We don't want to rule the world or do we?

We don't want to rule the world:
The US public largely opposes America's foreign wars and economic meddling. They need a voice in US foreign policy
By Mark Weisbrot

Americans are famous for not paying much attention to the rest of the world, and it is often said that foreign wars are the way that we learn geography. But most often it is not the people who have little direct experience outside their own country that are the problem, but rather the experts.

The latest polling data is making this clear once again, as a majority of Americans now oppose the war in Afghanistan, but the Obama administration is escalating the war, and his military commanders may ask for even more troops than the increase to 68,000 that the adminstration is planning by the end of this year.

This gap between the average American and the foreign policy elite has been around since the Vietnam war and long before. The gap is also large between Democratic voters, three-quarters of whom oppose the war in Afghanistan, and the politicians and thinktanks that represent them in the political arena. A few decades ago there was a real voting base of cold war liberals – people who were progressive on social and economic issues but rightwing on foreign policy. That base has largely disappeared. Yet amazingly, the foreign policy establishment – including most of the media – has managed to maintain this political tendency as a very influential force.

The gap between the public and the foreign policy elite is not due to the ignorance of the masses, as the elite would have it, but primarily to a different set of interests and values. Very few foreign policy decision-makers – just a handful of members of Congress, for example – have sons or daughters who actually fight in the wars that they decide are "wars of necessity". The tax burden for these wars is more affordable for most foreign policy experts than it is for an American with median earnings. And perhaps most importantly, the average American doesn't have the same interest in trying to have the US rule the world.

For the foreign policy elite, the importance of running the world – as much as it is possible – is taken as given. Walter Russell Mead is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the most influential foreign policy organisations in the United States. He represents the more liberal end of the political spectrum at the CFR. In a recent interview with The Brazilian Economy, he argued that all countries must accept what he called "the Anglo-American system". For him, the lessons of history show that there is no alternative:

To me, there is one clear lesson: by joining the [Anglo-American] system and becoming part of it, you can achieve far greater results, whether measured by international power, state security or the prosperity of your people. You actually do much better by co-operating than resisting.

Continue reading: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/...