The Financial Crisis and US Foreign Policy Goals
Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog
While listening to President George W. Bush give his speech at 7:45 this morning my email box started blowing up with some unusual emails from the State Department. Typically, my feed gets 3-5 emails a day. The typical subjects are new country notes, the daily press conference, and some new initiative or program. From 7:37 to 7:51 a series of emails with a scope of topics that normally don’t come in during the course of a week hit my box. Here’s the list:
- U.S. Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals
- Promoting Food Security Worldwide: A U.S. Commitment
- United Nations Management Reform
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- The United States’ Response to the Darfur Crisis
- The United States’ Commitment to Human Rights
- Financing for Development
My interpretation isn’t some huge leap, but basically the Executive is saying that despite plans to use 100s of billions of dollars to setup “Uncle Sam’s Domestic Wealth Fund” we’re not giving up on our monetary commitment to our foreign policy goals around the world. Several of those above are targeting China. The Humans Rights stuff, and the Darfur stuff are telling China that we still care about that stuff. Financing for development and millenium development goals is saying that we’re still in the soft power game. Management reform is saying many of our bankers may be crooks, but that doesn’t mean we’re gonna let others get away with it. Food security is related to the Doha round of trade talks which were all but scuttled due to fallout between India, China, EU and the US over agricultural subsidies. Some other foreign policy initiatives will probably have to be scaled back, especially extremely costly ones.
