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Strengthening America's Defenses
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15852 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1989 |
2,432 Words |
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W. Bruce Weinrod
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While the nation may recover from flawed domestic policies, there is little margin for U.S. error in international politics. The United States must maintain not only its own security, but also help protect its allies and friends around the world. In the international arena, the ultimate contest is between the open and the closed society--between democratic pluralism and monolithic totalitarianism.
As did Ronald Reagan, the new President should focus on a few fundamental objectives rather than trying to do everything. Specific policy ideas should be evaluated on the basis of whether they would further such objectives as meeting the Soviet challenge, strengthening America's defense, and responding to changing international dynamics. In applying these principles, the new President will be faced with a global context for its foreign and defense policy that is substantially different from that which the Reagan administration inherited. This new environment includes:
·an America which is more confident and willing to exercise an active international role and which is stronger militarily, yet which faces a shrinking defense budget;
·a Soviet Union which presents a new and more sophisticated challenge to the West and is undergoing important and potentially historic domestic changes that, among other things, will make it more difficult for the Kremlin to sustain its overseas empire;
·a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in which some members seem unwilling to carry their fair share of the common defense burden and in which a reassessment of the role of U.S. ground troops may be required;
·a Pacific Basin community which includes an increasingly strong and assertive Japan and other nations becoming independent of the United States;
·growing challenges and difficulties for the United States in retaining access to important overseas bases needed to project U.S. military power;
·a People's Republic of China which may be reassessing its relations toward the United States and the USSR, as well as its role in Asia, and which may become more capitalist and democratic;
·a group of potential powers, such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iraq, and Nigeria, that are growing in economic and military power and in many cases seeking some distance from both the United States and the Soviet Union;
·the spread of such high-technology weapons as short- and medium-range missiles, which even smaller nations can use to neutralize somewhat the military advantages of larger nations; and
·a growing acceptance of democratic capitalism as a development model by many politicians and intellectuals in the Third World.
The New Soviet Challenge
The new Soviet challenge is essentially the old Soviet challenge--an expansionist empire whose values and actions represent a serious
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