Larsson läser
Janerik Larsson
Janerik Larsson
National Interest redovisar idag en intressant diskussion om amerikanska elitmediers perspektiv:
Robert Kaplan began the discussion by noting that in tackling national security, the editorial boards of U.S. legacy media outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, “mostly discuss values.” All three editorial boards adopt the Wilsonian view that if the United States doesn’t actively spread democracy across the globe, “we are not living up to our values.”
Kaplan hade också en intressant kommentar om den sjunkande kvaliteten på amerikansk utrikesrapportering:
Kaplan mourned the decline of the traditional foreign correspondent; that is, highly educated Western journalists that speak three or four languages and spend a number of years reporting from the countries they cover. While expensive for newspapers to maintain, Kaplan praised these reporters for their ability to be objective about the countries they covered, because they did not have any personal interests vested in the outcomes. By contrast, Kaplan pointed to the “super stringers” that have replaced these reporters. According to him, these are usually local cosmopolitan elites who have been educated at the best Western universities, but then return to their home countries to report for major American newspapers. Unlike the foreign correspondent, they can have stakes in the outcomes of the events they are covering, negatively impacting their ability to report on them.
En mycket intressant och klart avvikande röst är Fareed Zakarias. Idag skriver han i sin kolumn i Washington Post om varför amerikanska militära ingripanden inte är lösningen:
The Paris attacks were barbaric but also startling, leading many to ask what can be done to prevent this kind of terrorism. One man has a clear answer. “That attack you saw in Paris? You’ll see an attack in the United States,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told the New York Times. Elaborating on how to stop this from happening, he told the Times and CNN that prevention will require a more aggressive strategy from the U.S. military across the greater Middle East, with ground troops and a no-fly zone in Syria and more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This theory was sometimes described during the Iraq war as “we fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here.” It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.
To argue that the only way to stop terrorism at home is for the United States to intervene militarily and stabilize the many parts of the Middle East that are in conflict is to commit Washington to a fool’s errand for decades. Scholar Andrew Bacevich has pointed out that before Syria, Washington had already launched interventions in 13 countries in the Islamic world since 1980. Would one more really do the trick?