The greatest danger in foreign policy is a reliance on worn out paradigms and unexamined assumptions. This received wisdom acts as a mental filter that ignores new developments and lets through only that information which fits the preordained narrative. For nearly forty years American foreign policy has been compromised by a mistaken paradigm conditioning our analyses and policies.
That paradigm is a construction of the leftist interpretation of American foreign policy. In this narrative, the United States is the heir of the European imperialist regimes that used state power to further the interests of capitalist overlords by establishing colonies in the undeveloped world, where they exploited labor and natural resources, and established new markets to increase profits. In the process, the colonial powers destroyed indigenous peoples and cultures, politically oppressed the people, and violently repressed native efforts to realize their nationalist ambitions and enjoy freedom and human rights. Anti-colonialist revolution and violence are thus legitimate acts of “resistance” to these imperialist depredations.
