for - key insight - why US geopolitics installed dictatorships - progress trap- US foreign policy that shaped modernity

key insight - why US geopolitics installed dictatorships - This was the US's rationale to justify the geopolitical mess it created this century: - If you allow democracy in the age of Communism - people might vote for communism, then - kill all the rich people, then - take their stuff, then - redistribute it - You can get a majority support for that in an impoverished country and that was perceived as a threat - So the United States was suppressing Democratic movements around the world - because if an authoritarian if a communist can win an election fairly one time, - that's the end of free and fair elections - So for decades, the US foreign policy agenda was to install dictators to suppress the threat that democracy could produce communism. - But after "communism was defeated" - all these installed dictators around the world that are the direct result of the pathological US foreign policy posed a new, unexpected quagmire - The decades of US foreign policy had created an enormous progress trap that we are all living through now - The US now had to normalize relations with the new world of dictators it had helped created out of its own fears<br /> - A new US foreign policy rule emerged to deal with this fiasco - Stay in your own country - If you want to kill, imprison, brutalize or subjegate your own people, it is fine with the US government as long as it is done within your own state borders - As long as a nation state abuses their own people, the US will continue to: - buy your oil - trade with you - show up at the UN - even have an occasional State event for you - However, Russia broke that rule

I've noticed this phenomenon as well. When criticizing public policy, writers should be required to write down their alternate plans and then go at least one or two levels deep as to the knock on effects that their decisions are likely to have.

It's easy to criticize, but it's much harder to do the actual work and thinking to actually do something else.

Paz, C. (2021, May 13). America’s Vaccine Nationalism Isn’t Working. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/05/america-vaccine-success-world-covid-equity/618839/

Kavanagh, M. M. (2020). US elections and a foreign policy for pandemics. The Lancet Public Health, 5(10), e517–e518. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30211-5

Strategy, E. (2020, April 23). Coronavirus: Impact and challenges [What Think Tanks are thinking]. European Parliamentary Research Service Blog. https://epthinktank.eu/2020/04/23/coronavirus-impact-and-challenges-what-think-tanks-are-thinking/

This could be about really any town in the US. Except for some college towns and big cities, most Americans live in mostly remote places -- in an actual sense or in an intellectual sense. Let's read this warm-up article together. Please leave your actual name in the responses unless your ID is the school ID (for me, that would be Baekk).

The authors examine the implications of fake news (aka disinformation campaigns). Before we start reading the article, I would like you to go out into the internet (preferably the reliable and credible sources on the net) and find more about American disinformation campaigns abroad. Please share the cases you found here.

The authors examine the implications of fake news (aka disinformation campaigns). Before we start reading the article, I would like you to go out into the internet (preferably the reliable and credible sources on the net) and find more about American disinformation campaigns abroad. Please share the cases you found here.

Abstract is a sales pitch and a guide; the authors summarize their entire paper into less than 100~200 words to draw you in and guide you throughout the rest of the paper.

This is a literature review on the relationship between the public opinion and foreign policy. The American public is, largely, regarded as uninterested and unaware of foreign policy. However, here the authors survey the literature and conclude that the public is able to hold a nuanced and coherent view on foreign policy and is able to make a voting decision based on this view.

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