The Rise of the Anglosphere: From my book the Rise of Nationalism and Democratic
Socialism: What Our Response Should Be
James C. Bennett and Michael J.
Lotus in their book America 3.0 [1]see the end of the
bureaucratic state, or what they call “the end of America 2.0,” and return to a
smaller and more decentralized “America 3.0.” Bennett and Lotus begin with a
brief history of how we got to where we are at present, as we moved from being
an agricultural America 1.0 to an industrial America 2.0. What Bennett and
Lotus present is not just a roadmap toward a new America over the next quarter
century domestically, but a new foreign policy based on the one alliance that
will prove dependable for the next century, an alliance of the Anglosphere
nations: United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Bennett and Lotus trace our roots
and our desire for liberty and individualism back before 1776 to the Anglo-Saxon
invaders after the fall of the Roman Empire. Our culture has two thousand years
of history, and our desire for liberty is inherited. One thing that scholars
see as a sign of progress is the nuclear family with individuals, not parents,
selecting their spouse. The beginning of freedom for women began when this
happened, and children left their parents’ home and no longer belonged to
extended families. From there, they made their own wealth and expanded the
economic pie.
The nuclear family encouraged the
market economy and property ownership to go with common law that moved toward
court cases that broke from more rigid Roman rules. America 1.0 had a
decentralized government with states largely left to pursue their
policies. This model came apart during the Civil War and the subsequent
development of the industrial state. Economic innovation fostered growth. Big
corporations rose and with it big government to counter the influence of those
large corporations.
The two world wars and the Great
Depression led to the formation of the bureaucratic state and the era after
post-World War II from 1940s to the present stage and the 1960s was the peak of
“America 2.0.” America 2.0’s development of the bureaucratic state has led
to our present situation as we are witnessing bureaucracy on steroids. The
1980s and 1990s saw reform of the bureaucratic state that worked, but this
century saw bloated government and unsustainable debt, making the demise of America
2.0 possible.
The question is whether we can
move to an America 3.0 without a complete collapse, and the authors say yes, it
can happen. They present a libertarian vision that includes the elimination of
the federal income tax and dramatically reducing federal government power, but
they still support a defensive posture that includes maintaining our present
alliances, along with federal protection for civil rights. So while the authors
questioned much of our foreign policy for the past decade and their criticism
was similar to Trump’s own message, they don’t call for the non-interventionist
policy of Ron Paul or his son, Rand Paul (although Rand Paul might want to
adopt their policies as his own). They believe America should continue to
protect the trading routes, following a policy that Britain and America have done
for three centuries.
On domestic policy, they see many
of our social problems being created by the Federal government and foreseeing
many states forming regional compacts on policies like health care. While many
conservatives and libertarians may not agree with their vision, Bennett and
Lotus present a confident future for conservatives and libertarians to consider
while putting together a governing vision that can unite the two groups. It is
a vision that can form a basis to counter the leftist vision that governs
America today.
Bennett’s and Lotus’s vision
depends how intelligent policymakers can become. Here is the crux of their argument:
the end of the present bureaucratic state can be a blessing in disguise and
that America will come out of the present implosion of command-and-control
bureaucracy as stronger as and more prosperous than before. The authors are
happy warriors who view America’s best days ahead of us.
National Review
editor Ramesh Ponnuru calls this alliance of English-speaking nations, “The
Empire of Freedom”[2]
which he says where the United States belongs. James Bennett has termed this alliance
as the Anglosphere. Anglosphere is the branch of Western civilization that is
moving beyond the West and on to its own sphere of influence. As Ponnuru
writes, the Anglosphere is “no longer purely Western civilization.”[3]
Bennett
writes that the Anglosphere is “Western
in origin but no longer entirely Western in composition and nature, this
civilization is marked by a particularly strong civil society, which is the
source of its long record of successful constitutional government and economic
prosperity.”[4]
While European are attempting to build a European Union that is
bureaucratic in nature, the Anglosphere nations are for most part suspicious of
such super state institutions build from top down and instead as Bennett
states, “promote more and stronger cooperative institutions, not to build some
English-speaking super state on the European Union, or to annex Britain, Canada
or Australia to the United States but rather to protect the English speaking
nations’ common values from external and internal fantasies.” [5] Brexit gives us the first
opening to build the Anglosphere and tie Great Britain to the United States and
move away from the bureaucratic European Union, which may be beginning its own
implosion.
