{"id":220298,"date":"2022-09-26T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=220298"},"modified":"2022-09-26T05:03:48","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T04:03:48","slug":"what-do-north-americans-care-about-not-a-cold-war-with-russia-and-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/09\/what-do-north-americans-care-about-not-a-cold-war-with-russia-and-china\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do North Americans Care About? Not a Cold War with Russia and China"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Citizens’ top security concerns include safety at home and protecting jobs.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Pentagon in Washington. (Charles Dharapak\/AP) (AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

20 Sep 2022 – <\/em>The Biden administration will soon release<\/a> its National Security Strategy, which is being revised in the wake of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. The document will no doubt trigger a renewed debate about how the United States should gear up for a new Cold War against Russia and China. But before we plunge into a global great-power competition, it\u2019s worth recalling President Biden\u2019s promise to create a \u201cforeign policy for the middle class\u201d<\/a> and take a look at what most concerns North Americans.<\/p>\n

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Congress is about to add tens of billions<\/a> of dollars to the military budget. Unrepentant hawks scorn this as inadequate<\/a>, urging a 50 percent increase, or an additional $400 billion or more a year. Aid to Ukraine totals more than $40 billion this year<\/a>, and counting. A new buildup is underway in the Pacific<\/a>. Biden summons North Americans to the global battle between<\/a> democracy and autocracy, implying that U.S. security depends on spreading democracy \u2014 and, implicitly, regime change \u2014 worldwide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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North Americans, it is safe to say, have different \u2014 one might suggest more practical \u2014 concerns, as revealed in a recent Quinnipiac University poll<\/a>. Asked about the most urgent issue facing the country today, 27 percent of respondents \u2014 the highest number \u2014 ranked inflation as No. 1, while only 2 percent ranked Ukraine at the top. In a range of Economist-YouGov polls<\/a> over the past month, the top foreign-policy concerns included immigration and climate change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The foreign policy \u201cblob\u201d may be gearing up for a global Cold War, but US citizens are focused on security at home<\/a>. According to a survey by the nonpartisan Eurasia Group Foundation, nearly half of Anglo Americans think the United States should decrease its involvement<\/a> in other countries\u2019 affairs; only 21.6 percent would increase it. Nearly 45 percent would decrease U.S. troop deployments abroad; only 32.2 percent would increase them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Polls, of course, are merely snapshots \u2014 and war fever can transform opinion. However, a 2021 report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs reported many of the same priorities. Far more Anglo Americans (81 percent) said they were concerned about threats from within the country than from outside the country (19 percent). Among foreign policy goals, more than 75 percent of respondents ranked protecting U.S. workers\u2019 jobs and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, respectively, as very important. Ranked lowest were \u201chelping to bring a democratic form of government to other nations\u201d (18 percent) and \u201cprotecting weaker nations against foreign aggression\u201d (32 percent).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What would a sensible strategy for the middle class look like? A recent paper from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft \u2014 \u201cManaged Competition: A U.S. Grand Strategy for a Multipolar World<\/a> \u2014 offers a good start. The author is George Beebe<\/a>, a former head of the CIA\u2019s Russia analysis unit who is currently director of grand strategy at the institute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Beebe argues that over the past three decades, \u201cyawning gaps\u201d have emerged not only between \u201cUSA\u2019s ambitions in the world and its capacity for achieving those goals,\u201d but also between a \u201cWashington foreign policy elite too focused on promoting U.S. primacy\u201d and \u201cordinary North Americans yearning for greater stability and prosperity at home.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He echoes the priorities of most citizens, arguing that \u201cthe chief strategic challenge Washington faces today is not to win a decisive battle between freedom and tyranny but to gain a breathing spell abroad that will allow the country to focus on desperately needed internal recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He then outlines the core of a strategy for this time: a \u201cmanaged competition\u201d with Russia and China. Recognizing that our economic health is intertwined with China\u2019s, and that Russia\u2019s nuclear arsenal demands prudence, he would \u201cavoid promoting regime change\u201d or otherwise \u201cundermining political and economic stability in Russia and China.\u201d Instead, in a managed competition, our rivals would be countered not only by Anglo American power and alliances, but also by rebuilding \u201cagreed rules of the game,\u201d beginning presumably with efforts to revive nuclear arms agreements and create cyber agreements to limit these growing security challenges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For this to occur, he notes elsewhere,<\/a> there must be an agreed end to the war in Ukraine. Beebe concedes that Vladimir Putin\u2019s attack required a strong U.S.-led response. But as when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Beebe would distinguish between repelling Putin\u2019s aggression and efforts to foster regime change in Moscow or to bring Ukraine into the Western orbit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the current euphoria over Russian reversals in Ukraine, this caution is likely to fall upon deaf ears. But a foreign policy for the middle class must find a way to curb our adventures abroad so that we can rebuild our democracy and strength at home. A Cold War against Russia and China might empower the foreign policy elite, enrich the military-industrial-congressional complex and excite our bellicose media, but it ignores the North American people\u2019s common sense.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Katrina vanden Heuvel <\/em>is editorial director and publisher of <\/em>The Nation and<\/em> served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.<\/em> She has edited or co-edited several books, including<\/em> The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obama (2011) and<\/em> Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover (2009).<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 washingtonpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Sep 2022 – US Citizens’ top security concerns include safety at home and protecting jobs. The US Congress is about to add tens of billions of dollars to the military budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":204775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,244,1061,278,961,70,481],"class_list":["post-220298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-china","tag-cold-war-ii","tag-russia","tag-ukraine","tag-usa","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}