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Zonie63 -> RE: US supporting freedom and democracy? US against terrorism? (12/30/2012 10:03:03 AM)
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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
I realize that most monarchies in Europe were constitutional, but I think they were still in kind of a transitional phase on that. The Tsar was not a constitutional monarch.
Ask most Europeans if they would want a constutional monarch as a head of state or a political President and most would look to America (and France) and think of President Bush (and Sarkozy) and think nah, give me a constitutional monarchy any day of the week.
I do remember a discussion I had with an English person (who insisted on being called "English," as he resisted the term "British") who was a very staunch proponent for monarchism. His views seemed very conservative, like an arch-conservative here in the U.S., with a great deal of zealous support for property rights.
America's anti-monarchist attitudes have obviously subsided in the past century or so, but I doubt that very many here would want a monarchy, constitutional or otherwise.
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
The Kaiser may have had some limitations, but he wasn't totally powerless. They still commanded the loyalty of their populations and could have used their influence for the sake of peace. The Kaiser, Tsar, and King of England were all part of the same extended family, so regardless of whether they were constitutional or not, they still should bear their part of the blame for what happened.
The Kaiser was prisoner of the military, the King of the UK was prisoner of parliament. The British monarchy is not so secure as the American capitalist establishment.
I've heard this before, but it's hard for me to fathom that they couldn't have done anything and had no influence over their government. The monarch is still the Head of State and their soldiers take an oath to the monarch (not to a constitution, as in America). As far as I know, there's nothing in writing that actually said that the King had no power. I've been told that Britain has no written constitution. Since the military takes an oath to the monarch, the monarch can just tell them "obey me" and they would be sworn to do so. At least on paper. If there was some backroom deal or some unwritten loophole that the monarch is not really the Head of State, it wasn't really made official. It's just some kind of nod-and-a-wink, "Yeah, he's the King, heh heh."
The King of Italy was able to oust Mussolini, even though Mussolini was a dictator. So, it's hard for me to believe that the monarch's job is just to sit there and look pretty while being powerless to do anything.
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
The arms race, nationalism, and capitalism were merely symptoms of this deeper problem caused by people who think they're so "special" and "noble," along with their mindless followers. So many people seem unable to function without some "Great Leader" to tell them what to do, which is how men like Hitler and Stalin came to power in the first place. For all its faults, capitalism doesn't really operate on those terms; if anything, it's more an anti-authority "every man for himself" philosophy. Something like a Mafia "Commission" might be more analogous, where the "official" government seems more of a front than anything else.
Hitler and Stalin had power because they were dictators, not because people wanted strong leaders and voted them in and both gained power through a failure in capitalism (amongat oher political miscalculations).
They were dictators, but they weren't born into the job. There are reasons why they obtained dictatorial power and why the people mostly stood by and allowed it to happen. On paper, they weren't supposed to have dictatorial power. Their governments were republics, not monarchies.
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
I'm not saying that makes it any better, but it just seems different from what I understand about the European aristocracy and ruling classes. The problems and conflicts in Europe in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century were purely their own doing. Especially during the 19th century, America was too weak and isolated to be able to influence European affairs, so whatever problems the Europeans were having were their own fault. As harsh as that may sound, that's how most Americans might look at the situation over there.
Yes, Europe created their own problems and the problems all lead back to capitalism,
I think capitalism is kind of a double-edged sword. When looking over the past 250 years of history, we can see a great deal of technological and scientific advancements, vast improvements in quality of life, education, health care. The growth of industry, transportation, communication has also enhanced our lives greatly, both in Europe and America.
So, capitalism must have some benefit to be able to accomplish all of what has been accomplished these past few centuries. Of course, there's a downside of that, too, which I'm not forgetting.
But Europeans constantly getting into war with each other - that process actually predated capitalism, mostly due to religious discord, ethnic/tribal blood feuds, and simple greed and lust for power that has gripped so many leaders over the course of human history. Those are the real reasons for war, not abstract political systems. A system, whether capitalist or communist, is only as good as the people who actually run that system.
That's why I often bump heads with both capitalists and communists, since they both seem to think that all that's needed is the perfect "system," while believing that people are nothing more than interchangeable cogs within that system.
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
That's why a lot of Americans can't understand the finger pointing and moral judgments coming from Europe. They see it as unfairly blaming Americans for many problems originally caused by Europeans. I'm not one of those Americans who says that "we saved Europe," but nevertheless, we did feel compelled to respond to the global situation created by Europeans. After World War I, there was a strong isolationist movement advocating that the US stay out of the League of Nations and out of European affairs in general. The feeling was that we should let Europe handle its own problems.
