Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.  Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

Super Bowl III: Right Click, Open In New Tab

The question of national interest, or as I call it, rational USA grand national strategic objective, is treated by several commenters, all implicitly or explicitly, yet accurately, noting that a statement of same is not present among the so-called US foreign policy/military establishment.

SecDef Mattis himself in his resignation letter refers to something like grand national objective and identifies it as a matrix of alliances that keeps us safe and the world tolerably civilized.  In other words, USA sovereignty and security are in foreign hands and USA grand strategy is to keep it so.

What could be weaker?  USA depends on NATO and UN, ASEAN and WTO?

Rational USA grand national strategic objective is maintenance of USA sovereign freedom backed by will to drive any power threatening that freedom to unconditional surrender.

Two powers today so threaten: China mainly and Salafi-Shiite Jihad plenty but not so ably.

So, step one is close the USA border, including the cyber-border, to those powers except as they cultivate USA sovereign freedom.  Step two is make alliance structure with nations great and small who face the same threats and wish to maintain their sovereign freedom against those threats . . . by driving them to unconditional surrender.

Three sovereign nation states are positioned geographically to assume the offensive against China and Jihad individually and in concert and to lead, again in concert, smaller nations to the same end.  They are India, USA, and Russia.

I call them Three Brothers and their alliance Three Brothers Doctrine.

Three Brothers Doctrine is the Monroe Doctrine in contemporary circumstances.  It is at least three up from zero.

The problem with the military and foreign policy establishment is that it substitutes activity for strategy. Strategy requires some articulation of goals and priorities, as well as some correspondence between means and ends.

Defeat Germany before defeating Japan is a strategy.  An alliance against a common enemy can be a strategy.  Attrition can be a strategy.  Encouraging a regime’s security forces to overreact is a perennial strategy of insurgents.  Fighting everyone, everywhere, all the time, lest we lose sole superpower status is not a strategy.  It’s only a thoughtless bad habit, the product of a failure to prioritize among security risks.  The long-term result of this bad habit will be perpetual war, overstretch, exhaustion, and decline.

Those lines embody a superb grasp of the lack-of-strategy, satisfied-with-tactics, phenomenon [weakness] inside the foreign policy/military establishment.   Fortunately, not entirely unanimous, but obviously rampant. Thank you!

My personal labors on the phenomenon distill to what I call Three Brothers Doctrine.  It could have other names.  And it stands receptive to refinement.  Essentially a defensive alliance posture it is, albeit regulatory towards other nations as needed, i.e., when they go aggressive.  I consider it an expanded Monroe Doctrine, which was essentially defensive and aligned with the instincts of Washington and Lincoln.

The primary facing of Three Brothers Doctrine is towards China.  Its secondary facing is towards the Salafi-Shiite Jihad, or, as your locution puts it, the deep pathologies of the Islamic world.

Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God

Update 1: Christopher Roach: Trump Is Smarter Than The Generals

Update 2: Don Surber: I Didn’t Vote For Jim Mattis

I commented:

If Syria exit is carried through, along with AFPAK and Africa, USA is out of NATO and UN.

That would mean Europe First establishment (aka US national foreign policy/military establishment) is de-platformed.

That would be the best Christmas present I have ever received.  USA strategic interests are westward into and across the Pacific.

…. westward leading, still proceeding ….   The entire impetus of Christianity is westward, coming originally from India and Tibet.  It’s a long way to get home, but it works.

SecDef Mattis is Europe First, which dates from 1940s and, IIRC, Churchill, agreed by Roosevelt.

Update 3: Leslie Eastman: Saudi Arabia and UAE sending troops to help Kurds in Syria

Update 4: Pat Buchanan: How the War Party Lost the Middle East

Update 5: GEN (RET) B. B. Bell: Military Generals And Globalism – And Response

Update 6: Angelo Codevilla: European Defense

Update 7: Good point, good article.  Emphasizing: vector of USA development is westward, not eastward, away from Old World snits (to include MENA), not towards them.

Geo-strategically, water is wet land.  The same strategic rules that apply to land warfare apply to sea warfare.  The sea is wet land.  The air is thin land.

One implication of that reality is that INDOPACOM is an Army show primarily, not a Navy one.  Current  deployments of thought and dispositions of assets do not reflect that fact.

Navy is a transport and fires support asset.  Marines are an assault asset.  Air and Cyber — and Space — are forward fires support assets.  Army is the asset tasked and equipped (when well) for land-control primarily and assault when needed.

The US foreign policy establishment anchors in the premise that USA strategic interests lie to the east, across the Atlantic.  They do not.  They lie to the west, across the Pacific.  That abyssal error is the source of confusion and mayhem in the assembly and execution of statecraft by the USA’s bi-partisan leadership kakistocracy, essentially mutineers against USA identity and strategic interests.  Until now.  Now, someone is shaking their foundations, thankfully.

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA