It isn't too hard to be rather bored by all the campaign "news" on the Democratic Party presidential nomination presently underway in the US - except that the outcome could have a bearing for the world at large. All too sadly the myriad of missteps and failures in American foreign policy [some would question what policy?] affect many around the globe, and then, mostly, not necessarily in a positive way.
In an op-ed piece in the NY Times "What Foreign Policy Agenda?" Andrew Kohut reflects on how America is looking inwards and essentially ignoring the world:
"Issues have hardly played a dominant role in the nominating races, especially on the Democratic side. Still, the public has a clear domestic agenda for the next president. Fix the economy, reduce health care costs, improve the environment, reform education, deal with rising energy costs and so on. This hearty appetite for an assertive domestic approach arises in no small part from the discontent that large majorities have with the Bush administration’s handling of nearly all of these issues.
This disapproval holds true with respect to foreign policy, too — just 30 percent approve of President Bush’s stewardship of it. But the public is far less clear as to what it wants with respect to foreign policy.
Opinion surveys show that American views about the world will not only challenge the presidential candidates of both parties in the general election, but will force the winner in November to deal with a citizenry that is downbeat about the world and fractured along partisan lines.
Disillusionment with the Iraq war has ushered in a rise in isolationist sentiment comparable to that of the mid-1970s following the Vietnam war. Pew surveys have found as many as four in 10 Americans saying the United States “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.”
In an op-ed piece in the NY Times "What Foreign Policy Agenda?" Andrew Kohut reflects on how America is looking inwards and essentially ignoring the world:
"Issues have hardly played a dominant role in the nominating races, especially on the Democratic side. Still, the public has a clear domestic agenda for the next president. Fix the economy, reduce health care costs, improve the environment, reform education, deal with rising energy costs and so on. This hearty appetite for an assertive domestic approach arises in no small part from the discontent that large majorities have with the Bush administration’s handling of nearly all of these issues.
This disapproval holds true with respect to foreign policy, too — just 30 percent approve of President Bush’s stewardship of it. But the public is far less clear as to what it wants with respect to foreign policy.
Opinion surveys show that American views about the world will not only challenge the presidential candidates of both parties in the general election, but will force the winner in November to deal with a citizenry that is downbeat about the world and fractured along partisan lines.
Disillusionment with the Iraq war has ushered in a rise in isolationist sentiment comparable to that of the mid-1970s following the Vietnam war. Pew surveys have found as many as four in 10 Americans saying the United States “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.”
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