BOOMERBUSTER

BOOMERBUSTER
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Monday, February 8, 2016

THE CLASH RE CARROT AND STICK

"The evidence simply does not support the liberal internationalist assumption that commerce promotes peace." Huntington, p. 67

Great passage...

Nevertheless, he advocates carrot and stick diplomacy at many points throughout The Clash

In practice, during the Cold War, this most often meant subsidies to our market = carrot, withdrawal of prior subsidies to our market = stick (i.e. not a real ' stick ', a faux stick).

Although he obviously does not see this as an inconsistency, except fitfully when he lamely suggests restricting technology transfers to retard relative civilizational decline (ie not carrot or stick restrictions, but rather restrictions without regard for strategic or diplomatic objectives and so called carrot stick tools), I do. 

It is views like this, of the appropriate tools of diplomacy, and of the willing, even eager, subordination of trade, commerce, and finance regarding domestic economic and commercial interests, to so called ostensible higher strategic and political foreign affairs goals, that got us here, over the last 100 years, really, since Wilson (a great universalist), after all, and especially after WWII, and then for 45 years during the Cold War.

Terms search: trading American interests, Trading Places, carats shtick.

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