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The Washington Rules

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Washington Rules emphasizes that the United States should order world politics. The world must be ordered by the United States and cannot be permitted to order itself. As a result of Washington rules, the United States has a duty and moral obligation to be the world’s policeman to the point where other nations just naturally expect us to act. The Washington Rules project of US foreign policy has managed to sustain and regenerate itself since the end of World War Two. However, we often forget that by following Washington rules, we do not follow limits and extend our power. As a result, there are blow backs when the United States attempt to control to world as seen by the Cuban Missile Crisis and 9/11. Additionally, Fulbright stresses the idea …show more content…

In regards to this debate, I agree with Bacevich and believe that we should tend our own garden. According to Bacevich, Washington Rules is expensive. Bacevich argues that “the cost of adhering to the Washington consensus defy measurement: families shattered by loss, veterans bearing the psychical or psychological scars of combat, the perpetuation of ponderous bureaucracies subsisting in a climate secrecy, dissembling, and outright deception” (Bacevich, Washington Rules). Additionally, according to Bacevich there is no end in sight, even though the conditions that first gave rise to the Washington Rules have ceased to exist. For example, United States allies in Western Europe and East Asia, weak and vulnerable in the immediate wake of World War II, are today stable prosperous, and perfectly capable of defending themselves. Clearly, Washington Rules is unnecessary because the world changes but Washington Rules stays the same. Washington Rules discount what actually works and obstinately grasp instead to familiar practices that obviously fail to deliver what they promise (Bacevich, Washington …show more content…

According to Bacevich, the policies of Washington and Adams defined the nation’s proper orientation toward the outside world. For example, Washington one urged his countrymen to “give mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?” In addition, John Adams elaborating on Washington’s themes insisted that “the United States does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and dependency of all” (Bacevich, Washington Rules). Washington and Adams credo was neither liberal nor conservative, and paved the way for the type of leadership, informed by conviction that self-mastery should take the precedence over mastering others. Undoubtedly, that is not the case in present day U.S foreign

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