Thursday, November 29, 2012
Reflection #1
In yesterday's lecture, we discussed Kissenger's and Albright's take on leadership and how it should be carried out by the United States. Their opinion was the complete opposite as mine in which they stated that the United States should not always lead in situations they wish to see change in. This highly contradicts my point of view since in the unipolar world we are currently living in (regarding the strength on military and weapons of mass destruction) should have its main and strongest power as the "worl police". To only intervene when seem necessary or beneficial to the United States will make its ties to other allies weaken as they cannot place their trust entirely on the United States. An example of this includes Colombia's terrorist group, The FARC. Previously, the United States had provided aid for Colombia to combat this terrorist group. However, this aid has been cut within the last couple of years and the terrorist group has begun to rise once again and terrorize the people of Colombia. Although the country has tried to retain more aid from the US by signing trade agreements with the them that would only benefit the other country, no aid has been further given to this developing country.
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I think you have a really interesting view of the United States as the world police. You discuss how the United States helped Colombia with the terrorist group. I'm not entirely familiar with that so I was wondering if you could expand on whether it was hard power as a method of carrots and sticks? Other than combating terrorism overall, did the US benefit otherwise?
ReplyDeleteWell I don't think the United States truly benefited from fighting the FARC (Maybe they do, I am just unaware of this). The FARC is a terrorist group in Colombia. The country received a lot of aid from the United States when Bush Jr. was on the "fight of terrorism". I know the United States and Colombia have many trade agreements that benefits mostly the United States, maybe this was an agreement they had to make up for the aid given. And I would see this more as a method of a combination of Hard and Soft Power. Hard Power by the rewards given to Colombia, and Soft Power by manipulating the trade agreements so it looks beneficial to both countries.
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