As required by law, the White House released a document last fall outlining its national security strategy. Douglas Feith finds much that the report gets correct, but also some serious deficiencies:
This strategy is 48 pages long. It uses the word “must” 39 times. To drive home that President Biden is not his predecessor, the strategy constantly emphasizes allies and partners. It uses the word “allies” 38 times and “partner” or “partnership” an astounding 167 times. Meanwhile, it does not use “enemy” even once. Two of the three times it uses the word “adversary” it is referring to “potential” rather than actual adversaries. The third time, it says only that America’s network of allies and partners is “the envy of our adversaries.”
There are references to pragmatic problem-solving “based on shared interests” with countries like China and Iran. The strategy does not explain, however, what U.S. officials should do if such cooperation is inconsistent with other U.S interests. Should they work with China at the expense of opposition to genocide against the Uighurs? Should they work with Iran at the expense of that country’s pro-democracy resistance movement?
Iran and North Korea are called “autocratic powers,” but being autocratic is not the key to their hostility and danger. Rather, it is that they are ideologically hostile to the United States and the West.
A strategy paper should establish priorities, but this one simply says we have to do this and that, when the actions are inconsistent with each other. . . . We should pursue the nuclear deal with Iran even when Iran is threatening its neighbors and aiding Russia in Ukraine (and, as noted, crushing its domestic critics). We should insist on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict while the Palestinian Authority remains unreasonable, corrupt, inflexible, and hostile.
Read more on Hudson Institute: https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/biden-administration-national-security-strategy-nss