CRITIQUE ON US FOREIGN POLICY ON WAR
War is an act that has been perceived as a necessity by some countries. Like the US, the country physically compels the other countries to accept and do their will. The use of nuclear-powered missiles was the main threat to starting a war. Countries that had already invested much in nuclear power, such as the US, had the upper hand. It is this use of force that made the United States a superpower after neutralizing the Soviet Union. Since then, the US has used foreign policy to continue on its quest to be a superpower by imposing restrictions on other countries. The paper will focus on how the United States uses foreign policy to maintain its status quo of being a superpower.
The subject of disarming an adversary has been used in the past by the military (Clausewitz, 2007, 267). The countries that have a history of war are always in fear of an attack by the enemy. The states, therefore, uses military preparedness to counter such attacks. As if physical disarming is not enough, the US has since used its foreign policies to disarm the enemy. The US has signed treaties with countries in the Middle East, such as Iran, to compel it to seize manufacturing nuclear weapons. It is therefore perceived as a smart way of defeating your enemy without shedding blood.
In the political scenes, war has been used as a political tool by many countries. Like in the US, the white house has seen many presidents since its inception. Each president came into the white house with political ideas that could have favored or avoided the acts of war. The war between the US and other nations like the Soviet Union as a result of governmental decrees. Each presidency in the US has used foreign policy from different angles. For example, the Obama presidency signed peace treaties with the Middle East countries (The American Middle East Foreign Policy) to maintain peace between each other (Tayyar, 2020, 37). It was aimed at ensuring that the countries did not manufacture nuclear weapons that could otherwise start another war. Some of the other presidencies used an aggressive approach to disarm the adversaries.
Unlike the Obama administration, the Bush administration imposed foreign policies that lead to a rapid increase in anti-Semitism and anti-American as a result of pro-Israel politicians in his administration. The result was to use physical war instead to maintain security in the United States. Bush demonstrated that the US foreign policy would in no way be persecuted as it had the best interests of the United States at hand. At that particular time, the peacekeeping process was suspended, and the military power took a toll.
It is evident that on the matter of global and regional policies when compared in the US, the Republicans prefer unilateral approaches to a multilateral corporation. It is noted that the republicans do not comply with international institutional corporations in the processes of formulating and implementing foreign policies. Due to this, Bush and Trump withdrew from the ABM Treaty and INF agreement, respectively, as a result of being republican governments. The democrats, on the other hand, are seen to be in support of liberal policies. Both the democrats and the republicans have one thing in common, they all weren’t to enforce the security of energy sources, but they apply different means to get this done. The republicans, therefore, do this at an angle of economic sense rather than the people.
Reference
Clausewitz, C., 2007. Carl von Clausewitz: On war.
Tayyar, A.R.I., 2020. Comparing the Bush, Obama, and Trump Foreign Policies: Continuity and Change in American Middle East Policy.