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"Empathy" and international affairs
"Empathy" has been in the news lately, mostly in the context of President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. It's a quality that's often in short supply in the conduct of foreign policy, where leaders (and sometimes whole nations) often have a fixed view of certain events and find it hard to believe that anyone might legitimately see things differently. As Condi Rice commented when some European governments didn't support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, "I'll just put it very bluntly. We simply didn’t understand it."
One reason for this absence of empathy is the human tendency to filter current situations through the prism of the past. One of the more enduring findings in political psychology is that people place more weight on their own experiences than on the experiences of others, even when their own experiences are in fact atypical. According to Robert Jervis's classic Perception and Misperception in International Politics: "if people do not learn enough from what happens to others, they learn too much from what happens to themselves." The salience of first-hand experience in shaping subsequent beliefs is increased if the event happens early in one’s life or career, and if it has important consequences for the individual (or the nation). In other words, we overlearn from big and important events, especially when they happen to us early.
This tendency might explain why different generations tend to have very different views on how the world works. For Americans born and raised during the Cold War (i.e., like me) images of conflict are also accompanied by a certain sense of stability and order. The Cold War begins in the late 1940s, the United States forms a set of alliances to wage it, and then bipolar stability kicks in. There are crises and confrontations and even some peripheral wars in Korea, Indochina, the Middle East, and Afghanistan, but the central strategic balance doesn't change very much and the Soviet Union eventually expires rather quietly. The period 1950-1990 is a monument to the virtues of deterrence, containment, and multilateralism, and a timely warning about the dangers of getting involved in costly quagmires. It is perhaps no accident that people like me tend to see the world as a competitive but ultimately fairly stable and predictable place.
But what if you were born in the early 20th century, and came of age in the turbulent decades after World War I? You would have seen a world where a nation’s fortunes could shift in a matter of weeks or months, and sometimes with swift and terrible effect. You might have seen the Roaring Twenties, followed by the Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. You would have seen a prostrate and disarmed Germany rearm itself in less than a decade, defeat France in a few weeks in 1940, and then conquer almost all of Europe and drive deep inside Russia, only to witness this seemingly unstoppable juggernaut be occupied and divided in half a mere three years later. You would also have seen Imperial Japan sweep across the Pacific, only to be occupied and disarmed by 1945. And having watched the Iron Curtain descend and seen Mao's triumph in China, you'd have a healthy respect for how quickly fortunes could shift and you’d be less inclined to take a complacent view of anything. Had I lived through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, I might have been much more hawkish than I turned out to be.
The problem with this sort of generational interpretation is that it can’t account for differences between people who lived through the same events, although it might lead us to ask whether their own personal experiences with key events were different. But even there I suspect there's more to it than just personal experience.
But the real lesson is that the same "events" look very different to different people and to different countries. The U.S-backed contra war in Nicaragua killed some 35,000 Nicaraguans (about 1 percent of the population) but hardly any Americans; is it any wonder Nicaraguans remember it differently than Americans do? Similarly, 9/11 means one thing to U.S. citizens, but something different to Europeans, Central Asians, or people in different parts of the Middle East. The current war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is experienced differently by an Al Qaeda leader facing a Predator attack, by the CIA "pilot" operating the drone from a remote location, by a Pakistani or Afghan civilian who is attacked by mistake, by refugees now fleeing the fighting in the Swat Valley, and by the politicians in the United States, Afghanistan, or Pakistan who have to deal with the consequences. And not only do different individuals and different societies experience the same events in radically different ways, they then conduct their own discourse about these events (occasionally fertilized by ideas and commentary from outside) and eventually generate unique narratives about them.
Understanding how things look to others doesn't necessarily eliminate conflict -- especially when basic interests are fundamentally at odds -- but it makes us much less likely to misinterpret another's position and makes spirals of exaggerated or mistaken hostility less likely.
To take an obvious example, many Americans think of Iran as an aggressive, unpredictable country led by a set of aggressive, fanatically religious clerics. That tendency probably increases if you watch a lot of FOX News or listen to talk radio. From this perspective, Iran's nuclear program and its support for extremist groups like Hamas or Hezbollah is evidence of aggressive ambitions, perhaps of the very worst sort.
