Reflection 10

I want to start off by saying that I still stand by my stance that security is not all encompasing, as I said on Wednesday (or Thursday morning). But I just want to reflect a little bit on the 2010 Security strategy. One of the means of advancing US interests as stated in the National Security strategy is Prosperity, meaning economic stablility and the well being of the citizens. This week we went to the Christ house, where many homeless people with chronic sicknesses go to get well before they move on to improve their lives. This is a great establishment, and shows that there are people out there who are trying to help people contribute to US society. But at the same time, the fact that there are so many homeless people overshadows the National Security strategy's efforts to promote prosperity. Sick and homeless people can not help the country increase its prosperity, and therefore they have to be taken care of and put in homes before they can ever contribute to society. If prosperity is key to national security, you have to start out by making sure the citizens of your country can contribute to that prosperity. That is all I have to say for today.

Reflection 10—

So let me see if I can somehow relate this to security. Last night I was on the phone with my girlfriend (as usual) and she had just seen the movie “Food Inc.” Now, I haven’t seen the film, but it sounds like the basic premise of it is to say that if there isn’t reform to the food industry, bad things are going to happen. In Obama’s NSS 2010 he relates the security of America to essentially the stability and prosperity of its citizens. In “Food Inc.” one statistic says (don’t quote me on this) that in the near future, over 50% of American minorities will have contracted diabetes. Isn’t this the kind of epidemic that Obama is striving to prevent? The problem with such a sophisticated and modernized world is that there are insufficient funds and insufficient time to properly address all of the threats to our society. I’d say the prospect of millions of Americans having a potentially fatal disease is a pretty substantial threat to our way of life. Any kind of universal healthcare will be crushed if funds are consumed with just an individual problem. The domino affect of something like this is massive. Why am I not terrified…or why will I not care tomorrow? Is it because there are bigger threats to our security? Not really. It is because I can’t do anything about it. Yes the idea of “oh if one person addresses it and then another and another until everyone has changed” is quite a beautiful fantasy, that logic discounts reason. As a singular citizen I have no power beyond filling in a bubble on a scantron. Our security as a nation depends on the effectiveness of our leaders in a system designed to render them ineffective. Senator Kaufman told Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” Tuesday night that the system is fundamentally structured to crush legislation…Well that sucks. Unless some serious reorientation of the political and economic systems occur then all of these issues we are facing will become malignant and effectively screw us over, whatever that means.

Blog 8

National Security involves the measures that are taken, or should be taken, to ensure that the citizens of a country are physically safe and under a stable government. That means stopping and preventing any threats of attack or even sending troops abroad to prevent an attack on the people from happening. But to the US today, it doesn't seem like that is the way things are. The US seems to put every issue in its country as a matter of National Security.
After reading the NSC68 document, it was very clear to me what the US's security strategy was in 1950. The US wanted to subdue the threat of communism because it went against everything the US constitution stood for (under a stable government) and it wanted to try and counter any possible nuclear attack from the USSR (physically safe). That was the basic idea of this top secret security strategy, and it involved nothing but security.
The 2010 security strategy is a little bit different. Not only is it out in the open for anyone to read, which I protest to, but it is very general in terms of what it considers security. Sure, it involves actual security and military options, but for some reason the US seems to consider improving the economy, human rights abroad and education parts of national security, which I just don't agree with. Sure, I understand how educating the youth can contribute to National Security, or how improving the Economy can contribute to National Security. But I don't believe that either of these things really ARE National Security the way that defense is.

Stretching the boundaries too far

Obama’s national security speech encompassed an extremely broad range of threats to be considered in planning national security policy. He mentioned terrorism, nuclear proliferation, violent extremism, cyber warfare, climate change, global health, violations of universal human rights, and a changing global economy.

Determining what the exact boundaries to security policy are depends on how one defines security. National security means maintaining the existence of the nation state through economic, military, and political power. If something impinges on the economic, military, or political security of a nation, or impinges on the values at the core of the nation, then it is considered a threat to security.

With this in mind, something like fighting disease would not be within the boundaries of security policy. Although it does threaten the safety of citizens, it is not something that is a threat to the economic, political, or military security of a nation, nor does it pose a danger to our values. Also, disease doesn’t need to be on the radar 24/7 (except for preventative measures) but can be focused on when an outbreak occurs.  Climate change is beyond the boundary of security for similar reasons. Yes, it is dangerous in the long term and yes, preventative measures need to be taken, but with more pressing matters at hand, such as the increasing presence of terrorist organizations which pose an immediate threat, national security strategy cannot spread itself to cover every single problem or it would be sacrificing attention that is much needed elsewhere.  

