
Main page
Jan. 28, 2009
Department
of Government,
College of
Liberal Arts, University of
Texas at Austin.
Questions, Comments, and Suggestions to
chenry@mail.utexas.edu