But ask yourself how this situation might look to an ordinary Iranian, or even to a member of its ruling elite. To many Iranians, their interest in nuclear technology (and possibly nuclear weapons) is entirely rational and essentially defensive: they have two nuclear neighbors (India and Pakistan), a third nuclear weapons state nearby (Israel), and the world’s most powerful country (the United States) has troops on either side of Iran and has been seeking to overthrow the Iranian government for a number of years now. Plus, various American politicians keep saying that "all options ought to be on the table," and Obama's special envoy to Iran, Dennis Ross, participated in a study group last year that advocated a hardline approach. It doesn't take a lot of imagination or empathy to figure out why Iran might want a nuclear deterrent: wouldn’t we want the same thing if we were in their position? Similarly, supporting radicals elsewhere in the Middle East keeps the U.S. off-balance and complicates efforts to unite various Arab states against Iran itself. A bit of empathy won't resolve these issues, of course, but it might help us reject the fervent threat-mongering that drove us to launch a foolish war in Iraq and has led others to favor a similar approach to Iran.
So can we train ourselves to “see things as others do?” Here the internet and the blogosphere are potentially transformative tools: you don't have to rely on the New York Times or the Washington Post or your own local newspaper (even if your "local paper" is Le Monde, Die Zeit, or the Daily Star). I can sit here in my office and read the English edition of Ha’aretz, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, and the online edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun. Or I can read the Guardian, Asia Times, or the Jerusalem Post, and then go to the online Reuters.com and BBC News websites too. (And don’t forget http://foreignpolicy.com, of course). Americans would be well served to spend part of each week perusing WatchingAmerica.com, a website that collects and translates media reports from around the world and a variety of political perspectives. When you travel, don’t just watch CNN -- check out the BBC or Al Jazeera, too. Spend some time reading knowledgeable non-Americans like Ahmed Rashid, C. Raja Mohan, Kishore Mahbbubani, or Therese Delpeche. Don't rely just on reports from inside-the-Beltway think tanks in the United States; take a look at the websites of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the International Crisis Group, or the growing number of think tanks in the developing world.
To repeat: developing a greater capacity for empathy won't eliminate conflicts of interest between states, and won't always make it possible to resolve the differences that will inevitably arise. But an inability to understand an adversary's perspective (or an ally's, for that matter) is a crippling liability, and there's less excuse for it in our increasingly interconnected age.
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“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University.
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Sorry you are in a tiny
Sorry you are in a tiny minority in U.S.
So can we train ourselves to
Professor, I was thinking that you are at least trying to be realist, not relativist;->
Professor, I would rather suggest "see things as they are!" Mate! if you believe and be on the side of Reality. That would make you capable to know and express Reality even in terms others can understand it.
Professor this "“see things as others do" is an offspring of Salvare Apparentias. I mean you are interested to know "how it appears to others", while it appears to you such and such. You see, you are not interested reality, you are interested in appearances to save your appearance;->>
Professor, I suggest you urgently need to read P.Duhem's To Save the Phenomena.
I also suggest to revise your concept of reality.
Unless we don't have the knowledge of reality all appearances may easily misguide us, then it wouldn't really matter how many different reports we get about appearances from different sources.
Professor, remember; we are not after weighted-average of appearances, we are after truth and reality. People need guidance with truth and reality and establishment of justice rather than emphaty. With a mono law legal structure denying SPEEs' right to law it is not possible to establish justice but it is certain to degenerate all SPEEs to create an unstable environment by denying their reality.
With such a faulty legal system don't expect miracles from your judges even to sort out a minor issue of gay-marriage.
Professor I am appalled to observe that you have no institution to criticize your legal system while you expect your judges to catch the bird with their mouth;->
Forget anout Guantanamo Mate! You have a mess at home.
Grand Sen~or.
To get to "reality" you need
To get to "reality" you need to feel the elephant from all sides. mutilating Khayyam or Mahavira.
Mid East news soup
A recommendation to you Stephen: For mideast-related empathy material, nothing beats the curated daily links from IMEU. It's got the main events as well as lesser-known stories covered.
One more factor working against empathy
I'm using Jervis' work in my own dissertation at Georgetown, and I think drawing on his ideas about why empathy is so difficult and so rare are correct. I would add that empathy is a stereotypically feminine quality. To the extent that these qualities are devalued, the usefulness of empathy will be shortchanged.
Can we see the world as others do?
Nope, we can only see it the way we do. Then, why try-on someone else's skin? Why ask to see the world from their eyes? Because afterwards, our differences seem less pronounced, and we will be a little bit closer to resolving those differences. It is a great approach, and I hope that the Obama administration will really embrace it and practice it, because they haven't yet. The Bush approach of turning any and every-one who sees things differently into the enemy simply doesn't work, because it isn't true.
