Grand Strategy for a Divided America

[cupper]

Me third.

 

[tomahawk6]

Better change the title.You cannot discuss grand strategy in a domestic context without discussing politics.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Better change the title.You cannot discuss grand strategy in a domestic context without discussing politics.

I accepted, nearly six years ago, that domestic politics would decide grand strategy but the original post was about grand strategy ~ why and how America comports itself in the world ~ and while I agree that domestic politics will decide the issues they, domestic political issues, are not components of a grand strategy.

This thread was not intended to be a platform for debating the American culture wars nor Pres Obama's conduct; it was meant to be about grand strategy. If we drift too far from that then I am confident that this thread, too, will become radio chatter.

 

[tomahawk6]

Perhaps I don't understand the premise "Grand Strategy for a divided America". Who's grand strategy ? How is America divided  except maybe in the political context that you don't want discussed ? Don't worry Edward I won't clutter your thread with politics.Although it would be an ideal venue to discuss the Nixonian bent of this administration.Anyway keep an eye on the Congressional hearings.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Perhaps I don't understand the premise "Grand Strategy for a divided America". Who's grand strategy ? How is America divided  except maybe in the political context that you don't want discussed ? Don't worry Edward I won't clutter your thread with politics.Although it would be an ideal venue to discuss the Nixonian bent of this administration.Anyway keep an eye on the Congressional hearings.

The title, and the premise that a) America needs a grand strategy and b) that ongoing political divisions make it difficult to enunciate, are found in the first post from nearly six years ago.

It seems to me that a) a grand strategy is still to be hoped for and b) the divisions are still deep and are still preventing official Washington from focusing on strategic issues.

 

[tomahawk6]

America required a grand strategy during the cold war. Post cold war a grand strategy isnt possible or desirable.Today we are fighting islamists beyond that world peace may break out or it will be back to a policy to contain the PRC.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I think that deciding how to engage China is a key element of a grand strategy: classic containment, à la George Kennan or something else?

Ditto: the Muslims: low level war or something else?

What about how to deal with a shaky, maybe failing Europe?

And there is always Latin America, with its own traditional challenges.

Where does India fit in all this?

Russia?

Africa?

 

[tomahawk6]

National interest has its ebbs and flows.During the cold war India aligned itself with the Russians.Now they seem to have aligned themselves with the West.
Europe may be shaky but they havent collapsed economically yet.Of all the NATO nations the one country with the strongest economy IMO is Canada.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The US didn't really have a grand strategy shared across the political divide during the Cold War, except by convenience.  The Republicans chiefly wanted to contain the Soviets and the Democrats chiefly wanted to expand the welfare state.  Each went along with the other as the cost of meeting respective aims.  Post-USSR, there is no external threat equal to the Soviets.  Republican attention has turned partly inward (source of friction added) and Democrat support is no longer needed "at any price" (source of cooperation removed).

 

[Nemo888]

The strategy seems to be assisting global capital create a single free market.  The lack of democratic oversight is already revealing the flaws of capitalism without moral or ethical constraints. It's an ideological experiment that I think is fundamentally flawed.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The US didn't really have a grand strategy shared across the political divide during the Cold War, except by convenience.  The Republicans chiefly wanted to contain the Soviets and the Democrats chiefly wanted to expand the welfare state.  Each went along with the other as the cost of meeting respective aims.  Post-USSR, there is no external threat equal to the Soviets.  Republican attention has turned partly inward (source of friction added) and Democrat support is no longer needed "at any price" (source of cooperation removed).

Containment, which was a grand strategy, was a Democratic policy adopted by the GOP. Kennedy, another Democrat was the author of interventionism which is, today, largely associated with the GOP. Nixon was a realist, a strategic posture that appealed to George HW Bush and Bill Clinton, while George H Bush, like Ronald Reagan and LBJ, was a Kennedyesque interventionist.

My  :2c: anyway.

 

[Rifleman62]

FINALLY:

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/national/scandals_take_nation_by_storm_XDfi2w8sSByyRmvPgL5XiP#axzz2TNW9R0QX

New York Post

O’s scandals take nation by storm

By MICHAEL GOODWIN

Last Updated: 2:49 AM, May 15, 2013


As a metaphor for big government, it is hard to top the Justice Department’s seizing of journalists’ phone records from The Associated Press.

Unless, of course, you think the best example is the Internal Revenue Service turning the screws on groups it viewed as conservative and, therefore, unworthy of fair treatment.

Or maybe the winner is the sneaky spreading of ObamaCare’s tentacles, with insurance companies now predicting the law will drive up the cost of individual premiums by as much as 400 percent.

