Best Interest

[A'AbarachAmadan]

Yes, but I would say the US is the best at providing freedom to others. After WWI the US protested the draconian (and historically normal) measures placed upon Germany. After WWII, the US helped rebuild Europe and Japan, even though they could have left them in ruin. The US could have simply leveled Afghanistan further, but decided to try to rebuild it. While I think this is in the US's best interest, it certainly is different than the historical norm of most nations.

 

[JohnRM]

Yeppers.....

 

[Ramius75]

Yes, but I would say the US is the best at providing freedom to others. After WWI the US protested the draconian (and historically normal) measures placed upon Germany. After WWII, the US helped rebuild Europe and Japan, even though they could have left them in ruin. The US could have simply leveled Afghanistan further, but decided to try to rebuild it. While I think this is in the US's best interest, it certainly is different than the historical norm of most nations.

I believe it is America's interest to provide support for these countries u mention so as to control over them and to contain, Communist USSR & later China (Germany And Japan) and In Afghanistan ( to look good and contain the terrorist, not to mention controlling the middle Asia and also to contain and box China)

Every man for himself and so does the countries the man lives in. So countries are more gernerous and some wouldnt give u a dime.

 

[Imaginos]

Every country looks to its own interests first. whatever foreign policy decision it makes, it has to see what it can get out of it, politically or financially.
When a country gives aid to another, i doubt it's doing it out of pure altrusim. There has to be more to it than that. A friend in it's pocket perhaps.. so that it can call in favours later on when/if it needs to. or to make sure it will always be friendly towards it or maybe, to make it open it's market to sell it's products. just some examples.
but there's always a catch to it.

 

[Shadylookin]

I would say they always attempt to act in their best interest, but sometimes unforeseeable events or a dumb leader/s cause an action to not go in their interest

 

[amadeus]

Funny how nobody who voted for "only the USA" has the balls to come out and say it.

 

[Desmond Hawkins]

Yes indeed, they intend to act in their own interests.

Whether they are smart enough to actually know what their own interests are is a different matter.

 

[Steph]

It's a questionn of balance.
A leader is supposed to work first for the interests of his country / the citizens of his country.

To do this, he has to balance the gain and loss of his decision.

What will it cost (financial, human, political credits, etc) if we go to war, what will we gain? Same question if we don't go to war?

The cost/loss shall take into account your allies / neighbours / rest of the world... and the different parties in the country and the public opinion (for the next election)

Except for corrupted leaders, they all follow this pattern when taking decision.

 

[Winner]

First law of IR: there are no national interests

In fact, there are serious disagreements between liberal and realist views about what the so-called "national interest" is.

Realists (in fact conservatives) think, that leaders of states declare this interest and this interest is then interest of every its citizen.

Liberals say, that it should be the opposite: we should take views of every citizen and the national interestshould be the interest of all (actually rather a majority) of them.


So it is hard to say some country is pursuing the national interest, because it usually means it pursue only the interests of its current government.

 

[Sarevok]

well, yeah. of course they go for their interests...

 

[A'AbarachAmadan]

Although I agree with the general concept that nations do what is in their best interest, I believe that some great leaders go beyond this. I believe in win-win situations and limited altruism.

For example, I don't see much gain for the US involvement in Rwanda or Bosnia, but the US led both of these effort under Clinton (albeit late in both cases to avert the big disasters, but better late than never). I think the gain for these nations was far more than the US got out of it, in fact Clinton took all kinds of political flak for his actions. Obviously in the US interest to encourage peace around the world and stop genocide, but clearly not a + for the US and a - for them. More of a + for the US and ++++++++++++++++++ for them.

 

[JoeM]

Do you think that every nation will almost always act in its own best interest?

I bring this up because there is a lot of talk of America as being a place full of nationalists that do not care about anything but America. I would contend that indeed every country acts in its own best interest. What are you thoughts?

This doesn't address the issue you're talking about.

Imagine you are at a party where everyone takes some food and drink, chats laughs and is merry. Some people get on better, some worse, some eat more, some less.

Now imagine a selfish person there, who doesn't care what the others get and takes most all for himself.

Nobody likes him, right?

International politics is about getting what you want without pissing everyone else off.