Attention Economy


Saturday, January 20, 2024

American Foreign Policy - Isolationist or Interventionist

Taiwan’s Doubts About America Are Growing. That Could Be Dangerous.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/20/world/asia/taiwan-united-states-views.html
Will deepening skepticism about the United States as a trustworthy nation diminish Taiwan’s belief that it could fend off China?
 
ROSS DOUTHAT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/20/opinion/nikki-haley-trump-foreign-policy.html
“… when the history of 21st-century American decline is written, the crucial chapter will focus not on Trump but on one of his predecessors, George W. Bush: a better man than Trump, a capable politician with a number of sound policies to his credit, but also the architect of a hubristic foreign policy whose disastrous effects continue to ripple through the country and the world.
The Iraq war and the slower, longer failure in Afghanistan didn’t just begin the unraveling of the Pax Americana. They also discredited the American establishment at home, shattering the center-right and undermining the center-left, dissolving confidence in politicians, bureaucracies and even the military itself, while the war’s social effects lingered in the opioid epidemic and the mental health crisis …
the greater peril is an American establishment and an American president who overestimate our powers, commit ourselves too broadly and too thinly, and end up facing a series of outright military debacles and defeats.”.