U.S. Foreign Policy Needs a New Playbook
Stale Cold War mentality fosters distrust toward the United States
America has a bad habit of compromising its core values of freedom and democracy by forging alliances with dictators who don’t support these basic tenets. During the Cold War, all a developing country needed to do in order to gain U.S. support was to stay out of the Soviet orbit—the enemy of our enemy was our friend. We thus found ourselves siding with despots such as Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu of Zaire, the Shah of Iran—the list goes on. Similarly, being a source of vital resources or a protector of “international stability” in today’s world is too often sufficient qualification for U.S. aid.
Author Hilton Root takes a shrewd look at what is happening in American foreign affairs in Alliance Curse: How America Lost the Third World. He challenges long-held assumptions about our actions abroad, arguing that “outmoded” may be a more accurate description of our foreign policy than “current.”
Root’s book, just published by the Brookings Institution Press, comes at a turning point in America’s history. Unfortunately, our recent track record shows that we haven’t learned from the past. In Pakistan, a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, the United States has contributed billions of dollars to Pervez Musharraf’s government, largely to secure its support in the war on terror. That aid, however, still has not secured the loyalty of the military regime or the friendship of the population. Root questions the wisdom of providing aid to governments that remain corrupt and tyrannical, in light of the potential blowback.
So, what should America do at this crossroads? Root, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, argues that fostering economic development—not propping up dictators—is the better course for the country’s short-term and long-term goals. In the long term, it is actually a more effective strategy for building stability and winning the hearts and minds of the developing world.
You can hear from the author himself about his alternative strategy to close the gap between security and economic development. Hilton Root will be appearing at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. this Saturday, July 19th at 1 p.m. Don’t miss out!
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