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It's realpolitik: doing and saying anything and everything to get an advantage over a perceived opponent or rival. This includes intentionally making misleading
by austinz 13y ago
It's realpolitik: doing and saying anything and everything to get an advantage over a perceived opponent or rival. This includes intentionally making misleading statements and convincing people you care about moral standards when you don't.
Before Snowden changed things, it was readily apparent that everyone was ready to believe the US and nobody was ready to believe China. So the accusations were a rational thing to do.
The US isn't the only country that does this, obviously, and people are divided over whether or not it is the 'right' way to conduct international relations.
- EthanHeilman 13y ago> This includes intentionally making misleading statements and convincing people you care about moral standards when you don't. Another possible is that several groups within the US government aren't on the same page. Elements of the State Dept might work to end torture in S. America, while the CIA secretly trains S. American governments in torture. This sort of, hack everyone/steal everything isn't in the long term interests of the US government because the US has the most to lose in terms of IP/infrastructure, but engaging in this damaging behavior may allow some agencies to "get the job done" in the short term. Makes sense that groups tasked with grand-strategy would oppose this behavior, whereas groups tasked with short-term results would ignore the long game. A predictable result of a failure of oversight (left hand plays against the strategy of the right hand).