The White House has finally released the long-awaited National Security Strategy (NSS). Among the document’s patronizing treatment of US allies, incongruous aspirations to be the best in every technological endeavor (while the administration actively undermines the American scientific enterprise), and dog whistles that sometimes devolve into overt, jaw-dropping racism, one might miss a startling feature of this missive: It lays out a strategy that almost entirely ignores the greatest threats humanity faces.
The authors of the NSS assert that “the purpose of foreign policy is the protection of core national interests” and uses that logic to justify a policy of isolationism. They then state that “[n]o adversary or danger should be able to hold America at risk.”But there are basic problems with both assertions. The core national interests of the United States are undeniably affected by human-caused existential risks that have no respect for sovereign national borders and cannot be mitigated by any one country.
Further, America is at risk every day, all day from these threats. The looming, multi-player nuclear arms race, the increasingly devastating effects of climate change, and the exponential growth of disruptive technologies are all part of an inescapable reality—one with which any serious foreign policy thinker is intimately familiar.
Even though it took over 10 months to produce, the 29-page document does little to outline how the United States will manage any of these threats. Unfortunately for the American people and the world, ignoring these risks is not a strategy; it is a disaster in the making.
Read HERE the full article by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist
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