"Is Now The Time For The U.S. To Scale Back It's Many..." Topic

…Alliances Around The World?

"Since the end of World War II, U.S. officials have spurned George Washington's advice that the republic should avoid permanent alliances. To wage the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the United States forged alliances with various nations around the world. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would be Washington's first such venture outside its traditional sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, but it was far from the last. Key bilateral military alliances with such countries as Japan, South Korea, and Nationalist China followed. So did U.S. efforts to create pale imitators of NATO in other regions, including the ill-fated SEATO in Southeast Asia.

One might have thought that the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union would have marked an end to such pactomania. But that assumption would have been wrong. Indeed, the United States exploited the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet empire to add a plethora of formal allies in Central and Eastern Europe. During those same years, Washington's involvement in the toxic rivalries of the Middle East deepened, and so did relations with a variety of allies and client states in that region…"

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Amicalement
Armand

No.

Agreed … No … for a variety of reasons.

Why??? (smile)

The world is changing…for worst or better… maybe in Africa USA can work more?…

Amicalement
Armand

Something always fills the vacuum. I can't think of one example where it has been filled by anything "good".

No, the author of the piece fails to recognise what stability brings.
Instead the author has focussed on the current US debt as reason to withdraw.
The current debt has many other causes and this piece cones across as an isolationist argument to return the US to 1930s foreign policy.
Pretty much a poor effort.

David

When the US held an isolationist foreign policy, we got sucked into WW1 and then WW2.

WW1 was supposed to be impossible, as the various economies were actually interlinked to an even greater extent than they are today.

It might be prudent, given the increasing insolvency of the Federal purse, for the US to quietly discuss reducing the level of military commitment it will offer to treaty nations or treaty blocs unless they agree to increase their own investment and commitment to their defence. Only if treaty partners refuse to uphold traditional or newly negotiated commitments should the US gradually and quietly extricate itself from some of its more dangerous and impractical global entanglements.

Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

We should scale back in NATO and SEATO we should protect out interests only. Africa, leave it alone. They all want to kill themselves. In the Middle East we work with Egypt, Israel and maybe Jordan. They rest can fend for themselves.

We should scale back in NATO and SEATO we should protect out interests only.

You already got out of SEATO, Paul, 39 years ago. SEATO was dissolved in June 1977.

Didn't you get the memo?

Yes SEATO has been gone for awhile. But if the Chinese and Norks keep playing games … it may come back, with the addition of a few other nations.

"When the US held an isolationist foreign policy, we got sucked into WW1 and then WW2"

A common misconception that the US wasn't involved even as it declared neutrality. Officially, they were neutral, behind the scenes they were either selling arms and or fighting with proxy forces to agitate the situation.

G'Day Gents

It is what it is…as for myself…I was pissed off when my Battalion was replaced by the ANA in Nov of 2013

Best Regards
Art