Who
is part of the Anglosphere? Author James Bennett answers, “Geographically, the densest nodes of the Anglosphere are found in the
United States and Great Britain, while Anglosphere regions of Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa are powerful and populous
outliers. The educated English-speaking populations of the Caribbean, Oceania,
Africa and India constitute the Anglosphere’s frontiers.”[6]
What
we may be witnessing is a cooperative alliance based on defense alliances and
trade. Ramesh Ponnuru notes, “An important
point here is that all these countries remain broadly in harmony on the subject
of global free trade and more supportive harmony on the subject of global free
trade, and more supportive of free trade than most countries outside the
Anglosphere.”[7]
(We
could easily see an expansion of an Anglosphere trading zone beginning with the
United States and Great Britain and including Australia, New Zealand, and
Canada.)
Anglosphere
may be just another word for an American-led Empire of Liberty. While some feel
that Europe is going in one direction and United States and other Anglosphere
nations another direction, Ponnuru notes, “Is
it inconceivable that the political cultures of France and Germany could change
into a free-market and pro-American direction in 20 years- or even ten?[8]“As
Ponnuru observed, Ireland has become an economic dynamo based on free market
ideals, so Europe is not yet lost to statis and it will be curious about how
the rise of populism in Europe will affect all of this. European populists have
less support for free markets than the Anglosphere populists but European
populists don’t have any real love for the European Union so who knows how this
will turnout. In France, the main battle may be between the hard-core
nationalist populism of Marie Le Pen and the more conservative reformist
populism of Francis Fillon. (The rise of Macron is temporary victory for the EU
establishment within France but his victory was due as much to French’s voters’
fear of Le Pen than affirmation of Macron.) While the European experience is
different from North America, there is still enough similarity between the two
separate cultures to make comparisons possible.
Former
Margaret Thatcher advisor John O’Sullivan has called for an American policy
that is pro-American while undermining the super state structure of the
European Union. The present German government has is attempting to use the
European Union as a tool for its own economic hegemony over Europe. Germany needs
to tie Central Europe to modern Europe and many Central Europeans want an
American presence in Europe to safeguard their security, not just from the
European Union dominated by Germany but a resurgent Russia to their East.
James C. Bennett’s thesis begins with the premise that
manufacturing supremacy begins with those countries with the best information
technology. Bennett notes, “The United
States, being the current leader in information technology while still
possessing a large manufacturing base, is likely to be the primary beneficiary
of this process.” [9] While critics have
expressed concern that we are seeing an outflow of manufacturing jobs overseas,
Bennett considers such observation misplaced. Bennett quips, “This is like fearing that the advent of
steel-hulled warships in the nineteenth century would undercut British or
American naval might, because it made irrelevant those nations’ mastery of
wooden ship technology.”[10]
The dominant economic activity in the world will be
information based and Bennett states that this is economic development that is
moving beyond the corporate model that has dominated the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. The new economic model will feature organizations that
link entrepreneur, financiers and marketers. Those nations that encourage
entrepreneurship will predominate and the Anglosphere world leads in that area.
America still leads the world in the second decade of
the new century. But there is a new movement of nations that is challenging
America’s lead, beginning with China in the Western Pacific and Russia
throughout Europe and the Middle East.
In the nations that form the Anglosphere, Bennett
notes, “The market economy is more than
the absence of socialism. It is more than the absence of interventionist
government; it is the economic expression of a strong civil society, just as
substantive democracy is the political expression of a civil society and civic
state.”[11]
While there is no rule that democracy and the market economy need to exist side
by side, but they often do. What matters is a civil society and understanding
that government is but one player in society and part of a greater society. Religion,
private charities, and corporations of varied sizes as well as political
parties are all players in society that interact with one another. A strong
civil society sees individuals creating and working in a variety of enterprises.
For the Anglosphere nations, strong civic societies
had their roots in medieval Europe. James C. Bennett contends that in the Middle
Ages, particularly in England, the modern-day society was built upon mix of “tribal,
feudal, local, church family and state institutions”[12] and the lack of a single
overwhelming power capable of dominating. From the Magna Carta, English princes
and barons made it clear to the royal crown that they had rights and this ideal
became rooted in English custom and eventually making its way across the
Atlantic. When civic society is strong, government can be limited to specific
duties since welfare can be provided through the private aid as well as public
aid.
The weakness of the non-English-speaking nations is
not the lack of creativity on the part of their people but the political
institutions in place retard growth. Even in older European countries such as
France and Germany, entrepreneurs are frustrated by bureaucratic inertia. And
as James C. Bennett notes, “It is likely
that the Anglosphere will continue to pull away from Continental Europe and
Japan.”[13]
In the United States, the Obama administration placed countless obstacles in
the path of economic growth. Trump’s policies have much to offer as far as
growth but it is possible that the Trump administration will put their own
restrictions to growth through protectionist trade policies.
