Example?
Japan and Germany as phijord related.
An alliance can be one of mutual support, or it can be one of dependency. Nation building falls in the latter category. It seems to me that history has shown that imperialism does not create allies, but rather resentment.
The former British colonies are as a whole much better off than any other country's former colonies I can recall. (See
Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order by Niall Ferguson ) Imperialism creates resentment due mostly to a bunch of scholars who like to bash Europe, and the media who promote them. For example, how many Austrailians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and Americans truly resent Britain and the civil society of law and custom it brought with it throughout the globe? Or, like my ancestors, scratching out a living in the Highlands?How many South Americans would truly rather be living in the jungles? What Indian truly wants to return to a divided India, constantly squabbling with itself? And so on. Imperialism is bashed now with little concious thought as to who brings the supposed grievance, and what benefits the "aggrieved" has taken advantage of.
True stability in any region comes from within.
Conversely, instability can and does come from abroad. Vietnam's instability was instigated and sustained by the Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh (Vietnamese Communist/nationalist) party at first, and after their split, by the North Vietnamese and their communist allies.
Consider the self-defense analogy in more detail: Do you pull a gun on an attacker and then proceed to give him a lesson in morality and personal finance? Or do you neutralize the threat and move on? A violent situation is not the context to do good.
True. But, you want to give the lesson to everyone else around, not the thug. You show others that self defense is good thing, and how to do it. After you stop the bad guy.
In your opinion, if we stay in Iraq - how do we know when we have "won?"
Yes, this wan't a question for me. But, my thought is that's when the Iraqis ask us to leave. The polls of Iraqis I've seen show that they don't want us there much, but realize they need external help to stabilize. They realize that we knocked out their former dictator, and then the thugs without the courage to fight him and his forces came in to make their own little caliphate and we've stayed to help them get rid of that vermin too. We would not like someone helping us to stabilize the US, but we would be foolish to turn down help we desperately needed. Kinda like the French help we accepted late in the Revolutionary War. Very late in the war, I might add.
This again shows my disagreement with Paul's (in my view) Pollyanna and contrarian approach to foreign affairs. We should "secure America and bring the troops home." When the people you need to secure from are in another country, you kinda have to go where they are. It seems as if he's saying "We should bring our troops home from around the world, but be ready to send them back to the same place." You are either ready to fight where needed to protect you country's interests, or you are not. You can't have it both ways. But, like I've said before, I tend to agree with Paul, even though I think he toned down his libertarianism to run as a Republican