Nem Tudo Está Perdido, Aprendendo com os Erros da Política Externa Americana

O que aprendemos nessa década? Que toda a política externa Americana, de Bush e Obama, é um lixo. Os erros são inúmeros e os custos astronômicos. Felizmente alguns analistas críticos do excesso de gastos de defesa, de alianças insustentáveis, da ilusão do nation-building, das longas guerras que nunca serão vencidas apontam para uma mudança radical de política, eles são chamados de new isolationists. Neste excelente artigo no Boston Globe, Cambanis comenta sobre 3 desses analistas, Bacevich, Mearsheimer, e Posen: America wastes much of its budget, Posen says, on allies guilty of “free riding and reckless driving.” Europe lets America provide much of its defense and offers little in return. Meanwhile, allies like Israel, Afghanistan, and Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt can defy American interests without losing Washington’s support. America, in this view, is paying too much for too little cooperation. Finally, they say, the economic crisis proves that even a superpower like America has limits; there’s only so much money in the treasury, and only so many troops that can be deployed overseas. With America financially up against the wall, it will have to prioritize rather than treat every threat with equal urgency.(...) Among other things, Mearsheimer says America should call off its war on terror, focusing on the small number of groups directly attacking the United States while ignoring all the rest. “We do have a terrorism problem, but it’s hardly an existential threat,” he writes. During the last half century, he points out, about the same number of Americans have been killed by lightning as by terrorist attacks. He also says America should stop trying to socially engineer faraway countries like Afghanistan. Occupying foreign nations, Mearsheimer says, is bound to produce new enemies while motivating old ones.