Garrison-state mentality in U.S.
Dear Editor: U.S. President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy envisions a world where countries are in constant competition; he brushes aside climate change and affirms America will defend its interests.
He blames previous administrations that allowed America to be pushed around, even risks upsetting neighbours and allies, saying we will seek co-operation but “will stand up for ourselves, like never before.”
Former Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 2012 book, Strategic Vision — America and the Crisis of Global Power, saw America’s post-war role as a global architect “buttressing” and “stabilizing” a world that is being “unbalanced by emerging powers.”
However, 70 years on, this sometimes thankless task now tempts many Americans to retreat into a “garrison-state mentality” and where even American doves retreat into a “self-righteous cultural hedonism.”
Nonetheless the problem argues Brzezinski, no other nation can carry America’s burden of global leadership. This leadership crisis creates new allegiances. A polycentric world order emerges of regional global spheres of influence all tied together with military alliances and trade agreements.
The purpose of his book was to help extend a few more years before the inevitable time America can no longer afford to police the world as it once did.
To internationalists like Brzezinski, building a “Pax Americana” around postwar alliances and institutions was a good thing. He understood that for America to extend its global hegemony, it meant buying the consent of smaller nations by providing such global goods and services as financing, military security and a system of international institutions with enforceable laws that underpin trade fairly for all participants. The Marshall Plan ethos had shown globalists that American hegemon is more secure when allies grow and prosper and has proven a worthwhile, long-term investment.
Trump believes those investments took advantage of America and agrees that America’s influence is waning. But disagrees on what to do; Brzezinski says, America does more harm than good if it continues to insist on getting its own way. Trump sees America as an aging and declining hegemon with a grievance. One that can squeeze a few more years of primacy, but only if America becomes tougher and more selfish.
Trump’s boast, “America is coming back and coming back strong,” rings hollow; the world already feels the centre of gravity shifting away from Washington. Jon Peter Christoff
West Kelowna