New Regimes Have Reason to Resent America

[marmar]

from truthdig:



New Regimes Have Reason to Resent America

Posted on Feb 22, 2011
By William Pfaff


The political scholar Walter Russell Mead recently alluded to more than a half-century of American “world-order-building tasks,” a formulation that I think most Americans would accept as describing the international obligations Washington assumed in 1945-46, and the policy the United States has undertaken since 1941, when it entered the Second World War against Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire.

Victory in the Second World War was followed by the Cold War, its outcome in the 1980s taken complacently to be another American victory. History was pronounced to be over—another success for Washington. Completion of that American-built world order seemed just over the horizon. Then came the 9/11 Arab attacks on the U.S. Since then, it has been world disorder that we have faced.

There are many in Washington and elsewhere who believe that the democratic awakening of the Arab nations, which has been under way since December, will consolidate a predominantly democratic order for nearly all the major states, with the U.S. enjoying a respected leadership role. My own opinion is that nothing is less likely.

The American commitment of the last four decades (at least) has been to the reactionary and undemocratic order that has prevailed in the Middle East, and to the three wars and several small and misconceived “Greater Middle Eastern” interventions that sowed the disorder now undoing Middle Eastern and Mediterranean geopolitics. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/new_regimes_have_reason_to_resent_america_20110222/?ln

[sabrina 1]

1. U.S. foreign policy over the past 60 years helped put in place

some of the world's most brutal dictators, who they supported and funded, in Latin America and everywhere else on the planet.

It is all falling apart now, not because the U.S. changed its policies, but because the suffering people who were the victims of it, have finally had enough.

We'll see how the emerging democracies deal with the U.S. from now on, but crimes, many crimes against humanity were committed with, at the very least, the backing of the U.S. (Reagan in Latin America eg) and some countries are now finally demanding accountability for those crimes. I would think the same thing will happen elsewhere.

We truly did need 'Change', especially in our foreign policy, but so far, any change that is coming is coming from people all over the world who have finally taken matters into their own hands.

Good article btw.

[Uncle Joe]

2. In spite of this presumption of resentment, the U.S. government should support the

aspirations and right of self-determination of those peoples, it's the only way to eventually make things right.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

[ChazII]

3. Thanks for posting this. n/t