New America Foundation to US - The World's Changed: Get Over It

[richlevy]

A senior fellow in the New America Foundation just wrote a piece entitled Waving Goodbye to Hegemony.

To summarize, the NWO (new world order) will be the European Union, the US, and China. Just as countries had a choice between us and the Soviets during the Cold War they now have a 3 way choice. Non-militarily, the other two are leveraging their assets smarter than we are. Our State Department, Peace Corps, etc are too understaffed to work on hearts and minds. We can no longer get away with a 'with us or against us' attitude. While we focus our attention on a few players, the EU and China are sweeping the rest of the board.

We blew a trillion dollars on a gamble to 'democratize' just two countries. This money will be needed for the new warfare, which is political and economic.

First, channel your inner J.F.K. You are president, not emperor. You are commander in chief and also diplomat in chief. Your grand strategy is a global strategy, yet you must never use the phrase “American national interest.” (It is assumed.) Instead talk about “global interests” and how closely aligned American policies are with those interests. No more “us” versus “them,” only “we.” That means no more talk of advancing “American values” either. What is worth having is universal first and American second. This applies to “democracy” as well, where timing its implementation is as important as the principle itself. Right now, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, the hero of the second world — including its democracies — is Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.

Third, deploy the marchmen. Europe is boosting its common diplomatic corps, while China is deploying retired civil servants, prison laborers and Chinese teachers — all are what the historian Arnold Toynbee called marchmen, the foot-soldiers of empire spreading values and winning loyalty. There are currently more musicians in U.S. military marching bands than there are Foreign Service officers, a fact not helped by Congress’s decision to effectively freeze growth in diplomatic postings. In this context, Condoleezza Rice’s “transformational diplomacy” is a myth: we don’t have enough diplomats for core assignments, let alone solo hardship missions. We need a Peace Corps 10 times its present size, plus student exchanges, English-teaching programs and hands-on job training overseas — with corporate sponsorship.

It's a great read.