Gone are the days, rare as they were, of astute diplomacy and current is the era where the bureaucracy of foreign policy is anything but a pure expression. Where affirming the sovereignty of the American people is the ideal rather then something instead akin to an adolescent love-fest were ideologues animate objectives on a napkin at Starbucks or thru brusk phonetics via text message.
The following are a select group of responses to questions/comments received after the original article was published. We believe you will find them of interest.
#1: Unfortunately Americans have been cultured to believe that American Foreign Policy is a mechanism of military force; however I do readily acknowledge that there are occasions when even the best diplomatic efforts end with the use of military force. Thomas Jefferson’s dealings with the Barbary Pirates is one of our earliest (as a Nation) examples. There are several very good examples where astute diplomatic nerve works and JFK’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis being one example, Bush-the-Elder’s efforts in the unification of Germany is another as well as Carter’s work Sadat (Egypt) and Begin (Israel) Peace Accords.
The best position in diplomatic efforts is to “pitch” from a position that requires, simultaneously, two components: High-Road Objective & Substantive Strength; any position short of this is always an equivocation, always weak and thus inevitably fails. It, the best diplomatic position, also requires a position of solitude so long as these two components are present. Finding willing accomplices, in order to create broad support, invariably is self-defeating whereas the notion of “solitude” has its own natural appeal where the “willing” will natively align themselves with a matrix built on “High-Road Objective & Substantive Strength.” This is precisely why, where these attributes do not exist, military action never has a lasting effect.
Ultimately, a malformed cadre will fail under the weight of its own dysfunction and if the U.S., as it should, took this approach and applied it outside of political cross-contamination and as an enduring National policy, then the incidents of mass-causality incursions would likely never be required. The U.S., were it to return to foster a strong national identity lifted by a solid and durable domestic policy that is void of destructive social re-engineering efforts then it would be more formidable an influence than the sum total of its military hardware could ever hope to be.
Unless of course incinerating the planet is your idea of a best possible outcome. As it is, having gutted its most potent attributes, it has taken to believe it has no choice but to join Old World Europe in a quest to maintain a non-durable paradigm they refuse to accept that is dead.
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