There are no losers in this race to the bottom — except the American people. It is tempting to ask whether they’ve had enough Hope & Change, but the question is premature. With 44 months to go in the reign of the Great Mistake, the gods are not done punishing us.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, the growing cloud of trouble must have the bunker boys longing for the good old days. You know, those idyllic days of yesteryear, a k a early last week, when Benghazi was the only scandal on the horizon.

Everything was much simpler then. All the president had to do was cry “Politics!” and the Pavlovian media mutts declared Benghazi a “partisan witch hunt” and started digging into really important things, such as whether Republicans are evil or just stupid.

Then the dam broke. First, it was the sensational Benghazi hearing, where previously muzzled whistleblowers detailed the administration’s bungles before, during and after the terror attack. Throw in reports showing the infamous Susan Rice talking points were rewritten 11 times, going from fact to fiction, and Benghazi suddenly became the important story it should have been all along.

If that were all, it would have been enough. But the near-simultaneous revelations in recent days about the IRS playing political favorites, the massive phone grab at the AP news operation, and ObamaCare’s cost impact combined to demonstrate something I believed for a long time.

The Obama administration is both corrupt and incompetent. It is a double whammy that spells trouble for the nation, at home and abroad.

The corruption is not like that in Albany, where officials stuff their pockets with taxpayer cash. The corruption in Obama-Land is the selective use of government power to reward friends and punish opponents. Or, as the president calls them, enemies.

Political allies — think Solyndra and unions — get special goodies, while those who oppose the regime’s agenda are demonized and singled out for scrutiny. The IRS targeting of groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names and those that advocate less spending smacks of the tactics of banana republic strongmen. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro would be proud.

But America is a nation of laws and not of men, of individual liberty and not of centralized power. And that national dynamic explains the firestorm of anger aimed at the White House. The headlines have sparked a wide and genuine outcry over Obama’s push against the nation’s roots.

He’s been doing it for four years, and mostly getting away with it, but suddenly, there is a critical mass of evidence against him. Maybe the AP case made the media realize they were not exempt from Obama’s overreach.

Whatever the reason, what we see so far is certainly not the end of it. You can bet other nasty, intrusive surprises are hiding in the vast deep of the expanding bureaucracy.

The ultimate danger is a lack of accountability. The idea that ordinary citizens hold the power has no meaning when the political class circles the wagons and the press looks the other way while the president accumulates more power and control.

That is where we have been, but hopefully, not where we are going. Their liberty DNA kicking in, more and more citizens, including some in the media, finally are expressing shock and anger at how big, clumsy and crooked our government is. They are welcome to the discovery, belated though it is.

For those of us not shocked by the inevitable, there is vindication but no satisfaction. Each example of Obama’s chickens coming home to roost just makes more obvious how much damage he’s already done.

The repair begins by throwing open the doors and windows of Washington. We’ll need a lot of sunshine to disinfect this rot.


Read more: Goodwin: Storm clouds brewing in Obama-Land over Benghazi, IRS, AP scandals - NYPOST.com http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/scandals_take_nation_by_storm_XDfi2w8sSByyRmvPgL5XiP#ixzz2TT6YvWEN

 

[Edward Campbell]

FINALLY:

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/national/scandals_take_nation_by_storm_XDfi2w8sSByyRmvPgL5XiP#axzz2TNW9R0QX

New York Post

O’s scandals take nation by storm

By MICHAEL GOODWIN

Last Updated: 2:49 AM, May 15, 2013


As a metaphor for big government, it is hard to top the Justice Department’s seizing of journalists’ phone records from The Associated Press.

Unless, of course, you think the best example is the Internal Revenue Service turning the screws on groups it viewed as conservative and, therefore, unworthy of fair treatment.

Or maybe the winner is the sneaky spreading of ObamaCare’s tentacles, with insurance companies now predicting the law will drive up the cost of individual premiums by as much as 400 percent.

There are no losers in this race to the bottom — except the American people. It is tempting to ask whether they’ve had enough Hope & Change, but the question is premature. With 44 months to go in the reign of the Great Mistake, the gods are not done punishing us.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, the growing cloud of trouble must have the bunker boys longing for the good old days. You know, those idyllic days of yesteryear, a k a early last week, when Benghazi was the only scandal on the horizon.

Everything was much simpler then. All the president had to do was cry “Politics!” and the Pavlovian media mutts declared Benghazi a “partisan witch hunt” and started digging into really important things, such as whether Republicans are evil or just stupid.

