What Role Does America Play In Foreign Affairs

The role America plays in foreign affairs is debated drastically throughout the nation. Realists see the world in terms of competition and working unilaterally whereas; liberals see the world in terms of cooperation and working multilaterally. President Woodrow Wilson initiated neo-conservatism to promote liberalism and American values contrariwise, President George Washington warned against undue foreign entanglements. This day in age our foreign affairs have been dominated on the war in terrorism, a tactic that disregards lives of citizens for instilling fear in citizens. The often misconception of citizens, is that terrorism is linked to Islam when in fact it is not linked to Islam or any religion.
In Simon Anholt’s, “Which country does

the most good for world,” He addresses the flaws within the government and its agendas and motivations. He emphasizes the competition created between countries; one trying to out-do the next. This creates several problems. One of the reasons he gives as to why our leaders don’t encourage countries to work together is that we are “cultural psychopaths.” “a psychopath is a person, unfortunately for him or her, lacks the ability to really empathize with other human beings.” He claims that since people don’t talk, walk, eat, dress like Americans we see them as cutouts rather than human beings. This is prevalent in America today. Implementation of President Trump’s travel ban highlight the cultural psychopaths in America. Although the ban is for “national security” purposes, we see across the country citizens promoting their islamophobia. These specific types of citizens do not see Muslim people as human beings. They associate the religion with terrorist group ISIS. As we learned in this week’s videos terrorism isn’t an ideology related to Islam or any religion at that. Anholt ends his talk by saying “I don’t want to live in a fast-growing or competitive country. I want to live in a good country.” With this I and most likely other citizens agree. Growth is vital to our country but we have lost interest in becoming a good country.
For the research component of this assignment, I took interest in President Trump’s Travel ban order. In February 2017, Trump launched the original travel ban order which barred people from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya from entering the United States for 90 days. These are prominently Muslim countries. The original order also banned refugee resettlement for 120 days while adding an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. Maryland federal judge, Honorable Theodore D. Chuang and Hawaii federal judge, Honorable Derrick K. Watson both ruled against the travel ban causing the Trump Administration to make reforms. On June 26th, 2017, the US Supreme Court ruled to allow part of his revised order to go in effect before the full case is heard later in the year. The revised order removed Iraq from the list on barred countries, and it also lifted the indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. It also clarifies that visa and green card holders will be allowed entry into the US. This all means that people from the six countries and refugees will be barred from entry unless they have "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity" in the country. I personally do not agree with the travel ban. As a citizen, I do value my safety and believe national security is important but I believe other measures can be taken before this. Since most of our terrorist attacks have been my homegrown terrorists I believe there is internal work that must be completed first. For example, new or reformed gun control laws.