"American Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective"
Speaker: Prof. Stephen Sestanovich
Date: October 1, 2007
Course number: U6800
Course title: Conceptual Foundations of International Politics
School: School of International and Public Affairs
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Half hour into the video and i fear we’ll have more of the meddlesome
warlike US like we’ve seen under the Bush jr. administration. Also it’s
visible in the veto’s and votes made by the US on the UNSC regarding Israel
and Palestine. America has labelled the Palestinian people as a terrorist
group and the US does not negotiate with terrorists… What a way to
perpetuate the inhuman conditions over there, also a bad excuse. Look at
northern ireland, where terrorists and legitimate government did come to
better solutions than violence.
I fear that the use of power in the interest of the US itself and the
meddlesome nature of these policies have brought us much bad things and
will bring more. It’s a disgrace that a democracy is threading upon those
with less power in such a manner for its own interest.
To elaborate on the ME conflict:
Resolutions designed to bring both peoples to the negotiation table have
been actively shot down by US policy and allow for prolonged suffering of
an entire country of people. He said that the policy would reflect more
than the interest of the US alone, but at this point, having a big Jewish
domestic lobby i can hardly believe that notion. Self interest is winning
by far on this one, as to not lose the next election due to the loss of
funding or whatever by the Jewish lobby.
I’m all for removing all veto’s on the UNSC at this point. It’s proving to
be highly ineffective when you look at this particular conflict (and it was
designed to resolve/prevent conflict, not to prolong it)
This would mean though that in matters of conflict, self interest will not
prevail over that of the interest of the peoples that are in conflict,
which is seen as a foreign influence on the US, which the US won’t allow as
was made clear by the speaker in this video. Not that it’s likely to ever
happen though. Archaic notions that the winners of the 2nd wolrd war should
hold the fate of other parts in the world in their hands like that, and it
will bring nothing good in the long term, i’m sure of that.
Interesting that this talk was in 2009, given all that has happened since
then
ethnicity a stronger force then business in u.s. foreign policy? you must
be joking
fantastic words from this guy.. nice speech….
Sestanovich would prefer to believe that the “Israel lobby” is countered by
other “ethnic groups.” He says our relations with Israel don’t occupy any
special position in US foreign policy. This is laughable. He doesn’t even
specify what these “ethnic groups” are that supposedly frame US foreign
policy, historically or contemporaneously. The disparity between
immigration enforcement and the overwhelming number of eligible hispanic
voters in this country would seem a simple counterargument.
dannng how do i get that s/a war cheat sheet.
A great and insightful lecture
You should reconceptualise American Foreign Policy as the creation of the
State of America. This counter-intuitive reversal of foreign policy allows
the insight that the very ontology of America is founded by the
intersubjective generation of character, and hence meaning, and hence
identity, by their relations with the Other.