By relying on NATO interventions and other military strategies, the U.S. is bleeding itself economically and crippling its ability to cooperate with Russia, China and other emerging forces in the multi-polar world that is taking shape, a grave geopolitical mistake, says ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.
By Graham E. Fuller
On the world scene, America is a declining power. This decline is in part domestic and self-inflicted, reflecting a certain weariness and neglect of our social order. No amount of huffing and puffing from politicians will significantly change this decline.
But the decline is also relative, relative to the rise of new world powers. China, India, Brazil, even the return of a more active Russia; all now severely affect America’s former ability to dominate the global scene.
A U.S. soldier in Afghanistan fires an MA-2, .50-caliber machine gun, in a training exercise at the U.S. base in Afghanistan’s Farah province on Sept. 22, 2012. (Photo credit: U.S. Defense Department)
Numerous historical examples abound of imperial exhaustion, loss of spirit and decline. Yet, with our ambitions more modestly set, there is no reason why America cannot comfortably live within the framework of the newly emerging world order. Indeed, President Obama, to his credit, (partially) does grasp the already serious costs of imperial overreach — even if his key strategists do not.
American strategy seems fundamentally stuck in defensive mode against rising powers. Such powers indeed do challenge American aspirations for continued hegemony. But a defensive posture robs us of our vision and spirit; it represents a basically negative orientation, like King Canute on the beach trying to stop the encroaching tide.
Worse, American military power — and the budget keeps rising — seems to have become the default U.S. response to most foreign challenges. The Pentagon has put the State Department out of business. NATO today particularly symbolizes that myopic and defensive orientation.
So while Washington focuses on building defensive military structures, bases and arrangements overseas against Russia and China, we are being rapidly outflanked by a whole array of new economic…