japanese maple

There is something wrong with the US foreign policy. Every action America takes in foreign businesses contributes to make its relations with other countries more unstable.

A leader in Friday’s Financial Times (1) brought me back to a book review I read in the New Statesman two weeks ago. The book argued that Europeans brood over xenophobia towards the US (2). This phenomenon was harshly criticized by the author of the article and I agreed with her. However now, in the light of what I’ve read in the FT, I feel I can’t blame Europeans.

The most recent problem in the US foreign policy is its authoritarian attempt to stop Iran’s nuclear enrichment. The FT leader affirms that American policy “surrender and then we can talk” will not work. On the radio, the other day, the Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki called the US preconditions paradoxical, because to impose a precondition means “to negotiate negotiations.” He didn’t talk completely nonsense.

Furthermore, the troubled US-Iran relations are the tip of the iceberg in US foreign policy’s failure of strategy. The bossy imperialism of the Bush doctrine has led the US to quarrel with the majority of Europeans countries.

However, in its conclusions, the FT leader gives the US a chance. It says: “if the US could deal with the greater threat of the Soviet Union, surely it can talk with Teheran.” But the fallacious US policy, from Afghanistan to Iraq, put it in the wrong in other countries’ eyes. Besides Bush is not Kennedy. It seems arguable that the former is eager to favour a détente in its foreign relations, as the latter attempted to with the USSR.

References
(1) Financial Times, “Dealing with Teheran”- February 23rd 2007 (p.16)
(2) New Statesman, “Love to hate you” by Mary Fitzgerald – February 12th 2007 (p.59)