Then the dam broke. First, it was the sensational Benghazi hearing, where previously muzzled whistleblowers detailed the administration’s bungles before, during and after the terror attack. Throw in reports showing the infamous Susan Rice talking points were rewritten 11 times, going from fact to fiction, and Benghazi suddenly became the important story it should have been all along.

If that were all, it would have been enough. But the near-simultaneous revelations in recent days about the IRS playing political favorites, the massive phone grab at the AP news operation, and ObamaCare’s cost impact combined to demonstrate something I believed for a long time.

The Obama administration is both corrupt and incompetent. It is a double whammy that spells trouble for the nation, at home and abroad.

The corruption is not like that in Albany, where officials stuff their pockets with taxpayer cash. The corruption in Obama-Land is the selective use of government power to reward friends and punish opponents. Or, as the president calls them, enemies.

Political allies — think Solyndra and unions — get special goodies, while those who oppose the regime’s agenda are demonized and singled out for scrutiny. The IRS targeting of groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names and those that advocate less spending smacks of the tactics of banana republic strongmen. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro would be proud.

But America is a nation of laws and not of men, of individual liberty and not of centralized power. And that national dynamic explains the firestorm of anger aimed at the White House. The headlines have sparked a wide and genuine outcry over Obama’s push against the nation’s roots.

He’s been doing it for four years, and mostly getting away with it, but suddenly, there is a critical mass of evidence against him. Maybe the AP case made the media realize they were not exempt from Obama’s overreach.

Whatever the reason, what we see so far is certainly not the end of it. You can bet other nasty, intrusive surprises are hiding in the vast deep of the expanding bureaucracy.

The ultimate danger is a lack of accountability. The idea that ordinary citizens hold the power has no meaning when the political class circles the wagons and the press looks the other way while the president accumulates more power and control.

That is where we have been, but hopefully, not where we are going. Their liberty DNA kicking in, more and more citizens, including some in the media, finally are expressing shock and anger at how big, clumsy and crooked our government is. They are welcome to the discovery, belated though it is.

For those of us not shocked by the inevitable, there is vindication but no satisfaction. Each example of Obama’s chickens coming home to roost just makes more obvious how much damage he’s already done.

The repair begins by throwing open the doors and windows of Washington. We’ll need a lot of sunshine to disinfect this rot.


Read more: Goodwin: Storm clouds brewing in Obama-Land over Benghazi, IRS, AP scandals - NYPOST.com http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/scandals_take_nation_by_storm_XDfi2w8sSByyRmvPgL5XiP#ixzz2TT6YvWEN

I think that about half of Americans (and maybe fewer than half of Canadians) think that the Obama administration is a mess, but what does the "growing cloud of trouble" have to do with America's grand strategy? Do you think that the domestic political problems will paralyze the national security and foreign policy apparatus? Will the Asian Pivot (which is a strategy, like it or not) fall apart because the IRS went after the Tea Party or the FBI looked up lists of reporters?

I'm happy to concede that the domestic political situation makes the kind of bipartisan strategic consensus that some observers think is required more and more difficult. But Truman managed to build a bipartisan consensus for containment and the Marshal Plan despite a resoundingly hostile Republican establishment, one which actually overrode his vetoes on several important issues. Now, maybe Obama is no Truman and maybe Americans do not see the kind of strategic threat today that they saw in the late 1940s, but domestic political problems do not always prevent foreign policy cooperation.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I will have a go at Conrad Black's Flight of the Eagle as soon as it arrives (well not quite then, but it's in line for early summer reading); I am a great fan of his life of FDR, I think he saw trhough all the clutter and got down to the very focused grand strategist. I admire FDR because he set the real grand strategy and them left e.g. the military strategy to Stimson and Marshall (who shared some of that responsibility Knox, Forrestal and King in a very complex bit of inside the beltway politics that saw Stimson and Marshall having overall control so long as they left the entire Pacific war (less the Manhattan project) to Knox, Forrestal and King).

In any event, Conrad Black holds forth on why, in his opinion, America's grand strategic vision is clouded in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/why-conrad-black-thinks-the-united-states-is-in-decline/article12005862/#dashboard/alerts

Why Conrad Black thinks the United States is in decline

MARGARET WENTE
The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, May. 17 2013

For someone who vowed to keep a low profile now that he is back in Canada, Conrad Black has been extremely visible.

Although he is still dealing with the messy legal aftermath of the crash of his newspaper empire, he is a popular fixture on Toronto’s social circuit, continues to write a weekly newspaper column and is active in various business ventures (“only non-public companies,” he stresses). He is also set to launch a weekly talk show on Vision TV this summer (his old friend Moses Znaimer talked him into it, he says).

What Mr. Black most likes to talk about, though, is serious history.

