An interesting piece.
A NATIONAL STRATEGIC NARRATIVE
By Mr. Y
This Strategic Narrative is intended to frame our National policy decisions regarding investment, security, economic development, the environment, and engagement well into this century. It is built upon the premise that we must sustain our enduring national interests – prosperity and security – within a “strategic ecosystem,” at home and abroad; that in complexity and uncertainty, there are opportunities and hope, as well as challenges, risk, and threat. The primary approach this Strategic Narrative advocates to achieve sustainable prosperity and security, is through the application of credible influence and strength, the pursuit of fair competition, acknowledgement of interdependencies and converging interests, and adaptation to complex, dynamic systems – all bounded by our national values.
From Containment to Sustainment: Control to Credible Influence
For those who believe that hope is not a strategy, America must seem a strange contradiction of anachronistic values and enduring interests amidst a constantly changing global environment. America is a country conceived in liberty, founded on hope, and built upon the notion that anything is possible with enough hard work and imagination. Over time we have continued to learn and mature even as we strive to remain true to those values our founding fathers set forth in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution
more at link:
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/A National Strategic Narrative.pdf
thx jillian that was interesting.....however....
when I saw who wrote the preface ( Anne-Marie Slaughter) I knew what was coming. The phrase Strategic Ecosystem sure is catchy eh? ......
When I saw that obama had tapped her as a foreign policy advisory in his campaign ( and until January the State Department's director of policy planning) I did some reading up.
Looking to the future, Anne-Marie Slaughter thesis of the US and global powers going forward is an argument crafted around America's culture of openness and innovation which will be centrally [placed] in the information age when network[ing] supplement, along with 'soft' power of our 'values' if not fully replace, hierarchical power.
She penned an article in the NY Times back in feb. ala Libya, calling for exactly what we have ongoing now; a lead from behind strategery with the usual internationalist bent, via a UN resolution, the Arab league and Nato to the fore....and? Hows that working out?
This strategery is now in full cry ala;
Obama may be moving toward something resembling a doctrine. One of his advisers described the president’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind.”
— Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker, May 2 issue
Of course he is, becasue Libya and this lead from behind soft power mantra is a mess and misapplied vis a vis Libya.
The lesson they refuse to acknowledge is, no one follows an uncertain trumpet, in the absence of clear determined leadership most especially when applied to a situation using a Coalition of forces, chaos will result.
As to soft power, it worked, as applied to Gadaffi in the 2000's, he had been brought to heal not by covert, overt threats or military action but by the soft power rendered effective by Afghanistan and Iraq.( the Saddam containment argument, anyone remember that?)
This treatise is nothing but more of the same, thrashing around trying to re-reason 2500 years of historical fact vis a vis how nations interact and affect one another by finding the soft power feel good 'out', minus hard power which is like saying there is good but no evil or vice versa. Its a symbiotic relationship, one doesn't exist without the other.
I snipped out the pay off pitch of the 2 authors ( click to view);
