(Photo Credit: U.S. Army Photostream)
New America Foundation/Economic Growth Program Policy Director and The American Way of Strategy author Michael Lind has an excellent new column over at Salon that traces the roots of the United States’ strategic insolvency.
Lind argues persuasively that the United States suffers from outdated, Cold War-era national security and economic strategies. The “bases for markets” grand bargain – according to which Germany and Japan allow the Untied States to base its forces on their soil in exchange for access to American markets – is no longer tenable from an American perspective.
Lind concludes that
For the time being, however, America’s out-of-touch foreign policy establishment continues to favor the policy of expanding America’s geopolitical frontiers while allowing our self-interested industrial rivals to hollow out the American economy. Policies that made sense in the early years of the Cold War emergency continue to be followed out of inertia, when their original strategic rationale has long since vanished. In the words of the philosopher George Santayana, “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”
The entire piece can be read here.
— Ben Katcher
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