A close student of grand strategists and strategy (his 2003 biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was widely praised), he is about to release a new book next week: Flight of the Eagle, he says, is meant to correct a common misconception that the United States stumbled into greatness; instead, America’s destiny was shaped in large part by a series of exceptional leaders.

You write about America. And you’ve often held it up as a country that Canada ought to emulate.

    I used to.

Yes, that seems to have changed quite dramatically. You describe the U.S. now, not without affection, as vulgar, banal, slovenly and complacent.

    There are those aspects to it, yes.

    I certainly don’t take any pleasure in what I would say is the comparative decline of the U.S. – or at least the trajectory of that country – but it does have an advantage for Canadians. I detest the spirit of envy
    and I never gloat over anyone’s difficulties (although I cannot say that I’ve always myself been received in that manner), but Canadians should at least now be cured of the subconscious feeling that we are, in fact,
    inferior to Americans.

    It hasn’t always been so – I think [Ronald] Reagan ran a better administration than [Pierre] Trudeau did – but this is a better-governed country than the U.S. now and it has been for some time.

Your book seems to suggest the high-water mark for the U.S. – for American power and prestige in the world – was 1989.

    In fairness, its vocation for greatness had been realized before. The U.S. dealt with a succession of challenges very effectively: the prevention of a German victory in the First World War, the containment strategy
    against the Soviet Union, even Vietnam – and I don’t make light of it, that war was a serious mistake – led to a complete victory. But then it wasn’t clear what the goal was, so George Bush Sr. talked about a new
    order in the world. But what did it mean? It’s like “a thousand points of light.” You could never say what it actually meant. I guess countries, like people, respond better to a challenge than they do when there
    isn’t one.

America has also undermined itself in terrible ways.

    Ah, but that, in a way, is the development of the challenge – the challenge within. There are lots of things inside the U.S. that are now a real challenge to that society: The education system isn’t competitive,
    the whole wealth distribution/welfare system, broadly stated, is responsible for wasting staggering and horrifying quantities of human resources. The justice system is simply an outrage. The problem of corruption
    in government and in public life generally, the excesses of the pecuniary society…

So what happened to American leadership after the people you mention in your book – the Madisons and the Washingtons?

    This is a terribly serious question. You’re younger than I am, but you remember that horrible year of 1968 when there were assassinations and riots everywhere, 550,000 draftees in Vietnam, undeclared war,
    no one knew what they were doing and 200 to 400 young men were coming back dead every week. But at one time or another Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan
    and Nelson Rockefeller were all running for president – and they were all qualified to be president, they were all very substantial people. In this last election, the best Republicans didn’t run. [Barack] Obama was
    a vulnerable candidate…

He should have lost.

    He was actually not a bad president. He wasn’t a good political leader, but he wasn’t a bad president. Still, he didn’t lose. The strongest candidates didn’t run. At the time, I remember writing that this was a very
    worrisome signal of how things were; normally it’s such a great office and Americans are such a patriotic people and you’re automatically going to be a famous person in history if you’re the president. And yet the
    candidates who could have won didn’t run.

You said something pretty controversial about President Obama. You said the main reason he was elected in 2008 was “white guilt.”

    That was the campaign he ran. I didn’t say it critically of him, I thought it was a genius campaign.

    It wasn’t explicit, but not subliminal either. The message was: You Americans – non-black Americans or white Americans – the great majority of you are decent, fair-minded people and you are naturally troubled
    by the aspect of our country’s history that consists of, in Mr. Lincoln’s phrase, “the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil,” followed by 100 years of segregation. Now you can be rid of that. As an added bonus,
    you will never have to listen to charlatans like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton again. The African-American community will have a respectable leader that doesn’t grate on your nerves when you hear him speak –
    and all you have to do is vote for me.

    Now, he never quite said that, but if you had interviewed the average white Obama voter and said, “Do you feel that this would be the consequence of voting for him?” they all would have said yes.

So vote for me and you can feel good about yourself…

    I’d put it more respectfully than that: Vote for me and we can turn the page on that terribly difficult time. And he’s right.

What about Canada: Are you able to stay?

    My temporary permit has been renewed.

Do you have to get it renewed year by year?

    Yes, at some time I would be eligible to apply to make it permanent. One step at a time.

At this point, do you think you’re a historian or a businessman first?

    Well, because of the horrible onslaught I had to endure for most of the last 10 years, I sort of cranked up my writing career. It was something I could do while I was trying to conduct my defence. And of course
    for three years I was a guest of the great American people and you can’t run a business from prison. Some people did, but I couldn’t.