The United States and the United Kingdom have the
world’s best navies and their armed forces can operate worldwide for an extended
period of time. This allows the Anglosphere to operate in any theater of the
world and deploy an appropriate military response to defend their interests. Throughout
the world, there are Anglosphere nations at key junctions. Australia faces a long-term
serious threat in Southeast Asia as they are near heavily populated and
underdeveloped Asian nations. The United States has bases throughout the world
but in a world of shifting alliances and changing world crises from the Far
East to the Middle East, a strong Anglosphere alliance will give Americans
dependable and capable allies in crucial areas.
The British armed forces are capable of working with
American military and are probably the only European nation that has the
ability to operate with the technically advanced American armed forces.
Australia provides an Anglosphere armed force that can also be incorporated
into a strike force in key areas in the Middle East and the Far East. The Gulf
War and the Iraq War showed that today the Anglosphere is the dominant military
power but that the Anglosphere needs to expand the alliance, as the limits on
resources are starting to appear.
James C. Bennett writes, “The United States is facing pressure to reduce the universality of its
commitments, combined with a certain fatigue among the populace for the
extensive nature of American alliances… Unlike the United States, the United
Kingdom has already reached the point where it is greatly limited in its
ability to go it alone on any major military commitment; its armed forces are
explicitly in existence to serve as leverage in a variety of alliance
situations.”[14]
Bennett correctly assumes that any primary alliance should focus on nations
that have strong shared values and the Anglosphere has just an alliance in
place.
Indian writer Pramit Pal Chaudhuri wrote in India’s Hindustan Times in 2003, “Russia provides the type of weapons needed
for mass wars of millions of men, thousands of warplanes and tanks. What New
Delhi is looking for today is smart weaponry, stuff that will allow it to
attack a terrorist camp with smart missiles or stealth-drop commandos. This is
exactly what Russia cannot provide. As it is, even the warplanes it sells now
have to get their more advanced avionics and missiles from Israel or France.”[15]
Many nations are reexamining their military strategy and the weapons that go
with it. Countries like India, Russia, and China are now studying our tactics
to adopt for their own forces. The Anglosphere superiority in technology allows
them to be able to fight any kind of war in any place of the world. While the
rest of the world is enhancing their technology to catch up the United States,
the U.S.’s commitment in various wars throughout the Middle East is taking
resources away from improving our own weapon systems to stay ahead of our
potential competitors.
The Iraq War and subsequent combat showed the
flexibility of the American forces. The United States military won the ground
war in Iraq and George W. Bush handed Barack Obama victory on the ground. Obama’s
diplomacy turned that victory into defeat and chaos.
What was seen during the Iraq War is that the present-day American military
can now fight any style of combat. While one Russian observer stated that
Americans were cowards depending soley [PHP1] on technology and did not like to fight
street-to-street, this war proved that the Americans, borrowing from their
British allies, learned street fighting. They did the dirty work while losing
very few men. Contrast this to the Russians, where 50,000 people may have died
in the Chechen wars during the 1990s including 5,000 Russian soldiers in
similar urban combat. The British and Americans showed that one could fight in
an urban environment without destroying everything and still secure the major
centers. As George Patton once said, “No dumb bastard ever won a war by going
out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die
for his country.”[16]
Americans and the British can fight in the urban center, in open ground, and on
the sea as well as the air.
Vladimir Dvorkin, the head of the Russian Defense
Ministry’s think tank, reflected the thinking of many in the Russian military
when he said in 1997, “The gap between
our capabilities and those of the Americans has been revealed, and it is vast.
We are very lucky that Russia has no major enemies at the moment, but the future
is impossible to predict, and we must be ready.” [17]
Israeli defense officials expressed similar
amazement in 2003 when they witnessed one of the more powerful Arab countries
conquered by what amounted to fewer than three American divisions. Major General
Dan Harel told a reporter that he was jealous of the American military. He
said, “They have advanced in areas that
we were leading in only a few years ago. They have the ability to put
everything together in command and control. Our navy and air force have
systems. But we have to integrate them.” [18]
Israelis were impressed that the Americans lost slightly more than 100 men in
the Gulf War whereas the Israelis lost six times as many in the Six-Day War. Both
friend and foe will study the Gulf War for its appropriate lessons. Even the
subsequent Iraq War has seen Allied casualties lower than comparable wars while
inflicting higher causalities upon the terrorist thugs they are fighting.
