Pod Academy

The abiding rhetoric of US foreign policy is 'freedom and democracy': "We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom." [President Barack Obama, 2nd term inauguration speech]. But as David Sylvan, Professor of International Relations, and Former Head of the Political Science Department at Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, co-author of the book US Foreign Policy in Perspective: Clients, Enemies and Empire, explains to Craig Barfoot, it really isn't quite like that.   Much of US foreign policy (as even the CIA would concede, says Professor Sylvan) revolves around acquiring clients, maintaining clients and engaging in hostile policies against enemies deemed to threaten them.  It is a peculiarly American form of imperialism. Ranging over examples -  from US support for a monarchy in Saudi Arabia,           its support for cou