I attempted to include all basic foreign policy philosophies above, but if I excluded yours, please describe it in a reply. My answer was "Little or no cooperation with international organizations, use military force only in strict self-defense." I appreciate all votes and replies. Thank you very much.

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"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

O don't think any one will be suprised by my vote, I voted 1

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“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

No surprises here either.

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

OTHER:
Depends. I really can't get more specific than that. Action depends on context. Overall it's best to cooperate, but sometimes unilateral action is necessary- however, you can't look down on others for not helping. I tend to support internationalism and the spread of democracy and if the UN gets in the way, it is counterproductive. However I think the best solutions are economic and social rather than militaristic in nature.
I think small NGOs with specific goals are better than the UN... and that the UN is useless for military action.
In other words I think the UN, WTO, and other big international organizations should be decentralized reformed, and get out of the way of better organizations.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

I change my vote -

Build a true empire.

YES! The Imperial Forces of South Africa. We start small, conquer sub-sahara Africa, no one will notice. Then we take Northern Africa, think of all the oil!!!

We then declare Winnie Mandela Empress for life (Nelson is a bit too busy, and his doctor ordered him to take things calm). and it is not that hard, with all the Africans already living in Spain, France and the UK those countries will fall easily. Then we use biological weapons (very cheap, we don't have to create them, we just export our Malaria mosquito's and Tsetse flies) to tackle the other powers.

And before you know it - YOU WILL ALL BE PART OF IMPERIAL SOUTH AFRICA!!! (Let's face it, we can't do much worse than the empires that came before us)

Or, uhm, maybe hyphenforce this is not what you meant??


(I do apologize, it is Friday afternoon, we are in a horrible heat wave, I am hot, tired, and I guess not funny at all. <sigh>

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“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

Oh the temptation of imperialism!
Michigan could easily conquer Wisconsin- It's really part of the Upper Peninsula anyway! And who would miss Ohio? (on the other hand, why would we want it?)
We can use Meijer stores as a HQ and conquer the midwest under the Greater Michiganderian Empire. Think of the electoral votes we'd accumulate!

Nah. That's a silly idea...
Now I bet if Oakland County worked together, we could conquer Detroit...
(what if Greektown tries to capture the city of Troy?)

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

As Viceroy of the Great Southern African Empire, I hereby invite you to a treaty. You keep all that lies to the West of the Great Atlantic Devide, we keep the East, (you can also get Australia, I mean really!)



Viceroy AH

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“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

I understand your reservations with regard to international organisations - but I think they should be reformed rather than subverted or ignored.

Until such reforms occur international law as it stands must still be upheld. Every country for itself? Well, lets just apply that as a legal principle at home - every man for himself! (its the law?).

See what I mean, Java? Or is the nation state beyond law?

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

Since I would go to war only in strict self-defense, I would probably not cause the American government (were I in control of it) to be condemned by the UN anyway. I also think that a few agreements, such as the Geneva Convention, need to stand. In fact, I would amend America's Constitution to require compliance with the Geneva Convention (thus making it national law).
However, I generally oppose American involvement in international alliances for two reasons. First, however noble their motives may be, they put any nation, and especially a powerful one like the United States, in the middle of quarrels. In other words, if we participate in foreign diplomacy, we will make enemies because we will, to some extent, take sides. That leads to phenomena like Islamist terrorism. I think that non-intervention is ultimately beneficial to all nations, including the United States.
Second, giving international organizations power over democracies negates democracy to an extent. The degrees of separation between American votes and American representatives in the UN are many- too many to make UN mandates democratic for practical purposes, and American voters have no say about who other nations' representatives are. Therefore, it violates American sovereignty (as well as that of all other nations in such organizations) to allow the United Nations or similar organizations to override national law. I also support restricting foreign aid to loans and giving it neutrally to all nations that request it at the same rate of interest.
Having stated that, since I support completely ignoring Iran and North Korea and since the only wars in American history that I think we should have been involved in were the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War II and the war in Afghanistan, I doubt that I would violate international mandates in practice even if I oppose them in principle. Accordingly, is my foreign policy, in its essentials, the same as yours, nawbut (as S-S claims), or is that just a blind spot of S-S's? I thought I would ask a liberal just to set the record straight on the matter. S-S seems determined to consider me a liberal.

(PS, as an Oregonian, I stake an imperial claim to California.)

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"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

Your foreign policy ideas certainly do not correspond with mine.

Yours seem rooted in the competitive model of associations rather than a cooperative one. This is fairly standard among Americans, I find. It has its roots, I believe, in a world-view which can be crudely put as follows:

Why should our conception of inter-national relations (I break these up intentionally) move toward being predicated upon a presumption of co-operation between communities (sovereign nations)? There is already an existing, traditional, competitive model (with its attendant wars) under which terms we have already 'won'. Why would we change?

I believe otherwise.

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."