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- Jun 23, 2009
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I am not convinced that there was only that binary choice. Truth was, we valued controllable and influencable allies much more than spreading democracy. We could have forced our despotic allies to democratize. That would have been a more consistent FP. Especially in the ME.
Now, of course, this must be tempered by the fact that the number of democracies in the world flourished while we have been a superpower, and we certainly helped do that with soft power, i.e. foreign policy and economic policy and McDonalds and music and movies.
Before 1941, the United States had a totally hands off policy. After WW2, they had learned a hard lesson from that policy and weren't going to make the same mistake twice.
In 1937, we were like, "Let the Germans invade Austria. Let'em invade Czechoslovakia. Who cares?" But then, they invaded Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France and were knocking on England's door. That's the perspective that they were viewing the world from.