"We're broke," interprets Robert Harneis United States President Barack Obama has launched his new National Security strategy (NSS). For the second time in a year President 0bama went to West Point military academy to deliver a speech. Last September it was to talk about his new strategy in Afghanistan. This time, he pronounced his new military doctrine. It is the American president's first chance to put his individual mark clearly on overall US military strategy. US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has called the new national security strategy a "dramatic departure" from its predecessor. In his speech and in amongst the 52 pages of smug self-satisfied waffle that all American leaders have to spout, there are important changes in style, focus and above all an awareness of financial reality. It is not a simple matter for the world's superpower to change the way it deals with the world. The current president is far from omnipotent, despite understanding the world outside the US better than any of his predecessors. He lived in Indonesia as a boy with his Indonesian stepfather. His paternal grandfather was imprisoned by the British colonial authorities during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. Although he seems anxious not to talk about it, he has a Diploma in International Relations from Columbia University. But the US political system is deeply contested and lobby-ridden. Former British foreign secretary Lord Halifax once commented on the evolution of American foreign policy as "rather like a disorderly line of beaters out shooting; they do put the rabbits out of the bracken, but they don't come out where you would expect." Amongst the disorderly rabbits, the idea of pre- emptive war has been quietly abandoned. Gone too are the aggressive references to "Islamic radicalism" and "Muslim fundamentalism". Instead there is the calmer invocation of "our broader engagement with Muslim communities around the world [that] will spur progress on critical political and security matters, while advancing partnerships on a broad range of issues based upon mutual interests and mutual respect." If Obama has achieved nothing else in foreign policy as president he had toned down the rhetoric. He will not, like his predecessor, start talking about "crusades". There are firm but respectful references to engagement with rising powers China, Russia, Brazil and especially India. It is clear that the Obama administration has moved away from cowboy diplomacy towards a more consultative mode of thought. The NSS reads: "Instead, we must focus American engagement on strengthening international institutions and galvanising the collective action that can serve common interests such as combating violent extremism, stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials, achieving balanced and sustainable economic growth, and forging cooperative solutions to the threat of climate change." However, the really big change is the open recognition of the elementary truth that military strength depends on economic power -- that the laws of financial gravity affect America just like everybody else. The president has put military policy firmly into a wider economic context. Whilst insisting that the present level of military strength and therefore spending will be maintained, he did not mince his words in front of the assembled army cadets: "At no time in human history has a nation of diminished economic vitality maintained its military and political primacy." It is not possible to say it clearer than that. In amongst the serious stuff there are moments of unintentional black comedy. Presenting the NSS in the White House the president said, "Fidelity to our values is the reason why the United States of America grew from a small string of colonies under the writ of an empire to the strongest nation in the world." Really? It would be difficult to find many Native Americans who would support that statement. They would no doubt prefer Obama's earlier description of US expansion in his book The Audacity of Hope as "an exercise in raw power" that "contradicted America's founding principles". But then, that was then, and this is now. "Al-Qaeda and its affiliates" he assures us are "small men on the wrong side of history". The United States and its NATO and other allies currently have 150,000 soldiers and assorted mercenaries, supported by overwhelming air power, engaged in Afghanistan, with little noticeable success. It would be interesting to know what would be required to deal with Al-Qaeda if they were "big men on the right side of history". It is hard not to call "foul!" when we hear that the US "will be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well" as the US dismisses its own alliance-made proposal, brushed off by Brazil and Turkey, to end the confrontation with. Sadly, once again, that was then, and this is now. Be that as it may, there is evidently now a drive under way, across the administration, to bring attention to the fact, as the November elections approach, that the nation's present economic weakness must be repaired if America's military supremacy is to be maintained. The model being projected is the Eisenhower presidency, supposedly the last administration to control the military budget. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has made an extraordinary appeal for cost savings in the Pentagon, from Eisenhower's home in Abilene a few weeks ago. Now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken out on the same theme with even more force. "We cannot sustain this level of deficit financing and debt without losing our influence, without being constrained in the tough decisions we have to make". She said it was "personally painful" for her to see the yawning deficit after her husband former president Bill Clinton created a budget surplus for his successor George W Bush. She added, "You cannot look at a defence budget, a State Department budget and a USAID budget without defence overwhelming the combined efforts of the other two and without us falling back into the old stovepipes that I think are no longer relevant for the challenges of today." A senior official at the Pentagon denied to Al-Ahram Weekly that there was a coordinated campaign underway within the administration to alert the nation and Congress to financial reality, but that is certainly what it looks like. Nobody is yet saying out loud "less money means fewer guns" but they are getting there slowly.
