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Us Foreign Policy Essay

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Why is US foreign policy pulled to extreme of either doing too much or nothing at all?
The inability of U.S. foreign policy to stay effective is because America has committed itself to supporting alliances that have not proven to be mutually beneficial. Foreign assistance, which is supposed to improve the well-being of recipient countries, goes directly to small coalitions. The United States, with the fear of losing its position on the global stage, has committed itself to the conundrum of regime change which often produces little result. Countries receiving foreign aid and military assistance have no incentives to build an effective bureaucracy or judicial system because these systems can represent threats to incumbents based upon local …show more content…

On the other hand, U.S. foreign policy was pulled to do nothing good to social improvements. The ultimate goal for U.S. foreign policy is to promote democracy in recipient countries. However, this goal has failed several times. For example, America was too deeply trapped into the commitment to see the real problems of South Vietnam. According to Hilton Root, the South Vietnam government's deepest vulnerability was its failure to win the confidence of the peasantry. Like Chiang Kai-shek's loss of China, both the Diem and Thieu regimes failed to gain popular support from the rural population. Without clearly seeing the needs of the rural population, America's effort to support South Vietnam and import democracy to this country failed with the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. Furthermore, social conditions of South Vietnam were not mature enough for accepting democratic style social reforms. According to Hilton Root, there was no cultural heritage in Vietnam that can link the individual rights to the cultural legacy of the nationhood. Unlike the French and American social systems, which rest secure on social contract, the Vietnamese had no social contract and Vietnamese social identity stemmed from loyalty to family or village rather than to the nationhood. The lack of both social

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