    But now I am focused on a commercial relaunch – not large public companies and not in a way that’s controversial, but completely under the radar, which is how I started. I have some aptitude for that.

Do you ever wish you’d done history from the start and forgotten about business?

    I live quite well and I couldn’t live the way I do on what you earn as a writer, even if I was a much more successful writer. It’s not a terrific career in income terms, as you know.

What do you think is the most indispensable history book on America, apart from your own?

    Can’t I have one per century?

All right, one per century.

    I would say Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life. I suppose Carl Sandburg’s life of Lincoln, and this is a terribly self-serving thing to say, but holding one hand over my eyes and repenting as I very tentatively
    put it forward, my life of FDR.

I disagree with Conrad Black that America's zenith was 1989; I think it was about 1950, for the same reasons that I maintain that Britain's peak was around 1830, not 70 years later.

I think grand strategy fell out of favour with John F Kennedy who, it appears to me, was more fascinated with the exercise of power than with the management of it, and I don't think anyone - maybe Richard Nixon is the exception - really wanted to bring it back to the centre of the presidency.

 

[Rifleman62]

http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

National Post - 25 May 13  Rex Murphy

The IRS vs. American Liberty

Our long national Senatorial nightmare is far from over. Even as the red Chamber’s expenses scandal receives severe competition from Toronto’s bizarre City Hall drug farce, there is promise of new Ottawa inquiries. The Senate scandal’s epicenter, Mike Duffy, is proving to be more famous off-camera than he was on.
Douglas Shulman

It’s all both sad and ridiculous. Sad, because — on an ideal formulation — the Senate is where we should send (and in some cases have sent) those Canadians we are most proud of, those who are an embodiment of Canadiana. Indeed, some good and great people have been and are Senators. Those folks, especially, must be ashamed to see the Senate’s reputation being dragged around like this.

But some context is necessary: For Canadians, our senatorial melodrama has partly obscured a more ominous series of scandals currently unfolding south of the border, threatening the reputation and agenda of Barack Obama in his second term. The u.S. scandals are, in my judgment, far more worrisome — they go to the very heart of democratic politics — than ours.

There are a trinity of them. The first two, to cite the shorthand, are (1) the Benghazi coverup; and (2) the Justice department’s spying on the press, including the seizure of phone records and emails from Associated Press and Fox News reporters.

But it is the third scandal that is by far the most devastating: the discovery that the Internal revenue Service — the fearsome, bullying, virtually unchallengable IRS — has been deliberately intruding into the political process: picking which groups to favour, and which to harass and distress, by targeting groups self-identified as “Tea Party” or “patriot.”

There is not yet evidence that such actions were performed at the order of elected officials. But even without that connection, the idea that the U.S. tax-collecting agency, with all its powers and investigative reach, has turned “political,” is horrifying. It has shocked even democrats.

In hundreds of cases — more than 500 according to one report — the IRS applied additional scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. And in doing so, the IRS demanded all sorts of private information from the applicants, effectively intimidating and harassing them on the basis of their political beliefs.

This is the very nullification of the American idea: It is the long arm of the tax authority targeting the citizenry. All this in a country founded on a tax revolt.

This week, Congress offered the edifying spectacle of a high IRS official in charge of these filings appearing before its Finance Committee — in one breath sourly proclaiming her innocence, and in another taking the Fifth. Let us put it this way: When a high IRS official pleads the Fifth amendment before Congress, there is something very rotten in the state.

Initially, there were assurances that all was well, then that it was merely a rogue agent or two in a single city (Cincinnati). It’s beyond that now. It has ramified to the point where officials in the White House are saying that they knew of the IRS scandal but did not tell (which itself is very telling) the President.

Much like our Senate story, no one is stepping up and either telling all or taking responsibility.

When he appeared before Congress, former Commissioner of the IRS Douglas Shulman was as sleek as a seal in his dives and evasions. despite a proven 118 visits to the White House (including one for the “Easter egg hunt” — perhaps “find the republican”) he blandly proclaims that he never discussed the issue with “anyone” in that bastion of power.

Canada’s scandals are bad, but the American ones are frightening. What the IRS has done is twist the system into a partisan persecutory instrument of the party in power.

The IRS is mighty: When federal and state police could not nail Al Capone, remember, they went to the IRS — who did get him. In the land of the free, it’s terrible to imagine the same tactics being used on political activists.

"Commissioner of the IRS Douglas Shulman was as sleek as a seal in his dives and evasions, despite a proven 118 visits to the White House".

More visits than the Secretary of Defence, the head of the CIA and FBI combined.

 

[Jed]

http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

More visits than the Secretary of Defence, the head of the CIA and FBI combined.

