Why do the US need an ally in the middle east? Allies should share values.
No shit. The ancient Athenians invented democracy but I believe the US has made exporting democracy all around the world a vocation. So many successes: Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Morocco.
As a European I would like to ask to stop exporting democracy for at least a decade, the world needs a break, really.
You don't mind defending your own democracy from the likes of Vladamir Putin et. al. right?
You missed a few countries on your list a bit closer to home.
I'm an American, born and raised, and I'm frankly sick and tired that the xenophobic nonsense that the more vocal of us seeks to propagate has influenced foreign opinion of all Americans. I cannot tell you how embarrassed I've been, when on foreign soil, finding myself correcting (or worse sometimes, agreeing with) their notions of what life in America is like, because life in America is different for all of us. Homogenous isn't a word that would even occur to me to describe "the American way of life".
With that kind of sarcasm, you can hardly blame them. It's incendiary speech, and you do not speak for all Americans, so kindly stop using hateful and sarcastic language while sounding like you do speak for all of us. You're free to share your own brand of "'Merica" with whomever you please, but you do not speak on my behalf. Additionally, thinly veiled threats of violence, no matter how cloaked in sarcasm they may be, betray a lack of grace under pressure, and a deeper resentment than is unhealthy to be left ignored.
And GP: you don't speak for all of the EU (or of Europe) either. I'm sure you meant the former because most of the rest of Europe's populace doesn't seem to give two shits about us because they have their own problems back at home.
[1] The GOP candidate is a question mark regarding his external policy and we all saw how reckless H. Clinton is in Libya. I'm not sure if there's any chance for an external policy change for the better in the US right now.
The fact is, a large number of the people and governments that criticize the US are propped up by the US financially, militarily, or both.
This doesn't invalidate either point or opinion, but it does reintroduce complexity where points are boiled down to one-liners, absolutes, and sound bites.
But that 'analysis' ignores the bulk of the last century where, in fact, American intervention did a great deal to export and defend Democracy in places like France, Spain, Italy, Germany and more recently places like Bosnia and our very costly presence protecting Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
I am no fan of the Bush Doctrine and the foreign policy blunders of the last twenty years but it is more than a little misleading to suggest the United States hasn't done anything to safeguard and spread democracy in the world.
I would love to ramp that role back since it is such an eye wateringly expensive policy to maintain and we could use that money for our own infrastructure and domestic projects like universal healthcare and fighting poverty -- but we're still tied up in those engagements and playing the Superpower Defender.
And xenophobia? Where did that come from?
I didn't mean for my comment to come off as hateful, just exasperated. I would love it if the US would stop sticking our nose in everyone's business. Reallocation of those resources would be wonderful. But I am a realist and I understand that you just can't stop posing a credible threat to potentially bad actors without risking peace or someone stepping up and bearing more of that cost.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The following explains what we're after in more detail. Please (re-)read it too.
This is correct in an extremely narrow sense, in the same narrow sense that "there is no such thing as a country." This is because countries are political abstractions, and do not exist as a physical entity, like say, a chair, or a pomegranate.
If we understand "country" to instead refer to the group of people who organize under that system, then you are completely mistaken that "countries don't have values."
You can see this for yourself right now. If it's not too cold, you could strip naked and take a walk in your town for an hour or two.
As you are almost in a country where this is against the local values, you will very likely be asked to dress, or even arrested.
But why?
You said "countries don't have values, countries have interests." So whose "interests" is it for a man (or woman I guess) not to be naked? Well, right, the people living there.
This is just one example of how you can easily see that there are certainly values that are represented by the population, municipality, country, etc.
it's kind of silly to argue that there are no such values. I've just given one example, but I could easily list dozens if you don't find it convincing (just ask me to).
[1]Except in the rarest of occasions. edit: they also serve as a means to pretend and extort, too, but that's besides the point.
I'm at a complete loss as to why you would write that, to me this is like reading "Politicians don't have any role in defining laws" or something - like, we must be using some completely different definitions for you to write that, it's not even disagreement, I clearly have no idea what you have in mind.
Does your definition of value match this (second definition): https://www.google.com/search?q=define+value
like, I literally don't understand why you would write that unless we're just really misreading each other due to wildly different definitions of what you're talking about. If your definition of value doesn't match the above, then what definition are you using?
It's true a lot of people think and live like this, but it would be interesting to see politics join the 21st century, instead of pretending that an ethical base that can be traced back to the Stone Age is something to celebrate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
There is no other way in politics. Never has been, never will be.
I'll go you one further - people don't ACTUALLY have values. They make that stuff up too.
This being said, to the extent that they do exist, nation-states have interests, not values. When they try to have "values", things tend to go badly.
EDIT: You seem to edit that part in, well if the US some how manages to strip any interests in the near east then yes they do not have that many strategic interests (outside of trade, research and industry).
However as far as values go the are more or less on the same page, the only difference it's considerably more easy to commit to your values when everyone around you plays by the same rules. That said the US is probably the worse as far as it comes to actually living by their values of most western nations.
Values wise it's different cultures, languages, religious landscapes etc. Sure, nominally we are both liberal democracy's that value free markets. But, in practice things like immigration policy's demonstrate huge differences.
PS: That said we do have close ties and are Israel's largest import and export partner.