I will try to analyse two words, namely “freedom” and “democracy”. If we hear them coming out of the mouth of George W. Bush, we think he’s either naïve or he’s just being a hypocrite.

That’s a bit judgemental i think. Especially if you continue to define “freedom” and “democracy” from an American perspective (haven’t read on yet, but anyway). Defining either one of those words is totally subjective anyway: the bipartisan US democracy, the direct Swiss democracy, the sexist classic Greek democracy, or the Communist people’s democracy?

Anyway, let me continue reading your essay and pick at individual alineas first.

The origins of FREEDOM & DEMOCRACY…
…
Without going into details, we can say that during the nineteenth century US foreign policy was reluctant and mostly concerned with her own defence.

Disagree. What the US was mostly concerned with during the 19th century in my eyes was all about nation building and had nothing to do with defense. Just look at it: it began with unifying the 13 original colonies into one Union, the expansion to the West, fighting a civil war, accepting ongoing waves of (White and initially preferably protestant) immigrants, and finally a late attempt at joining the European game of colonisation (Hawaii, the Phillipines, Cuba, the Virgin Islands, the small game left by the traditional colonial powers)

In the Proud Tower, …. this conference was to mediate between France and Germany over a Moroccan dispute.

Okay, you get into the expansion beyond the continental US. Sorry for mentioning it above. However, you could explain the more internationalistic approach of US politics from the late 1800s as a logical result after the conclusion of US nation building. Almost exactly the same as European countries did earlier: Spain did it 300 years before, Belgium and Germany less than 50.
I think Mahan’s theories on naval power are very valid for this period though, but you have to remember that it was actually the British Royal Navy which made the Monroe Doctrine possible, not the US itself. Again, i think Cabot Lodge’s plans for an American Hochseeflotte with it’s staging bases has more to do with the USA having evolved into a full-grown state instead of a ragtag bunch of semi-anarchist slaveholders, pioneers and fortune seekers.

Did this mean the end…. …to the exercise of an international police power.”

Not exclusively American, especially not at that time. This was the era of Kiplings “White Mans Burden”, and almost each and every Western nation (including Russia) considered it self to have some sort of messianistic role in the rest of the world. And not only states had this in the back of their minds, also philosophers and political movements. Nietzsche, Marx, Bakunin, even proto-nazis and proto-fascists like madame Blavnatsky had such high self esteem. For some reason this tendency to be expansionist with one’s ideals is nowadays seen as Trotskist (because of Trotskis Permanent Revolution thing), but it was part of almost each and every (geo/socio-)political current around the 1900s and in a number of cases for a few decades more.

I might be speaking before my turn here, but the Neoconservative movement is very, very outspoken in it’s messianistic approach of it’s views. To me personally, that is my main grudge with Bush and those of his ilk.

….Nationalism continued to exist after WWI, even supported by the United States to compete against the “internationalism” of the newly created Soviet-Union.

Do you put the American intervention (together with a number of other countries of course) in the Russian Civil War into this context as well? Because Wrangel’s White troops supported by the US were just as undemocratic, if not worse, than the Soviets who had hardly proven the brutality of their regime yet.

But this was a different form of nationalism than the Europeans had in mind. Not the exclusive nationalism based on blood-ties and Darwinism, but based upon a similar traditions, history and culture (inclusive nationalism). France and the UK thought they could sit around the table, and dictate Germany (and the others who lost the war), while Wilson wanted a new kind of “open” diplomacy. The League of Nations was supposed to bring this dream of a new diplomacy into reality. However, the Senate didn’t share Wilson’s ideas and neither did any of the European players, and hence, the League turned out to be a big failure.

I think equating the Versailles treaty with the League of Nations isn’t really justified: Versailles in the end became a purely financial issue (the US wanted France and the UK to repay their war debts, and this could only be achieved by making Germany bleed), while the League actually had one or two successful intervention despite being frustrated by the US (and the initial exclusion of Germany and the USSR) ever since it came into being.

Important though is that we understand US foreign policy was never aggressive nor arrogant towards any country in Europe. They did believe that “democracy” was a goal that should be achieved by all means possible, and that everyone had the right to live under a democratic regime, where in Europe most were stuck to the nineteenth century politics of “balances of power” and that every country should decide on its own how it should be governed, as long as it did not bother the others (roughly said). So, the US pulled backed its troops out of Europe.

