ltlee1
2017-12-14 14:04:35 UTC
An eye-catching title comparing current WH to previous WH foreign policy approach.
https://thediplomat.com/2017/12/is-the-us-foreign-policy-establishment-a-dead-man-walking/
[Old Thinking]
"Indeed, as Kori Schake recently argued, the Trump White House is making many of the same arguments the George W. Bush administration made in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War to justify military action on the Korean Peninsula.
Furthermore, Donald Trump’s foreign policy so far is fairly conventional and has not broken with that of his Democratic and Republican predecessors—Twitter outbursts notwithstanding. Whether on Afghanistan, North Korea, or Syria, Trump has largely stayed the course.
This perception of the continuity of U.S. foreign policy is amplified by the fact that just as a number of U.S. foreign and defense policy experts see Germany and Japan as monoliths so do Asian and European experts view the United States.
And to a certain degree they are right: There is broad bipartisan agreement by the U.S. foreign policy establishment on the fundamentals underpinning U.S. national security including the need for American leadership in the world backed up by the threat or use of military force."
[New Situation]
"Yet, while many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment see the continuation of conventional U.S. foreign policy as comforting allies and partners, the 2003 invasion of Iraq invokes opposite sentiments among a number of Asian and European experts I talked to: They fear unilateral American military action."
[Old Thinking + New Situation = Dead Man Walking in the absence of new policy thinking.]
"Unlike the rest of the world, the U.S. foreign policy establishment has largely moved on from the Iraq War.
Those who supported it, admitted that they made a mistake, while simultaneously blaming the Bush administration for a jumbled execution of the war, which vicariously exculpated their own misguided assumptions to a point.
They also paid lip service to find means to better empathize with the enemy given that they acknowledged their failure to understand Middle Eastern societies.
Yet, there are few signs that members of the foreign policy establishment in 2017 speak more foreign languages, spend more years living abroad than in the early 2000s, or move outside the bubble in general.
Like similar institutions in other countries, the U.S. foreign policy establishment is relatively small, homogenous, and insular. This makes criticism from outsiders especially hard to be heard and the loss of credibility outside the blob especially hard to grasp for some."
https://thediplomat.com/2017/12/is-the-us-foreign-policy-establishment-a-dead-man-walking/
[Old Thinking]
"Indeed, as Kori Schake recently argued, the Trump White House is making many of the same arguments the George W. Bush administration made in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War to justify military action on the Korean Peninsula.
Furthermore, Donald Trump’s foreign policy so far is fairly conventional and has not broken with that of his Democratic and Republican predecessors—Twitter outbursts notwithstanding. Whether on Afghanistan, North Korea, or Syria, Trump has largely stayed the course.
This perception of the continuity of U.S. foreign policy is amplified by the fact that just as a number of U.S. foreign and defense policy experts see Germany and Japan as monoliths so do Asian and European experts view the United States.
And to a certain degree they are right: There is broad bipartisan agreement by the U.S. foreign policy establishment on the fundamentals underpinning U.S. national security including the need for American leadership in the world backed up by the threat or use of military force."
[New Situation]
"Yet, while many in the U.S. foreign policy establishment see the continuation of conventional U.S. foreign policy as comforting allies and partners, the 2003 invasion of Iraq invokes opposite sentiments among a number of Asian and European experts I talked to: They fear unilateral American military action."
[Old Thinking + New Situation = Dead Man Walking in the absence of new policy thinking.]
"Unlike the rest of the world, the U.S. foreign policy establishment has largely moved on from the Iraq War.
Those who supported it, admitted that they made a mistake, while simultaneously blaming the Bush administration for a jumbled execution of the war, which vicariously exculpated their own misguided assumptions to a point.
They also paid lip service to find means to better empathize with the enemy given that they acknowledged their failure to understand Middle Eastern societies.
Yet, there are few signs that members of the foreign policy establishment in 2017 speak more foreign languages, spend more years living abroad than in the early 2000s, or move outside the bubble in general.
Like similar institutions in other countries, the U.S. foreign policy establishment is relatively small, homogenous, and insular. This makes criticism from outsiders especially hard to be heard and the loss of credibility outside the blob especially hard to grasp for some."