America's Battered Spirit: Our Security and Foreign Policy Dilemma
Abstract
In this turbulent historical era, our systemic political and economic problems, and, most fundamentally, the battered, declining American spirit pose a critical dilemma for our security and foreign policy: Should we accept the reduced world role that our domestic realities suggest is necessary, thus eroding still further our ability to defend our interests; or should we try to exercise a more proactive international policy, thus risking failure of that policy because it is not consonant with domestic realities? The way out of this dilemma may be a reinvigorated national spirit. There can be little doubt that in recent years America's international power and prestige-and our ability to influence the worldwide political, economic, and military environment in which we must exist-have been eroded. This has been so not only in relation to our principal adversary, the Soviet Union, but also with regard to various countries and groups of countries in the Third and Fourth Worlds (for example, Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam, and OPEC). Moreover, this unfavorable trend seems to be accelerating, most recently as we helplessly watched some of our most important strategic and economic interests being destroyed in Iran.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1979
- Accession Number
- ADA515995
Entities
People
- James R. Bullington
Organizations
- United States Army War College