budget assumptions/imperialism

[Carl Remick]

> Your post presumes a present, great economic benefit
> to imperialism.  It also implies a link between the
> spate of U.S. military interventions over the past
> forty years -- many of which the left and liberals
> did not support from the jump -- and the aforementioned
> economic benefits.  The benefits are highly problematic
> as to magnitudes.  Also the necessity of many of the
> interventions in sustaining any such benefits.  You
> seem to be reducing U.S. foreign policy to a narrow
> economism.

It certainly can be argued that all these costly imperialistic
interventions do carry a net benefit, whatever its magnitude may be:
They demonstrate who's in charge.  Sometimes this demonstration goes
awry, as in Vietnam; other times it works, as in Kosovo.  But the sheer
willingness to drop billions of dollars of high explosive on some
recalcitrant nation from time to time means that *most* of the time you
can get your way simply by saber rattling.

Carl