Because you see Europe as a homogenous mass which it isn't and there is a large opposition to capitalism in Europe and that fact means there is a large opposition to US imposition of capitalism post war.
Come on, you are intelligent enough to know the USA entered WWII because it was attacked by Japan and germany declared war, not because the USA felt compelled to save Europe. By the time the USA entered the European war, even the German general staff knew Germany couldn't win.
Well, no, I don't actually see Europe as a homogenous mass, but if the different European countries decide they're going to line up in alliances and oppose each other in massive wars, then I would still say that the blame lies with the countries going to war.
Besides, when I see Europeans posting here and in other forums, they seem to imply that they view Europe as a homogenous mass. I've noticed that you've often said "most Europeans" numerous times, rather than "most Germans" or "most British." Ermood was speaking of "the outside world" as if the entire world outside of America is somehow solidified in their opposition to America.
US opinion on the war prior to our entry was somewhat mixed and in a state of flux. I don't think that most Americans wanted to save Europe, although it seems that FDR was rooting for the Western Allies and opposing Hitler early on. Even prior to America's entry, FDR passed Lend-Lease and used the U.S. Navy to help protect British shipping even before we actually entered the war. He may have been doing so to provoke Hitler, hoping that his u-boats would attack U.S. ships, which would give America a valid reason to declare war on Germany. I think FDR was willing to go to war, but he just couldn't get enough political support to do so, not until December 7, 1941.
As for Japan, they attacked us primarily because they were afraid that we would attack them if they continued with their invasions of French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies. The U.S. imposed an embargo on Japan, and the Japanese felt that US forces in the Philippines were a threat to their southern invasions. The British also wanted us to declare war on Japan if the Japanese attacked any British possessions in that region. We may not have wanted to rush in and save Europe, but we did have an apparent common interest in protecting white colonial rule in East Asia. And that's why the Japanese attacked us.
As to why Hitler declared war on America, that still remains a mystery. I think it's because he was hoping that, by declaring war on the USA, Japan would take that as a signal for them to declare war on the USSR, which never happened. He may have also felt that the U.S. fleet was so crippled that, between the Japanese fleet and Hitler's u-boat fleet, they could keep the U.S. bottled up and a non-factor in the war. At the time, German forces were just outside of Moscow, with the Kremlin in sight, and they figured that Russia was just about finished. They were wrong.
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
But after World War II, the prevailing view in America was that isolationism was a serious mistake on our part. It was believed that if we had joined the League of Nations and added our power to that of Britain and France, it might have been enough to forestall the rise of the dictators and their aggressive expansionism throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
Don't you mean the United Nations?
No, I was referring to the League of Nations, the organization that America did not join in 1919, because the Senate failed to ratify our entry into the League of Nations or the Treaty of Versailles. The U.S. signed and ratified a separate peace treaty with Germany and Austria-Hungary as a result.
But after World War II, there was a belief that our refusal to join the League of Nations was a mistake, that we should have gotten involved earlier, and that might have prevented the blood-letting of World War II. It's all "what if" now, but it has been a very strong basis of our post-WW2 foreign policies.
This was why, when the United Nations was formed in 1945, we readily joined as a charter member.
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
I think there are many Americans who felt some sense of regret about that, thinking that we might have been able to stop Hitler or Stalin before they even got powerful, if we had taken a more active role in world affairs. We could have done more sooner, but we didn't, and perhaps some Americans felt a bit guilty about that. Isolationism was no longer an option.
The economic crisis that enabled Hitler to gain power was started in America. Hitler's popularity shadows the economic crisis of the Wall Street crash. The rise iof Stalin started before WWI and that was the Russian uprising against feudalism and the USA could have done nothing about that.
Actually, the rise of Stalin started after WWI, after Lenin's death in 1924, when Stalin was in a struggle for power with Trotsky. But prior to that, during and just after WWI, the Western Allies were involved in an intervention in the Russian Civil War. If the U.S. and other Allies had committed more troops to the intervention, they might have succeeded in preventing the Soviet Union from ever existing in the first place. They could have reinstalled the Kerensky government, although at the time, U.S. public opinion was against intervention, and no other nation could adequately explain what they were doing there in the first place.