Undoubtedly one of the great
Undoubtedly one of the great tragedies of human history is how generations have to relearn the errors of the past. We're going through something like that now, with the younger generation having overwhelmingly supported Obama, whose policies more closely resemble a mix of Hoover and Carter; and the irony is that it's these same people who will be hurt the most by their generational ignorance, as, I suspect many are just beginning to realize, as they can't find jobs and will be facing enormous tax increases to fund the expanse of the government bureaucracy, as they won't be able to get loans for mortgages due to misguided government regulations, as oil prices skyrocket due to misguided energy polices, and as they live lives of virtual slavery under the country's enormous debt.
However, I'm not as convinced as you that the internet is going to be the transformative tool you envision, Sure, I can experience other perspectives, but so what? I used to read the Guardian during the height of the Iraq War to get a different view from the US media. I gave it up after getting tired of reading commentaries from Islamic supremacists and multicultural absolutists. There was just not much value to it after awhile, other than to inform me that there were really messed up people who were given very big soapboxes, and it was little surprise that the UK was being ripped apart from within. This was, after all, the same publication that by the height of the Cold War was little more than a KGB front. I use it just as an example. For every smart worthwhile place for commentary on the web, there are scores of worthless ones. Do we really have the time, much less the insight, to be able to tell the difference? It seems like the internet could possible lead to the opposite effect, that people might retreat into sites and commentary that simply reinforce their views, causing their views to harden, rather than become more understanding.
guardian ...
>>>I used to read the Guardian during the height of the Iraq War to get a different view from the US media. I gave it up after getting tired of reading commentaries from Islamic supremacists and multicultural absolutists.
Thank you ! I knew I was not the only one who felt that way, but I'm impressed that someone else who follows this blog also feels that way. I too followed Guardian for a while, especially their "Comment is Free", but it was basically a platform for any Islamist or apologist thereof. I like my multicultism in moderation, as opposed to people who argue that FGM or similar horrors are just a quaint cultural tradition.
Empathy, Sympathy
I'd have more confidence in Walt's analysis if I were more confident that he grasps the difference between empathy and sympathy.
Any American trying to put himself "in the shoes" of the Iranian president or one of the senior clerics, for example, would have to try to understand how it feels to harbor an intense hatred of Jews, or how important it must seem to stoke Iranian xenophobia during an election campaign taking place at a time when the Iranian government's handling of the economy is under severe criticism. He would have to place himself in the position of someone who may not worry about problems like the security of nuclear materials or who will end up having the power to decide when they are used because it is too difficult to decide those issues in Iran right now. The last thing he ought to do is assume that an Iranian must feel the way an American would feel if he were an Iranian, because people are all basically the same.
If empathy in international relations were that simple, wars would have ended centuries ago, and Walt would be in another line of work.
The Golden Rule, Mr. Walt?
Would you not be happy if Interventionist Do-Gooders from far off lands came from the air to spread what they label as "Freedom and Democracy" to your neighborhood? Would you resist their schemes? What if they went on TV in their far off land and made a speech in a language you don't speak, insisting that they are doing it all for your own good? Their suit and tie are very nice and clean, they appear to be very sincere. Who can resist such charms? What are you, an Isolationist?
The flip side of the interventionist coin will one day be landing on us, in the form of the unmanned drones you mentioned, but from other actors, be they state flavored or "other". Drones tell no tales and respect no borders.
The obvious solution is a non-interventionist foreign policy, but where is the money in that? The bankrupt ideology of intervention is perceived as the most profitable, from neolib to fascist to neocon to do-gooder, intervention is in. They all have so much damn empathy that they have to spread it everywhere, as long as their benevolent state is doing the spreading. Any day now Wilson will be rising from the dead to focus it all, with Lincoln following in order to consolidate it, thus saving the world from itself.
Empathy, traditionally
Empathy, traditionally considererd a female attribute alongwith intution,is not so easy to practice and acquire.It means constant evaluation of our belief systems, notions of self-identity and cultivation of virtues of patience and humility. It also means posing hard questions to our own selves. And generally we are not ready to do that.So, reading of different web posts will not help us see things as others do, for seeing is not believing.
But,its a good read.
Empathy is all very well, but not towards Israel
Israel and its people have allready had so much empathy that they can live on it for the next 200 years. And remember none of us is suggesting that they should be thrown into the sea; rather they should participate in a democratic vote together with the several millions Palestinians -- the largest exile community in the world -- when these return to their ancestral land in the coming years. We shall then see how a majority between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean wishes the land to be governed.
