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| Government |
| Towards a More Prudent American Grand Strategy |
| 2019-11-07 |
| [RC Public Affairs] Bottom Line: The Trump administration has disrupted the foreign policy status quo. American leaders should take advantage of this moment to enact a foreign policy of restraint. Since the Cold War, conventional wisdom has held U.S. power to indispensible. Foreign policy experts have long asserted that global trade depends on U.S. military presence, that our allies around the world rely on U.S. power to deter threats from China, Russia, and other powers, and that U.S. military intervention is the solution to many problems. But neither trade nor international peace rely on U.S. power, and intervention is frequently impractical and rarely popular. President Trump has thrown the foreign policy establishment into a tizzy. "The expert community is engaged, for the first time in a long time, in a healthy conversation about the future of U.S. grand strategy." Many Democrats and Republicans have begun pushing for a more isolationist stance in response to the unilateralism of the President’s "America First" attitude. Conversely, many others have adopted a hawkish demeanor in response to the President’s perceived isolationism. But the United States should look beyond these positions to a third alternative. America and the world would benefit from a more restrained foreign policy. U.S. leaders should adopt "a foreign policy of restraint" that sets and is guided by "modest, achievable objectives." This foreign policy should privilege diplomacy and trade over intervention, and seek to apply the liberal norms the U.S. follows at home in foreign affairs. Such a foreign policy would keep the U.S. out of costly, unpopular entanglements abroad, and help rebalance the international arena to be more collaborative and rely less on a single power. |
| Posted by:M. Murcek |
| #9 Polybius |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-11-07 15:32 |
| #8 Grand Strategy can be taught to young people without the frou-frou of calling it a School of International Relations. Read the old books, by the masters-- Thucydides, Machiavelli, Sun-Tzu, Hobbes etc-- and supplement with tons of historical examples studied in great depth using old-fashioned historical analysis of contingency, human error, the complex interplay of human choice and material constraints across time. The problem is the globalist nonsense that infects the minds of the people who for the past 25 years or so have dominated this profession. There's really nothing related to foreign policy that can't be taught either in a well-constructed, rigorous history program or a traditional law or economics program. The Koch Brothers of all people--to their credit-- have actually done something good (for once) with their philanthropic dollars, by funding research into a more restrained, realist foreign policy by Barry Posen and his colleagues at MIT, Michael Desch at Notre Dame and several other leading researchers. |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-11-07 15:25 |
| #7 which appears to mean letting bad guys be bad and sending US troops to die in sandy hell-holes. Yes, and recognizing the spark of divinity in every MS-13 member, too. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-11-07 11:19 |
| #6 Grand Strategy for the cold war slowly mutated into we can't win, then Reagan appeared and crushed the Soviets in three terms. Grand Strategy since the cold war was never properly developed beyond thousand points of light which appears to mean letting bad guys be bad and sending US troops to die in sandy hell-holes. The strategy could use a bit of work. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2019-11-07 09:51 |
| #5 ^ Yep. We can't close down the "School of Foreign Policy" business fast enough. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-11-07 07:57 |
| #4 Trump doesn't have a strategy or a policy. He has principles and a arsenal of "opportunities" for use when his enemies make their moves. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2019-11-07 07:19 |
| #3 In a huge, shocking story, a career diplomat was fired |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-11-07 01:02 |
| #2 "The expert community is engaged, for the first time in a long time, in a healthy conversation about the future of U.S. grand strategy." Too bad that our best schools have made their flagship Grand Strategy course into an Alinsky-soaked identity-politics Shitshow.... |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-11-07 01:02 |
| #1 I've not figured out in line comments, so here it is: The forever wars against everyone else are designed to distract you from the gummint's forever war against you. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-11-07 00:58 |