Should the United States foreign policy be implacable? Or should there be flexibility?
Foreign policy, to be meaningful, must be strategic (long term). If it were subject to every change in the political wind, it would never accomplish anything. Therefore, I would say that yes, it must be implacable (not subject to change by transient causes.) However, this fact is normally masked. As an example, I’d point to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both were clearly planned before 9-11-2001, and they will continue through the Obama administration, campaign rhetoric to the contrary. They have resulted in us building massive bases in Iraq and Afghanistan that only make sense in terms of a long term occupation of that part of the world. That in turn is largely motivated by our need to control strategic petroleum reserves and pipelines in Asia. The real goals and directions of US foreign policy are often not spelled out clearly for US citizens to understand. One reason is that we also don’t want foreign nations to understand too clearly what we’re up to. Another reason is that a c