At last, some MSM showing some perspective.

 

[cupper]

At last, some MSM showing some perspective.

No. One Canadian commentator making observations from what he has seen from other media sources.

Let's not make more of Rex Murphy than he really is.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The appointment of Susan Rice as US National Security Advisor might help explain US foreign policy to the world according to this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-susan-rice-a-provocateur-in-the-west-wing/2013/06/05/5b7f0e10-ce22-11e2-8f6b-67f40e176f03_story.html

Susan Rice, a provocateur in the West Wing

By David Ignatius

Published: June 5

Think of Susan Rice as the president’s assertive kid sister. Where he’s cool and deferential, she’s boisterous and sometimes abrasive. Where he avoids public confrontation, she often relishes it. They have different styles, but make no mistake: What Rice says out loud is often what Obama is thinking privately.

In appointing Rice to become national security adviser in place of Tom Donilon, Obama is trading a reliable gray sedan for a flashier but more temperamental sports car. He’s exchanging a private political dealmaker for a public provocateur. He’s replacing a man who dislikes taking risks, and has generally been good at avoiding them, with one of the more adventurous people in government.

And then there’s Benghazi: Obama is swapping a man who generally avoided the Sunday talk shows for someone who nearly committed career suicide for delivering the famous talking points (for which she was otherwise blameless). Enough, already, about Benghazi.

For an Obama administration that is struggling to find its voice in the second term, Rice’s elevation should be helpful. She will give the White House a compelling new focal point on foreign policy. People may not always agree with her, but they’ll know what she thinks. And perhaps she will galvanize sharper policy thinking from Obama himself, especially on Syria.

But the Rice nomination brings some obvious risks: She is not a quiet inside player in the tradition of Brent Scowcroft, who was Donilon’s role model as national security adviser. She’s more in the tradition of extroverted policy intellectuals such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, who used the media and other channels to shape events.

It will be interesting to see how Rice shares the foreign-policy platform with Secretary of State John Kerry. White House officials say that Kerry will own the diplomatic space and that there shouldn’t be much overlap. But this pairing of ambitious policymakers conjures memories of past feuds between Kissinger and Secretary of State William Rogers, or Brze­zin­ski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Obama’s personal relationship with Rice will allow her to speak with special authority when she’s dealing with foreign leaders. But it could undercut Kerry, who is otherwise off to a strong start. The White House doesn’t envision Rice as a secret emissary, a la Kissinger. But foreign leaders may try to use her as a back channel anyway.

Rice will have trouble matching Donilon’s success as a process manager. Critics argue that he has been overly organized and top-down, but he has run a smooth interagency process: Paperwork is delivered on time to the Oval Office; decisions are made and implemented (or fuzzed because the president wants it that way). Donilon has been a firm and sometimes controlling presence, and he’s known as a hard taskmaster. But he gets the job done, in a way that Cabinet officials generally feel is fair. This won’t be easy for Rice to replicate.

“Tom is not given enough credit for running the process. He did that masterfully,” says Michele Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense who sometimes butted heads with Donilon.

Rice’s biggest challenge is to help Obama project a more strategic view of foreign policy. Donilon took on the big issue of rebalancing U.S. diplomatic and military power toward Asia — culminating in this weekend’s summit between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But beyond the pivot to Asia, policymaking during the Donilon years sometimes seemed reactive and event-driven — closer to crisis management than systematic strategy. Obama said Wednesday that Donilon combined the strategic and tactical, but the world saw more of the latter.

Obama has some visionary ideas about the United States’ role in a changing world. They’re articulated in his speeches, penned by deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, but there’s often a lack of follow-through. That’s the first thing journalists often hear from foreign leaders: Where is your president on big issues? Why don’t we hear more from him? Perhaps Rice can help the White House send clearer policy messages to a world that is drifting without active and engaged U.S. leadership.

Rice has star power. She is smart, funny, profane and passionate. She can also be her own worst enemy — using sharp words or elbows when a softer touch would work better. In that sense, she and Obama are well-matched: The cool and cautious chief executive may benefit from a more hot-tempered national security adviser, and vice versa.

