10-09-2019, 11:46 PM
(10-08-2019, 12:03 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 08-Oct-2019 World View: Truman Doctrine
(10-08-2019, 02:13 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: > "...the heart of America's role in the world...." Perhaps we are
> starting to see this questioned because of generational turn over?
> Consider the generations that remember Word War II. The
> G.I. remnant is in the Old-old phase. The Silents are old and
> fading away.
> The Boomers remember the Cold War, but the Cold War was not
> cataclysmic, and ended with a whimper.
> The Xers were soldiers in these Endless Wars. I don't know of any
> reason for Millenials to want the same.
> (BTW, I don't think that I would love and adore a war between the
> USA and Turkey).
Every president from Truman to Bush 43 followed the Truman Doctrine.
The Silents and Boomers thought it was important. The Millennials
don't have the vaguest clue what it's about, and couldn't find the
relevant countries on a map. Obama didn't see any use for the Truman
Doctrine. Trump is repudiating it, but that could be because he's
reallocating forces in preparation for the war with China.
Obama's foreign policy was inertia, which looked sane and effective enough. Communism had disappeared as a meaningful menace to the United States and its allies except in Korea. Face it: Barack Obama was still a young adult when Communism collapsed in central and Balkan Europe. Obama had spent most of his adult life in the post-Cold War world before he became President.
Trump is incompetent and reckless enough to bungle his way into a very nasty war... He may not be planning a major war, but he can certainly get one. He thinks much like the despotic kings who started wars over minor slights, and that is consummately dangerous.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
