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Showing posts from February 3, 2007

William Pfaff: A foreign policy realist

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Who is therefore my kind of guy. Read his GREAT piece in the New York Review of Books. Here is one section which reads as though it was authored by someone working in a libertarian think tank: The noninterventionist alternative to the policies followed in the United States since the 1950s is to minimize interference in other societies and accept the existence of an international system of plural and legitimate powers and interests. One would think the idea that nations are responsible for themselves, and that American military interference in their affairs is more likely to turn small problems into big ones than to solve them, would appeal to an American public that believes in individual responsibility and the autonomy of markets, considers itself hostile to political ideology (largely unaware of its own), and professes to be governed by constitutional order, pragmatism, and compromise. A noninterventionist policy would shun ideology and emphasize pragmatic and empirical judgment of