“How can America regain its status as a superpower?”
By returning to policies of domestic prosperity, and being the friends of liberty everywhere but the defenders of none but our own.
You, know, sort of like the Founders advised, over and over again?
The never ending aggression against the world that the NeoCons have spread happens to coincide with the start of our decline. That is not a coincidence.
“1. Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.
2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.
4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.
6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
The business of America is business, not the war racket so vigorously advanced by chickenhawk bureaucrats and parlor marshals.
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.That does not entail being defenders of none but our own to the exclusion of true allies. Obama is withdrawing the USA from being the proverbial “world police” and look at what is filling the vacuum.
The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death; a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. (I:1-2)Since we will always have enemies, then warfare of the higher kind mentioned here has to be engaged in. Red China certainly has been at it for many decades, against us.
In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it; to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them. / Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. / Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy’s plans; the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy’s forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy’s army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities. … (II:1-3)