Mattis and Kori Schake wrote: “In practice, ‘America first’ has meant ‘America alone.’ That has damaged the country’s ability to address problems before they reach U.S. territory and has thus compounded the danger emergent threats pose.”
This is rancid, insidious hogwash. Trump’s travel bans, which Biden has pledged to repeal on his first day in office, are designed to prevent problems from reaching U.S. territory. Biden’s repeal of them will only make Americans more vulnerable. Also, Trump’s America First policy was not “America alone” by any means: the U.S. was instrumental in concluding peace deals between Israel and three of its Arab Muslim neighbors, deals that John Kerry, who will soon be back in a position of power, assured us back in 2016 would be absolutely impossible. Trump has also demanded more responsibility from our allies, asking them to pay more for their own defense.
The only way in which Trump’s America First policy meant “America alone” was insofar as it broke from the internationalist arrangements that have been in place since the end of World War II, to which Mattis and Schake refer as “the commitment to cooperative security that has served the United States so well for decades.”
But if a “commitment to cooperative security” doesn’t involve being able to put one’s national interests first, how is it good for the people of that nation? That question doesn’t apply just to America.
The internationalist elite has reasserted its hegemony and beaten back a serious challenge. And it is not a good sign that in spiking the football after that victory, Mattis makes it abundantly clear that “cooperating with like-minded nations” means putting their interests before our own. No responsible national leader should do that, but of course soon, with completely open borders, nations themselves will be a thing of the past, at least in Europe and North America, as the all-encompassing, authoritarian technostate for which Mattis is a front man is put into place.
“Mattis says he hopes Joe Biden takes ‘America First’ out of national security strategy,” by Brooke Singman, Fox News, November 23, 2020:
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in an op-ed on Monday that he hopes President-elect Joe Biden will take “America First” out of the national security strategy for his incoming administration.
Mattis penned the op-ed, titled “Defense in Depth,” for Foreign Affairs with Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Jim Ellis, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, and Joe Felter, a fellow at the Hoover Institution.
“In January, when President Joe Biden and his national security team begin to reevaluate U.S. foreign policy, we hope they will quickly revise the national security strategy to eliminate ‘America first’ from its contents, restoring in its place the commitment to cooperative security that has served the United States so well for decades,” they wrote. “The best strategy for ensuring safety and prosperity is to buttress American military strength with enhanced civilian tools and a restored network of solid alliances – both necessary to achieving defense in depth.”
The four authors also that the U.S. currently is “undermining the foundations of an international order manifestly advantageous to U.S. interests, reflecting a basic ignorance of the extent to which both robust alliances and international institutions provide vital strategic depth.”
“In practice, ‘America first’ has meant ‘America alone,’” they wrote. “That has damaged the country’s ability to address problems before they reach U.S. territory and has thus compounded the danger emergent threats pose.”
They wrote that advocates of the Trump administration’s approach “seem to believe that other countries will have no choice but to accede to the United States’ wishes and cooperate on its terms.”
“This is delusion,” they wrote. “Sovereign countries always have choices: to compromise with aggressors, take actions opposed to U.S. interests, opt out of assistance when the United States needs it, or cooperate with one another on activities from which the United States is excluded.”
They added that “assuming otherwise has the result of emboldening adversaries and encouraging tests of the strength of U.S. commitments.”
“Not even the United States is strong enough to protect itself on its own,” they continued. “Cooperating with like-minded nations to sustain an international order of mutual security and prosperity is a cost-effective way of securing that help.”
Mattis and his co-authors said that “to dismiss U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere as ‘endless’ or ‘forever’ wars – as both President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden do – rather than as support to friendly governments struggling to exert control over their own territory misses the point.”…