Reviewing USA Foreign Policy: Humanitarian or Self-interested?

Morgenthau's article 'Another Great Debate: The National Interest of the United States' aims to negate the fact that American foreign policy is based humanitarian and pacifist concepts. Civilians are blinded by the image of morality portrayed to them by their leaders and their government. Is foreign policy made on humanitarian grounds, or is each country just trying to maintain the 'balance of power'? If America's foreign polcy was built on humanitarian grounds, what explains the wars in Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq and Afganistan?

Realism provides us with a framework of how and why countries make the decisions they do. Realism instigates that countries work within their national interests and aim to work for their own survival. We can see through the lens of history that the United States of America has promulgated a foreign policy that forwards political agendas under the guise of a humanitarian moral grounds. The United States, while being a champion of liberal thought and democratic ideology has taken part in a plethora of foreign interventions over the last few decades. Most of these interventions including major ones in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq which were said to be on the basis of protecting the indigenous people in those regions. However, in retrospect, we can judge that these interventions aimed mostly at gaining resources, promoting political agendas and negating the wishes of the local people they sought to protect.

The US faced opposition in Vietnam by local militants, in Afghanistan by military groups and by sectarian groups in Iraq. The rights of the people remained in a poor condition post-intervention while the United States continued to seek resources from these countries. This concludes that the US foreign policy prioritized capturing resources and political/military agendas over humanitarian and social agendas.