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>Marshall plan. Little to do with reconstruction, lots to do with ensuring economic dependence. Why not talk about the Dawes and Young plans? >Defense of Sout
by madaxe 13y ago
>Marshall plan.
Little to do with reconstruction, lots to do with ensuring economic dependence. Why not talk about the Dawes and Young plans?
>Defense of South Korea.
Again, not doing objective good, protecting American interests, and a direct result of USAMGIK.
>Support for Taiwan
This is solely to piss off PRC, and always has been, and again can't really be seen as "good" as the principle mode of this support is in selling them lots and lots of guns.
>Public and private responses to natural disasters throughout the world.
Public responses good, yes, but the government responses to natural disasters - not so much. Lots of ODA, but that's just an economic shackle, rather than helpful aid.
>Argument by hyperbole isn't very interesting or useful and analysis of historical events is always difficult because the alternatives not taken are hard to evaluate against the actual choices that were made.
This is true, and it's hard to condense decades of thinking into a single post, but I stand by my assertion that US foreign policy sucks.
- gtt 13y ago>Little to do with reconstruction, lots to do with ensuring economic dependence. Why not talk about the Dawes and Young plans? Could you explain this a little? How this economical dependence was created? How does it related to Dawes and Young plans?
- madaxe 13y agoSure, no problem. It relates to D&Y as it's similar in vein. It was wildly successful in getting European economies rolling again, but the hook was that it ensured penetration into and possession of European markets by American business interests. It also served as a cultural hook, by massively upping the volume of American goods exported to Europe. Either way, it was pretty successful in its publicised goals, but also very successful in the less spoken about goals of US hegemony. D&Y were overtly intended to make Germany dependent on the US, and the great depression pretty much directly precipitated the fall of the Weimar republic and the rise of National Socialism, as it absolutely buggered their economy and caused huge resentment. Dawes of course got the Nobel Peace Prize, even though his work would ultimately set the stage for the bloodiest conflict the world has ever known.
- gtt 13y agoThank you for clear explanation. Any further reading (besides wikipedia)?
- gwright 13y agoYou seem to be arguing that there is some sort of utopian national policy mechanism that would benefit its receipent(s) but would be independent of the sponsor's national interests, would provide economic assistance but not create economic shackles, provide assistance without creating dependence, and so on. Obviously you don't think US foreign policy satisfies any of those criteria. I'd be interested in knowing what such a policy would look like or even if you've got any historical examples.