For more than 40 years, the Cold War policy of containment of Soviet influence provided America its strategic framework. Though US tactics were debated and shifted from administration to administration, the overarching approach remained consistent, because it was broadly supported by Republicans and Democrats alike. Of course, an overarching national-security strategy provided no guarantee against problems or even major disasters in countries like Vietnam and Nicaragua. Nonetheless, in hindsight, containment infused an order and organization on US foreign policy that is absent today. CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphAfter the fall of the Berlin Wall, the necessity that had been driving containment disappeared. The US, inebriated by victory, saw in the triumph over the Soviet bloc another sign of its exceptionalism, and found itself taken in by the mirage that its Cold War success was itself a strategy. CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphWhat followed was a decade of scattershot foreign policy marked by notable cases of inaction, together with individual initiatives taken largely without reference to a broader doctrine. Unchallenged in the world’s unipolar moment, the US had the luxury of not knowing its strategic goals. CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphShocked by the attacks of September 11, the US forced a new framework onto its still-unquestioned belief in the inexorable movement of history toward freedom. Unfortunately, what emerged was a deeply flawed approach, not least because in declaring a “war on terror,” America positioned itself against a tactic, not an entity or an ideology. Read more at project-syndicate.org/commentary/on-the-most-disturbing-implication-of-the-us-spying-scandal-by-ana-palacio#QrzBe3mYLvmgoM5S.99
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 21:23:18 +0000
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