Thursday, August 16, 2007

My Struggles to Understand the Appeal of 'Tough' Foreign Policy

In an earlier post I struggled mightily to understand the appeal of 'tough' foreign policy. I now think that this thinking makes so little sense to me because I can't empathize enough with the authoritarian personality. This notion of 'tough' punitive treatment of our opponents comes right out of the authoritarian's psychological playbook. See my previous posts involving Karen Stenner's The Authoritarian Dynamic. Search for these by using the Search tool in the upper left of my blog's homepage and type in Stenner.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tibet never had a very tough or authoritarian foreign policy. How'd that work out?

James A Bond said...

mook,
No, Tibet didn't, but the Chinese did and Tibet is the butt of an authoritarian and tough foreign policy.