A cautionary prediction of the result of such a vote would be that Israel would then cease to exist. and this would be very beneficial for the world, as it would then had got rid of its greatest terror-incentive and its greatest destabiliser - - security- as well and economy-wise.
It is thrue that a complex relationsship have existed between Israel and Iran, ever since this artificial country was set up in 1948. According to the Iranian/Swedish/American scholar Trita Parsi , until around 1993 Israel and Iran shared a common interest against the Arab world, but the collapse of the USSR and the defeat of Saddam's Iraq in 1991 completelky changed the strategic set-up in the region, and Iran was suddenly viewed as a threat. According to Parsi -- and several Israeli scholars that he quotes -- Israel needed "a new enemy in order to get the Israeli people to agree to make peace with the Arabs.
It is odd for normal and straight people to get this insight into all these deliberations -- none of which would ever have happened if Israel had never existed - or been forced to close down in - say - 1965. A closure of Israel -- the worlds last colony -- is therefore viewed among all righteous men and women as one of the most desireable things in modern policy today. Had we done it in 1965, none of the following things would have happened:
Cutting and pasting your comments from other postings
is really not a sign of great intelligence or analysis.
Find yourself a new hobbyhorse.
Israel and its people have
Israel and its people have allready had so much empathy that they can live on it for the next 200 years.
I think you're missing the point.
If you want to make a deal with israel, you need to understand what they want and why. Otherwise any deal-making is up to just accident.
If you can't make a deal, then the obvious alternative is sheer force. If you can't let israelis get at least part of what they want, then they'll fight until they're destroyed. That probably isn't really a good outcome for anybody.
Let me tell you the most important thing for israelis, the thing that has prevented every deal so far.
The most important thing is the same thing that was most important for the nazis fighting WWII, and the most important thing for the USA fighting the Cold War. The nazis could not have a peace, they could have only victory, because they didn't trust their enemies to honor a peace. If their various enemies -- particularly russia -- had time to build up their strength, germany would be too weak. And germany had no real friends, so once their enemies got strong enough they could tear up the peace treaties and fight and win. Germany had to keep the enemies weaker than they were or risk utter defeat. And their only way to keep their enemies weak was to occupy them and control them. Once the USA was their enemy they were too weak.
Similarly, the USA didn't trust the russians to keep treaties. So each time we tried to make a treaty with the russians about something that was obviously good for both countries, we spent years negotiating out the details of how to prove that they weren't breaking it, and what we'd do if we found out they were breaking it, and at home we argued about whether the treaty was better for russia than it was for us. Because we were convinced we had to stay stronger than russia. If russia got too strong then they'd tear up the treaties and do whatever they wanted.
And that's israel's basic problem too. They don't trust arabs to keep treaties, so they have to do whatever it takes to make sure no arab nation ever gets strong enough to overcome them. They can only make treaties when they're strong enough that it doesn't matter whether the other side breaks the treaty or not. And they must make sure that the treaty doesn't help the other side more than it helps them, because they can't allow treaties that help the other side get stronger than them.
So if we want palestinians to have a peace with israel as opposed to destroying israel, somehow we must deal with these concerns. We must persuade israelis that it's safe to make peace. There are various approaches to that.
1. They might be persuaded that after a treaty the arabs would be satisfied and would no longer want to destroy israel. But this is unlikely -- what treaty could possibly be fair to palestinians?
2. They might be persuaded that after a treaty all the arab nations will stay weak enough not to be a problem. This is unlikely -- part of what keeps the various dictatorships in place (which keep their nations weak) is the israeli threat, and part of what keeps foreign investment out is the possibility of israeli bombing etc, and part of what reduces US trade with arab nations is their enmity with israel etc. Peace would help arabs more than it would help israel, unless it was a very special peace.
3. They might be persuaded that no matter how strong arab nations get, still the USA and the world will enforce a treaty. That looks like one of the better chances but israelis will hesitate to depend on the USA when wse're on our way down, and why would they trust anybody else to look out for them?
And remember none of us is suggesting that they should be thrown into the sea;
I met a palestinian man in 1983 who suggested that. Even if all the palestinians stopped saying it, israelis would worry that they still thought it.
