Curt Mills: Should America Police the World?

Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative, talks U.S. foreign policy on the latest episode of Just Asking Questions.

1x 1.1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 3x

:15 :15

Download

Curt Mills: Should America Police the World?

"The greatest risk of a Republican administration is a war with Iran, and the greatest risk of a Democratic administration is a war with Russia," says Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative, a magazine for the types of conservatives who are skeptical of foreign military intervention.

Mills joined Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe on the latest episode of Just Asking Questions to talk about a $95.3 billion aid package, including $60 billion for Ukraine, that passed the Senate this week, which Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) called a "middle finger to America" during his filibuster of the bill. In this episode, they discuss the bill's passage, Paul's filibuster, Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent interview with Tucker Carlson, the Biden administration's airstrikes against Yemen, and whether or not the surge of foreign policy noninterventionism within the GOP is likely to last past 2024.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or on the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

 How the Ukraine delusion may end | Curt Mills | The Critic Magazine

Ukraine funding package moves closer to Senate passage | The Hill

Statement from President Joe Biden on Coalition Strikes in Houthi-Controlled Areas in Yemen | The White House

Mike Lee on X: "I totally agree with @RoKhanna. The Constitution matters, regardless of party affiliation." / X (twitter.com)

Rep. Pramila Jayapal on X: "This is an unacceptable violation of the Constitution. Article 1 requires that military action be authorized by Congress." / X (twitter.com)

Letter to Biden from Sens. Kaine, Young, Murphy, and Lee, - Jan. 11, 2024 

Secretary General Annual Report 2020 (nato.int) 

Comments

[Sarah Palin's Buttplug 2]

Has there ever been a president whose policies were so thoroughly shit-canned in his lifetime more than Bush the Lesser?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

The guy that hired all of his people?

[Homer Thompson]

karl rove has a column in the wsj today offering advice to the dems on how to remove biden

[Bill Falcon]

No. Screw the neocon Trotskites and their old world grudges. Stop dragging America into your wars..

[I woke up when Hillary talked about Reconstruction]

Biden and Obama ,if you really want an answer. Obama goes to Britian to tell them "Vote against Brexit !!" before he got there it was a squeeker but after his pompous finger-wagging IT PASSES.
Then he goes to Africa to promote abortion and homosexuality and creates tons of young America haters.

Under Biden we've had at least 8 coups in Africa, many with anti-American tones. WTH is the connection? Biden, Obama,Clinton...Yes, Bill says if he had gone in sooner he fully believes he could have saved --- his number --- 300 000 lives.

[AT]

Should America Police the World?

If not us, who?

[R Mac]

Nobody.

[Mickey Rat]

That is not an available option.

[R Mac]

It was for most of human history. You’re operating backwards from your conclusion.

[sarcasmic]

Let's say there was no world policeman, and Putin could do whatever without the US helping anyone out.
I think Ukraine would have lost heroically, and the Russian tanks would have kept on rolling.

[Zeb]

What makes you think that? I don't think Putin even wants to control all of Ukraine. I guess if there was no NATO it might be different. But if there was no NATO being vaguely hostile to post-Soviet Russia it's quite possible that relations between Russia and the rest of Europe might be a lot better. Who knows?

[R Mac]

He’s been told what Putin would do by the establishment, and so that’s what he believes. All the facts that completely contradict that narrative are conspiracy theories, and if those facts become to obvious to ignore, he’ll claim facts changed.

[R Mac]

Well, I think you’re an uninformed (usually on purpose) moron so what you “think” would happen doesn’t concern me.

[Bill Falcon]

oh my gosh Putin....progressives loved the USSR..they always screamed "peaceful coexistence" but now..Russia a country with the GDP of Spain is about to start a domino effect taking and occupying all of Europe..(since occupation is such an economic benefit...the US learned that the last 20 years in the middle east..hell we are running surpluses with our new lands in Iraq right?).

If we don't stop them there they will come here. Sure Corn Pop. Are you a paid lobbyist for the MIC or Ukraine or AIPAC?

[I woke up when Hillary talked about Reconstruction]

Yes, he is wrong, but you are more wrong

[AT]

For most of human history, the actions of one civilization rarely – if ever – affected another. That’s only been true in the last few centuries, particularly the last one. Now it’s an issue – and most of the world needs policing. Because we see what they do when left to their own devices.

In retrospect, what America should have done after pasting the Nazis and Japan was conquer the world and opened the light of Individual Rights, Constitutional Freedom, and Christianity to everyone. We were in a position to do it, and I honestly don’t think it would have been hard. Finish off a weakened Russia, assert dominance over a Western Europe in tatters, wipe out China, India, and South Asia before they could meaningfully defend themselves, annex the rest of North America and then push into South, and finally mop up Africa, the ME, and Australia. And it wouldn’t have even taken the same degree of military might we used against the Nazis/Japan. Islam would put up the most resistance, but most of the world would roll over and embrace open access to the technological boom and quality of life that post-war America brought – like gobsmacked Russians who got a peek behind the Iron Curtain. By 2000, American culture would have saturated at least two generations and be accepted as the global norm.

Instead, we went the other direction, the dragon went back to sleep, got fat and lazy and complacent in its decadence, and we’re now in the process of committing social/cultural suicide.

So, I get it. America, on paper would make the best candidate – but now that we’re a social/cultural dumpster fire, probably not. But even with our absolute social/cultural rot – is there still anybody preferable?

[R Mac]

Wow, that’s one of the most delusional posts I’ve ever read here, and that’s saying a lot.

[AT]

Why?

Imagine instead of 50 States making up the United States of America, it was 245 States making up a global United States of America. Every man, woman, and child with the same rights under the Constitution, everyone getting representation in government, all commerce and industry dedicated to one capitalist economy, all people of the world with the opportunity to build their local communities to the same quality of life we enjoy - and all the worst actors in both history and contemporary society, from the communists to the theocrats to the despots, condemned to the fringes and powerless to spread their oppression and bigotry and violence in any meaningful way.

What is it you find so objectionable about that?

[R Mac]

How old are you and how many history books have you read?

[AT]

Old enough, and a lot.

Don't change the subject.

What do you find so objectionable about the American Constitutional, Capitalist, Christian way of life being the global norm?

[I woke up when Hillary talked about Reconstruction]

Well using a contrafactual to argue a fact is ground-breaking 🙂
The answer also answers why in fact we do NOT have 245 states.

I find objectionable that you don't know that after 70 years !! THe UN Declaration of Human RIghts flopped over the most simple of all rights,things like
Article 16
Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

AND

Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

[LIBertrans]

Ackshully, China begged the US to police the world because the EIC was shipping opium there like whiskey to an indian reservation. Their 1905 boycott harnessed greed in the service of beheading. Panics followed Pure Drug laws. Balkan wars and World War 1 followed the Hague Convention and the Versailles Treaty inherited its world policing prohibitionism. China demanded a monopoly on global opium production "so we can check," and Hert Hoover's boys ratcheted the Moratorium on Brains and the Dope Limitation Convention. German pharma then financed Christian National Socialism while beer was a U.S. Depression felony. The question is whether adding the next prohibition will bring a Crash, a War, or both.

[LIBertrans]

New Czarist Russia is going all-out with its race-suicide prevention Plan to make females breeding dams for conscripts. So it's not surprising that His Holiness Paul II will pay any price and bear any burden to help Russia run its writ down nukeless Ukraine's throat. Taiwan on the other hand, was not stupid enough to expect Red China to be deterred by another Chamberlain wagging a sheet of Hungarian paper. But prohibitionsm commits the Taiwanese to cling to initiation of force till reprisal force kills them off. Canada might be worth defending in exchange for their "policing" the US with Mounties.

[R Mac]

What does this have to do with Comstock Hank?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

"The greatest risk of a Republican administration is a war with Iran, and the greatest risk of a Democratic administration is a war with Russia," says Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative, a magazine for the types of conservatives who are skeptical of foreign military intervention.

I'm not sure I could have bowf sidezed this better.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

This Curt Mills guy looks like he shouldn't go outside without his inhaler.

[A Cynical Asshole]

Looks like a stiff breeze could knock him over.

[MWAocdoc]

"Should America Police the World?"