What the Americans do have is ingenuity. Stephen Ambrose in his many books
on World War II continuously observed that under the strain of combat, the
American soldiers who were raised in freedom were constantly were able to adapt
more freely to conditions on the ground than their inflexible German
counterparts. Technology is not all that wins wars. It also takes the soldier
on the ground to make it work. The American soldier is raised in a world of
technology, so a strategy based on technology is second nature and this shows
in combat as well. The American soldier brings this strength into battle.
Fred Kaplan details that the origin of the victories in the Gulf War and the
Iraq War began in the early 1980s. With the advent of digital technology, a new
war-fighting doctrine was born. With the defeat suffered in Vietnam, a whole generation
of officers determined never to repeat Vietnam’s mistakes. Among those were
Huba Wass de Czege, who wrote a major revision that broke the Army’s previous
strategy of attrition warfare, setting up static lines against the enemy’s
assault, and repulsing it with superior firepower. De Czege began a new
strategy that emphasizes lightning strikes behind enemy lines and emphasizing
speed. Speed Kills. When the Gulf War began in 1991, many of De Czege’s
students were part of Norman Schwarzkopf’s staff and the Gulf War was a
combination of superior firepower matched with feints and the classic deep
strike behind Saddam’s army, still in Kuwait.
With the advent of smart bombs and their increased use in combat, the
military could better target its weapons while employing deception. Increased
accuracy also meant less civilian casualties. Fred Kaplan said of this strategy, “Operation Desert Storm was really two
wars—the air war and the ground war—each fought autonomously and in sequence.
Gulf War II was an integrated war, waged simultaneously and in synchronicity,
on the ground, at sea, and in the air. The vast majority of air strikes, from
Air Force bombers and attack planes as well as Navy fighters, were delivered on
Iraqi Republican Guards, in order to ease the path of U.S. Army soldiers and
Marines thrusting north to Baghdad.”[19]
As mentioned previously, synergy of all of the services became a reality.
In addition, Fred Kaplan stated, “Another
new thing, which started in Afghanistan and continued in Iraq, was the
systematic inclusion of the so-called “shadow soldiers,” the special operations
forces. The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, which was best-known for giving new
authority to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also made special ops a
separate command, with its own budget.”[20]
The warriors of the night became an integral part of American strategy.
A pundit recently pointed out that an army that combines the use of dolphins
and satellites is a tough army to beat. This is an army that is capable of
using what is available to fight. Americans use old-fashioned “Yankee know-how”
in war as effectively as they do in business. The entrepreneurial spirit that
exists outside the military has now made its way into the military. The
Anglosphere nations’ power lies not just in its economic prowess but it’s
military as well.
What the Iraq War showed is that future wars on
terrorism will be fought with actual combat, imaginative diplomacy, and through
subversion of terrorist sponsor states. The combat tactics of the Iraq War demonstrated
that the United States has the capability to either strike with the thunder of
armed columns or special ops operating in the shadows. To win the war on terror
in this century we will need armed forces that can fight under any and all conditions.
Nothing replaces a well-trained soldier carrying out the policies of diplomats;
but without the soldier, diplomacy is nothing more than an empty bluff. This is
something the Trump administration needs to learn and the Obama administration
never did learn.
The
Rule of Law and Anglosphere
“L’Angleterre, en
effet, est insulaire, maritime, liee par ses echanges, ses marches, son
ravitaillement, aux pays les plus divers et souvent les plus lointains”.[21] (England is indeed
insular, maritime, and tied by its exchanges, its markets, its supply with the
most diverse and often most remote countries.)
—Charles
de Gaulle, vetoing British membership in the Common Market, January 14, 1963.
The American Constitution is a document whose
existence is rooted in a wider constitutional tradition derived from Britain. From
the Middle Ages to the present, there is a continuity and stability that
undergirds the Anglosphere. James C. Bennett observes that a business lawyer in
New York would recognize the common law code of Australia or England. The
lawyer would know the problems while dealing with any issues across the Pacific
or Atlantic in a fellow Anglosphere nation.
The English monarch was never as absolute as his or her
counterparts in continental Europe. From the Magna Carta onwards, the powers of
the monarch were restricted. The belief in limited government has given
Americans and the rest of the Anglosphere an advantage over their competitors. In
the Anglosphere nations, entrepreneurship has flourished and spread beyond
their borders. From the time of the American Revolution and development of the
Constitution, the French have endured two Napoleons and five Republics. Outside
of England, no European nation has had more experience with democratic rule
than the United States. The development of a strong civil society and long time
understanding of constitutional rule has fostered both political and economic
freedom within the Anglosphere and led to its present domination throughout the
world.
