This US report is selfish and short-sighted. Why is anyone surprised? |
The 33-page US National Security Strategy report issued a week ago by the US government was the most selfish, greedy, and short-sighted document in the 250-year history of American foreign policy.
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The document praised right-wing parties emerging in Europe; condemned European governments for allowing "civilisational erasure" for not preventing mass immigration of non-whites; and said not a word about the murderous nature of Putin's regime in Russia but rather encouraged caving in to aggression.
Its tone was laced with America First rhetoric, arrogantly trying to impose its view of how the world should work on others.
"Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory," it said.
All of it was written in dog-whistling language. The whole theme was how America could make a buck out of security paranoia.
It is best summed up by the now-famous contraction of President Calvin Coolidge's words in 1925: "The business of America is business."
The whole 2025 document is couched in terms of defending and promoting America's national interests - its economic interests and the interests of its business elites, of which Donald Trump is most certainly a member.
But why should we be surprised? The idea that the post-war years in which a selfless US led a rules-based order that was natural and permanent is a delusion. At best in was an aberration in the 250-year history of the US. In fact, it was just a heavily disguised version of business as usual.
Perhaps the believers in the Enlightenment and human rights were naive. The post-war actions of the US were not grounded in altruism and pursuit of individual human dignity. The Marshall Plan and post-war reconstruction in Japan had little to do with helping ordinary German and Japanese people who had been duped by fascist dictators.
To the contrary. The initial post-war US policy was that all Germans and Japanese were collectively responsible for the war and the atrocities committed and should pay for them. Instructions from on high to US occupying troops, contained in the booklet Your Job in Germany, was not to fraternise and to be suspicious. The........