Tuesday, August 02, 2005

What Are America's Worldwide Responsibilities?

Let's set aside intangibles such as "freedom".

In practice, there is the need to assure that national security and treaty commitments of long standing are held to account and that we maintain our own. For example, the U.S. is withdrawing some of its bases from Germany. You would think that this would meet with German approval. However, many do not approve of this because it negatively affects the local economy. How are we to please both sides of this issue?

The only solution to these and similar dilemmas is that we must serve whichever goals best protect our national security needs and the needs of the West, in that order. While we would like to maintain bases in Germany, we can no longer afford to neglect the current hotspots in the world today. This is why we have a massive base in Qatar, for example, where none existed before.

Further, as Cold War alignments have disappeared, we are able to move troops to former Eastern European countries, such as Poland and Czechoslavakia.

These are concerns that even the British do not have, to say nothing of relative hanger-ons such as the French, who benefit from Pax Americana without contributing much to it.

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