Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
The Trump Administration did something on Saturday that would make intelligent immigration restrictionists wince: he cut off all aid, ostensibly totaling $500 million, to Central American nations Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The president’s rationale: “We were paying them tremendous amounts of money. And we’re not paying them anymore. Because they haven’t done a thing for us. They set up these caravans.” But, of course, as almost any policy analyst would tell you, reducing aid to a country will only increase misery and desperation, leading to even more emigration and asylum seekers.
It’s also not as if the Trump Administration cares about the money. Foreign aid is a drop in the ocean of the total federal budget, and $500 million to three of the most unstable countries near the nation’s border is a pittance compared to the $700 billion we spend on the military. If immigrant caravans from Central America are as big a threat to the country as Trump claims they are (and, of course, they are not), then the financial aid is a small price to pay.
But Trump’s instincts in this direction have nothing to do with smart policies. It’s about nursing a theory of nationalist white supremacy, one in which each nation represents a different race and civilization, in which each nation controls finite wealth to spend either on its own “people” or on someone else’s, and in which other nations should be forced to solve all their own problems on their own and keep all their own people within their borders. Donald Trump and his acolytes are not conducting foreign policy in the real world. They are treating foreign policy as if it were a video game simulation of national interests and empires a la Sid Meier’s Civilization series
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/...st-nationalism-is-a-mask-for-white-supremacy/
It’s also not as if the Trump Administration cares about the money. Foreign aid is a drop in the ocean of the total federal budget, and $500 million to three of the most unstable countries near the nation’s border is a pittance compared to the $700 billion we spend on the military. If immigrant caravans from Central America are as big a threat to the country as Trump claims they are (and, of course, they are not), then the financial aid is a small price to pay.
But Trump’s instincts in this direction have nothing to do with smart policies. It’s about nursing a theory of nationalist white supremacy, one in which each nation represents a different race and civilization, in which each nation controls finite wealth to spend either on its own “people” or on someone else’s, and in which other nations should be forced to solve all their own problems on their own and keep all their own people within their borders. Donald Trump and his acolytes are not conducting foreign policy in the real world. They are treating foreign policy as if it were a video game simulation of national interests and empires a la Sid Meier’s Civilization series
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/...st-nationalism-is-a-mask-for-white-supremacy/