With the exception of the Soviet intervention, which in my eyes did smell a lot like the ABC-doctrine (Anything But Communist) from the Cold War.

Looking back at World War I we found the historical basis to understand what some might describe as “US propaganda”, ie “democracy and freedom”.

If you consider that democracy and freedom were still relatively new to Europe at the end of WW1, i think the European and American definitions of these words were actually far closer in 1918 than they are now in 2005.

But let me read on…

Even the word crusade has a different meaning when looking at its historical context. In Europe however, we compare it to the Crusades of the 11-12th century. The US means something totally opposed to that. The United States is not innocent, but it uses a different vocabulary.

Please explain, or have i accidentally skipped the word ‘Crusade’ yet? In case you want to go there, there’s IMHO no defining of Crusades without the obvious religious colonialism, but also both the inter-Christian bloodshed (the sacking of Constantinople) and genocide (the Teutonic knights literally wiping out the Prussians). A positive, optimistic, even philantropical view of the word Crusade is a form of romantic revisionism i equate with Blut und Boden-romantics. In other words, such stupidity disgusts me. Even when such stupidity was populair in the 19th century.

1956, a turning-point….
In ten years time all former European colonies got their independence.

I couldn’t disagree with you at all here, except for this timeframe-tidbit. The Spanish and Portugese colonies didn’t get independence until the mid-1970s, so that would make it twenty years time (ignoring British Honduras and some other stamp-sized tracts o’land).

The frustration of the Suez-aftermath led to two different approaches towards the US, namely the British and the French. Britain would never go to war without consulting the US (even the Falklands), while France did the opposite. Even today, 50 years later, we still see the same lines in the foreign policies of the two countries:…

Disagree. I think the Suez-crisis was more a watershed to the US than it was to Europe, because 1956 was in my eyes the last bit of non-interventionist behaviour in US foreign politics (outside of the Western hemisphere, of course). In fact, the US took over a lot of Europe’s colonial wars from the 1950s on, either overt or in secrecy. Just look at it: toppling Mossadegh after he nationalised the British-owned Iranian oil industry, joining (and eventually replacing) Belgium in it’s fight against the horrible king-insulting Lumumba in the Congo, getting even against Sukarno in Indonesia for the Dutch, those police actions in Vietnam, involvement in the Angolan civil war… All in the name of the fight against communism and “for freedom and democracy” but essentially those had surprisingly lot to do with neo-colonialism. But i’m going astray here.
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If you don’t mind, i’ll continue later tonight (or tomorrow). Need to take a poop, and stuff.

It’s educational… 😀

Wait, let me get to read it first. But putting Pixies-lyrics at the end was just asking for it…

Man, you’re thick. The DDR did NOT use the T-62, but according to you some graffiti sprayed on a tank at a gunnery range or something like that is evidence to the contrary? Please.

I really enjoy your efforts in making a fool of yourself, but try to keep at least a tiny bit of credibility in acting like a belligerant doofus. And check Steve’s excellent Albania Sellout link, as perfectly from the goat’s mouth as one can get.

I guess the fact it says DDR right on it means nothing? duh…

So your alphabet reads like A-B-D-E-F-G… etcetera? People who know the full alphabet actuall read CDR on that T-62s turret. Duh :rolleyes:

It’s not an East German camo pattern either. Besides, for some reason Shqiponja knows to spot the nationality on a totally nondescript T-62 picture on an at-random-picture-collection-website called http://www.ndu.edu/nwc/nwcCLIPART/

Are you sure about that, Nitin? I think the overwing pylons were part of the whole set of options for the Jaguar International from the outset.

The pic shows an Ecuadorian Jag ES with overwing pylons, and while i don’t know the full delivery details of all individual Jags, Ecuador got it’s first Jags in January 1977. India didn’t get it’s first Jaguar until 1979, the first being one of the borrowed RAF machines.

EDIT: forgot the pic, sorry.

That’s a civil Mi-8T, ZA-MFE. It doesn’t have an Albanian AF identity.