Rudiments of a Grand Strategy for the United States of America

摘要

The United States continues to languish in the post-Cold War doldrums with no consensus over what our strategy should be in the world. For two generations the Cold War allowed us to easily define ourselves as that which opposed communism. We became strategically complacent and now, with no heir apparent for an enemy, what is seen as an anachronistic military dies a very slow, painful, agonizing death by a thousand cuts. Sun Tzu told us to 'know your enemy'. But he more poignantly demanded of us that we know our self. The ancient warrior sage of China was one with the Tao, understood the unity of opposites, and fundamentally recognized that enemy and self remain 'tails and heads' of the same coin. Your enemy can only be defined to the degree that you will precisely define yourself. This paper reflects on the enemy we must face by first taking an exacting look in the mirror at what we aspire to be as a people, the American body politic. With a thorough understanding of ourselves, an enemy does start to materialize, and the fundaments of a viable grand strategy become tangible from the haze that currently enshrouds us.