I guess that administration needs to be aware of things like disease and climate change because they do pose a danger to our safety, but they should not be trying to deal with these in addition to the more urgent threats.  There are different levels of threats and terrorism, violent extremism, nuclear proliferation, and cyber warfare come first and foremost in protecting our nation.

I think that Obama’s laundry list of threats weakened his overall argument and that focusing his attention on the current critical challenges would have been more effective. Administration should be mindful of things that are dangerous to humanity in all areas, which is why it is good that Obama recognized and mentioned all of these things, but being too inclusive is going to be problematic because certain threats need more attention, even undivided attention, over the others.   

Blog 8—

Determining what the aspects of a security strategy should be or exclude, first begs a definition of security. This definition is dependant upon which theoretical school of thought one identifies with, because they range from narrow to broad interpretations of security. A realist would argue that military force is the primary component of security and probably economic superiority as well. The offensive nature of realist IR dictates that the best defense is having a bigger stick than everyone else. Conversely a liberal would concede that military power is important for security, but on a more defensive scale. The liberal doctrine would promote the idea of diplomacy as the key component of security. Strong alliances and an international presence rule liberal security thought. Constructivists would advocate for the promotion of shared values throughout the world. If the international community were to have the same basic set of moral and humanitarian standards, then the community would be far more socially cohesive, thus ensuring the security of all nations.

In President Obama’s National Security Strategy he addresses all of these scholarly viewpoints. He realistically makes the assertion that the U.S. military must adapt to a new and more versatile enemy, thus remodeling the American war machine to be better suited to wage war in the modern world. There was also a heavy focus on healing our economy to retain our hegemonic economic supremacy. The document also prescribes a massive influx of American diplomats to countries around the world, in order to promote peace and democracy. Obama also spoke about keeping the values of the U.S. strong as well as spreading them to places where people are oppressed and can barely conceive the idea of freedom.

The document addressed a large variety of topics as they relate to security, and all have an argument to support them. The only issue with the document, which is a fundamental one, is that there was no outline for how any of the goals he presented were to be achieved. This leaves us with the big question of 'will any change actually occur.'

Reflection 9

Since I put most of the action stuff in my Blog from yesterday, I think I am going to just reflect on how I felt about the Risk game in general. i had never played Risk before, and it was a really exciting experience to learn how to play in a world politics setting. I am sure it probably will have ruined the real version of Risk for me, should I ever choose to play it. On one hand, I wish it would have just kept going, but on the other, I was kind of glad to finally get it done and over with. I was happy that all of our tactics seemed to be working, but after a while I just wanted the game to end and to move on, because it just felt like no one was coming any closer to their goal, we were all just getting rid of people instead of working to win. But I guess that's how it has to work in the world of Liberalism, which I hadn't thought about yesterday. when you work with other people, things take longer to get done, and so in the end, it is just easier to go at it by yourself sometimes, from a world politics point of view. I guess that is another reason why not everyone in the world will just give in to Liberalism. But anyway, this was probably my favorite subject of the class so far, and hope we can play a game like that again in the future.

Reflection—9

More Diplomatic Risk…So this week of the game really sucked. My teammates and I (the blue team) had a perfectly devised plan to achieve our objective in the game. Since it is over now (sadly) I feel fine revealing fully our two objectives, which were to either have 15 alliances on the Diplomatic Status board or to have no wars declared on the board. At the end of Fridays class the blue team, almost single handedly, tapped into our physical and diplomatic resources to eliminate the red team from the game. We did this successfully, clearing the status board of wars. The only two neutral squares remaining were determined by the black team and us. Our secret power (as we understood it) was that we could censure any team from changing the diplomatic status board from one round of play. So…if you can follow the logic, we clearly were not going to declare war and could censure black if they attempted to declare war. No wars on the status board…game won…blue team kicks ass. Roland and I are high-fiving, Rachel and Hillary are giggling, and Kate is about to have a nervous breakdown she’s so excited. Then we were informed by PTJ that we could only use our power to freeze the board at the beginning of the round, effectively ruining our beautiful moment. Thanks a lot.