To Bill's comment about arrogance, this is not a concept about America, we are simply the party de jour and the nation I am a citizen of that is currently caught up in this problem.
It is America that is leading a global campaign to defeat a tactic and an ideology, and it is America that is not recognizing the causal role of our obsolete and controlling policies lingering in the Middle East that serve to validate much of AQ's dogma regarding "the far enemy."
Policies that are often reasonable and necessary when initiated grow stale and inappropriate over time if not updated for the times. This is true of relationships as well, to include relationships defined in the legal terms of a treaty. In fact, the very nature of a treaty and its fixed terms leads to a relationship most likely to become outdated and inappropriate for the times we live in today. As Bill well knows, we have many treaty allies in the Pacific, treaties crafted during and for the Cold War. It is little wonder much of our pivot looks a lot like Cold War containment when so much of the policy is still crafted in Cold War terms. I would strongly urge our government and the governments of the region to make updating those treaties the policy lead to any sort of military pivot.
This does not mean don't have treaties, but they must be living documents. This does not mean don't have partners, but partnerships must be flexible, both in their terms, and also in what we apply them to. For example, the US cannot expect NATO nations to follow us on every adventure we see as being in OUR national interests and assume that it must be in THEIR national interests as well. Often it isn't. We can wear out our friends and their populations just as fast as we wear out our opponents and their populations. Perhaps we actually have an adverse affect on the populations of friendly nations even faster than we do on those we bump heads with at the governmental level.
Look at Iran. The people there are not too pleased with their government, but they don't blame the US for that government, so we suffer little from populace-based Iranian or Shia terrorism. Our polices to constrain Iranian sovereignty in support of our Saudi and Israeli allies, however is beginning to create a resistance effect in what is otherwise a largely pro-American Iranian population. That is unfortunate, unnecessary, and avoidable. I applaud the President's efforts to work toward normalizing US relations with what is arguably the most important nation in the Middle East.
Being the most powerful nation on earth is an onerous task. We will have to act in ways that are hard on governments and populations at time. No question. But we always have choices as to how we pursue our interests. Currently we are too caught up in the goodness of our own narrative and therefore ascribe excessive badness to narratives that run counter to our own. This is a problem with becoming excessively ideological in one's strategy, and the US NSS is extremely ideological in tone and nature. We need to become more pragmatic and more aware of how others perceive us and our actions. This will help guide us to developing approaches that are more effective than those of the past dozen years, and that are perceived as more appropriate by the global audience who watch or are impacted by our every move.
Resistance is as old as government and war. We did not invent resistance, nor are we the first nation to spark a resistance effect through occupation by policy. But we are the current nation caught up in this cycle, and recognizing the problem for what it is is the first step to backing away from stomping about the planet in an effort to crush the symptoms.
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