Hoyapolitik is "A Blog from Alumni, Students, and Faculty of Georgetown's Security Studies Program." It's relatively new but should prove to be interesting (I will be put up a post there once I have something relevant to post about).
My comment:
...I think one key part of strategy is prioritizing. In that, all of the recent Foreign Affairs essays by the presidential candidates are pathetic - “our key allies are all of western europe, all of eastern europe, india, china, japan, korea, and russia, plus south america too, and of course israel, and by the way africa is very important too.”
My strategy would be a more indirect approach to the rest of the world. My 1st priority would be reorganizing American security structures - the intel community, military, etc., away from the Cold War legacy and towards new, more relevant structures. That would have to be priority #1 because of the amount of political capital it would take. My 2nd priority would be similar to yours, trying to influence and manage the process of globalization. My 3rd, related, priority would be spreading liberal constitutionalism, primarily through supporting private individuals and NGOs who are already doing that type of work.
6 comments:
dear adrian,
if you do not tell us something about proposing to your girlfriend i will stop reading your goddamn posts.
love,
a friend
Anonymous friend:
You win!
"My 1st priority would be reorganizing American security structures - the intel community, military, etc., away from the Cold War legacy and towards new, more relevant structures."
You had me at "My."
Indeed the severance of the last great cause and it's ideologies, tactics and politics is, post haste, needed.
Further (and I'm beating my wardrum [and a dead horse] here and you know it) the entire idiocy that entails the homogenous term "terrorism" needs to be tossed aside and ascribed the context of verb or adverb and not noun.
Agreed, "terrorist" is such a vague term that its sole use is as an epithet. In 1988 some political scientists counted 109 definitions (page 12 of a 60 page pdf).
Adrian, I generally agree with what you're getting at but your priorities mix up tools with goals. We need to reorganize the American security structure in order to influence, manage (and defend!) the process of globalization. Managing, influencing and defending globalization is the goal, a reformed the military-industrial complex is an essential tool for achieving that goal.
And to tie in your third priority, towards what do we want to influence globalization? Towards liberal constitutionalism.
We need an overarching statement of our goals in order to definite what a relevant security structure would be. After all, folks who argue we need to put more resources towards hedging against a conventional war with China will argue that their priorities are the most relevant...
Wiggins - I see the distinction. But wouldn't building up a large industrial base be a strategic goal, despite the fact that the state might only want an industrial base to achieve other goals down the road (like a modern army)?
I recognize that strategy is linking means and goals, but I think the line between them is fuzzy.
I agree that the discussion needs to be public - it's always good to have everyone working towards the same goals.
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