The US has been floundering over the last ten years without any viable national security strategy. Without a clear cut policy on national defense, budgeting expenditures for defense becomes a guessing game. If elected to the Senate I will do everything within my power to see that Congress will
The United States cannot solve all the world’s problems. It cannot act as the world’s social worker—taking responsibility for rehabilitating the rest of the world by redressing human rights violations, humanitarian disasters, and the absence of democracy wherever such blight offends American sensibilities. Nor can the United States be the global cop. Washington is not the arbiter of law and order throughout the world, even when it comes to such matters as weapons proliferation or the activities of ‘‘rogue states’’ such as North Korea or Iraq.
Quit Making Promises Washington Cannot Keep
Put simply, the United States is incapable of keeping many of the commitments it has made. Moreover, there was no credible strategic rationale for assuming most of those obligations in the first place. That recklessness has already come at considerable cost, and those costs are sure to rise unless major adjustments are made.Mythical Benefits of U.S. Political and Military World Leadership
Proponents of the U.S. crusade to lead the world point to several purported benefits of that policy. One of the most persistent myths is that—by assuming responsibility for leading the world—the United States is able to persuade other countries to share the costs of initiatives that it would otherwise have to bear alone. The Gulf War is the preeminent example of such alleged burden sharing. Yet the United States offered concrete economic or political rewards to many key countries to encourage their participation in the coalition against Iraq. Moreover, Washington today continues to pay about $80 billion per year to defend Saudi Arabia and the other wealthy southern Persian Gulf states. The Europeans buy far more oil from this region than does the United States but do little to help defend it. The price tag for defending the region clearly eclipses any temporary burden sharing that occurred back in 1991. Washington’s willingness to assume responsibility for security in many parts of the world—not only in the Persian Gulf region but in East Asia and Europe as well—encourages free riders, not burden sharing.A World Without U.S. Intervention
If Washington renounces world political and military leadership, is the United States condemned to stand idly by while villains and irredentists around the world terrorize helpless populations? It is unfortunate but true that brutal civil or subregional conflicts are likely to mar the future—as they do the present and have the past. Furthermore, there are many parochial wars that simply cannot be settled by outside powers at an acceptable cost to those powers, whether or not the United States claims the mantle of global leadership.A more critical issue is the evolution of the international system after the United States adopts a policy of strategic independence. Washington can exert considerable, though not complete, influence over how that system develops.The United States as Balancer of Last Resort
An international system should possess two key features: diffuse power and a means of checking would-be hegemons. The United States could tolerate a variety of regional arrangements. As long as no single power or group of powers emerges with the capability and intent of challenging American vital interests, the United States should be reasonably secure. In particular, as long as a hostile hegemon does not have the potential to overrun regions of high economic output—that is, Europe or East Asia—or does not try to interrupt U.S. trade, American vital interests will not be threatened. To further enhance its security, the United States should always maintain sufficient military strength so that it could reestablish the balance of power if a serious imbalance were to develop. It should, however, act only as a balancer of last resort. The United States should allow smaller scale shifts and civil strife to be addressed at the regional level. The risks and costs of serving as balancer of last resort are much more manageable than is a quixotic crusade to lead the world.Hand in hand with a Security Policy goes a Defense Budget.