¶ … United States Have a Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy? with Todd Myers
This lecture was part of Political Economy Week at Grossmont. The lecture started with a little history about the foreign policy of the United States, especially with regards to the theme of non-interventionism. The speaker referred to the way the United States used to be non-interventionist until the First and Second World Wars, how it was reluctantly entering the Second World War but after that, there was no more non-interventionism. Since then, the United States has been the opposite, fighting other people's fights for them under the guise of benevolence. The speaker questions whether this trajectory is healthy for the world and for the United States. Citing the failure of the recent interventions, but also contrasting that with non-intervention in Syria, the speaker did a good job of presenting both sides of the argument.
I liked the facts, and general overview of foreign policy. I liked that the speaker put foreign policy in context, and spoke of the prevailing social values and norms that might have supported different policies at different times. I appreciated reminders that history has not just been about interventionism, which is what it sometimes seems like in the 21st century. Most of all, I appreciated the balanced perspective. The idea that the United States has both an obligation to intervene in human rights-related issues, and the idea that the United States has an obligation to respect national sovereignty, are two conflicting roles. Perceptions of the United States by foreigners are ambivalent due to the paradoxical character of American foreign policies.
The only thing I didn't like, if anything, was that there was no argument per se. The speaker was not trying to say definitively whether the United States should have a non-interventionist policy but was mainly encouraging the…
