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COPYRIGHT 2007 Professors World Peace Academy
The United States, with its tremendous power, has a profound influence on the international system and many of its component parts. Yet, in protecting U.S. national security, idealist claims are not substitutes for realistic and honest analysis, or for courage on the part of policymakers to act upon it in the national interest, partisan pressures notwithstanding.
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I have for some time been of the opinion that the U.S. role in the Asia-Pacific Rim against the background of the rise and progress of China is not a subject that can be treated in isolation from the global context. Over recent years the world has been impacted by a United States' foreign policy which has seemed arbitrary, self-serving, short-sighted and in many respects inconsistent with the ideals of democracy. There is an urgent need for the U.S. to evolve and develop an overall foreign policy which has coherent principles and enjoys full bi-partisan support.
Never in the history of the world has U.S. leadership become so important as today--but to be effective, enduring, accepted, and respected, this leadership must go hand in hand with the principle that right makes might and the recognition that it is one thing to win a war, and quite another thing to win and secure the peace.
When I was deposed as President of the Republic of Seychelles in June 1977 by a Marxist orientated coup d'etat, the coup leaders accused me of being an "imperial lackey." They were critical of the fact that I had allowed the United States to build a U.S. Air Force Satellite Tracking Station atop our main island of Mahe to gather military intelligence over the former Soviet Union. They were critical of the fact I had supported the U.S. decision to build up an ultra-sophisticated and modern naval and air force base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Chagos archipelago. For those who do not know it, Diego Garcia is the island from which B-52 bombers departed to fight the war in Afghanistan, and Diego Garcia provides irreplaceable logistical support to the war in Iraq.
For many years now, I have been following the evolution of U.S. foreign policy. I first started to be seriously bothered by it when the State Department under Madeleine Albright decided to close the embassy in Seychelles after the U.S. had emerged as the sole superpower in the world. There was no concern that for more than 20 years the Seychelles had burdened herself with a U.S. spying station, making her a top target for destruction had there been physical war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It seemed like the U.S. was only using others for its own arbitrary ends.
I became even more disenchanted with U.S. foreign policy when, on the June 18, 1997, I came across an article in the International Herald Tribune by William Pfaff, a well respected syndicated columnist of the Los Angeles Times entitled "Sole Super Power Status Goes to America's Head." In that article Pfaff makes reference...
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