Within the Western traditions, there are now two
competing ideas. For the French, there is a continental system that features
extensive government intervention within the economic sphere and beyond. Many
French have derided what they call “Anglo-Saxon” Ideas. In the 1960s, de Gaulle
envisioned a block of nations as a separate world power that stood as a counter
to the Soviet Empire and the American led “Anglo-Saxon Empire.” Whether it is
attacking American culture or complaining about America hegemony, much of the
French intellectual and foreign policy apparatus viewed American ascendancy as
counter to their goal of dominating Europe through the EU. France wants to
become a major player on the world scene through various international bodies
such as the European Union and the United Nations. For many French
intellectuals, the EU represented the both the political and economic
counterweight to what they view as “cowboy capitalism.” (The problem is that EU
and the euro aided Germany in being the dominant economic power within Europe,
and it is no longer the French leading the way but they are becoming a tail
wagged by the German dog.)
One of the future key issues for the Anglosphere
nations will be Great Britain’s relations with Europe. The present EU and
continental system favors more bureaucratic control over the economy and
increased industrial policies targeting specific industries. The harmonization
of taxes and budgets within the EU is designed to maintain high taxes and
support an ever-expanding welfare state. The policy of harmonization is
being used as wedge against lower tax countries such as those in Ireland and in
the emerging democracies in Central Europe. Britain’s goal of being “the
Anglosphere voice” would have been compromised by dealings with the French and
Germans, the present leaders of the EU. James C. Bennett observed in 2007, “Were the United Kingdom to leave the Union
and join NAFTA, it would lead to far more productive partnership.”[22]
For Bennett, Britain needs to be more closely
integrated into the Anglosphere through inclusion in NAFTA and the other
Anglosphere pacts. This is a more logical alliance as Bennett observed that
having the United Kingdom join NAFTA would,
“accelerate the existing trend toward mergers, partnerships, and alliances
between U.S., Canadian, and British infotech companies. It would extend them
into allied defense and
defense-impacted fields such as aerospace and commercial aviation.”[23] In other words, Brexit.
Many European leaders have learned the wrong lessons
of the past fifty years. At this moment, Europe is at peace for the first time
in a millennium but with the resurgence of Putin’s Russia, there exists for the
first time a prospect of a major European war. This peace came as a result of
American steadfast military support of Western Europe. During the 2016
campaign, Trump refuse to committing American support for NATO and European
collective security.
India and the Anglosphere
James
C. Bennett does not yet consider India formally part of the Anglosphere but for
the Anglosphere to dominate the 21st century, India must become part of the
alliance. He writes, “In such a
commonwealth (Anglosphere), should the Indian choose to engage it, It may well
be that Bangalore becomes a major center of the Anglosphere in thirty or fifty
years’ time. Anglospherists do not fear this, knowing that just as London is
still great today because it shares an Anglosphere with New York and Los
Angeles, it and the American metropolises will be great tomorrow partly because
they might share it with Bangalore.”[24]
Indian
writer Gurcharan Das remembers attending Henry Kissinger’s lectures at Harvard
in the early 1960s and listening to Kissinger point out that Nehru was a
dreamer and “it is dangerous to put dreamers in power.”[25] Kissinger’s own views on
Nehru may have been misplaced and he admitted it in his most recent book on diplomacy.
Nehru was not an idealist and certainly not a pacifist like Gandhi. When force
was needed, Nehru was prepared to use it. Three wars with Pakistan, including
the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, one war with China, and
pushing the Portuguese out of Goa showed that India was not afraid of using
military force. What Kissinger called a foreign policy of dreamers was a
serious attempt to buy time for the new nation, residing as it does in a tough
neighborhood. Kissinger’s own opinion from his Harvard days changed when he
stated “India’s conduct during the Cold
War was not so different from that of the United States in its formative
decades.”[26]
The difference is that in the United States’ formative years, there was an
ocean between America and Europe. India, on the other hand, is in a region
populated by vipers and political rivals.
The United States, as the leader of NATO and the
premier Western power, has inherited the traditional British interest in
ensuring that no one single nation dominates the Eurasia landmass. India, also,
has co-opted policy from its former English master. In 1934 Britain designed a
plan to stabilize the Sino-India border and to dominate the Indian Ocean from
Aden to Singapore. India’s present naval building effort reflects those same
objectives. Like the United States, India does not want to see an Islamic
fundamentalist revolution sweep through the Middle East. As China grows in
strength and challenges the United States in the Far East, China also threatens
India at her northern borders and through the sea lanes including the Indian
Ocean.
