Coat of arms of the U.S.A.

The foreign policy of the United States is its interactions with foreign nations and how it sets standards of interaction for its organizations, corporations and system citizens of the United States. The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States, including all the Bureaus and Offices in the United States Department of State, as mentioned in the Foreign Policy Agenda of the Department of State, are "to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community." In addition, the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs states as some of its jurisdictional goals: "export controls, including nonproliferation of nuclear technology and nuclear hardware; measures to foster commercial interaction with foreign nations and to safeguard American business abroad; international commodity agreements; international education; and protection of American citizens abroad and expatriation." U.S. foreign policy and foreign aid have been the subject of much debate, praise and criticism, both domestically and abroad.

Quotes

  • The USA is the world's foremost economic and military power, with global interests and an unmatched global reach. America's gross domestic product accounts for close to a quarter of the world total, and its military budget is reckoned to be almost as much as the rest of the world's defence spending put together... U.S. foreign policy has often mixed the idealism of its 'mission' to spread democracy with the pursuit of national self-interest. Given America's leading role on the international stage, its foreign policy aims and actions are likely to remain the subject of heated debate and criticism, as well as praise.
  • It is difficult to find a part of the world where an actual American interest is being served by Washington’s foreign and global security policies. Indeed, a national security policy that sees competitors and adversaries as enemies in a military sense has made nuclear war, unthinkable since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, thinkable once again. The fact that no one is the media or in political circles is even talking about that terrible danger suggests that war has again become mainstreamed, tacitly benefiting from bipartisan acceptance of it as a viable foreign policy tool by the media, in the U.S. Congress and also in the White House.
  • Representative Tulsi Gabbard has made reforming United States foreign policy, particularly ending what she calls “regime change wars” and the “new Cold War and nuclear arms race central to her 2020 presidential campaign. Gabbard’s rhetoric infuriates... because it strays from their script for what is acceptable debate on U.S. foreign policy. [CNN's}...questions, and.. statements, are designed to shame her for her disloyalty to the foreign policy establishment. However, the reality is... Gabbard’s reservations toward war are based on actual experience and a recognition of the many times in which the U.S. meddled in countries only to face serious blowback later.
  • Denying medicines to Iran and Venezuela is a crime against humanity... One of the most truly despicable aspects of the coronavirus is how it is being exploited by Washington to punish countries like Iran and Venezuela, currently the enemy-designates of the inside the Beltway crowd... Waging war on innocent people should not in any event be what the United States of America is all about. A shift in policies that actually demonstrates that Washington might be interested in saving lives rather than destroying them would be welcomed by most of the world and also by many Americans.

"The Mother of All Bombs: U.S. Foreign Policy" (6 February 2019)

Howard Lisnoff, "The Mother of All Bombs: U.S. Foreign Policy", CounterPunch (6 February 2019)

  • Following the horrific destruction left in the wake of World War II, the United Nations in its seminal and founding document, the Charter of the United Nations, set out to prevent future wars among member nations. The Charter’s admonition against war was also voiced in the lessons learned from the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals in its condemnation of war: “starting or waging a war against a territorial integrity, political independence or sovereignty of a state, or violation of international treaties or agreements.” are crimes against peace and “makes all war crimes possible.”
  • The few and the wealthy of many nations are no longer constrained by rules that categorize civilized and enlightened behavior toward other nations such as Venezuela and Iran. They’ve had many nations in their crosshairs and have met with much “success.” Their attacks against Venezuela’s sovereignty are the final nail in the coffin of the endless wars, and the preparation for war, that are now all the rage among the sycophants of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
  • Venezuela is absolutely no threat to the U.S., and therefore, the U.N. Charter prohibits the kinds of dangerous and lethal idiocy that the Trump administration is now orchestrating against Venezuela. Readers need to consider that presidents are viewed in a positive light when they are seen as acting in a presidential manner, i.e., threaten or incite war against other nations. Recall the popularity of the newly elected Trump when he ordered the use of the mother of all bombs against Afghanistan. The bipartisan talking heads in the U.S. loved that theatre (“Trump Drops The Mother Of All Bombs On Afghanistan,” New Yorker, April 14, 2017).

