Here’s the summary of Christopher McCallion’s piece on America’s grand strategy at Defense Priorities:
- Geographic distance and the current state of military technology interact to favor defense while diminishing the threat of conquest. The stopping power of water in particular obstructs the ability of even the most powerful states to project power overseas.
- Proximate land powers are the most likely to engage in security competition and conflict, while distant or sea powers are relatively isolated from potential adversaries. This strategic insularity is even greater if a state has a large and diversified economy and the resources to be relatively self-sufficient.
- The United States is separated from other great powers by thousands of miles of ocean to both its east and west, and is the most powerful, prosperous, and secure state in the world.
- However, many of the same conditions which make the United States secure also make it difficult to project power, carry out wars far abroad, and maintain military primacy on land in Eurasia.
- The United States should both embrace its abundance of security and accept the limits to its offensive power, using its position as a continent-sized maritime power to act as an offshore balancer rather than a hegemon on the flanks of the Eurasian landmass.
The piece is full of maps. charts, and graphs.
The point-of-view being argued in the piece is diametrically opposed to the strategy of primacy that has been maintained by American diplomats and military figures over the last 50 years which I believe is in contrast to the views held by most Americans. I also believe it is incumbent on those who continue to advocate primacy to explain how they plan to accomplish it.
The one observation in the piece with which I disagree is this:
The United States is abundant in natural resources and is incredibly food-, energy-, and mineral-secure.
We have made ourselves dependent on other countries for food, energy, and minerals. In the case of minerals, for example, although the U. S. used to the the world’s leading producer of rare earth minerals most of what we use today is produced by China. One additional point. The chart of energy production in the piece has a notable omission:
China doesnt have natural gas. Besides the loss of hydropower this is also why they are installing more renewable than anyone else. Of note, it looks like most of their mining is open pit mining like our cheaper mines out West.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-renewable-energy
Steve
Though the United States continues to prosper, as developing nations rapidly industrialize, the relative standing of the United States will be inevitably reduced. That’s exactly what America fought and planned for—that the whole world could benefit from liberty and markets.
The United States has repeatedly overextended itself, which has weakened its power and undermined its political goals. A more deft grand strategy could allow the United States to have a positive impact while avoiding the problems all decaying empires face; the power vacuum left in their wake.
I think the points Zach made are generally fair. However, he deftly (heh) avoids the central issue: we have unnecessarily ceded our technological, industrial and natural and human resource advantages in pursuit of dubious goals.
The bizarre notion of a climate crisis. The failure to maintain strategic resource mining and refinement capabilities. (who in their right mind would dictate EV’s and then give the market for batteries to the Chinese?) An education system designed to indoctrinate and extract outsized profit rather than educate (for the benefit of votes, ideology, promotion of grievances, and high paid education industry employment). Ridding ourselves of broad manufacturing capabilities rather than just low tech/labor intensive manufacturing. I could go on.
We are in decline because, fat, dumb and happy for now, we have chosen, primarily through lack of civic involvement, to allow parasitic politicians and their supporters and agencies to profit at the public trough. Talk about suboptimal.
The rise of other nations does not necessarily have to come at the expense, in a zero sum game, of the US. Both can prosper and maintain fine positions, even if in a relative sense the upstarts pace exceeds the US.
The U. S. policy of primacy in all theaters, espoused by many in foreign policy and the military, is incompatible with the perceived national interests of China and Russia in particular. The policy makes the growth of China a “zero sum game”.