No plans for winning!

Angelo Codevilla writes at the Washington Examiner,

...The Declaration of Independence set the objective: “a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth” — no more, no less — and George Washington’s Farewell Address encapsulated the meaning: “observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.” America, John Quincy Adams wrote, “enters the lists in no cause but its own.” Theodore Roosevelt re-formulated the essence of the founding generation’s legacy: (“speak softly and carry a big stick”) as, most recently, did Jeanne Kirkpatrick (“no society exists to conduct foreign policy. Rather, foreign policy exists to allow the society to live in peace.”) Adherence to that legacy is what made America great at home and respected abroad. The American people, by and large, continue to share these views and to revere this legacy.

This view of America first, however, is alien to progressives. From Woodrow Wilson’s generation at the turn of the twentieth century to our own time, they have imagined themselves as mankind’s improvers, forcefully preparing mankind for their ministrations. Speaking big words that they hardly understand and wielding power incompetently, they squandered the founders’ legacy. Acting as sorcerers’ apprentices they gave us disdain and war instead of peace and respect.

...both parties’ progressives have spent thousands of lives and trillions of dollars replicating their failures in Vietnam: endlessly policing bad guys while trying to infuse their societies with their own evolving ideas of liberal democracy, including radical culture-war ideas on sexuality.

What can be done?

When in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. In the 2016 election, the American people ordered that, and more, by electing Donald Trump. More than any other candidate, Trump had vowed to do what is common sense to ordinary Americans, but incomprehensible to our progressive foreign policy establishment: to stop interfering in other people’s business, while preparing to defeat whoever troubles ours — thoroughly and quickly.

Doing this requires, first of all, wise decisions about what our business is around the globe, and what might interfere with it.

Trump judged that, after our own land borders, the Pacific Ocean is of the greatest importance, and that China’s military-political efforts to expel us from its western rim, and its economic challenge, are our weightiest problem. Hence he ordered major military improvements and economic countermeasures against it. His predecessors had vowed fidelity to our allies in Japan and South Korea. Trump meant to involve them in dealing with our common problem. This seems to have led them to trusting America some more.

America’s oldest allies in Europe, however, trust Trump’s America less. That is because Western Europe’s progressive ruling class is a copy (or an extension) of our own. Its rulers were the firmest of allies so long as we went along as they divested themselves of the capacity to defend themselves from invasion. They resent us as we begin to take care of our own interests. Under them, Europe no longer matters much, for good or ill. The good news for us is that they are being rejected by their own peoples, many of whom look to Trump’s America as a model.

...As ever, military power is the foundation of respect among nations. The U.S military establishment is plenty large. It has increasingly resembled a police force that tries (and fails) to police the world while neglecting its most basic tasks. Simply, our ruling class has not been serious regarding strategic weapons, especially missile defense. The American people notwithstanding, our ruling class long since decided to put no barrier to Russian or Chinese missiles striking America, that America’s intercontinental missiles must remain immobile and vulnerable, and that tactical nuclear weapons are things of the past.

The reason why no one takes seriously U.S complaints about Russia is that the U.S. has neither the equipment nor the plans that would allow for a confrontation on the European landmass with a Russia that integrates nuclear weapons into its armed forces, whose strategic missiles are mobile and invulnerable, and whose missile defense is tailored to its geography and strategy.

The same goes for China. U.S. policy is to avoid a military confrontation with it, but without plans for winning one. This is not a formula for respect, or for peace.

China’s strategy to control nearby seas from the land is designed to push U.S influence out of the Western Pacific. Its artificial islands extend its air and missile forces more than a thousand miles into the ocean. Guam is in range. Its coast bristles with medium-range missiles, covered by intercontinental ones that are mobile or otherwise invulnerable because they are based in deep tunnels. U.S. missile defense is an expensive pretense, which North Korea has just exposed.

Read more here.