Today, I'm continuing my reflection on the more interesting ideas proposed by the Republicans during their debate. This time, the subject is foreign relations--a critical subject, especially in this era in which we have thousands of troops stationed all over the world.
Specifically, I'm referring to diplomatic relations. Economic relations are a completely different thing and, I believe, much more complicated.
FOREIGN DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS
The Republicans
all had different ideas about how to handle ISIS and the conflicts in
the Middle East. Every single one of them wants to "rebuild the
military," the implication being that our military is currently weak
and/or falling apart. Specifically, some of them were concerned that our
allies in the Middle East, like Israel and Saudi Arabia, are losing faith
in the United States' ability to support them. Further, a strong military
gives the United States stronger negotiating power as we try to broker
peace in the region. Jeb Bush especially was offended at Donald Trump's
idea of banning Muslims from entering the United States due to the enormous,
detrimental impact such a policy would have on our diplomatic relations with Islamic nations.
Given that our defense budget dwarfs the defense
budget of any other nation on Earth, I'm inclined to believe that if
our military seems to be weak and falling apart it's more of a
management problem than a budgetary problem. Plus, the accusation that
President Obama is defunding the military is provably false: the defense
budget of the United States in 2015 was $598.5 billion, accounting for
54% of the discretionary budget. In 2014, it was $520.5 billion. It's
true that, in Obama's first budget, passed by a Democratic Congress in
2010, the Defense budget was $663.7 billion, though that was quite a bit
more than George W. Bush's Defense budgets for 2009 and 2008, which
were $515.4 billion and $481.4 billion respectively.
That
said, I don't know what's going on in the military right now or why
they may need more funding. I also don't know what's going on in the
minds of leaders in the Middle East, whether they're starting to doubt
out military might or not. Certainly, we've spent quite a long time
there now without much luck in calming the region, and with ISIS taking
over half of Syria it seems to be worse than ever.
Unlike
many of the Republican candidates, I don't think ISIS is the result of
poor relations in the Middle East. On the contrary, I think ISIS is
symbolic of a reaction against some great progress Islamic countries
have been making. To make an American analogy, ISIS is the region's Ku
Klux Klan, violently resisting very real progress despite the fact that
their very existence means that the end of their ideas are near.
Some
of the Republicans have some interesting ideas about how to handle the
situation, though. Some just want to bomb ISIS into oblivion of course, civilian casualties be damned, but the
more clear-headed among them supported the idea of aiding regional
forces against ISIS and other extremist groups rather than simply
throwing American soldiers at the problem. Certainly doing so would
reduce casualty rates for American soldiers, but I don't think it's a
good idea to make it a simple "our bodies, their bodies" calculation.
Rather, the idea seems sound because it continues the process of
teaching the people to fight for and maintain their own peace rather
than relying on outside forces to do it for them.
It's
quite possibly a pipe dream, as people have been trying to bring peace
to the Middle East for thousands of years to no avail. Plus, it's the
height of conceit to think that Americans can solve the problems of the
region from here on the other side of the world. Still, the beauty of
helping them help themselves, to give them the power to create peace or
destroy it, takes us out of the equation somewhat. And that,
to me, seems better than nothing, though I should acknowledge that previous attempts at doing so led to the creation of militant groups that eventually fought us with our own weapons.
Given that, it's tempting to simply extract ourselves from the region altogether, abandoning our allies in the region and letting them sort themselves out. However, Middle Eastern conflicts tend to not contain themselves in the Middle East, and ISIS especially has been at least tangentially involved in attacks in Europe and the United States in the past year, so it's obvious that we're going to be involved whether we're in the region or not.
In short, there's no simple solution, and I think most of the Republicans on stage at the debate were aware of that. Even Donald Trump's Muslim ban is proposed to last only "until we figure out what's going on," as if it's something we'll ever really figure out.
No comments:
Post a Comment