The American Way of Strategy

I have just finished reading "The American Way of Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life" by Michael Lind and found it one of the most thoughtful analysis of a most challenging issue. Lind addresses the following question: What international grand strategy will best protect and support the "American Way of Life"?

This, in turn, poses the question: What is the "American Way of Life? Lind answers: Civilian government, checks and balances, a commercial economy, and individual freedom. He then goes on the posit several different generic grand strategies, analyses American history in the context of protection of the "American Way of Life", and concluded that the best approach has been and will be a balance of liberal internationalism and realism.

Specifically, he proposes as our best strategy for the foreseeable future what he calls "Concerts of Power", a series of regional compacts in which the United States acts less as the leader (with the exception of North America) as the "re-insurer" (my term, not his) of political/military power. Read this book! It will be time well-spent. Of course, I am biased as I intuited something similar and benefit from Lind's more analytical approach to the issue.

[A very complementary book is Peter Beinart's "The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again". Beinart's historical view is somewhat shorter (just post - WW II) but he makes a key point that is implicit in Lind's work: American exceptionalism only makes sense if we take as a given that we can do wrong with it, rather than assuming that this world view is always benign.]

Back to Lind's book. There are several ommissions of importance:

1. No where does Lind discuss how we get "from here to there". How do we mobilize the American body politic to recognize the wisdom of this reasoning and to change the way we "play the game"? Obviously, this is difficult at best. Is it in effect impossible?
2. Another unanswered question: Assuming that we are able to change the American mindset and to develop and deploy what Lind suggests, what if others are unrealistic about what it takes for them to benefit from this change? Specifically, what if Europe (EU?) doesn't build up and coordinate its foreign affairs and military endowment so as to permit the United States to step back to it's "reinsurance" role?
   

I am sure that there are other practical issues to be considered. So let's take what Lind is offering us a get on with a realistic debate on the merits of his proposals and their implementation.