"US Foreign Policy Is the Greatest Crime Since WWII" (14 February 2018)

"US Foreign Policy Is the Greatest Crime Since WWII,” Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark", Jay Janson, Global Research (14 February 2018)

  • Back in 1991, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark wrote, “US Foreign Policy is the Greatest Crime Since WWII,” in his book, The Fire This Time – US War Crimes in the Gulf, in which, Attorney Clark cites specific crimes in dozens of nations bombed and invaded by Americans since WW II... Thirteen years later, back in Iraq for the crimes of a second President Bush, Clark declared, that: “American aggression had already created incalculable levels of “misery for the world”; that “the poor of the planet [are] made poorer, dominated and exploited by the foreign policies of the U.S. and its rich allies;” that “the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression, an offense called ‘the supreme international crime’ in the Nuremberg Judgment.”
  • The question arises, ‘how long can indescribably enormous crimes go unpunished?’ How long can the human race, so phenomenally accomplished in science and art, in space exploration and medicine, afford to let this unearthly criminal insanity continue – an indescribably idiotic wholesale extermination of millions of children, women and men?
  • There are few countries in Latin America that have not experienced the USA both secretly and overtly backing a right wing military government coup... Human suffering has never been of any consequence to the financial interests of that 1/10 of 1 per cent of Americans who, to one degree or another, rule us all.
  • However, although ‘Might makes right!’ might continue to prove to be axiomatic and to assure US capability to make war whenever and wherever, there is a countering ultimate truth that whoever has the most money can buy the most guns. Also worth noting is that overspending on one’s military could lead to the demise experienced by the now non-existent Soviet Union. There is something else that has made this archival research peoples historian wonder, and that is the prevalent assumption that the US and its allied neocolonial powers will forever continue to get away with mass murder and genocide.
  • At Nuremberg in 1945, Nazi Germans and Japanese leaders were held legally accountable for their much shorter run at doing the same as Americans have been doing since these principles were universally signed on to. It is also worth remembering that according to the long since universally adopted Nuremberg Principles of International Law, every single soldier following illegal orders to invade or bomb shall be tried as criminally responsible for his actions.

"No, Dual Loyalty Isn't Okay, Many in congress and the media won’t discuss loyalty to Israel" (12 March 2019)

Philip Giraldi, "No, Dual Loyalty Isn't Okay, Many in congress and the media won’t discuss loyalty to Israel", The Unz Review (12 March 2019)

  • A freshman congresswoman Ilhan Omar has let the proverbial cat out of the bag by alluding to American-Jewish money buying uncritical support for a foreign country which is Israel without any regard to broader U.S. interests, something that everyone in Washington knows is true and has been the case for decades but is afraid to discuss due to inevitable punishment by the Israel Lobby...
  • Omar has defended herself without abandoning her core arguments and she has further established her bona fides as a credible critic of what passes for U.S. foreign policy by virtue of an astonishing attack on former President Barack Obama, whom she criticized obliquely in an interview Friday, saying “We can’t be only upset with Trump. His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was. That’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.” Presumably Omar was referring to Obama’s death by drone program and his destruction of Libya, among his other crimes. Everything she said about the smooth talking but feckless Obama is true and could be cast in even worse terms, but to hear the truth from out of the mouth of a liberal Democrat is something like a revelation that all progressives are not ideologically fossilized and fundamentally brain dead.

"Whose Wars? Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars" (17 April 2018)

Philip Giraldi, "Whose Wars? Israel continues to wag the dog for Middle Eastern wars", The Unz Review, (17 April 2018)
  • In March 2003, Pat Buchanan wrote a groundbreaking article entitled “Whose War?” in opposition to the Bush Administration fueled growing hysteria over Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction which was producing demands for an armed intervention to disarm him. Buchanan rightly identified a number of prominent Jewish officials and journalists closely tied to the Israel Lobby as the principal driving force behind the rush to go to war.
  • Lest there be any confusion, the same country keeps surfacing as a central player in the lead-up to America’s regime-change wars, which now have included an illegal attack on Syria, the second such intervention in the past year. That nation is Israel.
  • Syria is only part of a much larger problem. It is remarkable the extent to which Israeli concerns dominate those of the United States, which now has a foreign policy that often is not even remotely connected to actual U.S. interests. Congress and the Special Counsel are investigating Russia’s alleged interference in America’s political system while looking the other way when Israel operates aggressively in the open and does much more damage. Netanyahu and his crew of unsavory cutthroats are hardly ever cited for their malignant influence over America’s political class and media. Bomb Syria? Sure. After all, it’s good for Israel.

See also

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