U.S National Security, Part 3: Don't Underemphasize Freedom
Opinion: The following article is commentary and its views are solely those of the author. This article was first published the 30th of December via The Angry Demagogue.
Conclusion
The post-Cold War world that the Strategy Paper tries to figure out is much more than the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of China. One of the main goals of the Trump administration is to turn the clock back on “globalization”, be it via tariffs, other economic ways or even, military means.
While the world is panicking over AI’s destruction of good white collar jobs, it has, paradoxically, created a world where the auto industry can’t find enough qualified mechanics at nice six figure salaries. Not even ten years ago the journalists were haranguing out of work blue collar workers with “go learn to code”, the beer guzzling crew can now tell the tearful journalists and Hollywood “writers” who can’t write better than AI to “go learn how to weld” (or at least handle a screwdriver). But the strategic issues we are facing go beyond manufacturing jobs.
The challenge to the United States and to other free countries is how to handle a new reality where massive debt threatens the diminution, if not the destruction, of the life style we have all come to take for granted and where revanchist regimes don’t quite understand that their power and “prestige” is a result of what has been built in those free countries they want to replace. China, like Russia, Iran, Turkey, Qatar and the non-state actors like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Moslem Brotherhood and others don’t quite understand that while they can use, and even sometimes improve on what freedom has provided them, they will stagnate once they attain their goal of defeating and destroying the free world.
As advanced as China becomes and even if it flies to the moon, overtakes the United States in AI and quantum computing and manages to make the United States into only the breadbasket of the world, they will stagnate as only free markets and free people can move the world to the next step. Growth can only be accomplished by free people. True enough, the economy often grows in ways that we don’t always like, the alternative is stagnation and a return to the pre-scientific age. For all the talk of “new man” and “progress” and everything else that the Soviet Union strived to create, they produced no medicines, no medical devices and no medical treatments.
Therefore, the defeat of the revanchist world and the preservation of freedom needs to be the paramount goal of American foreign policy. This does not mean the creation of democracies where none have ever existed and it does not mean sending troops in every time a political prisoner is arrested or even a plan to militarily defeat the CCP, but it does mean always supporting free countries against the unfree even when the United States is also “friends” with the unfree one.
This means that it will also give free countries leeway when their interests do not align perfectly with America’s (non-core) interests. America as sole protector of the free world has leverage that America as midwife to a set of regional alliances does not. This is a choice that America can make and a correct reading of the Strategy Paper tells us that the United States no longer wants to or can be the main power in every region in the world. This means that there needs to be a change in attitude in America so that it cannot force its will on its allies just because there is another contract to be had or another “cause” that has caught the eye of the country’s establishment.
Encouraging regional alliances of free countries such as the new Eastern-Med Alliance that has already been established between Greece, Cyprus and Israel is a prime example. In addition to the economic cooperation there has been joint defense training and there are agreements that will lead to a defense cooperation pact if not a NATO-like security treaty. Turkey is the common competitor, or enemy, of these three countries. Turkey claims certain Greek islands, occupies parts of Cyprus and has designs on Israel as it strives to be the Islamic “liberator” of Jerusalem. There are gas exploration agreements and cooperation and there would have been a pipeline to Europe if the Biden administration had not stopped it (while they approved the Russian-German pipeline).
Italy ought to be a natural member of the East-Med Alliance and maybe the dissolution of NATO will make them realize that they have more in common with Israel and Greece than they think they do. If Italy were to join then that would create a powerful naval and air deterrence of free countries against aggressors in the eastern Mediterranean. The addition of Malta, a small but strategically important country south of Sicily would provide naval bases that could control the sea lanes between north Africa and Europe helping to stem illegal migration and Turkish attempts to control those same lanes. Malta also brings with it a history of defeating Suleiman the Magnificent in a four month siege when the Ottomans tried to conquer this important island. As we stated before, the United States as a “midwife” to alliances cannot instruct countries on their own national interests. That means that allies of the United States will clash but America must always come down on the side of the free countries and not the revanchist power – in this case, Turkey.
There are of course other regional alliances that can come into being and a remake of the post-WWII world is in order. The end of the cold war created economic booms across the globe raising hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but recent decades have seen an increase in terror and tyranny and that itself needs to be dealt with. If not by the United States alone then by the US along with the regional alliances that the Strategy Paper has highlighted and we have demarcated (partially) here. But concepts like “territorial integrity” (see Syria, Somalia and the rest of Africa) and “sovereignty” have lost their moral imperative as they are used as excuses by tyrants (and their enablers at the UN) to further their cruelty. One of the faults of the old “liberal international order” has been allowing tyrannies the same rights and respect as free countries. During the Cold War, when nuclear war loomed, this might have made sense but after the fall of the Soviet Union these “principles” have created more harm than good.
In the National Security Strategy of the administration, the words “free” and “freedom” appear twenty times, but never in the context of an alliance of free countries. While it speaks of freedom of religion and speech and free markets it never speaks of the need to put allies that are free ahead of friends that are not free. Allies are those countries that share values and will come to your aid because of that. Friends, in international affairs, are those that look to short-term gain and have no desire to further your values or interests. There is no reason that the United States, in its current fiscal condition needs to fight the fight of freedom around the world alone, but neither can it abandon that fight in the pursuit of short-term contracts or frivolous causes.
Disclaimer: the views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of the author, and not necessarily the opinions reflected by angrymetatraders.com or its associated parties.
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Related article of interest by Ira Slomowitz https://www.angrymetatraders.com/post/u-s-national-security-regional-alliances-europe
