Bret Devereaux

"We are going to intentionally crater the economy of X so they have less resources to do Y" is a fairly reasonable strategic maneuver, but not a very politic one given that 1) the pain falls on regular people and 2) admitting the goal is essentially admitting to hostilities.

Thus frequently pretending - or worse, convincing ourselves - we're using sanctions to convince a regime to change course, when we're really using sanctions to draw lines between 'us' and 'them' in international disputes (thus bloc-building) while engaging in economic warfare.

And of course that pretense is part of the larger pretense that US foreign policy has anything to do with concern for human rights — "to punish this regime for imposing suffering on its people, we'll impose even more ourselves" would be a tough line to parrot with a straight face

Sure, though I'd argue US foreign policy should - even from a pure realist perspective - concern itself with human rights. To do otherwise is what Andre Beaufre calls a 'psychologically false note' which entails severe costs in indirect strategy so often shaped by public opinion

Well from a purely cynical realist perspective, the benefits of the US being able to rely on horrifically antidemocratic/repressive allies and proxies like Egypt or Saudi Arabia seem pretty substantial, hard to outweigh with some vague sense of appealing to international goodwill

But of course that's easy for me to say from a leftist perspective, taking for granted that US foreign policy is firmly opposed to the values I hold dear; the more attached one is to the idea of the US as a force for good in the world, the more troubling these questions become

Beaufre isn't thinking about a vague sense of international goodwill. He's recognizing that the freedom to act inside of the 'balance of terror' (to use Wohlstetter's term) is conditioned by predictability and perception.

To put it very briefly, the unacceptability of total conflict in the nuclear age creates the need for indirect approaches in strategy. The freedom to implement those indirect approaches without triggering unacceptable levels of conflict can be manipulated.