The grand strategy of the United States under the 44th president

[Sigaba]

This thread is in partial response to nmap's question posed below.

Originally Posted by nmap

Another little leaf in the wind - isn't it interesting that even though gasoline prices are low, we're seeing more and more emphasis on fuel economy? And local leaders are urging the use of public transportation and car pooling? Isn't it fascinating that we're seeing discussion of the electrical grid becoming a so-called smart grid in order to reduce fuel usage? I wonder - is this to reduce carbon emissions, or do they know that future fuel availability will decline?

After several months of intermittent thought, here's are my two cents on what the president has in mind for the United States.

First, by 'grand strategy' I am using the definition offered by E.M. Earle more than sixty five years ago.

The highest type of strategy--sometimes called grand strategy--is that which so integrates the polices and armaments of the nation that the resort to war is either rendered unnecessary or is undertaken with the maximum chance of victory.*

More recently, Paul Kennedy, informed by Liddell-Hart, broke down the elements of grand strategy into a "whole number of factors" and summarized in three interrelated areas.

1. The use of natural resources to balance ends and means.
2. The use of diplomacy in both peace and war to maximize the nation's standing relative to its allies, enemies, and neutral powers.
3. Maximizing national morale and levering a nation's political culture to secure a population's support for a government's policies.** This post centers around this third component.

For reasons outlined here, I'm very wary of Liddell-Hart. So while Kennedy's areas are useful for this discussion, I am using them provisionally.

Here, a brief review of the U.S.'s grand strategy since the end of World War II is in order. This discussion answers a mentor's favorite question: "SO WHAT?"

Since World War II, America has relied on the Mackinder-Spykman thesis.*** This thesis holds that there are five geographic heartlands (the U.S., Great Britain, the Rhine Valley, Russia, and Japan) “where the sinews of modern military strength could be produced in quantity.”**** Since the conclusion of the Second World War, the heated (and sometimes bitter) debates in American political and strategic cultures were about how to maintain the West's control over three of those heartlands, to neutralize a fourth, and to contain the fifth. Mackinder-Spykman is the foundation of American globalism and a key reason why there has not been a third world war among modern nations.

The events of 11 September 2001 challenged the relevance of MacKinder-Spykman against enemies that managed to combine the worst aspects of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern life. (This last aspect has not received the public attention it merits.)

In the months leading up to his 2002 state of the union address, I wondered if President Bush would shelve MacKinder-Spykman in favor of an unusual blend of Wintrhop and Machiavelli, and thus satisfy his most venomous critics' garbled ranting by living up to the fantasy that he was a unique combination of evil mastermind, religious zealot, and corporate thrall.

Specifically, I wondered if Bush might do what I think the current president is doing: reviving the concept of Fortress America.

To be clear, had Bush the Younger pursued this path, it would have been for different--read, better--reasons. I'm fundamentally opposed to the concept of Fortress America but I think a Republican version would protect the homeland, remain an efficacious pluralistic society with a diverse culture, fulfill its international commitments, and stand as a bulwark against tyranny.

In my view, this president's version of Fortress America will be noteworthy only because there will be free 4G wireless for everyone, a Starbucks on every corner, and maybe The New Yorker will have an opportunity to get off its high horse and return to publishing a magazine worth the paper its printed on. (I'm not holding my breath. Nor am I renewing my subscription.)

This iteration of Fortress America is going to look like an eco-friendly City on a Hill but without the concepts of either American Exceptionalism or Christian sensibilities. (I'll be blunt. When the president talks about America's greatness, his words sound hollow in my ears.) Mackinder-Spykman will be consigned to oblivion.

I have outlined the political component of this concept here. To this thumbnail, I would add an component that is in respectful disagreement with the interpretation that the president is a socialist. It is my view that the president should be taken for his word when he said.

So we have a choice to make. We can remain one of the world's leading importers of foreign oil, or we can make the investments that would allow us to become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy. We can let climate change continue to go unchecked, or we can help stop it. We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity. [Source is here.]

IMHO, he's going to shift the trajectory of free enterprise in America to benefit "green collar" industries (the list of products will include LEED certified buildings, hybrid cars, OLED displays, and, my favorite, devices that are digitally convergent). These industries will be shepherded by government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels much the way America in the past encouraged (through various subsidies) the automobile industry (among others). The Americans working in these industries will be a cross section of entrepreneurs, middle class professionals (such as engineers and urban planners), and the working classes (including the Reagan Democrats).

He envisions a level of prosperity that is high enough (and 'sustainable') that the upper echelons of his economic coalition will not mind paying higher taxes for the 'public good.' (There are Americans who make six figure salaries who were opposed to Bush's tax cuts.) The working classes will have stable jobs because they will be based on American technological innovations.^ Members of this coalition will not mind taking public transit (the parking is going to suck), living in close proximity, rubbing elbows, and shooting the breeze.

In this big Green City of Joy, assimilation won't be futile, it won't be necessary.

With this third leg of the stool (pun unintended) established, the president will have widespread public approval to pursue other, more controversial, policy goals in support of America's grand strategy.

As one of the objectives of this grand strategy is to make the world safe for America by making America safe for the world, the president will attempt to leverage his successes at home to establish a permanent Democratic majority. (The Democrats may have treated Karl Rove with contempt publicly but I have no doubt that they also took careful notes of everything he said.)

Concurrently, the president will continue to 'restore America's standing in the world' and to defeat the terrorist threat through his immeasurable personal charm (a la Franklin Roosevelt).

In contrast to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition, this president will be less inclined to bring more people into the big tent. He won't need to.

For those of us who are comfortable with this vision, we are going to get dinged bit by bit. But not by the federal government. Instead, the mechanism will be local governments. Even if these governments are controlled by right of center politicians, they will be staffed by professionals and bureaucrats who will bring a 'me too' frame of mind when writing municipal and building codes. The traditional Republican complaint about a bloated federal government is going to be undermined by the fact that local governments will be instituting these policies.
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*Edward Mead Earle, introduction to Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. E.M. Earle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943), p. viii.
**Paul Kennedy, introduction to Grand Strategies in War and Peace, ed. P.M. Kennedy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 2-5.
***The thesis was originally promulgated by Halford Mackinder’s “The Geopolitical Pivot in History” (1904), supplemented by Thomas Spykman’s America’s Strategy in World Politics (1942), and popularized by Walter Lippmann’s U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (1943). See John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 22-23. See also Gaddis’s Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 57.
**** John Lewis Gaddis, “The Cold War: Some Lessons for Policy Makers” Naval War College Review 27:3 (November-December 1974), pp. 2-16.
^ If there's a lesson of the e-economy--other than 'where there's smoke, there are mirrors'--it is that 'first to market' yields a huge competitive advantage. Missing from this calculation is that this advantage is undermined by theft. The president wants to 'restore' America's standing in the world but he forgets that foreign nationals have been hacking our systems, stealing our content, and producing unlicensed counterfeit knock-offs since Al Gore invented the internet.