I can't believe this is even a sarcastic headline question! The greatest risk of either a Republican or a Democratic administration is not even remotely another war. The greatest risk to Americans from any administration is bankruptcy followed by social catastrophe. America has been at war continuously around the globe since at least December 7th, 1941. It's a no good, very bad, horrible situation, but it's not the worst thing that can happen to America right now.

[EISTAU Gree-Vance]

“The greatest risk….. is bankruptcy followed by social catastrophe.”

Not sure how you can square this with advocating the mass import of poverty, doc.

Maybe they’ll all go home when we’re bankrupt?

[A Cynical Asshole]

Maybe they’ll all go home when we’re bankrupt?

Best case scenario: they move to another host, like parasites.

Worst case scenario: That's when they say "Viva le revolucion!" and proceed to turn the dried up husk of America that's left into a carbon copy of the third world shithole they came from.

[MWAocdoc]

Some of my finest neighbors lately are hard-working, honest, peaceable families from south of the border. But then you don't really care who you're ranting about because you're "a cynical asshole."

[MWAocdoc]

No. Instead we should let American union labor price itself out of the labor market and then demand that we support their high-paying American union jobs with higher prices. By the way, if you would stop giving away tax money and/or “borrowed” fiat printer money to poor people, the imported “poverty” would magically disappear overnight. But then this isn’t really about importing poverty, is it. This about your unreasoning hatred of brown people from south of the border.

[Uncle Jay]

" Should America Police the World?"

Of course the US should police the world.
Just look at the magnificent job America did in Vietnam.
You don't see any communists running around in that country, do you?

[MWAocdoc]

Well, aside from the fact that Ho Chi Minh was NEVER actually any kind of communist before we forced him into the arms of the Russians ... the only foreign policy America has actually excelled at was Mutually Assured Destruction. Since the USSR went bankrupt and we're not all radioactive cinders right now, we can probably conclude that we at least got that one right. Everything else was Democrats trying to prove that they had bigger dicks than the Republicans had - for the last eighty years.

[Mickey Rat]

How about this proposition?

There is going to be a hegemonic power in the world, whether you want one or not. Which one other than the United States do you want to police the world?

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

I suppose it would depend on what the U.S. is becoming. I'm not sure I have any great desire to be smothered by the warm embrace of "our" totalitarian regime just because it's "ours".

[LIBertrans]

Take your pick. The Mummy's party wants you to sacrifice for altruist Maoism. Orange Hitler's party wants you altruistically sacrificed to the Splendid Blond Beast. All you have to do to Make Amerika Grate is destroy the original Libertarian party--turning it into a straddling imitation of both meddlesome looter factions.

[MWAocdoc]

Rejected. The United States of America is the only superpower in the world, with or without an hegemony. We don't need an hegemony now, will not need one in the future and, in fact, never needed one at any time in the past, to maintain our independence and national security against military threats. But if you think we need one, feel free to retreat to your safe space and suck your thumb as needed.

[Mickey Rat]

It is not a question of what we need, it is a question of what will be. If the US retreats out of its role, then that vacuum will be be filled by some other nation.

[I woke up when Hillary talked about Reconstruction]

I saw our stupid and lazy President ,the great Unifier, give a speech notable for hate and lust to make sure a baby up to 9 months can be killed.An abominable man.

[Nobartium]

Are we going to extract tribute?

No?

Then hell no.

[LIBertrans]

To mystical altruists, "Police" means "Police State." The Germany Prohibitionist Amerika bullied in 1931 was 97% Christian, run by Protestants and Catholics dedicated to pharma and envying and hating Jews. Hoover's prohibitionist push made Christian National Socialism look good to them, just as the welfare State products of prohibition crashes make Christian National Socialism look good to girl-bulliers and Orango-lewsers. Racial collectivists who fear replacement need precisely that.

[I woke up when Hillary talked about Reconstruction]

Damn, you say stupid anti-fact things

The chief voice against Prohibition was the Catholic Church ,from top of the episcopacy down to

Al Smith, Governor of New York, was a candidate for President of the United States in the 1928 election. His run was notable in that he was the first Catholic nominee of a major party, he opposed Prohibition, and he enjoyed broad appeal among women, who had won the right of suffrage in 1920.

Jesus lists FOLLY as a sin....repent of your gross proud ignorance