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11 June, 2011
US STRATEGY IS DEEPLY FLAWED-A US SCHOLAR ASSESSES US STRATEGIC
FAILURES
A Brilliant US Scholar Assesses US Strategic Flaws
I am not one to throw my expertise out on the military, as I was a Peace Corps
Volunteer, but I have spent the greatest part of my career overseas (Central America,
Caribbean, Africa) and I have seen the results of U.S./Western foreign policy in the
Developing World. As far as I am concerned Western foreign policy is morally bankrupt
from Western donors (e.g. WB/IMF Structural Adjustment, USAID, CIDA, NORAD, etc.,
etc.) to the use of our Military. In many cases we use proxy armies with special forces
behind the scenes.
It matters not if it is our young soldiers, foreign legions, mercenaries, and now people
sitting in Nevada killing with high tech drones - it is how we use them and in most
cases it has been to control access over natural resources with little or no respect for
the lives of those in the countries we exploit, nor of our young soldiers (Cannon fodder
for the politicians and this includes the Pentagon generals who at that level are political
animals) who take most of the risks, while the military contractors make all the money.
There are a few issues that need to be addressed in my opinion:
1. Have a Draft - if you don't want to serve in the military then you go to the Peace
Corps for 2 years - as Cooperants use to go under the old French system. It was
obvious with Vietnam - once everyone was touched in the USA with a draft- there
were mass protests that ended this debacle. Where are the protests
today???????????? - the majority are tuned out.
2. Campaign Finance Reform - no problem with lobbying but you should not be
able to buy politicians/votes - War is big business and lobbying is a large part of the
problem!
3. Term limits - come in for 8 years and then go back to what you were doing
before so that being a politician does not become a career and way of
accumulating wealth. Right now we have all kinds of career crooks (moral and
economic) that have been in for 20-30 years - this needs to be stopped!

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4. No one should be allowed to be "Commander-In-Chief or even serve in the
highest levels of the Pentagon (need soldiers not paper punching bureaucrats who
have kissed ass to get to the top) who has/have not experienced the horrors of
war - in hopes they will think twice about sending someone to war unless it is vital
to national security
5. Stop the privatization of war that was accelerated by Cheney and his links to
Halliburton when he was VP under GW Bush - I think the military should be able to
cook its own food and build it compounds, etc.
6. Get our Military the hell out of the rest of the world - we don't need 700 odd
military bases all over the world - can't afford them for one - have a small but
efficient military with the majority based in the USA, a few strategically located
bases, with rapid deployment capabilities (e.g., like France today where the
majority of their African rapid response force is based in France).
7. Use our military for defensive not offensive operations
8. Stop invading and occupying other countries
9. Use foreign aid for education and health care - otherwise end this Global
Welfare that has been used to create dependency, and delinks governments from
having to serve their citizens - often using what income they generate to repress
their citizens
10.Stop putting in and propping up puppet despots/dictators - the youth of the
world are switched on today with the advent of the INTERNET and won't put up
with this anymore - I suspect there will be more "Arab Springs" or Summers on
other Continents where this has been the modes operandi in the way the West
deals with the Developing World
11.Where a country has unique natural resources encourageForeign Direct
Investment (FDI) as a means of helping the rest of the world develop, with salaries
based upon Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)/cost of living and appropriate
environmental controls - give these developing countries some level of
transformation/beneficiation where they have these unique natural resources to
help create a large middleclass - otherwise we will continue to see mass migrations
out of Latin America into the USA and out of Africa/Middle East/South Asia into
Europe, as well as Africa into South Africa that in the long run places tremendous
pressures on social (education, health) and physical (roads, etc.) infrastructure of
the invaded countries by the illegal aliens (no problem with legal immigrants).
12.Don't send our jobs overseas. I am for Free Enterprise(what made America
shop owners, craftsmen, small farmers, etc.) but not Milton Friedman's Chicago
School of Free Market Economics that completely deregulates business, opens

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borders as a means of U.S. companies becoming Multi-Nationals and maximizing
their corporate profits while sending our jobs overseas (those jobs we can't fill in
the USA with open-border illegal aliens that undercut the American worker's
wages) and gutting our Middleclass - America today fits the definition of a Third
World Country with the largest gap in the world between the rich and the poor with
a large lower class, disappearing middleclass and small elite. Our saving grace for
the moment is that a poor person in America is often much better off - especially of
someone living in an urban slum in the Third World.
13.Stop the brain drain from the Third World of the best or the brightest or these
countries will never develop - also goes for South Africa that is stealing from the
rest of Africa. If America steals someone from Germany or France - there are
plenty of educated people to replace them, but if you steal someone from
Cameroon or Ivory Coast - this is morally reprehensible.
These steps would help America and the rest of the World - make it a better place for
all of us. However, I suspect as long as our Government functions under the status
quo this will not happen. It will take an economic collapse and/or a social revolution -
sort of an "American Spring"!
MR XYZ