Inside Story - How militarised is US foreign policy?

[Lars77]

Barack Obama has won a second four-year term in office after a victory in the US presidential election. It is said that a US president has a bit of a freeer hand in a second term because he does not have to worry about re-election. And if that is true, how militarised will foreign policy be going forward?

[Tansy_Gold]

1. A far more urgent question:

How wet is water?

[ancianita]

2. It IS an urgent question, in spirit. Just not quite the right one.

I'd ask how weapons industry-driven is our foreign policy. When we enflame political conflicts abroad by introducing both foreign "aid money" and weapons sales, we create the conflicts that force commanders-in-chief to chase our state department around, cleaning up CIA and arms muckups, and to consult with the joint chiefs about military "solutions" to problems that we ourselves create. We have to see the connections across conflict-driven foreign policy and peacefully negotiated trade that doesn't enflame extremists of other countries.

[rwsanders]

3. Read a great book on how this happened in the 1800's that led to WW2 in the pacific...

Can't recommend the book "The Imperial Cruise" by James Bradeley (Flags of Our Fathers) enough. It is one of the worst books I have read, not badly written, but just horrible to comprehend. The only other books that had that kind of impact on my were "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and "A World Undone: A History of the Great War".
He draws many parallels to our current foreign policy in Iraq and Afganistan. The fundamental message was that our leaders sell us the very ethnocentric (and racist) idea that we need to lead these primitive people to democracy for their own good, even if we have to kill them to do it.