faloperu.blogg.se

This is not hubris but a statement of fact: order cannot be expected to just materialise, and no other country or group of countries has the capacity and commitment to bring it about.Įven if it wanted to, the US could not wall itself off from global threats such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, trade and investment protectionism, pandemic disease, climate change, or a loss of access to financial energy or mineral resources.

The US cannot thrive at home in a world of turmoil - and the world will move in the direction of turmoil without consistent American leadership. The emergence of modern isolationism is deeply troubling. And as is the case with political dysfunction, it raises questions in the minds of others about American reliability, something that tends to lead friends to act more independently and foes more assertively.

Like under-performance and overreach, isolationism stems from within the body politic and crosses party lines. Call it "underreach": the risk posed by what appears to be a growing lack of understanding by many Americans of the close relationship between the state of the world and the state of the US. A country's national security reflects what it is doing in both domains.īut there is a third threat to US national security, one related to but different to both overreach abroad and underperformance at home. The other side is domestic - all that a country does to strengthen its economy and society. One side is foreign policy - what a country does abroad, be it diplomatic, military, or in some other realm. It helps to think of national security as a two-sided coin. The ad­vantages the US enjoys are neither permanent nor sufficient to ensure continued primacy. There is nothing inevitable about American sway over this young century. The United States has jeopardised its ability to act effectively in the world because of runaway domestic spending, underinvestment in human and physical capital, an avoidable financial crisis, an unnecessarily slow recovery, a war in Iraq that was flawed from the outset and a war in Afghanistan that became flawed as its purpose evolved, recurring fiscal deficits, and deep political divisions. The biggest threat to America's security and prosperity comes not from abroad, but from within.