Posted on 05/12/2017 4:23:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
In essence, the US today has four main strategic aims: (1) to prevent the emergence of a peer or near-peer competitor by denying all such potential rivals the resources and allies that they would need; (2) to protect and promote the alliances and international institutions that underpin the rules-based international order that we established after WW II and relied on to help win the Cold War; (3) to assure the security of the US homeland and of US access to the world's resources; and (4) to oppose and suppress terrorism, especially Islamic terrorism.
None of these goals are unreasonable or ill-chosen even if, in application, the US may sometimes go astray. The US continues to enjoy a combination of military, economic, political, and cultural power that the world envies but mostly accepts because it broadly benefits from US policies and conduct. The world's complaints about US leadership are negligible against their fears of a lack of US leadership. Moreover, US foreign policy and national strategy benefit from our robust political institutions, remarkable history, and the options offered by different schools of thought about foreign relations. Working together, these help provide a check against excess and error.
The primary opposition to the US in the world -- the so-called revisionist powers (China and Russia) and rogue states (Iran, North Korea) -- are subject to containment strategies, national weaknesses, and inherent strategic constraints. The Twentieth Century has been called "The American Century." And, with most of the world fully accepting of American leadership, the current century is likely to be even more defined by American ways and decisions.
Well said. Pat’s commitment to isolationism blinds him to anything that doesn’t support his theory that often turns in to “it’s America’s fault.” Arab soil may be sacred to him, but it’s also the soil that spawns hate regardless of the USA or Israel, points I am positive he’d rejected. He’s really the last of the great appeasers.
The same goals as any Empire. The same end, too.
Liberty
Our goal should be opening a new frontier. Space, the bottom of the ocean, somewhere, a new frontier.
Yes. Seeing how the rest of the world is dominated by either socialism or Islam I was going to say “promote freedom”, but liberty works fine too.
It starts with flushing our own toilet. Send the bad guys back to the old country. Anyone with a criminal record-even white collar types. Reopen the Russian Gulag for American convicts. Turn back 30% of immigrants for whatever reason like they did 100 years ago. THEN import European families with 3 kids who succeed in schools. Throw the Mexicans a bone. Serve in the military or demonstrate their kids are in the top half of school tests.
Not only does the world use the dollar as its trade and reserve currency, but it also invests those dollars in US Treasuries and thereby finances our federal debt. The world thus covers, among millions of other Americans, the Medicare and Social Security costs of my parents in retirement because, like cops ready to deploy, there are US army brigades, strike aircraft, and carrier task forces watching and on call to keep the peace and protect US friends and allies.
And it should not be forgotten that the US is also leading the scientific and technical revolution that drives modernity. Although it seems almost like science fiction, within a generation or two, the US and the developed world may bring to reality the start of a future of astonishing material ease and abundance, with minimal work required, and the conquest of disease and dramatically improved longevity.
What is there not to like in such a future, where the US federal debt will be a bearable trifle and most urban areas in the world look like US cities, with Americans near universally welcome?
I don’t accept this. The housekeeping tasks of empire.
There is little to like about the job — but we dare not shirk it because there is far more to fear if the job is not done at all or is not done properly and to our satisfaction. And, against common dangers, the natural order of things usually has the richest, strongest, and most powerful person leads the defense effort.
The only reason America didn’t have an anti-war movement in World War 2, was because Hitler invaded the Democrat Holy Land of Russia. The Left was not about to go marching in the streets, when their hero Stalin was in mortal danger.
True. The two major anti-war movements in the US were the America First isolationist movement, which patriotically disbanded after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the declarations of war by the US, and the anti-war movement led by the American Communist Party after the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939 up until Hitler attacked the USSR in June of 1941. By the time the US entered the war, American Reds were vociferously eager to fight the Nazis so as to save the USSR.
The US Government is now controlled(bought and paid for) by the globalist-corprate cabal. Their goal is to keep the one sided unsustainable international rape trade status quo going as long as possible. This way corporations maximize profits and Americas enemies grow stronger industrially. The deep state is doing its part by watering down the middle class political power by importing as many 3rd worlders as possible, all the while instigating a anti white race war-cultural shift through the leftist MSM. Win-win, for them.
False. The anti war movement in the North during the US Civil War was huge. "Copperheads" were the key group in this ant war coalition. Peace candidate McClellan was very popular and could have beaten Lincoln had Atlanta not fallen in late 1864. The anti war movement climaxed in a huge race-draft riot in NYC. It was a huge event.
The democrat party has cost millions of people their lives and freedom.
Spreading perversion, destroying all other cultures to atomize the people who live in them, and to become a global shopping mall.
My comment was directed to a post that referred only to WW II.
I get it.
Just a whiff of the dense rhetoric and conspiratorial thinking in your post had my head reeling like when when I have been put under for surgery. I dare not take in enough to attempt a reply on the merits.
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