Saturday, January 12, 2013

Patrick Doherty — A New U.S. Grand Strategy

The strategic landscape of the 21st century has finally come into focus. The great global project is no longer to stop communism, counter terrorists, or promote a superficial notion of freedom. Rather, the world must accommodate 3 billion additional middle-class aspirants in two short decades -- without provoking resource wars, insurgencies, and the devastation of our planet's ecosystem. For this we need a strategy.
The status quo is untenable. In the United States, the country's economic engine is misaligned to the threats and opportunities of the 21st century. Designed explicitly to exploit postwar demand for suburban housing, consumer goods, and reconstruction materials for Europe and Japan, the conditions that allowed it to succeed expired by the early 1970s. Its shelf life has since been extended by accommodative monetary policy and the accumulation of household, corporate, and federal debt. But with Federal Reserve interest rates effectively zero, Americans' debt exceeding their income, and storms lashing U.S. cities, the country is at the end of the road....
Foreign Policy
A New U.S. Grand Strategy
Patrick Doherty | Director of the Smart Strategy Initiative at the New America Foundation
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Watershed moment in history.

Analysis and plan worth reading.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seems like another neoliberal market-oriented plan to make plutocrats even more massively rich by helping them buy ownership stakes in the new, more sustainable world order to come.

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to become a full-out socialist.

Tom Hickey said...

Seems like another neoliberal market-oriented plan to make plutocrats even more massively rich by helping them buy ownership stakes in the new, more sustainable world order to come.

Yeah, their response is that their increased wealth, power, and dominance its a by-product of good policy under difficult circumstances. That's just the way capitalism works (for us). TINA if the objective is to avoid global disaster.

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to become a full-out socialist.

Yup, there is no compromising with modern (neoliberal) "capitalism," which is a form of corporate statist fascism, elitism, and privilege that is also neo-feudalism based on neo-imperialism and neocolonialism.

Of course, this is not lost on the BRIC's and other emerging countries. The question is whether the US and West can co-opt their elites, or will their elites oppose Western elites in the struggle for global dominance.

Ryan Harris said...

I don't accept the idea that whatever vision or policy choices Washington adopts, we are necessarily co-opting elites or making plutocrats rich as a goal. Obviously this grand strategy is flawed in several ways and would need modified but the plan is powerful. Spending a few minutes reading it created a vivid world picture in our minds that resulted in revulsion. No matter what actions or goals we pursue, we are in a capitalist nation and people will position themselves to profit & get rich. We have to be cognizant of that and potential problems but if people are helping to promote the goals of the state and the state is promoting the goals of the public, then they deserve to get rich.

Without a strategy, as we have now, there is no way to attack the broad challenges as there is no collective vision of a better world.
Every time a politician does anything now, the goal is NEVER to benefit the majority of the public; The goal is to garner the most $upport from plutocrats and not be too controversial so people don't vote against you.

Ideally people should spend time arguing over the minutia of the plan while the politicians work to execute the plan. This is more similar to the way the two party system used to work when a great deal of effort was put into the platforms. The plans should be revisited every couple years to change as problems are identified or new needs arise.

I think a grand strategy helps politicians traverse policy minutia in which they work and SHOULD help to create policies that benefit the majority of people. I simply don't agree that it is another tool of the neolibs or pluts.

Tom Hickey said...

if people are helping to promote the goals of the state and the state is promoting the goals of the public, then they deserve to get rich

If this were "equal opportunity" I would agree within reason, but it is not that way. We have an institutionally privileged elite that function in much the same way as an aristocracy. And a callous aristocracy at that.

Modern neoliberal capitalism is an institutional fascism of the corporate state.

Tom Hickey said...

I simply don't agree that it is another tool of the neolibs or pluts.

Of course that is not expressed intention of the plan, which in general has a lot of merit. But the way things are configured now, if they don't change than it is going to further cement Western dominance and the privileged elite and their cronies and minions. The rest of the people are "beneficiaries" of the plan. Really?

David said...

289 The author thinks George Kennan was a great man. If Kennan wasn't a fascist, he was as like it as damn it.