I am a (tepid) admirer of Ambassador Rice; I agree with David Ignatius that she is "smart, funny, profane and passionate," - all good attributes in a grand strategist. But: President Obama, like his predecessors, Bush (43), Clinton and Bush (41), doesn't like grand strategy ~ he's a dilettante, unlike, say, Nixon, and he's a good example of Isaiah Berlin's fox mentality, in contrast to, say, Ronald Reagan's hedgehog like focus on defeating the "evil empire." I think/hope she can explain American strategy, such as it is, to friends and foes alike; I doubt she can do much to make grand strategy matter, even if she is so inclined.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Veteran Anglo-American journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave gives a reasoned review of Richard Haass' new book Foreign Policy Begins at Home in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from United Press International:

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/de-Borchgrave/2013/05/03/Commentary-Beyond-the-last-war/UPI-90611367580711/

I haven't gotten to "Foreign Policy Begins at Home," yet - it's on the Spring reading list - but if what Arnaud de Borchgrave says is correct then I suspect I shall agree with Richard Haass prescriptions.

That America's post World War II strategic vision has been cloudy, to be charitable, is beyond question but America's strategic capacity is now in question, too.

If we want American strategic leadership - and I think we do - then we must hope for a new generation of leaders very, very unlike pretty much everyone from John F. Kennedy through to Barack Hussein Obama, all of whom, including Ronald Reagan, in my opinion, have been second rate. America does need to restore is social and economic base before it can assert itself as a global leader. The social base is still ruptured by the silly, destructive culture wars for which both the (misnamed) liberals and conservatives are equally to blame. The economic base has been destroyed by two generations of misguided social engineers. the US military is, in my opinion, poorly led - and has been ever since about 1960, badly managed, and aimless. US strategy ... well,the lack of one is what this thread is all about.

I have finished Richard Haass' "Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order" and I am in broad agreement with Arnaud de Borchgrave (that shouldn't surprise anyone) but not everyone is. here is a well thought out but quite contrary opinion which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323550604578410432065425550.html

A Noble Responsibility
At a time when jihadists have proven capable of conquering Mali, a country roughly the size of Texas, the U.S. can't afford to turn inward.

By SOHRAB AHMARI

May 6, 2013

In 1944, amid the carnage of World War II, the German-American banker James Warburg published a book titled "Foreign Policy Begins at Home." In it, he hailed "Anglo-American-Soviet solidarity" and expressed hope that it would achieve a "durable peace" at war's end. He railed against America's "runaway capitalism" and predicted that, unless "economic democracy" was established, "some form of fascist dictatorship" would soon arise in the U.S. The book was squarely in the tradition of influential men—Warburg was FDR's personal financial adviser—pondering the geopolitical landscape as it is reflected in the editorial columns of the day and offering grand prescriptions for the betterment of the nation.

Richard Haass's "Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order" borrows more than its title from Warburg's tract. Mr. Haass's basic claim is that the U.S. overcommitted itself abroad in the years following 9/11 and neglected the "domestic foundations of its power." If this sounds like a more sophisticated version of one of President Obama's campaign slogans—"America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home!"—that's because it is. The author says the slogan could serve as a "bumper sticker" for his own foreign-policy doctrine.

Mr. Haass, who serves as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, knows that the U.S.'s combination of military supremacy and decent values makes our leadership essential to global order. But he says that to maintain primacy, America must downsize its international footprint and attend to its spiraling debt crisis, broken education system, crumbling infrastructure and other domestic concerns. He calls this program a doctrine of "Restoration." In the first half of the book, Mr. Haass sketches the state of the world in broad brush strokes, and in the second half he offers more specific recommendations.

It's hard to argue with his insistence that, without economic and cultural vitality at home, the U.S. won't be able to defend its interests or project its values abroad—not for long anyway. Mr. Haass correctly warns, "American profligacy at home threatens American power and security." Many of his suggestions for reversing course domestically are sensible (if also unoriginal): solving the entitlements crisis through a combination of raising the retirement age and means testing; attracting jobs and investment by slashing the country's corporate tax rate; enhancing energy independence by building new nuclear power plants. When he steps away from conventional wisdom—calling for the abolishment of the Electoral College to "strengthen the center" or having unelected expert commissions draw up congressional districts—he tends toward the unrealistic and unconstitutional rather than the innovative.

It's the national-security implications of his doctrine, though, that are the most troubling. The author says the U.S. should "increase the resources devoted to internal as opposed to international challenges"; shift away from the Middle East toward East Asia, "the part of the world most likely to influence the course of this century"; and supplant military power with "economic and diplomatic tools."

The doctrine's resemblances to Mr. Obama's foreign policy—with its "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific region and emphasis on "smart power"—are striking. Its appeal to war-weary Americans is obvious. Yet Mr. Haass puts far too much stock in the fashionable certainties of the think-tank and journalistic echo chamber, where it's now an article of faith that regime change in Iraq and the broader war on terror were irredeemable catastrophes. Indeed, the pages where Mr. Haass lays out the global state of play add up to a compendium of foreign-policy clichés.

