calling for a post-Cold War policy rooted in the Washington-Jefferson tradition of “no permanent alliances” were abruptly dismissed. We can’t have “isolationism,” said George H.W. Bush. We can’t have “isolation- ism,” said his son George.
So, off we went into Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya. And here we are, 20 years on, more isolated than we have ever been — and bankrupt. Where do we go from here? “The most signifi cant threat to our national security is our debt,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullen in 2010, an echo of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. If not addressed and resolved,
the defi cit-debt crisis will eat up the resources we allocate to defense and destroy the dollar. A default would do to the U.S. system of alliances and archipelago of bases around the world what the fall of the pound did for the worldwide British Empire. What America needs today is what she should have had, and failed to conduct, 20 years ago, when she emerged victorious in the Cold War, with no peer rival. She should have undertaken a bottom-up review of all the alliances and commitments made over 45 years of Cold War, sev- ering and discarding those no longer essential to national security. When the Soviet Empire collapsed and the Soviet Union disintegrated, and the Red Army withdrew all the way from the Elbe to Russia, all U.S. troops should have come home from Central Europe, U.S. airbases should have been shut down, and control of NATO passed to the Europeans. In 1961, Eisenhower urged John F. Kennedy to execute just such a with- drawal, lest the Europeans become military dependents of the United States, as they have today.
Why, two-thirds of a century after the end of World War II, does America still borrow from Europe to defend Europe? Why are we plunging
66 9|11: A DECADE LATER / NEWSMAX / SEPTEMBER 2011
deeper into unpayable debt defend- ing rich countries that refuse to sac- rifi ce to defend themselves? Why is their defense seemingly more impor- tant to us than to them? Today, a third Obama defi cit of 10 percent of GDP and a national debt of 100 percent of GDP are forcing upon us decisions we should have made 20 years ago. Specifi cally, U.S. ground forces should be withdrawn from Europe. If Europe refuses to raise the divisions for its own defense, let Europe live with the consequences.
Second, the 28,000 U.S. troops should be withdrawn from the Korean peninsula. Seoul has an economy 40 times as large as North Korea’s, has twice the population, and access to U.S. weapons superior to anything the North possesses. Third, U.S. troops should be moved out of Japan. America needs to become again the strategic reserve of Western Civilization, not a front- line fi ghting state. Why should U.S. soldiers be fi rst to die in any future Asian war?
Fourth, with the removal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, those nations are going their own way and this nation would not tolerate a
9/11 BY THE NUMBERS
Tracking Crime Crimes
against Muslims peaked in the months following the 9/11
attacks. But despite dire predictions, incidents fell off sharply and remain at historic lows.
reintroduction of U.S. troops. The security interest we have in the Near East and Central Asia is that these nations not serve as base camps for terrorism and that the oil of the Gulf continue to fl ow to the West. U.S. air and naval power, which ought to be enhanced with the savings from base closures abroad, is the way to counter any attacks on threats from terrorist elements or rogue states in this vast region of the world.
America needs to review every alli- ance, every trip wire, every war guar- antee dating back to a Cold War that has been over for a generation, and to sever some and renegotiate others. She needs to reduce her mili-
tary presence abroad, lower her pro- fi le, come home, repair and rebuild her military forces after a decade of attrition and war, and let other nations begin to provide for their own defense, as we had to do from the fi rst earliest days of the republic. America emerged victorious in World Wars I and II and the Cold War. But the nation that emerged triumphant from the post-Cold War era does not appear to be the United States. We need to understand what China has been doing right, and what America has been doing wrong.
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Anti-Islam Hate Crimes
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