Obama’s Strategic Doctrine: W Lite
The Obama Administration’s “Defense Strategic Guidance” (DSG), which was unveiled on January 5 as part of the broader programmatic document, Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, has been greeted with neoconservative howls of rage. The document “sends a clear message to America’s adversaries: Go for it,” was the view of the Washington Times editorialist, “this mini-Quadrennial Defense Review is an eight-page admission of American impotence.”
It is nothing of the kind. Obama’s DSG replicates all of the flawed strategic assumptions of the Bush era. Reading a short statement at a press briefing at the Pentagon to unveil the DSG, President Obama spoke of “enduring national interests” in maintaining the unparalleled U.S. military superiority, “ready for the full range of contingencies and threats” amidst “a complex and growing array of security challenges across the globe.”
Obama made no attempt to outline the basis for his claim that the security threats to America are growing, or to provide his own definition of “enduring national interest.” The terms “full-range,” “contingencies,” “threats,” or “security challenges,” are not value-neutral. Obama used them within a paradigm which treats the entire world as a legitimate sphere of interest of the United States. The consequence is that there will be new wars, as unrelated to the realist understanding of this country’s national interest as have been those in the Balkans under Clinton or in Iraq and Afghanistan under Bush.
Far from heralding “the massive $450 billion in defense budget cuts over the next 10 years” the President stated that “global responsibilities demand leadership, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration.” This means that the rate of growth will slow down somewhat—and 45 billion a year is a drop in the $16 trillion ocean of debt—but there will be no “cuts.” Obama further stated that our defense spending “continues to be larger than roughly the next ten countries combined.” It is less than the rest of the world combined—the preferred neocon level of spending—but it is still much more than America needs, or can afford to spend.
The DSG claims that in the decades ahead it will be the task of the United States to “confront and defeat aggression anywhere in the world.” “Even when U.S. forces are committed to a large-scale operation in one region,” it declares, “they will be capable of denying the objectives of - or imposing unacceptable costs on - an opportunistic aggressor in a second region.” This means that the totality of what the DSG treats as American commitments and interests around the world will continue to exceed the ability of the United States to defend them.
A strategically innovative president would accept the limits of American power and seek to establish a rational correlation between its ends and means. He would turn America into a “normal” power pursuing limited political, economic, and military objectives in a world populated by other powers doing the same. But Obama and his team remain wholly unwilling to do any such thing (not to mention his likely Republican opponents). His view of America’s role in the world still produces strategic blueprints for new self-justifying interventions around the world—interventions which are not merely unnecessary but detrimental to U.S. interests. “Making the world safe for democracy” has morphed since 1917 into many strange pursuits: making Libya, Syria, and Bosnia safe for the Islamic radicals; making Kosovo safe for the KLA. Under Obama the bipartisan continuity of methods and objectives has remained intact. The continuity of imperial assumptions and practices remains unbroken.
The DSG is a flawed document. The key issue of ends and means of American military power is still unexplored, and will remain so regardless of what happens next November.
Entries(RSS)
With a small amount, a very small amount, of editing, the DSG and its antecedents would be synonymous with the words of the Brezhnev Doctrine as it appeared in 1968:
"When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries."
The general government of the United States mobilizes NATO, the U.N., the WTO, the World Bank and other surrogates to overthrow the created order on a global scale. Brezhnev would be in awe thereof.
That same point I've made in "The Brezhnev Doctrine: Alive and Well" vis-a-vis Bush II:
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2008/08/21/the-brezhnev-doctrine-alive-and-well/
Why can't Ron Paul be brought over to paleo-ism? Can someone from the '90s JRC feud between the heirs of Bradford (Chronicles) and the heirs of Rothbard (Mises) give me some talking points to use with Libertarians? The SC GOP is showing signs of heading in the direction of Ron Paul and Libertarianism. I'd like to hold their feet to the fire all along the way. Ron Paul sounds like a bumbling idiot who just happens to be right when in comes to foreign policy. Why can't he have some actual depth like Srdja? I mean, Tom Pauken's point about Paul's F+ rating from NumbersUSA (compared to Tancredo or Bachmann's higher score) ought to mean something in the Palmetto State.
In response to Llewelyn Rockwel's "Case for Paleo-Libertarianism" (Liberty, January 1990) Ron Paul wrote that he hesitated to comment on the article "because I see the debate as being more divisive than productive. I prefer to use my energy attacking those who support statism, whether they do so intentionally or out of ignorance." It does not appear that 12 years later his paradigm has changed. Older but not wiser. He is right on global empire (Pat Buchanan: "I share with Ron Paul the view that America has become an over-extended empire. After the Cold War we should have downsized the empire dramatically and returned to become a more normal nation in a more normal time.") RP is also right on
immigration. He is devoid of a coherent Weltanschauung, however, that would give his views a solid intellectual and emotional grounding.
The Daily Paul in May 2008 eccentrically claimed that he's really a paleo with libertarian leanings
http://www.dailypaul.com/50453/neoconservatism-versus-paleoconservatism-lindbergh-goldwater-buchanan-barr-are-paleoconservatives
There's an uninteresting "Paleo-Primal for Ron Paul" Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/PaleoPrimal-for-Ron-Paul/208641405890520
Tim Manning II:
It is an ancient debate that involves the excesses of justice, which lead to cruelty and the slight but necessary restraints on indivdual liberty for the sake of the common good. Perhaps the first illustration of this tension in our civilization was when the Goddess Athena appeared to Achilles and pulled the back of his hair to restrain him from becoming more like an animal than a man. Since a civilization, like virtuous conduct itself is usually a matter of degree, it is not susceptable to easy ideological formulation. It has never been a dialectical argument between thesis and anti-thesis, hawks and doves, feminist and cheauvenist, gays and straights, authority and democracy or any of the other false distinctions we live and endure today.
The most contemporary debate on this human political condition ( other than the everlasting meaning of the cross or the experience of marriage and raising a family ) which I have read on the subject was probably in the back issues of National Review or the defunct, Triumph Magazine, between the old man Bozell, (I should have written " the late Brent Bozell" ) and his libertarian friend, Frank Meyers. I think the entire debate might be in the book, The Best of Triumph. I hope this is of some assistance in getting you started but it is of course and endless debate given that human nature cannot save itself and needs grace to perfect its true desires.
Paul's supposed "libertarianism" has at least had the benefit of attracting avowed "liberals" and "socialists" on either side of the continent to his candidacy. Buchanan as a "conservative" could only be seen for his stance on abortion, immigration and same-sex marriage. It's all in the semantics, though it is true that all this makes Paul look less coherent to those who know what they are talking about when it comes to politics and sociology.
On the other hand, democratic plebiscites do not depend on people who know what they are talking about. (The average American has an IQ of 98. The average voter is undoubtedly a few points higher, though the average public [grade?] schoolteacher has an IQ of about 107, and my experience with public schoolteachers suggest that those few points count for rather little in sociopolitical literacy.)
"democratic plebiscites do not depend on people who know what they are talking about."
Yes this is true. To a large degree they depend upon the advertising budgets of those resisting or endorsing them. When Buchanan was rolling in Arizona, I think Forbes spent something like 50.00 or 60.00 dollars a vote to get things under control. I think it cost 16 million recently in Florida for the necessary 170,000 votes to get things under control -- or about 93.00 dollars per vote.( Adjusted for inflation and the fact a million ain't what it used to be, still pretty cheap for a cheap trick) In these times, Nicholas, you must remember that it is always the economics that we stupid folks must rely upon in arriving at decisions. I believe it has cost Mr. Sheldon Gary Adelson about 12 million so far to get Newt Gingrich to promise to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv-Yafo to Jerusalem. As my old friend, Ray Olson, said recently "other than trying to figure out the economics of it all, like enjoying a good crossword puzzle, there is no good reason to pay attention."
Dr. Trifkovic, wouldn't there be some good reason not to cut defense spending outright, no matter how wasteful it is?
It may be much much costlier to replace certain aircraft and naval vessels further in the future than it is today, for example.
Plus, the more aging the defense equipment, the lower the scrap value when it is replaced. That's another cost.
Steep defense cuts are akin to steep cuts in treasury staff in pay or payroll. One saves the money spent on those people, but one loses a lot more on having less competent people manage funds.
Perhaps it makes some sense to slow down the rate of rise of government spending than to cut it.
I like on occasion to step back from the alleged 'rationality' of a mechanistic materialism as if it's a whole context in human affairs, since I either accurately fathom such a standard as an incomplete guide, or if wrong about this then I at least 'fancy' that it's incomplete. Here's Plato from his Seventh Letter: (Quote)
"For the one thing which is wholly right and noble is to strive for that which is most honourable for a man's self and for his country, and to face the consequences whatever they may be. For none of us can escape death, nor, if a man could do so, would it, as the vulgar suppose, make him happy. For nothing evil or good, which is worth mentioning at all, belongs to things soulless; but good or evil will be the portion of every soul, either while attached to the body or when separated from it.
"And we should in very truth always believe those ancient and sacred teachings, which declare that the soul is immortal, that it has judges, and suffers the greatest penalties when it has been separated from the body. Therefore also we should consider it a lesser evil to suffer great wrongs and outrages than to do them. The covetous man, impoverished as he is in the soul, turns a deaf ear to this teaching; or if he hears it, he laughs it to scorn with fancied superiority, and shamelessly snatches for himself from every source whatever his bestial fancy supposes will provide for him the means of eating or drinking or glutting himself with that slavish and gross pleasure which is falsely called after the goddess of love. He is blind and cannot see in those acts of plunder which are accompanied by impiety what heinous guilt is attached to each wrongful deed, and that the offender must drag with him the burden of this impiety while he moves about on earth, and when he has travelled beneath the earth on a journey which has every circumstance of shame and misery." ... (end quote)
In other words I fathom (or 'fancy') this ancient and traditional additional perspective brings into purview a whole or more complete standard without which there may not actually be any rationality? Thusly if the price of bubble gum is in one case affected favorably, good; or if in another case within the same whole standard, affected disadvantageously, good as well.
Regardless, in either case we can't really fortell the future we can only pretend precognition either to ouselves or to others or both? But we don't really know, do we?
There is in other words this inevitable, moral or "irrational" component embedded within the 'rational' any way we choose to go. Biblically it is so stated as: 'it rains and the sun shines on both the just and on the unjust.'
But one thing manifests as certain, man is neither exclusively an animal nor exclusively a machine, and so perhaps we arrive again at a time when both he and the divine while temporally and eternally in the form of Nature or mother Nature ought to be embraced--as is--as the more complete perspective...Than in the current vogue of believing in an emphasis or highlighting of what clearly manifests as only a part of, or a smaller part of the whole, in search of a greater though perhaps equally delusional certitude?
This boiling down, and boiling down, and boiling down to little or no avail at improving human experience except perhaps to make it worse by an erosion or elimination of the normal affections of the heart gives new meaning, if humorously stated, to the eleven minute egg. However hardboiled-can we ever become exclusively a machine? -Beep-beep! How's my scrap metal, has it held value??? Sorry, just wondering.
"I wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder who-Who wrote the book of love?" ... Anyone here old enough to remember that contemporary lyric, I can't remember by whom!
The Paleo/Primal fans are enthusiasts of the Paleo diet/lifestyle, not paleoconservatives. Many of these enthusiasts are libertarian, including a number of contributors to Lew Rockwell.