Independent Party Foreign Policy Speech: Written for 11th Grade Government Class State Standard

In any nation, it becomes crucial to interact with other nations, since the world is required to function as a whole with all of the nations intertwined. When the leaders of other nations determine their foreign policies, this becomes possible. Each leader shapes the United States in their own way, and their foreign policy is a great contributing factor to the nation's reputation. In the past years, the United States has constructed a rather effective yet controversial foreign policy. One of the greatest needs of our country at this moment in history is a strong, realistic, well defined policy to guide our relationship with the other nations of the world. The chaotic conditions that we're currently seeing have been created throughout the last two decades with a consistent foreign policy which wasn't well-defined.

I Alexandra Nienhaus plan to form a new set of foreign policies. I hope to conserve our world's traditions, environment, and power to the people. Our foreign policy needs to be one designed to secure a just and lasting peace in the world. In the past, leaders have recommended that in order to better protect the United States, we should attack every possible threat to the United State's people. While this does make some amount of sense, it's completely unnecessary and is a wasteful spending of military funds. The military should have enough money to successfully defend our nation, but the United States should not be dishing out tax dollars to attack other nations on a consistent basis.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has recently ran into problems in the former Soviet Union and in the Middle East. NATO is now calling for increased military spending and funding of our allies. If we were to pay money towards this organization, it would even further our tax dollar expenditures in the army. In the independent party, we favor military defense budgets, technology capabilities, supplies, storage, and manpower sufficient to fight wars against other countries, however we do not support treaties in which wastefully spend money on the military. We should not fund NATO because the war is unnecessary and any further spending of money on the war is taking away from every citizen's tax dollars which should be directly benefiting them, not causing pointless wars over seas.

For the last several years, the United States has also been fighting in an endless and seemingly pointless war in Iraq. The war has become extremely lengthy as well as complicated. Billions of your tax dollars are spent every day on troops, weapons, ammunition, security, transportation, and communication in the war. Our reasons for going into and remaining in Iraq aren't completely clear to everyone, however remaining in Iraq only causes us to spend billions of dollars a day which comes directly from your pockets. I believe that we should stop these undeclared wars which cost thousands of American lives, as well as billions of tax dollars. Tax dollars need to go directly towards defending and supporting the people, not towards fighting these wars over seas that have no end as well as no direct support for the people.

If the United States withdraws troops from Iraq, tax dollars will once again be spent where they are supposed to go; on the people! A tax decrease may also be in line. The United States will not be at unnecessary war, and the government won't be pumping out billions of dollars a day for the cause of war.

It has also been brought to attention by the government that the size of the military should be decreased by an additional 25 percent. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States military has been declining in numbers. The defense of our nation may be at jeopardy if the United States even further slashes its military by 25 percent. Of course this may increase government spending some, but what good are funds if the United States has no defense? In the independent party, we believe that a strong military is important to the security of our nation, because without security, what are we as a nation?

In recent years, its becoming a growing concern that the automobiles we're driving today are causing destruction to the environment in which we live. Automobiles pollute the air, destroy the ozone, and cause direct pollution to the world. However, automobiles are always going to be necessary to the success of any nation. It has been brought up that the United States and other foreign nations should expand mass transit systems to help eliminate pollution. If we were able to decrease the amount of vehicles on the road, and increase the number of people involved in mass transit systems, our pollution levels would greatly decrease. I believe that conversing our natural resources as well as being environmentally clean is a responsibility for everyone, and an increase in funding for mass transit systems would greatly improve the quality of our environment. The United States as well as all other nations should increase their funding for mass transit systems to help drastically improve the quality of our environment and diminish pollution.

The SuperFund program is another way to go about cleaning up the environment. This program has been in place and has been cleaning toxic waste sites for years. Allegations of mismanagement have led proposals to cut the funding towards this program in half. I stand strongly against this proposal. If the funding towards our world's primary way of cleaning up the environment is cut in half, whose responsibility does it become to clean up the environment? It's the world's responsibility to keep our environment clean, and a decrease in funding to help keep the environment clean is nothing but ignoring our responsibilities.

We feel that the road to peace lies through international cooperation and understanding. We will pursue this goal to the limits consistent with our own national interest. I, Alexander Nienhaus am only interested in doing what's best for the people.

SOURCES
http://www.usiap.org/Beliefs/BeliefsIndex.html - United States Independent Party Beliefs

http://www.usiap.org/Beliefs/Mission.html - United States Independent Party Mission

http://www.independentvoting.org/about/ - American Independent Party Voting

http://www.nato.int/docu/handbook/2001/hb0901.htm - Information about NATO funding

http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/vmts.htm - Vehicle mass transit system information

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/washington/20bush.html?ex=1324270800&en=46733667d8b96d87&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss - President wants to INCREASE the size of the active military