The uniqueness claim is that the United States is beginning to recognize the failure of engagement and is shifting towards
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- Hegemony solves great power war, economic collapse, and proliferation
Impact: US Hegemony goodUS leadership prevents extinction – it accesses every impactDobriansky, 15 - Paula J. Dobriansky served as under secretary of state for global affairs from 2001 to 2009. She is a senior fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. (“We Asked Paula J. Dobriansky: What Should Be the Purpose of American Power?” The National Interest, 8/25, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/we-asked-paula-j-dobriansky-what-should-be-the-purpose-13678 The purpose of American power, which includes military, economic, diplomatic, ideological, legal and cultural components, is to protect the entire range of our national-security interests. While we face many pressing domestic challenges, America cannot afford to focus on them alone. Americans cannot be secure and prosperous without a stable, rule-driven international order. Terrorism, refugee flows, pandemic diseases, pollution, cyberattacks, economic decay, nuclear proliferation and military aggression can directly threaten our security and prosperity even when they arise overseas. We cannot handle these threats successfully in an ad hoc fashion. American power must be continuously applied to maintain political, military and economic international institutions and alliances that, with effective U.S. leadership, can safeguard global stability, economic growth and the rule of law. This does not mean that every foreign dispute or fight concerns us. But we must counter fundamental assaults on the existing global liberal order. This task is particularly crucial today, since the post–Cold War international framework is under attack by numerous challenges, including Islamic fundamentalism, growing Sunni-Shia strife, Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and become the preeminent power in the Middle East, Russian revanchism, and China’s efforts to exercise dominion over Asia and strong-arm its neighbors. In addition to these hard-power threats, the world faces numerous humanitarian crises, ranging from famines, environmental devastation and extreme weather events to flows of refugees and displaced persons. While the United States cannot solve all of these problems, consistent with our moral values, it has been a world leader in rendering humanitarian assistance and helping to alleviate poverty worldwide. America must always retain the ability, when necessary, to use its power unilaterally. However, the United States has been most successful when it has worked with international institutions and alliances, partnering with like-minded countries and combining their resources and capabilities with our own. Furthermore, the best way to deal with potential international threats is to deter them from arising or at least defeat them before they become acute. This requires continuous American leadership and credibility, especially in upholding our international commitments, to reassure our allies and deter our enemies.
The benefits of this grand strategy can be difficult to discern, especially in light of the United States’ foreign misadventures in recent years. Fiascos such as the invasion of Iraq stand as stark reminders of the difficulty of using force to alter domestic politics abroad. But power is as much about preventing unfavorable outcomes as it is about causing favorable ones, and here Washington has done a much better job than most Americans appreciate. For a largely satisfied power leading the international system, having enough strength to deter or block challengers is in fact more valuable than having the ability to improve one’s position further on the margins. A crucial objective of U.S. grand strategy over the decades has been to prevent a much more dangerous world from emerging, and its success in this endeavor can be measured largely by the absence of outcomes common to history: important regions destabilized by severe security dilemmas, tattered alliances unable to contain breakout challengers, rapid weapons proliferation, great-power arms races, and a descent into competitive economic or military blocs. Were Washington to truly pull back from the world, more of these challenges would emerge, and transnational threats would likely loom even larger than they do today. Even if such threats did not grow, the task of addressing them would become immeasurably harder if the United States had to grapple with a much less stable global order at the same time. And as difficult as it sometimes is today for the United States to pull together coalitions to address transnational challenges, it would be even harder to do so if the country abdicated its leadership role and retreated to tend its garden, as a growing number of analysts and policymakers—and a large swath of the public—are now calling for. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2012 2012 -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? 2012 -> Aa and na members Dying from Tobacco 2012 -> [Baby Crying] 01: 04 [Ching 2012 -> Unit Name / Nom de l’unité uic / ciu dates 2012 -> What We Owe Jehovah’s Witnesses 2012 -> Oceans Challenge Badge 2012 -> Canadian cycling olympians 2012 -> Greg landry, june olkowski and tom lysiak 2012 -> William goldman 2012 -> Does translocation and restocking confer any benefit to the European eel population? A review Download 323.84 Kb. Share with your friends:
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