Ehsan Ahrari
America’s most potent weapon is not its military, but its democratic culture. If anyone has any doubts about that reality, he/she should read the most recent essay penned by President Hu Jintao of China.
“China’s President Pushes Back Against Western Culture” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/world/asia/chinas-president-pushes-back-against-western-culture.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print Continue reading “The Universal Potency of America’s Democratic Culture”
The continuing economic crisis has created new pressures and demands for reduced expenditures inside the United States. The chief question is how to lower defense spending without damaging America’s capacity to project power globally and being able to fight more than one war in different regions of the world. The fact that no such situation would present itself in the near future is irrelevant; the requirements of contingency planning make it vital that top U.S. civilian and military leaders remain prepared for emergencies. An added variable is the presidential campaign that is currently being waged inside the United States. This is also a time when a sitting president becomes a target of challengers to his job for not paying adequate attention to America’s military strength. These realities also necessitate a declaration of a “new” strategy. Continue reading “Reshaping America’s Military to Fight Wars in a Transforming World”
The U.S. invasion of Iraq was the outcome of the then rising militarism of the administration of George W. Bush. Some would argue that it might also have been a natural reaction to the fact that American territory was attacked on September 11, 2001. But the invasion of Iraq itself had a spurious pretext: to deprive Saddam Hussein of his non-existent arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The exploitation of the U.S. intelligence community to support the claims by the Bush White House has permanently damaged the credibility of the American intelligence community worldwide. Other “rationales” for waging a war is always an option. The next major war, or at least military action, involving the United States seems to be Iran, the last “rejectionist state” of the Cold War years. What might be different about the next war is that the states of the Persian Gulf are likely to be playing a major supportive role, if not militarily, then certainly by providing political and financial support for that war. Continue reading “The Evolving Pretext to the Next War”