{"id":177143,"date":"2015-08-31T15:45:19","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T15:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/americas-short-sighted-grand-strategy\/"},"modified":"2015-08-31T17:06:26","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T17:06:26","slug":"americas-short-sighted-grand-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/americas-short-sighted-grand-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Short-sighted \u2018Grand Strategy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Franklin Spinney<\/p>\n

The contemporary theory and practice of grand strategy by the United States can be summarized in the sound byte uttered in 2001 by President George W. Bush shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, \u201cYou are either with us or you are with the terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bush did not invent this conception of grand strategy. His sound byte was simply a variation of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright\u2019s triumphalist theory that America had become the world\u2019s \u201cessential power\u201d with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that Bush\u2019s\u00a0assertion of unilateral prerogative blew back on itself to create all sorts of problems at home and abroad. It is also clear that, notwithstanding the blowback, his coercive grand strategic outlook became more entrenched and ossified during the Presidential tenure of Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

This is evident in Obama\u2019s unilateral escalation of drone attacks; his fatally flawed Afghan \u201csurge\u201d decision (click here<\/a> and here<\/a>); the foreign and domestic spying by the NSA, which included tapping the cell phones of close allies like German Prime Minister Angela Merkel; his administration\u2019s aggressive meddling in Ukraine, together with the demonization of Vladimir Putin that is now well on the way to starting an unnecessary new cold war with Russia; and Mr. Obama\u2019s so-called strategic pivot to the East China Sea to contain China.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Franklin Spinney The contemporary theory and practice of grand strategy by the United States can be summarized in the sound byte uttered in 2001 by President George W. Bush shortly after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, \u201cYou are either with us or you are with the terrorists.\u201d Bush […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-177143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}