More important, you are suggesting that israelis give up their power. If arabs -- any arabs -- look like they're getting strong enough to throw israel into the sea, israel must do something to weaken them before they get that strong. Israelis cannot accept a treaty that weakens israel. So the choices are: Status quo, make a deal that israelis will accept, or throw israel into the sea. It's no use proposing deals that israelis can't accept because they won't accept them. The closest we can come is offer israel an uacceptable deal when the alternative is worse. Like, if israel is about to be thrown into the sea anyway we could offer them alabama and maybe a lot of them would take it.
If arabs want peace with israel as opposed to total victory, they must find a way to persuade israelis they will not be a threat even if they become very strong.
I'm not arguing that you should be sympathetic to israeli concerns. Like you probably aren't sympathetic to the nazis for having those same concerns. But if you want a peace short of pushing israelis into the sea, then there has to be some way to address those concerns. Otherwise they'll fight instead.
Thomas we must hold together
It is strategically wrong for you to waste efforts to try to pince a hole in my arguments - allthough it is allways an interesting exercise to watch. We who opposes Israel and thus are on the same side should not use efforts to go after each other in this way.
Israel is a very powerful country and has even steered the Worlds remaining superpower into wars that is not in its national interest, which cannot be won, and which have increased terror in the world, rather than reducing it, as I believe was the stated purpose.
It is therefore necessary to use all of ones powers to expose this colony and its many crimes against humanity -- not to go after the ones that agree with you on major points.
But your arguments do not hold, - as it is unthinkable that this colony would turn violent in opposing a fair result in a democratic vote about the future of the land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean, ie when the Palestinians get back to the land they are named after, and votes about how they think their ancestral land should be governed.
I for one have difficulty in seiing that Israel faced with a majority vote against it would abandon all civilised behaviour and confront the international community in a violent way. All this remains to be seen however, and it would be an interesting sight. If they really do that, it would furhter undermine any credibility ("the only democracy in the Middle east etcetera) that they might have. Not even Apartheid South africa did that, when faced with the Worlds collective will. The key point here is to subject Israel to the worlds collective will. You try to defuse this quest from the very outset, in what can only be judged as an untimely effort to defuse other opponents of Israel's just quest.
We who opposes Israel and
We who opposes Israel and thus are on the same side should not use efforts to go after each other in this way.
You seem to be assuming that everybody except the zionists ought to be allies against them and present a united front.
But I am not particularly against zionists. I am *for* the USA, and I am for humanity as a whole and the ecosystem as a whole. For the moment, supporting the USA and humanity means opposing zionists because currently they are against the USA and against humanity. When they change their positions I'll change my responses.
That certainly doesn't mean I should pretend to agree with you when you say things I disagree with. If some specific issue comes up that we both get to vote on, I might vote on the same side you do. On some other issue I might not. It depends.
...it is unthinkable that this colony would turn violent in opposing a fair result in a democratic vote...
What is the weather like on your planet? The USA proposed a fair vote to decide who got to run the PA. When Hamas won, we opposed it and encouraged Fatah to turn violent opposing it.
The USA proposed a fair vote to decide about vietnam. When the vote went the wrong way we supported the creation of south vietnam and we very strongly turned violent to oppose that democratic vote.
Do you suppose that israel would do less for their national survival, than the USA does for its minor interests?
Israelis see this as a survival issue. In a fair vote with an arab majority, arabs could take their land, take their money, kill them -- everything that israelis have done to palestinians. Why would they trust their sworn enemies to be fair to them? A few of them were alive in 1945 when the Holocaust ended.
All this remains to be seen however, and it would be an interesting sight. If they really do that, it would furhter undermine any credibility ,,, that they might have.
Sure, it would make them look bad. If the intention is to send them further into a dead end where they have no viable choices, then this would further it. If you want an actual peace then you need some way to persuade them that they wouldn't be treated badly -- that they wouldn't be treated the way many people feel they deserve.
Not even Apartheid South africa did that, when faced with the Worlds collective will.
The Boers were a different case. They were a small minority and they couldn't hold out forever. They could go anywhere in the world. (I knew a woman who married a south african man. Her relatives were a bit put off but they didn't have any particular prejudice against him. I told a british joke and he laughed, and later they thanked me profusely because they had thought he had no sense of humor. He had a british sense of humor and they hadn't noticed it was there.) They didn't feel that they were wimping out on their religion if they left or if they gave up apartheid. They did not have the USA as an unconditional ally.
It's possible the israelis might back down before the world's collective will. South africa did, the nazis didn't. Serbia did kindof. I dunno. If it goes that way we'll see what happens. Often when people think the world's collective will is telling them to commit suicide they refuse. A lot of individual jews did let europe's collective will send them to concentration camps and it isn't unlikely that a lot of israelis are ready to make the opposite mistake.
