As American foreign policy evolves

Brent Scowcroft of The Scowcroft Group and the Council on Foreign Relations said in 2008:

"There have been three general trends in America on this issue. The first I would call the Washington-John Quincy Adams trend, in which we saw ourselves as the shining city on the hill. We believed democracy was the way to go. We were an example of man's ability to live in peace and harmony with his fellow man. If others wanted to adopt our system, fine. But, as John Quincy Adams put it, we go not in search of monsters to destroy. We're the well-wishers of all who seek freedom and liberty. We're the guarantors only of our own.

"The second trend began with Woodrow Wilson, who found the Washington-Adams foundation too constraining and believed we needed to be evangelizers of democracy. There's been a debate ever since about whether we accept countries as they are and work with them, or try to turn them into democracies.

"The third takes place after 9/11 with the Iraq War. It constitutes of an emendation of the Wilsonian ideal. It's now our goal or our mission to spread democracy, if necessary even by force. The Europeans, on the other hand, possibly from their experiences with colonialism, are much more modest in what to do."

America's original attitude toward democracy and the world was what made the nation popular in the world. Other states emulated us if they wished to and that was fine, that is what this sort of democratic freedom is about. With the Wilsonian ideal came the beginning of the nation's descent into what it has become today. George Bush II and the clique behind him brought the true downfall caused by the new American arrogance. The USA could not contain its newfound superpower status, it had to exert it on others. She sought revenge for what she considered previous affronts to her all powerful image when she could, most notably in Iraq and Libya as well as elsewhere on a smaller scale.

As Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski say in the 2008 book "America and the World," a world power is in its decline when it has to repeatedly declare its supremacy to the world, as exhibited by America's current GOP candidates in all their talk of "American exceptionalism."

The US is no longer elevated so far above the rest of the world in terms of economic and military power with the rise of China and the Asian powers. America is losing its grip, mainly through its own arrogance and preoccupation with its own power. Osama bin Laden was well acquainted with the meaning of Sun Tzu's lesson in dealing with an enemy: "The best strategy in dealing with an opponent is to let him defeat himself." Since 9/11, America has done exactly that. In the name of "national security," liberty after liberty has been repealed (e.g. the Patriot Act, the TSA, etc.).

And the US is trying to shove this insanity it still calls "freedom" down the throats of the entire rest of the world from China to Iraq and it wonders why it perceives so many "problems" in the world. If the whole rest of the world  doesn't look like you no matter how much you try to remold it in your image of course you're going to see problems everywhere, you will make enemies of everyone, it will cost you trillions and in the end you will have nothing and be broken. Look at the United States now, does it not resemble a broken power that increasing has less and less?

Brzezinski calls much of the world "useless eaters" and says things like "it is easier today to kill a million people than to control them." In all appearance, Scowcroft agrees with Brzezinski's every word. They both laugh about the general ignorance of the American population as to world affairs. With attitudes and ideas like this among those who have dominated foreign relations for decades is it any wonder that American foreign policy is in shambles?