Abstract

A FOREIGN POLICY FOR THE COMMON CITIZEN

This article discusses the foreign policy of the United States related to its military interventionism and effects of the cold war. Washington's foreign-policy elite talk as if America's "soft power" can prevail in nearly every instance. And where it cannot--as in Colombia's narco-civil war or against the specter of international terrorism in Afghanistan or Sudan--both political parties, Republicans and Democrats alike sanction cruise missile diplomacy or outright military interventionism reminiscent of Vietnam. Naturally, such behavior reinforces the anti interventionist instincts of citizens on the liberal-left. Washington's bloody-minded intervention in Vietnam have little relevance in dealing with ethnic cleansing or oppression in Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda, East Timor and Kosovo. And though the victims of these internal wars cry out for help--the American left remains divided on how to respond.