The first book is Ian Bremmer’s Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World. Together, they have produced a set of books that should be read by the incoming national security team. Three books have performed serious strategic critiques that range from the theoretical to the micro-analytical. What we have been doing no longer works, and the need for a new strategic course is overwhelming. Today, the United States finds itself war-weary and deficit-ridden, with much of the world dissatisfied with our leadership. Allied dissatisfaction with the Obama administration appeared to rise as overseas policy problems increased and compounded one another. strategy encountered a host of new problems. The new President was all about exit strategies, with the accent mark on exit and less so on strategy. The Barack Obama administration made it quite clear that its priorities were ending the war in Iraq and first surging and then drawing down in Afghanistan. That misestimate led to a still-compounding tragedy in the Middle East. After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush conducted a retaliatory war against al Qaeda and the Taliban government in Afghanistan, and less than 2 years later, a preventive war against Iraq, presumed to be both a supporter of international terrorism and the holder of weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and research programs. Bush administration initially rejected nation-building and tried to focus on great power relations, but fate had another path in mind. After failures in Somalia and Rwanda, the domestically focused Clinton team fought low-casualty air wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, followed by peace enforcement operations, which were followed by what came to be known as nation-building. During the years of the Bill Clinton administration, this strategy featured engagement and enlargement of the number of democracies, especially in Europe. The predominant national strategy that emerged has been called primacy or liberal hegemony. When the Cold War ended, some claimed that history (and strategy!) had ended, but others argued that the United States had to exploit its “unipolar moment” or otherwise behave, in Madeleine Albright’s phrase, as the world’s “indispensable nation.” Containment activities ranged from military operations to subtle diplomacy or foreign aid to the more than occasional covert operation. Strategic debates on how to contain the Soviet Union were severe and constant, but the aims and framework of the strategy were widely accepted. Jones)įor the entire Cold War, we had one overarching national strategy: the containment of our principal enemy, the Soviet Union. Marines from Mike Battery, 4 th Battalion, 14 th Marines, operate 155mm M198 howitzer in support of Operation Phantom Fury, November 2004 (U.S.
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