A recent stumbling block that stood in the way of
Indian-American relations was India’s ownership of the bomb. Kissinger noted
that India “will not risk it’ survival “on
exhortations coming from countries basing their own security on nuclear
weapons.”[27]
Kissinger concedes that India is acting rationally and that President Clinton’s
reaction to India’s holding nuclear tests in 1998 and subsequent expansion of
its nuclear capacities was “emotional.”[28] While Clinton would tell
the Indians that they did not need nuclear weapons, India’s own reaction was to
ignore Clinton’s appeal. As far as Indians were concerned, they were not under
the American nuclear umbrella and were facing two nuclear rivals, Pakistan and
China, in their own backyard. The Bush Administration removed the various
sanctions put in place in 1998 after the events of September 11.
The biggest problem with nuclear non-proliferation is
the unrealistic approach that good intentions are enough to ensure enforcement.
The 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act requires the imposition of
sanctions against any nation that pursues and acquires nuclear weapons. These
sanctions include denial of World Bank aid, restricting bank loans and
technology exports. The problem with this approach is that it does not
distinguish between friend and foe. India’s nuclear program is designed to
protect against growing Chinese military clout, and the desire to counter
Pakistan’s intentions in South Asia. Nuclear weapons are India’s entry into the
superpower club and India’s nuclear plan does not threaten America. New Delhi’s
actions are not motivated by any desire for a military confrontation with the
United States, now or in the future. Washington has tolerated nuclear weapons
in the hands of the U.S.S.R. and Red China, so why not India? India’s nuclear
possession does not threaten American interests any more than do France and
England with their nuclear capability. France’s own nuclear plan was based
simply on the idea that France and only France is responsible for its own
security. England also did not choose to live strictly under America’s nuclear
umbrella and India is merely following its own national interest in becoming a
nuclear power. If anything, Obama’s own policy led to nuclear proliferation.
When Obama and Hillary Clinton led the effort to overthrow Gaddafi in 2011,
they increased the chances of nuclear proliferation since Gaddafi surrendered
his own weapons of mass destruction in exchange for neutrality in the war on
terror. The message to any future nation with nuclear weapons that to trade
them in exchange for American security is riskier than keeping the weapons. Ukraine’s
own security was also guaranteed by both Russia and United States when they
gave up nuclear weapons on their border. Today, Putin controls a third of
Ukraine through proxies, and annexed the Crimea. If our allies can’t trust our
own nuclear umbrella, they will obtain their own nuclear weapons. Does anyone
think that Saudi Arabia won’t obtain their own nuclear weapons if Iran finally
obtains its bomb?
The final solution is simply the adoption of the
Strategic Defense Initiative. The use of technology to checkmate present
missile technology allows the United States and her allies, including India, to
maintain its military superiority while giving potential nuclear powers a
reason not to proceed with their own program. SDI provides the West an
insurance policy against any cheaters. The days of depending upon mere pieces
of papers for security are over. A missile shield allows the United States to
protect its own national interest, while securing a nuclear umbrella to protect
other nations, including India. The reason that the nuclear club has not gotten
even bigger is that America’s nuclear umbrella has been extended to potential
nuclear powers such as Japan and Germany, and in the past there was no need for
those countries to be nuclear powers in their own right as long as they are
allied with the United States. (The Obama administration’s reckless policies
that rewarded our enemies more than our allies will only encourage many of
these allies to pursue their own nuclear weapons to ensure their own defense.) A
strategic defense initiative protects the United States in a world of changing
alliances. China has made it clear that it is considering challenging the
United States’ role in East Asia and its own nuclear and military buildup is
predicated upon its own military objectives that are not necessarily in sync
with ours. SDI allows a sensible policy of containment if that is what is
required in the future, and also allows for reduction in nuclear weapons since
it allows nations an insurance policy against cheating and reduces the
utilities of nuclear weapons.
A new nuclear non-proliferation policy begins with the
principle that we can no longer keep the nuclear genie in the bottle. There are
some nations in whose hands nuclear weapons may in fact be a stabilizing
factor. In the 19th century, Europe was dominated by a concert of
leading powers, whose goal was to maintain the peace and European stability
after the end of the Napoleonic wars. What is required today is a concert of
democratic states, starting with the Anglosphere and including other democratic
states like India. In this new era of terror, stability is dependent upon this
new group of nations acting in harmony. And certainly, this concert of power
should include other alliances with other nations not just limited to the
Anglosphere. While military options will always be considered, the ultimate
protection is a new group of democratic states prepared to defend what is right
under the umbrella of a Strategic Defense Initiative and backed by the United
States-led Anglosphere.
