[See Note below]
With Russia massing tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s border and China increasing its aggressive behavior against Taiwan, maybe now is a good time to consider what the purpose of U.S. foreign policy should be and what our national interests are in connection with either or both of those situations. Actually, the real question is what our national interests are in general.
We hear talk about supporting a rules-based international order. But is that really what we should be doing? Is it our goal to support other countries or do we need to worry about ourselves? Some would say that we have lots of problems in the United States; there are lots of things we need to do for our people. The Biden administration is proposing spending trillions of dollars on important domestic priorities. Given all of this, do we really have the money – or the time or energy – to deal with Ukraine or Taiwan – or the Uighurs or Alexei Navalny?
China will still sell electronics to us and buy agricultural products from us. China is only harassing Australia now because Australia went out of its way to call for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19 in China. Given how inadequate the WHO investigation in China was, which we all pretty much knew would happen, what good did it do for Australia to call for the investigation? Why didn’t Australia just keep its head down and not say anything? The WHO investigation would have been about the same anyway (i.e., inadequate), and Australians would have been able to continue to sell things to China. This would have been good not only for the Australian companies who sell things to China, but also for the Australian people who work for them.
Consider our position. We spend 3.73 percent of our GDP on defense each year. Germany spends 1.56 percent of its GDP on defense. What if we spent what Germany spends? We would have 2.17 percent GDP, which is $450 billion, more to spend on other things every year. We could make affordable child care more available and medical care less expensive.
We might not be able to object to some things China or Russia do. But so what? We’d have more money to spend to make life better for Americans. And isn’t that the job of our government? Would it really be all that big of a deal if we let China do what they want in their part of the world and didn’t criticize them for it? As long as we can take care of our people and address our needs, what difference does it make to us?
Consider Germany. Angela Merkel makes it pretty clear that selling cars in China is more important to Germany than the human rights of minorities in China. When push comes to shove, it’s Volkswagen over Uighurs. The same for Germany and Russia. Getting natural gas from Russia via Nordstream 2 seems to be more important to Angela Merkel’s Germany than what Russia might do in eastern Europe. In fact, the factories German car companies have in eastern Europe seem more important to Germany than doing anything effective about rising authoritarianism in east and central Europe. But, if that is the way to protect German jobs, maybe that is what Germany ought to do. And why shouldn’t we do the same thing?
In sum, shouldn’t we focus on our people, our workers and our companies? Do we really think that, if we don’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense, China is going to attack us or Vladimir Putin is going to launch missiles at us? What bad thing would China do to us? So what if we can’t criticize them on human rights or something else? If we can keep our standard of living and do more for our people, by not spending as much on defense and not criticizing China, what’s wrong with that?
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NOTE: I don’t agree with this argument, but it needs to be addressed because a lot of people believe it. And even people don’t agree with all of it, agree with some of it it in one area or another. People who think the United States should play an important role in the world need to be able to address the concerns of people who think this way.
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