It was only through reading the Acknowledgment at the end of “Strategic Vision, American and Crisis of Global Power” that we discovered the reason between the deficiencies of portions of the first half of the book and the brilliance of the final chapters: They were drafted by two different aides!
After setting forth his views concerning American policy towards an expanded Europe in future decades, the author Zbigniew Brzezinski turns his attention towards proper American policy towards Asia post 2025.
He cautions “…Any direct US military involvement in conflicts between rival Asian powers should be avoided. No outcome of either a Pakistani-Indian war, or of one also involving China, or even a strictly Chinese-Indian war is likely to produce consequences more damaging to US interests than a renewed and possibly expanded American military engagement the Asian Mainland.” He does carve out an exception to our meeting our treaty obligations to Japan and South Korea.
Rather he sees the US should “respect China’s special historical and geopolitical role in maintaining stability on the Far Eastern mainland” using a balancing influence to bring about an eventual “American-Japanes-Chinese cooperative triangle”, recognizing that our role in Asia will be that of influence towards peace and democratic progress and helping to balance China’s prime position in the region.
The USA “must be the promoter and guarantor of greater and broader unity in the West, and it must be the balancer and conciliator between the major powers in the East. Both roles are essential and each is needed to reinforce the other. But to have the credibility and the capacity to pursue both successfully, America needs to show the world that it has the will to renovate itself at home.”
We believe the hardest task will be essential reforms at home, given the rapacious grasp by special interests on the domestic economy and the genetic predisposition of humans to ignore facts and to pursue ideological dogma over what is in their own best interests.
