Quote Originally Posted by Alpha View Post
The USA does what it has the power to, and what is in "its interests" to do.
And if it's in the United States' interests to free fifty million people from Islamic extremist dictatorship, or to protect the lives and/or freedom of anybody else, what's wrong with that?

The UN attempts to find areas of common ground and mutual/universal support.
It attempts to, yes. Does it? Of course not. And even when they do, what do they do? They write letters telling people how angry they are? They impose sanctions that they don't enforce?

And when the United States doesn't do the UN's work for them, the UN gets together and bitches that the U.S. isn't doing its "fair share". That was exactly the reason Clinton withdrew most support -- if we're going to be doing everything and paying for everything, we're not going to have the same miniscule amount of decision-making power that other countries have.

Would "the UN" (comprised as it is of members of the UN) have invaded Iraq if everyone, bar Iraq and perhaps a few minor states, supported it? Probably.
You mean if certain UN members with veto power had not been conduction under-the-table deals, violating UN sanctions, and trading weapons to Iraq?

That's the kicker with the whole bullshit "blood for oil" argument. Germany, France, and Russia were perfectly happy to not only let the bloodshed continue, but to facilitate it, as long as they were still getting oil that didn't have to be bought and tracked on the open market.

Because there was no such mutual support, the US and UK acted (relatively) unilaterally.
The U.S. and UK acted with 26 other countries' troops, forming a larger coalition than the one that conducted Operation Desert Storm.

As long as the USA is the de facto UN, there will be further agitation, as the actions of the USA suit the USA -- it does not need to consider other interests, while the UN must.
As long as the UN proves itself to be weak and incompetent, the U.S.A. will be forced to be the de facto UN. Somebody's got to do the UN's job, and obviously the UN isn't capable.

So in that sense, do we actually have a common ground in support for a stronger United Nations? (Holds breath.)
Stronger, no. But one that actually acts? Yes. One that acts as a group of united nations, instead of the current and past UN, which only acted to back the United States' actions (when it approved of them)? Yes.

Of course, the UN faces the most fundamental problem of international relations: balancing sovereignty. The USA doesn't really have to care.
I'll give you that. Especially when the most powerful members of the UN see things very differently and have much different interests. But certain situations -- Rwanda, Somalia, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. -- should not have that many issues for lacking support.

Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
How would everyone feel if the US went completely isolationist? That means no aid in any circumstances, no support, no troops to watch over global hotspots, absolutely nothing. We just take care of our own business and interests, and everyone else can go screw.
So far, what I get from this topic is "America should keep to itself and stop getting into everybody's business because people dislike it", until you reiterated your question, when it became "America needs to be active all over the world or else people will start disliking it".

I would definitely support a more isolationist policy. Not completely, of course -- at least not suddenly -- but I fully support withdrawing foreign aid from quite a few countries. Hell, Obama is sending foreign aid to at least four countries with known terrorist involvement. I would simply say, "we've got our own problems right now, so we're going to pool our resources and take care of ourselves first." Think of how much money we could save by having our military only where they're needed, or by not throwing away billions of dollars every year to countries that will never like us anyway. Or to other countries that can fend for themselves without our help.

Trade wouldn't take much of a hit. Countries would still trade with us for the trade they receive from us -- they just wouldn't be getting MORE from us. You wouldn't stop shopping at the only supermarket around that gives free samples if they stopped giving free samples, would you? Of course not, because it was the store's prices, capacity, and variety -- not the free samples -- that brought you to shop there in the first place.

But the whole idea of "we need to give money to everybody because without us, they can't afford to feed themselves, because if we didn't, they would somehow have enough money to invade us" is ridiculous.