The key point here is to subject Israel to the worlds collective will. You try to defuse this quest from the very outset,
Oh? Let's back up a little. I want good things for the USA and the world. Israel is currently a bad thing that leads to worse things.
If israel gets stuck in a big final war where the whole world sees israel is wrong, and then israel loses, to my way of thinking that's a bad thing. It's great if you like primitive morality plays where good wins and evil loses, amidst great suffering on all parts. But I don't want a big war even if it doesn't go nuclear.
If you want a real peace -- which is what I want -- you have to convince israelis that what they're agreeing to isn't really an unconditional surrender. They have to believe that what they agree to is what they'll get, that strong arabs won't use the new strength to take away everything from israelis. If they doin't get that they won't agree to anything. Would you, if it was you negotiating?
Whether or not you agree that israelis deserve anything, this is what it takes to get a peace. That or push them into the sea. Or watch them genocide their enemies. Or wait while the current slow catastrophe plays itself out with no peace.
Thank you, Mr. Thomas
for rational, well-thought arguments which represent the "world collective will" on this issue much more accurately than Mr. Sorensen's non-starters.
Thank you, Kerpin
Now can you imagine any solution?
Is there any possible way palestinians can demonstrate that they are willing to abide by an unfair treaty, that will convince israelis enough to actually make the agreement?
Israel is getting relatively weaker. Within 20 years or so there will be arab nukes -- nonproliferation is dead. Israel is looking increasingly less sympathetic to the rest of the world including america, and america's strength is declining fast. In a few years israel may not have any strong friends, maybe nobody much but taiwan.
Israel could try to ally with china. But what can israel offer to china? The chinese are sharp businessmen, they'd sell israel out to saudi arabia as soon as the price was right. Russia? Israel has very little to offer russia except US military secrets, and the russian leadership tends to be antisemites too.
Imagine that there could somehow be a real peace that most arabs would abide by. Something like northern ireland, a few terrorists that don't get a lot of support but no existential threat. If it was true, would there be anything that anybody could do that might persuade israelis it was true? Any chance they could accept a real peace if it was available?
Any chance they could accept
Any chance they could accept a real peace if it was available?
Echo answers mournfully.
Israel and its people have
Yeah but she spends it so quickly to make more and more enemies around her that she always in need of more emphathy and sympathy. Have a look at her how helpless she looks with her 200+ WMDs in stock, I think they need more of those, every Israeli should have one portable WMD to protect him/herself it is Old Wild Texas out there Mate, whoever pulls his/her WMD first may win, as she aims she is not going to be the last one to pull it out - Calamity Jane;->>
Grand Sen~or
"Empathy and International Affairs
A greater understanding of the impact of U.S. interventions are essential for effective foreign policy to promote a more peaceful world. Our foreign policy has been skewed from helping overthrow an elected democracy in Iran in 1953 to the fiasco of wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Our elected and appointed national leadership has been ethnocentric causing long term damage economically, militarily and to our security.
My own experience in the Vietnam war and in Iran during the time of the Shah make it clear that our national elected leadership and/or appointees consistently lacked competence in foreign affairs because they arrive with agendas instead of with a clear head asking what is truly in our long-term national interest and not just for a decade or two.
A pertinent example is the situation in North Korea today. Any trade agreements with China ought long ago to have settled the matter of North Korean nukes. Favorable trade status with China ought to have been contingent upon their success convincing the North Koreans to refrain from building nuclear weapons.
How much incompetence does it take for their to be political change? More political parties, term limits and reducing influence of lobbyists makes it more likely that true debate and compromise on domestic and foreign policies would occur instead of our sandbox political paradigm where winner take all is often the game. If the country is in a mess look to both Democrats and Republicans. As a relative of mine said about the Democrats and Republicans facetiously, "They ought to surrender themselves and go directly to jail." Of course, there are exceptions.
http://uniskywriter.blogspot.com/
take a look at the websites
Obviously you've never looked at these sources - or you really have no idea what the "others" see. Not one of these groups are different from a standard Washignton think-tank. They provide zero "difference" if you will.
As for foreign authors - don't count on any of the ones that trully provide a "different" view from ever being translated. Wathching America is a great site - but poorly updated and underfunded.
I've seen countries which have ten websites like WatchingAmerica, dedicated to the way the press covers their country + other articles related to foreign affairs.