Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Trump Has Strategic Hallucination, Not Vision
The White House has issued the new National Security Strategy of the United States of America. While the administration claims this sets out a new vision for the country, it really is just an old hallucination. It shreds the last 80 years of success in the name of putting America first. What it fails to appreciate is that the American-created post-war arrangements had America first, last and always. The IMF, the World Bank, NATO and so on are all tools of American power. Instead, the Trump administration is withdrawing from the world, leaving a power vacuum. China is likely to fill most of it.
The muddled thinking behind it is betrayed on page 12 of the document. It is piffle, at best.
President Trump's foreign policy is pragmatic without being "pragmatist," realistic without being "realist," principled without being "idealistic," muscular without being "hawkish," and restrained without being "dovish." It is not grounded in traditional, political ideology.
It wants to be everything to everyone, just like the president himself. As a result, it amounts to nothing at all.
The biggest mistake it makes is in abandoning allies. NATO is going to wind up being a European-led institution, for which one can make a decent case. Indeed, the alliance is overdue for that kind of rebalancing. But it is not the case that this strengthens America. By definition, an America-led NATO is going to be better for America than a European-led alliance.
Meanwhile, it treats Russia with kid gloves. It wants to "establish strategic stability with Russia." It also says the US should focus on "[e]nding the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance." Only one nation benefits from ending NATO expansion: Russia. Not surprisingly, Moscow has said this document squares with their view of the world. So, this part of the document is clearly, Russia First and America Second.
Most disturbing is the section on China. It is simply naive and silly.
President Trump single-handedly reversed more than three decades of mistaken American assumptions about China: namely, that by opening our markets to China, encouraging American business to invest in China, and outsourcing our manufacturing to China, we would facilitate China's entry into the so-called "rules based international order." This did not happen. China got rich and powerful, and used its wealth and power to its considerable advantage. American elites -- over four successive administrations of both political parties -- were either willing enablers of China's strategy or in denial.
To paraphrase President Lyndon Johnson, Mr. Trump does not like China inside the tent pissing out. He wants China outside the tent pissing in. No one is happy with the way China has operated in the World Trade Organization, but that is better than having no leverage on China at all. Mr. Tturmp seems to think it is 1960 still and that China has nothing the west needs.
On the Middle East, it has this disqualifyingly inaccurate statement,"the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over -- not because the Middle East no longer matters, but because it is no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was." One is unaware of Gaza or the West Bank flourishing today.
At least when Caligula made war on Neptune in the English Channel, the legionnaires got a day at the beach out of it. Mr. Trump will wage war on reality, and the troops and nation will suffer for it.
The decline under the Trump administration continues to accelerate
© Copyright 2025 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
|
|
|
