3 ms·

Americans are better aligned with the largely Shi'ite Muslim Persians than with Wahhabbist (Sunni) Muslim Arabs. Note that this has almost nothing to do with r

Americans are better aligned with the largely Shi'ite Muslim Persians than with Wahhabbist (Sunni) Muslim Arabs. Note that this has almost nothing to do with relations between the governments of the U.S. and Iran. On the axis of prince to ayatollah, I prefer the ayatollah. On the axis of theocratic absolute monarchy to theocratic constitutional republic, I prefer the republic. Supporting the Shah was a mistake. Supporting the House of Saud is also a mistake. Supporting the ayatollahs would be another mistake. What the U.S. should be doing is to support the personal and economic freedoms of all people living in Asia Minor, and to stop making their sole points of contact the strongarm governments and/or rebel groups. Like everyone else on the planet, the people in that region just want one of two things: help my business prosper, or leave me in peace. The constant military interventions and arms support and political deals serve neither goal.

cmurf 10y ago
"support" personal and economic freedoms for all people is code for what policy, exactly? Because the word is vague on its own, and in the way in which you're using it. This sounds like a very interventionist foreign policy, otherwise what else could "support" mean, if it's at all a meaningful statement? I also think you severely underestimate the strength of entrepreneurship as a social class, in that area of the world. It's not like they materialize out of nowhere the instant the U.S. stops propping up strongarm governments. They didn't exist in any signficant number before U.S. intervenist policies either. And by what moral authority do you draw upon to suggest that these countries should be modeling themselves off the U.S. economically in the first place? I think the better policy is to leave them alone, in the John Quincy Adams approach to foreign policy. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/jqadams.htm https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/jqadams.htm
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." --T. Jefferson It means you leave people alone, unless you have a mutually beneficial trade to offer them. If a country has no entrepreneurial class, you look to make money elsewhere. The US has no moral authority to demand imitation. It just has money--lots and lots of money. And it lets its own businesses spend their own money relatively freely, so long as they obey most of the laws and regulations and pay most of the taxes and make sufficient campaign contributions. So that leaves only two acceptable foreign policy sticks. You have the embargo, and you have the boycott. And you have only one carrot--access to all the money held by your country's consumer market and philanthropic donors. The US could decide, for instance, to boycott all goods and services produced in whole or in part by children under the age of 16 years, or by prisoner or slave laborers. This would, of course, require detailed provenance records for all goods entering US ports, and voluntary certification inspections for facilities listed in those records. And it would make all goods imported to the US more expensive. And it would put a lot of child laborers out of work, even if they really do need to be working to survive. If you are an international supplier, you only need to imitate US working conditions if you want to export to the US. If you do want access to the market, you can't get there with kids, convicts, or slaves. This is slow. Apartheid ended 35 years after the first international boycott campaign, and the actual impact of the boycott is debatable. Israel has shrugged off a boycott for a long time, because the US actively undermines it. The US embargo against Cuba never produced any meaningful result, after many long decades. In contrast, you can charge in, guns blazing, topple a regime, eradicate its bureaucracy, and stir up its internal politics with a bayonet, then go home by the end of your presidential term. But it isn't going to earn you many friends.
tyenl 10y ago
It is true that U.S. culture is far more aligned with Shia Islam, but it is merely a game of numbers and control. ~80% of muslims are Sunni or some offshoot whereas the remaining percentage consists of Shia and other very small sects. As a result, Sunni is the dominant force in the ME except in Iran and half of Iraq where the Shia population is concentrated. If the goal of the US policy is to exert as much control over the ME, then aligning with Sunni is the clear play.

cmurf 10y ago

"support" personal and economic freedoms for all people is code for what policy, exactly? Because the word is vague on its own, and in the way in which you're using it. This sounds like a very interventionist foreign policy, otherwise what else could "support" mean, if it's at all a meaningful statement? I also think you severely underestimate the strength of entrepreneurship as a social class, in that area of the world. It's not like they materialize out of nowhere the instant the U.S. stops propping up strongarm governments. They didn't exist in any signficant number before U.S. intervenist policies either. And by what moral authority do you draw upon to suggest that these countries should be modeling themselves off the U.S. economically in the first place? I think the better policy is to leave them alone, in the John Quincy Adams approach to foreign policy. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/jqadams.htm https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/jqadams.htm

logfromblammo 10y ago
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." --T. Jefferson It means you leave people alone, unless you have a mutually beneficial trade to offer them. If a country has no entrepreneurial class, you look to make money elsewhere. The US has no moral authority to demand imitation. It just has money--lots and lots of money. And it lets its own businesses spend their own money relatively freely, so long as they obey most of the laws and regulations and pay most of the taxes and make sufficient campaign contributions. So that leaves only two acceptable foreign policy sticks. You have the embargo, and you have the boycott. And you have only one carrot--access to all the money held by your country's consumer market and philanthropic donors. The US could decide, for instance, to boycott all goods and services produced in whole or in part by children under the age of 16 years, or by prisoner or slave laborers. This would, of course, require detailed provenance records for all goods entering US ports, and voluntary certification inspections for facilities listed in those records. And it would make all goods imported to the US more expensive. And it would put a lot of child laborers out of work, even if they really do need to be working to survive. If you are an international supplier, you only need to imitate US working conditions if you want to export to the US. If you do want access to the market, you can't get there with kids, convicts, or slaves. This is slow. Apartheid ended 35 years after the first international boycott campaign, and the actual impact of the boycott is debatable. Israel has shrugged off a boycott for a long time, because the US actively undermines it. The US embargo against Cuba never produced any meaningful result, after many long decades. In contrast, you can charge in, guns blazing, topple a regime, eradicate its bureaucracy, and stir up its internal politics with a bayonet, then go home by the end of your presidential term. But it isn't going to earn you many friends.

tyenl 10y ago

It is true that U.S. culture is far more aligned with Shia Islam, but it is merely a game of numbers and control. ~80% of muslims are Sunni or some offshoot whereas the remaining percentage consists of Shia and other very small sects. As a result, Sunni is the dominant force in the ME except in Iran and half of Iraq where the Shia population is concentrated. If the goal of the US policy is to exert as much control over the ME, then aligning with Sunni is the clear play.