But even before then, the Western Allies could have given some boost of prestige to the Kerensky regime, since the mood in Russia was to want to end the war - "peace without annexations or indemnities," not entirely dissimilar to Wilson's Fourteen Points. If Britain and France had agreed to a joint statement about "peace without annexations or indemnities," then that would have proven to the people that it wasn't an imperial war. The British and French refused to do so, and this is what led to the fall of Kerensky, the rise of Lenin, and the subsequent rise of Stalin.
Germany's economic problems were also the result of the Treaty of Versailles, in which they lost all their colonies and were forced to pay unreasonably punitive war reparations. That wasn't all America's fault. Wilson was far more moderate in his war aims (the Fourteen Points) than his British or French counterparts, who were there to take everything for themselves and leave the rest of Europe in a disorganized mess. This is why former Allies, such as Italy and Japan, felt a bit cheated, which contributed to the rise of their ultra-nationalist governments.
Also, it wasn't just Germany's economic problems which led to the rise of Hitler. It was also the threat posed by the USSR and growing communist movements within Germany that drove many of the German moderates into the arms of Hitler. The Communist Party was quite large in Germany prior to the rise of Hitler, and some feared a possible communist takeover of that country.
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ORIGINAL: Zonie63
I've always been somewhat ambivalent about the debate between capitalism and communism. I'm familiar with both sides and their arguments, and I can see the merits and flaws in both. But I also try to be flexible in that I think we could take the good parts of each and throw out the rest. I suppose that makes me a Keynesian.
Incidently Keynes had his photo taken after the treaty of Versailles holding a card predicting the date of the next world war, he had it down as 1940. The largest part of the blame can be put at the door of the French and Belgians.
Just as an aside, I think the USA lost its claim to be an international innocent when Commodore Perry forced Japan to sign the Convention of Kanagawa (unequal treaties) which prompted Japan to militarise or become another colony of a western power.
That could be, although I never claimed that the USA was an international innocent. My main point has been that, at least in regards to our relationship with European countries, we tried to stay neutral and detached from their affairs. If Britain and France went to war with each other, our goal was to stay out.
I don't think the U.S. was in any position to colonize Japan in 1854 anyway. I think all they wanted to do was open up trade with them, but at that time, U.S. political factions were deeply divided. Japan was too far away, and we had barely started organizing the territory we stole on our own continent. Later on, I think that the European powers were content to have Japan as a modern, militarized, independent power in order to balance out the European powers also vying for control of the region.
After the Civil War, U.S. policy was focused mainly on westward expansion, organizing the western territories and solidifying their control. We were far from innocent. While the Civil War was ostensibly to end slavery, it really only ended on paper, while the same guys who defeated the South then proceeded to embark on a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West. They let the Klan run their Southern investments while operating sweatshops, factories, mines, railroads under grisly conditions in the North.
It was really quite a violent and horrible time in America, and we surely weren't innocent then, either. But we Americans have a way of fooling ourselves into thinking that what has happened is "God's will." It was also called "Manifest Destiny," often exemplified in the famous painting "American Progress." The seeds of American nationalism and patriotism as we know it today were planted during this period. That is, patriotism for America as a unified national entity and not as a loosely based coalition of "United States." This illusion was necessary in order to mitigate our misdeeds in the hearts and minds of the American people. It was believed that the blood spilled in the Civil War cleansed our nation of the sins of slavery, which justified us taking our country into a new direction, which also may be a contributing factor in the moral arrogance that others seem to observe in Americans.
The Civil War was also closely watched with a wary eye by the European powers, and when it was over, they realized that they had no interest in tangling with America. We had a modern army and navy, had come into our own and were on the verge of becoming a world power. From our own perspective, we felt rejuvenated, cleansed of our previous sins, and could go out into the world with a "clean slate" and sin even more. Of course, we were still a junior partner compared to the Europeans, but we saw what they were doing and felt it was necessary to adapt and adjust accordingly.
We weren't innocent, but we were still feeling our way into the situation and not quite sure of ourselves. The Spanish-American War was inevitable, mainly due to lingering desires for expansionism to the south and into Latin America. In order to do that, we had to settle accounts with Spain and show them who was really running the Western Hemisphere. Somehow, though, the Philippines got thrown into the mix, and that's probably where things started to really go downhill. We were never innocent, but that was a case of crossing a line we had not previously crossed, elevating us to a higher level of international intrigue, on the same level as other colonial powers. We were no longer just messing around in our backyard, but we had established a foothold on the other side of the world.
We also got involved with China, pushing the Open China policy and participated in a joint invasion of China with other European powers and Japan. We were all on the same side on that one. No one was innocent.
