Comment by dangoldin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dangoldin | Hacker News Reader

It's true when he wrote it but has also been true before 9/11. Most times the US intervenes in foreign affairs on behalf of economic reasons (Guatemala, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, etc)

In the case of Nicaragua in 1984, it went up the UN courts with the US being found to encourage human rights violations but it didn't amount to much since the US sits on the security council.

This is such a complicated topic that I really don't know whats the moral answer is. On one hand I don't believe we should be completely isolationist when there's so much going on in the world but on the other hand it's very easy to screw things up and impossible to predict the consequences. The best I hope for is having morally justified reasons for intervention rather than economically justified ones.

Lots of interesting stuff at the following links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_U.S._regime_change_actio...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States

"On one hand I don't believe we should be completely isolationist"

Agreed. But we (USA) should be non-interventionists. Isolationism is when you cut off economic ties and restrict travel in and out (think North Korea). Non-interventionism is when you stay out of other nation's political affairs (politics, war, economics).

And then something like Rwanda happens and everyone (quite rightly) asks why there was no intervention when everyone could see what was happening.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. And simple answers to complex questions come with their own problems.

It matters what kind of intervention are you getting into. You can step yourself up as a mediator and act to prevent the conflict escalation and to reduce the damages, or you can just hand weapons to one (or even to both) of the involved opposite camps that will most surely not prevent the conflict escalation or reduce any damages.

...but now, which option is more profitable?

I think non-interventionism gets harder and harder to achieve as the world gets more connected. Even if the government becomes non-interventionist you still have private companies and individuals intervening. I think it's hard to separate the two.

Another interesting link, for some sense of scale: http://zompist.com/latam.html

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