The final piece to India’s greatness will be the
evolution of its relationship with Pakistan, including how it deals with the
Kashmir question. Pakistan, formed as a result of the partition of 1947, has
been a dysfunctional society, cash strapped and living in the shadow of India. For
millions of Indians and Pakistanis, the partition had its own human tragedy,
ending in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Pakistan’s
former strongman, Pervez Musharraf, migrated from his home in India to Pakistan
after partition, whereas author and business consultant Gurcharan Das went in
the opposite direction as a refugee. Nearly 40 million people traveled in
either direction in a tragedy that today still threatens both the security and
prosperity of India and Pakistan. India diverts billions of dollars of defense
funds that should go into economic development and expanding its own influence
outside the South Asia continent to defending its borders with Pakistan. As for
Kashmir, Pakistan’s claim is due to a substantial Muslim population, and some
in Pakistan even view Kashmir as a part of a “Greater Pakistan.” India views
Kashmir as part of its own territory and the Kashmiri people, themselves, are
uncertain about their own fate.
A democratic, moderate Pakistan would be a boon to
peace in the region and possibly give India an extra market for their products.
India is now the dominant power on the South Asian continent. An autocratic,
economically dysfunctional Pakistan is not in the interest of either the United
States or India. Pakistan stands between the forces of Islamic radicalism and
modernity and is proving to be a dysfunctional nation.
Great
Britain was the inspiration for both the United States and India in the values
of freedom. Both nations now have the responsibility to spread those values
throughout the world. A country of more than a billion people will never be a
junior partner in any relationship and, unlike Great Britain, India will be an
equal partner based on its potential as an economic and nuclear power. With
nearly a million Indians living throughout the United States, there is a
personal connection being developed between these two nations. These immigrants
live in America but much of their heart belongs to India. These people to
people contacts further cement relations between these countries. These
contacts also bring down the veil between these countries as well. As India
learns more about the United States, we also learn more about India.
India will prove useful in battling terrorists and
defending the West. India, for many years, has set itself apart from the West,
but in recent years, this is beginning to change. Gone are the days of
reflective anti-American attitudes that infiltrated Indian leadership and there
is a more balanced approach to world events. It will be imperative among
American policy makers to encourage India to become a permanent member of the
Anglosphere
SDI and
Anglosphere Technical superiority
In 1988, I managed the campaign of GOP candidate Mary Ellen Lobb, who was
running against Democrat incumbent Alan Wheat in Missouri’s 5th District. One
of the issues that we highlighted was Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense
Initiative. When discussing SDI, Lobb told me that “we must remind the voters
that within the next decade, we’ll need strategic defense not just against the
Soviet Empire but various Third World regional powers such as Iran.” We would
not always be in a world, separated into two armed camps led by the Soviet
Union and the United States.
Within a year after the election, the world that Mary
Ellen Lobb foresaw became a reality. The Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Empire
imploded. In this century, we’ve seen the rise of regional powers that threaten
our own national interests-including Iran in the Middle East and China in the
Far East. Missile technology is no longer “high technology”, and it is
spreading to rogue nations such as North Korea, making them become “superpowers”
on the cheap.
In the 19th century, Great Britain was the
dominant world power based on her navy, which allowed the English to project
force throughout the globe. England maintained bases on every continent to
defend the empire. Britain’s population was relatively small, precluding a
dominant standing army, and her statesmen understood that her superpower status
was delicately poised. British defense plans were based on maintaining naval
superiority supplemented by continental alliances against whatever nation was
threatening to dominate Europe.
When Kaiser Wilhelm II decided to challenge British
naval hegemony, English statesmen took this as a challenge to British world
dominance. Throughout the 19th century, Great Britain maintained technical
superiority over all opponents, taking advantage of its industrial might as the
world’s strongest and freest economy. This allowed Great Britain to maintain
its military superiority.
The
collapse of the British Empire after World War II ended the British domination
in world affairs. The United States, through the Marshall Plan and the GATT
system of trade, inherited England’s mantle as the defender of Western
democracy while the Soviet Empire assumed Hitler’s role as the exemplar of
socialism. The Soviet Union dominated the Eurasian landmass, with the largest
standing army in history and by the time Ronald Reagan became President, the
Soviet Empire stretched from the Berlin Wall to the Pacific Ocean, with
satellite nations on every inhabited continent, including North Vietnam,
Angola, Ethiopia, Cuba, and Nicaragua. The threat it posed was real.
The Cold War ended with a whimper, not a bang, as the
Soviet command economy collapsed. This felicitous outcome was due in part to
the Reagan administration’s military buildup and the beginning of the SDI
program. The Soviet economy could not compete with technological advances that
a free economy adapted to military use. The West’s superiority in military
hardware was showcased during the Gulf and Iraq Wars. These conflicts also
illustrated the security threats of this century. Iraq, a regional power,
launched Scud missiles against our allies throughout the Gulf War. As Patriot
missiles dueled Scuds, we saw the first field demonstration of why strategic
defense is essential. In the Gulf War, this missile duel was a sideshow. In a
future regional conflict, it may become the main event, whether the payloads
are nuclear, chemical, or biological.
