Isidingo - The Need

American people are generally very stupid when it comes to the rest of the world. If their foreign policies were not so deadly they would be charming in a Disney kind of way. But let us face the truth here. The average American has little idea about that country's foreign policy and is happy to leave it to the people in power as long as they can carry on with their daily struggle for the dollar. Let us not forget their God-given right (well constitutional right at least) to "pursue happiness".
This makes them the perfect cows for their leaders to milk. A billion dollars for Iraq, a billion dollars for Nato, a billion dollars for Taiwan, a billion dollars for South Korea, a billion dollars for Afghanistan, round and round it goes to end up in Dick Cheyney's pockets. Because the American leaders are in the business of war, or at least armed standoffs.
For years now this didn't cost Americans anything but their hard earned cash, their educations and their medical and social services. But then they were suckered into believing that THOSE were not their rights. There is something fundamentally wrong with a society that believes buying a gaz guzzling, air polluting monster-car is their "right" but having their children taught to read, or looking after someone who has an illness, or putting a roof over a veteran's head is not a "right".
Some of them do the math. Some of them look at America's foreign policy and scratch their heads and wonder why.
The average American does not want to spend years patrolling some foreign hostile country, getting maimed or killed for a bigger reason other than to protect their families. They have been sucker punched into the Iraq war, which had nothing to do with 9/11. And only now they are beginning to wake up to that fact. But the problem is far more pervasive than just Iraq or Afghanistan.
And when it is not a hot issue, when Americans are not being killed but just paying out billions of greenbacks, the American public goes back to it's family and it's get rich or famous quick schemes, and empties its pockets to fund interventions across the globe. In a way, the hollow joke is on them.
The US empire interferes in almost every country in the world in some form or another. And many of its biggest investments are now entirely obsolete. Yes the American voters don't ever seem to ask why they are still ongoing.
Why is America still involved in Nato when it is so clearly against America's national interests? This is an obsolete organisation that continues to expand. It was once believed that Europe needed defending from the Soviet Union. But from whom is the US defending Europe today? And the joke is that Europe has a larger population and a larger gross domestic product than America does. So if anyone needs to be helping anyone, Europe should be helping the US.
We can see, though, the rhetoric used by the US to maintain its military presence in Europe. Whereas before it was there to keep the communists down - whether those were homegrown communists or foreign ones - now it is to "contain Russia".
Why does Russia need to be contained?
Because it refuses to be a US client state. It refuses the Mafia's protection and it refuses to pay the price of that protection. So they will kick it and provoke it until it lashes out and then they will need to "contain it" again.
Similarly misguided is America's continuing defence of South Korea. From whom are they defending this successful Asian powerhouse? The North? The South has more than 40 times the GDP and twice the population of the North. Most South Koreans no longer fear the North and in fact have been subsidising it for years. If the Americans had to leave, in all likelihood the North and South would reunite, and get on with their lives after the heinous suspension of normality after world war II. But no. Condi Rice and crew have their fingers in that pie, stirring and stirring, intimating the North has nuclear weapons when no one has ever confirmed this. The strident whining of the US power elites about this non-issue is carried world wide. North Korea has no expansionist ideas. It can barely keep itself together. What it wants and what is happening despite the US's best efforts, is for an opening up of the economic borders and for its people to join the boom.
Then there's Japan. There's a nation that needs to be firing off interceptor missiles like the lap-dogs of the empire that they are. Again, the joke is on America. Japan is the second ranking economy in the world. It is more than capable of protecting itself, and funding that protection.
American elites like the idea of the US trying to run the world, so Joe average must foot the bill. But there is a hidden danger in this naivete.
Serious armed conflict is unlikely in Asia or Europe, but Washington's promise to defend the Baltic states and Eastern Europe means that all of those nations' squabbles with Russia become America's squabbles too. And Washington's implicit guarantee to Taiwan does the same thing with mainland China. This may offer some deterrent to aggression, however it also ensures American involvement in conflicts that have little relevance to US security.
Moreover, this protectionist attitude of America creates and incentive for irresponsible behaviour by the smaller powers they are protecting. As long as small powers believe Washington will rush to their defence in a conflict with bigger powers - like Russia or mainland China - they are likely to act more aggressively. And this is obvious in Taiwan today, with Chen Shui bian provoking China beyond reasonable lengths.
This in turn affects the internal security of China and Russia who are forced into an arms race on a larger scale than would normally be necessary. This in turn takes finances away from the populations of Russia and China and affects those nations' services to their people. And the resentment and anger continues to grow against the perpetrator of it all - the United States.
It's time a strong Europe and Asia told them to back off, butt out and go home.