"History," he proclaims early on, "has returned if in fact it ever departed." And in case you hadn't heard, "globalization is a defining feature of this era, differentiating it from previous ones." Oh, and "China's rise is one of the defining features of this era," too. Welcome to the Arab "Winter," the "Brave New World," the "post-European world," the "nonpolar world," where "individuals and groups are empowered as never before" and where "all politics is local."

Some of these platitudes contain kernels of truth. But the author's casual reliance upon them is an indication of lazy thinking. If "the era of peacemaking between leaders is over," as Mr. Haass flatly declares, then why must "national leaders . . . be able and willing to take political risks and compromise" to achieve peace, as he says three sentences later? And if "the paramount feature of the twenty-first century is nonpolarity," as he says, then why is "the question for today . . . whether the world is becoming bipolar"?

The author also never makes it clear why he believes defense cuts are necessary for the economic health of the country. As he repeatedly concedes, defense spending isn't a structural cause of our ballooning national debt (Social Security and Medicare are the real causes). Nor does he consider the contributions that assertive foreign and defense policies have made to U.S. economic growth and technological development in the decades since James Warburg thought he saw the future.

Mr. Haass's doctrine is premised on the notion that the U.S. is currently experiencing a "strategic respite." The global order today, he thinks, is "relatively forgiving; that is, presenting no existential threat," and therefore the U.S. can afford to turn inward. At a time when North Korea's psychopathic rulers issue daily threats of nuclear war against the U.S.—and jihadists have proven capable of conquering Mali, a country roughly the size of Texas, within a matter of days—such confidence may be seriously misplaced. Yet even granting that the U.S. is benefiting from a "respite," a problem remains that the author never pauses to consider: Isn't it possible that the relatively peaceful state of many regions of the world is a product of precisely the muscular policies and hegemonic posture Mr. Haass would do away with?

History, after all, is full of great powers forgetting that vigilance is the price for peace of mind; the U.S. on Sept. 10, 2001, was one such nation.

Mr. Ahmari is an assistant books editor at the Journal.

While I agree with some of Mr. Ahmari's criticism, especially of some of Mr. Haass' prescriptions, I think that "the U.S. should "increase the resources devoted to internal as opposed to international challenges"; shift away from the Middle East toward East Asia, "the part of the world most likely to influence the course of this century"; and supplant military power with "economic and diplomatic tools."" I believe the US is challenged, internally, by a horrid series of culture wars, for which I blame the Democratic and Republican "bases" equally and by rising tide of domestic political violence ~ some of it inspired by e.g. al Qaeda and some inspired by nativist tendencies which have been part of American culture from 200 years.

I believe that the facts are:

    1. America's capacity to lead the West has been badly damaged by America, itself;

    2. There is no other suitable leader for the West;

    3. China, even though constrained by India, is rising rapidly and confidently to the role of leader of the East; and

    4. The Islamic Crescent IS a strategic problem but it is one which we can, and should, watch, with interest, while it explodes dues to its own internal contradictions.

Thus, I believe Richard Haass prescriptions for America are helpful.

 

[a_majoor]

Looking at it from a different angle, I see one of the key reasons for the difficulty in defining, articulating and asserting American power and the "culture wars" that are paralyzing American political culture (and ours too, make no mistake) is because we are entering a period of transition. Russel Walter Mead has written extensively about it in Via Media on the collapse of the "Blue Model", and many other writers have taken aim at various aspects of the end of the Progressive model as well.

Since the structures and political systems that have worked since roughly the 1930's are now failing due to financial, political and (i9n some cases) moral bankruptcy and the sources of power, economic growth and even demographic footprint have changed radically, new structures need to be created and implemented in order to carry on the business of governance. Since no one knows which models will be successful, we have a situation where the old guard is fanatically fighting to save their vested interests in the existing systems, while various movements are rising around different organizational, political and economic models.

In terms of "Grand Strategy" this also leads to the conclusion that the defining and exercise of "Grand Strategy" may also change, depending on the dominant political, economic and social model that emerges.

I still think George Freidman's model is a good starting point; all "Grand Strategies" need to begin with the security and preservation of the Homeland, and most "Grand Strategies" then fall out of the specific requirements based on the unique geographical and geopolitical situation the Homeland is embedded in. Robert Kaplan's book "Revenge of Geography" goes into this point in some detail.

If you want a prediction from me; the American Grand Strategy will begin with a realignment and reconstruction of institutions "at home" in response to mounting fiscal pressures, followed by a true pivot from "East-West" to "North-South" as Mexico becomes economically more important, demographically ascendant and exerts more and more influence on her former territories in the American Southwest.