In later years, it was logical that America would more readily align with Britain and France, which were both democratic, capitalist, colonial powers, and Britain and France would welcome America's participation because they knew that America could effectively balance out the growing power of other potential rivals, namely Germany and Russia.
I think this was when America faced a pivotal moment regarding its international guilt/innocence and whether we would cross yet another line. When World War I broke out, America was neutral, but American sympathies were strongly pro-British. Former President Teddy Roosevelt was very much the war hawk, and he wanted America to join the war against the Germans. But most Americans were still very much against getting involved in a war in Europe. It was one thing to ally with Britain and France against the Boxers in China, but to ally with them against Germany was yet another thing altogether.
Unrestricted submarine warfare was eventually enough to put us firmly on the Allied side, but in the hearts and minds of Americans, it was a war to make the world safe for democracy. It was, in our eyes, a war for freedom, which gave validation to our military actions. Since the cause was seen as moral and just, it made Americans feel that they were on the side of right (and fed our aforementioned arrogance even more).
You can imagine that we were probably feeling pretty good about ourselves around that time. Not innocent, but still, we felt we were fighting the good fight, believing we were working for peace and brotherhood in the world. We supported the Kellogg-Briand Pact which outlawed aggressive warfare among nations, even though we didn't wish to be part of any alliance that would enforce such a treaty if it was violated (which it was later on). Isolationism may have been a way for some Americans to try to maintain our "innocence" and stay out of European affairs, their Machiavellian intrigue and their internecine wars.
But we were already involved, even as much as we tried to deny it.
I didn't really mean to go into this long digression, but I think it's necessary to examine how all of this came to pass. Sometimes, these discussions tend to degenerate into a laundry list of crimes and grievances against America, without anyone wanting to examine the reasons why and how it all happened. America's primacy didn't just happen out of the blue. I would never argue that we were innocent, but I think that we were deceived and manipulated. Maybe we've been fooling ourselves all this time.
These are questions we'll eventually have to come to terms with, as a nation. As we bicker and argue endlessly in America, polarizing into different factions blaming each other for our impending demise, with the infrastructure cracking, the safety nets shrinking, and heavily-armed lunatics running around shooting people, I think that we Americans are going to have to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask "What the hell have we done to ourselves?"
In the end, I don't think Europeans can really help us. As Ermood mentions about the "outside world" sending us a message, I don't think their messages or criticisms are very constructive. Indeed, I think the messages from the outside world are only serving to shake things up and rile people up even more over here.
I guess what I'm really getting at here is this: If the people outside of America wish to see America reformed and changed in its role in the world, then they can either help us in this - or use the situation to try to hurt us.
If their bitterness and resentment towards us compels them to try to hurt America, then they may end up hurting themselves in the process. Right now, America is in a rather fragile state of mind. While I've been closely following America's demise for my entire life here, I knew that the war fever stoked after 9/11 was the beginning of the end for us. (Actually, I knew we were finished before 9/11, but I had been clinging to the unrealistic hope that our government would change. Now, I'm somewhat resigned to the fact that we have authored our own doom and there's nothing that anyone can do about it.)
I think we might still be able to salvage the situation, but we have to completely shift our focus and direction. At minimum, we have to pull out of the Eastern Hemisphere entirely. Let the major powers on that side of the world maintain stability at their end, while we work to reconcile and promote stronger relations among nations on our side of the world. One of the motives behind NAFTA was that since the EU had formed a unified economic bloc, we thought it was necessary to do the same on our continent. Some believed that it could one day extend to all of South America as well, making the Americas the largest free trade zone in the world. We've been somewhat neglectful of that region, putting most of our attention on the Middle East, East Asia, and Europe. Mexico is in a bad way right now due to their cartel wars and widespread poverty, much of which is our responsibility. Those in America who focus on immigration issues also have to take that into consideration, since we can help Mexico and help ourselves at the same time.
I just think we have other things to do rather than be a superpower anymore. It doesn't mean that we would turn into a weak nation, but more limited in our international scope. We could get together with the other major powers and promote a regional power system, where the major powers would be bound to "keep the peace" in their own regions of the world. We're beyond the time of colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, and aggressive invasion, mainly because the world's eyes are open. We were able to get away with it when most of the world was ignorant of our ways, but now that they know us better, they're just not going to put up with that kind of bullshit anymore. (I think that's what the OP was referring to when he said that the world doesn't listen to us anymore, but that's not how I would have put it.)
Certain areas and hotspots around the world will have to be dealt with, but preferably through negotiation and the major powers all being on the same page. That's key. That's probably why it would fail, too.
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