GooneriC The world includes a hell of a lot people accustomed to thinking of the United States as a rogue nation, and questioning the gross, withering Frankenstein of Clinton-neocon foreign policy it's still practising today.

Every one of the world situations that's become a "foreign policy question" for the US has its concrete details, but the overall posture of the last decades has been a violent, unprincipled mess.

Burnwinter as a baseline, America is a crazy right wing country that has historically been prone to the influences of slavers, Nazi sympathisers, January 6 insurrectionists etc.
Kamala isn’t going to be a radical departure from this momentum. But here is a candidate who in the last few years has been talking about women’s right to choose and improved maternal healthcare, defunding of police, widely accessible healthcare, etc. she’s a much better option than what the US typicallly has.

Claudius Yeah, it's not a tough choice between Trump or Harris for me from a domestic perspective—it's Harris all the way. Trump is a horrible piece of work with a platform that's half ideological fantasy, the other half regressive tax cuts and reckless deregulation in greater degree than usual. For the rest of the world the implications of the choice are less clear, and not good in either case.

Side point but I wonder if the radical conservatives set on gutting the federal bureaucracies worry about state capacity at all, which is already relatively poor in the States.

Meatwad Same difference really. When the US passes a massive military appropriations bill, the first bullet point on the announcement is usually that two thirds of the cash is going to MIC profiteers in swing states.

And when Australia announces a vast military investment (by our standards), the first bullet point is usually that two thirds of the appropriations are going to MIC profiteers in the United States as well.

There is less difference in foreign policy. Some of this is domestic politics - no American administration is going to stop supporting Israel, and Biden's policy here has been as close to pro-Palestinian as is currently imaginable. Some of it is institutional, and on the whole I think that's a good thing. Big change in American foreign policy will not come from the democrats because they're institutionalists, whereas Trump's foreign policy "vision" requires the collapse of institutional constraints. I'd rather not see the US withdraw from NATO, surrender Eastern Europe to Putin, and start a tariff war with China. All while doubling down on support for uncontrolled settler violence in the West Bank.

Interesting you see it that way.

I think it's a matter of time. Time passes, allegiances shift. Alliances get reset and restructured. The new generation doesn't see Israel as some sort of sacred cow. We are entering a phase where unquestioned support for Israel is not taken for granted anymore. That's progress.

Regarding foreign policy and influence, I think it's myopic (to one's own country) to think there's no difference between Trump and Kamala. Taiwan (and in turn Japan), Ukraine (and in turn the EU), and Mexico (in turn Central America) all have a vested interest in this election.

Mirth

The rest of the world is dealing with the ramifications of the current US administration and I don't know how Trump could make things any worse.

"Trump would be even worse" rings hollow when Biden and Harris are active right now in supporting, funding and arming what will go down as one of the worst genocides of the 21st century. Their administration has changed US law to arm the genociders quicker and with less oversight. This is worse than anything Trump did during his four years. Harris has offered nothing but full throated support and continues to gaslight Palestinians on behalf of the colonial army trying to eradicate them.

Like with Obama, it's alluring to see a less conservative POC as hope that the US may revert its assault on the rest of the world, but POC who reach leadership positions within the swampiest of swampy establishment institutions like the Democratic Party don't attain those positions if they have conflicting views to the donors and the Pentagon.

flobaba this is true, but also, such progress comes with very real costs. The status quo is much maligned, and I'm one of those maligners, but the hard reality that the kids never want to face is that reactionary forces will predictably accelerate their violent agendas as their general support wanes. It's a real in-before-the-lock mentality, and it establishes a new status quo for the foreseeable that's very hard to undo. It's like fixing the interest on an adjustable line of credit. Genocide, historically, is often at its most intense nearer to its perpetrators' rise/demise.

The truth is that just about everyone is ready to sacrifice the lives of others for their ideological goals, which are usually couched in the rhetoric of preservation - of a culture, of a way of life, of a people, of a sense of what the status quo was or should be. But, when you actually get to the crossroads with your finger on the button, its much harder to press it than the slogans on the protest signs make it seem. Granted, some people have no trouble mashing that button, but those people aren't the ones you want to give that opportunity to, however noble their cause may be.

One of the glaring issues with US foreign policy in the years since Iraq has been that the imperial agenda and expectations are continuing, but they're lagging the decline in how willing and able the US establishment is to sustain large military commitments.

There's been a pattern of inadequate accounting for the scope and possibilities of the conflicts the rest of the United States' international conduct touches on.

Imperialism is brutal, but this all care no responsibility pseudo-imperialism, where the forces hang round for five, ten or twenty years while the MIC money machine spins, then rack off leaving the state of things in chaos worse than when they showed up—because a Trump has been elected, perhaps—has been diabolical in other ways.

It’s fair to say that there is bad and then is worse US foreign policy. In recent history, the Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice administration comes to mind as one that was particularly heinous. Regardless of perceived harms against them, they wreaked havoc.

I’m reading that in Obama’s voice even before listening to Shapiro

Claudius US state agencies seem unable to contain the spread of misguided agenda-building and avoid further terrible outcomes. As an example, take the "steps to a convenient Sunni statelet in East Iraq" thought bubble that was circulating in the State Department around 2010.

Someone senior at one of the agencies becomes convinced one of these objectives is strategic and achievable. RAND Corporation comes in and does the white paper. The agency seeks support from the executive. I reckon the difference between "bad and worse" is between one President who says "Halliburton would love this idea, we're all in" and the next who says instead "I haven't got the political capital for this, set your objections aside and bring me a plan that's bound to fail so long as it only involves funding contras".