The major impediment to missile defense is not
technology, but America’s will to deploy. As Professor Frederick Seitz, a
leading expert in missile technology, concluded, “The science behind missile defense is solid, and we certainly do
possess the capabilities to defend ourselves.” Seitz observes that missile
defense technology has been around for decades. The key to its success today is
the ability to destroy enemy missiles in their boost phase, when decoys can be
more readily defeated. The difficulties of boost-phase intercept are best
approached through space-based and naval platform systems. With the demise of
the ABM treaty, the last legal restraint to develop these systems has been
removed.
American missile defense allows Americans to protect
potential land-based allies, freeing them to divert their energies toward
trade, currency reform, and capital formation. Pax Americana-—the extension of
democracy and economic development throughout the Third World—depends on
America’s ability to prevent aggressive regional powers from becoming
international powers “on the cheap.” Strategic defense is a key component of
this strategy. The sea-based Aegis missile extends a defensive shield to our
allies, and expands our naval superiority over any potential enemies. A
space-based anti-missile capability ensures the defense of our key command
centers in space and allows protection of the American people. With our
technical superiority, we will be able to neutralize the nuclear capabilities
of most regional powers such as Iran and China. SDI is a manifestation of the
Anglosphere’s technical superiority.
During the 20th century, the United States
became the dominant superpower. SDI will allow America and the Anglosphere to
continue to exert its influence throughout the world-, with the result being an
expansion of economic and political freedom, worldwide. The United States is a
commercial nation similar to nineteenth-century Britain, and depends upon the
freedom of voluntary commerce to ensure its economic well-being. NATO was an established
land-based alliance to ensure that no power dominates the Eurasian continent
and this ensured the general peace of Europe. Now NATO cohesion is now
threatened and in the United States, support for NATO is on the wane and it may
be on the wane within Europe as well.
[1] For a summary of
their book, see James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus, “America 3.0: The Coming Revolution of America,” American
Enterprise Institute, August 20, 2013.
[2] Ramesh Ponnuru,
“The Empire of Freedom,” National Review,
March 24, 2003.
[3] Ponnuru, “The
Empire of Freedom.” ARE QUOTES FROM THIS
ARTICLE? IT IS BEHIND A PAYWALL
[4] James C. Bennett,
“Our Emerging Anglosphere,” Orbis,
Winter 2002.
[5] James C. Bennett,
The Anglosphere Challenge: Why The English-Speaking Nations Will Lead
The Way in The Twenty-First Century (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) GIVE PAGE NUMBER
[6] James C. Bennett,
The Anglosphere Challenge, 80.
[7] Ponnuru, “Empire
of Freedom.” OK?
[8] Ponnuru, “Empire
of Freedom.” OK?
[9] Bennett, The
Anglosphere Challenge, 26.
[10] Bennett, The Anglopshere Challenge, 27.
[11] Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge, 34.
[12] Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge, 35.
[13] Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge, 38.
[14] Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge, 287.
[15] Pramit Pal
Chaudhuri, “Indo-Russian Ties Going Nowhere,” Hindustan Times, October 13, 2003.
[16] James M. Gavin, War and Peace in the Space Age (New
York: Harper, 1958), 64.
[17] Thomas C. Reed, At the Abyss: An Insider’s
History of the Cold War (New York: Presidio/Ballantine,
2004), 347-48.
[18] “Israeli Military
Amazed, ‘Jealous’ At U.S. War Against Iraq,” worldtribune.com, April 14, 2003.
[19] Fred Kaplan,
“Force Majeure,” Slate, April 10, 2003.
[20] Kaplan, “Force
Majeure.”
[21] “Conference de
Press de Charles de Gaulle (14 janvier 1963)” in Charles de Gaulle, Discours et Messages. Volume IV: Pour l’effort (1962-1965). Paris:
Plon, 1970, 66-71
[22] Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge. 164.
[23] Bennett, The
Anglosphere Challenge, 167.
[24] Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge, 7.
[25] Gurcharan Das, India Unbound (New York: Knopf, 2001), 83.
[26] Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a
Diplomacy of the 21st Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 156.
[27] Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy?,
158.
[28] Henry A.
Kissinger, “India and Pakistan: After the Explosions,” Washington Post, June 9, 1998.
[PHP1]Solely
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The Donelson Files 