Dieter Heinrich
Recent Activity
Dieter Heinrich commented on Anne-Marie Slaughter: The Mission Ahead on March 31, 2009, 7:36 PM
A comment from a non-American who likes Americans personally but finds the United States to be a risibly hypocritical and regressive force of darkness: Real networks have no center. The way to strengthen cooperation with your allies is by shedding the self-chosen, self-serving global ambitions of “leadership” that simply mask a relentless intent to control others in America’s interest. Ms Slaughter’s vision of America at the “center” of a global network is simply a two dimensional representation of America at the top of the heap. It’s still arrogant. (How would Americans react to hear Europeans plotting to be the center of a world network?) All I hear Ms Slaughter saying is, the US should try harder and be nicer as it goes about getting others to accept the same-old same-old of American hegemony and exceptionalism. To end on a positive note, I’d like to offer some really fresh thinking that could actually help the average American: close your foreign bases, bring your troops home, and focus on the care of your citizens like a normal country. You could save hundreds of billions of badly needed dollars every year on your military budget. Then, instead of bashing the UN and undermining the International Criminal Court, join in raising the new democratic institutions of global governance that can serve us all by bringing about peace under a rule of law that also applies to everyone, including you. Woodrow Wilson might have liked that.
Dieter Heinrich commented on Katrina vanden Heuvel on Progressive Foreign Policy on April 3, 2009, 2:12 PM
Thank you. Well said. What a refreshing voice. (Of course, it goes without saying you’re a communist man-hater. ) As a non-American observer, I find it curious that average Americans on the Right will believe their government domestically to be mendacious, controlling, conniving, conspiratorial, incompetent and arbitrary — then will deny deny deny that American foreign policy is anything other than principled, just and benevolent toward the world. And as Katrina probably knows, anyone who disagrees is a commie pinko fascist lefty liberal, and probably a tree-hugging eco-Nazi to boot. Above we have Exhibit 3856724982, Luke Allen, implying that America has been paying for the world’s social ills. How charmlessly naïve. The United States on a per capita basis pays almost nothing toward the world’s social problems. And what it gives doesn’t compensate for the brains and talent it sucks out of the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the US has gotten a bazillion dollar free ride from its dollar being the world's reserve currency. It wouldn’t be hard to make the case that the US is not only ungenerous, it is the world’s biggest freeloader. It's foreign policy consists of making sure no one can change this rigged game, especially if it might obligate the US to play by the rules that it enforces on others. It has spent decades undermining international organizations and treaties. It doesn’t even pay its legally-obliged dues to the United Nations. What it does do very generously is supply weapons all around. Is that is what Allen meant? Humility indeed.