...American leadership in the world hinges on learning to accept and manage the rise of many competitors, and dismisses as far too narrow the Bush era doctrine that fighting terrorism should be the nation’s overarching objective.
I don't know about "leadership" -- that ripe old American fantasy -- but Obama's newly declared security strategy should help with our sanity. Nothing about American improved during the era in which we claimed leadership and then maimed and killed to keep our pretensions in place. It hasn't been leadership, it's been bullyship. Letting our fantasies go will make us a much healthier society.
But will we let the fantasies go? At least the strategy outlined the President today indicates we may actually get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the New York Times.
Remember: President Obama didn't jump across the table and choke someone in that time-waster meeting with insultingly petulant Republican senators, even though that strategy would have been justified. But he is about to flatten their expectations for "bipartisanhip" on Republican terms. It looks as though he's warming up to give them what they deserve rather than what they want.
“The burdens of a young century cannot fall on American shoulders alone,” Mr. Obama writes in the introduction of the strategy being released on Thursday. “Indeed, our adversaries would like to see America sap our strength by overextending our power.”That line is just one of many subtle slaps at President George W. Bush. Much of the National Security Strategy, which is required by Congress, reads as an argument for a restoration of an older order of reliance on international institutions, updated to confront modern threats. While Mr. Bush’s 2002 document explicitly said the United States would never allow the rise of a rival superpower, Mr. Obama argues that America faces no real military competitor, but that global power is increasingly diffuse. “To succeed, we must face the world as it is,” he says.
Imagine! We may get to live in an America which has learned how to play nice with the neighbors, an America which accepts that it has to change, not just try and force everyone else to change.
Mr. Obama also defines national security more broadly than his predecessor did, making the case, for example, that reducing the deficit is critical to sustaining American power. He emphasizes issues like the economy, education, climate change, energy and science. In that way, he tries to draw a broader theme linking his presidency to the notion of a “new foundation,” the phrase he previously has coined as a slogan for his domestic program. “Our national security begins at home,” the strategy says.
Oh, the weeping and wailing we're going to hear from the armed bunker on the right!
Comfort them with some over-reaching executive powers. There will be no letting go of "using the state secrets act to withhold information from courts in terrorism cases, although it argues for prudent and limited use. It also insists that 'we will maintain the military superiority that has secured our country, and underpinned global security, for decades.'"
Two impressive steps forward, two shallow, political steps back.
