The United States has been regarded as one of the most powerful countries since World War II. This powerful world prowess has been held due to successful trading relationships and a prosperous economy.
But recently, with skyrocketing federal spending, more than $1 trillion spent on the Iraq War, and economic troubles, the United States’ world influence has been dwindling.
Currently, the United States accounts for 44 percent of the world total of military spending.
The military has been sent to all corners of the world trying to establish and keep democracy.
Dr. Lloyd J. Dumas, author of The Peacekeeping Economy, believes that America could become the most highly respected superpower once again by using the right foreign policy plans.
Dumas wants Americans to think about war differnetly.
He wants us to think about it as a last resort. The first resort, he says, should be building strong economic ties to other nations.
Since the beginning of time, national security has been synonymous with military strength.
This just shouldn’t be, he said.
“Military actions are very costly and often very ineffective in terms of building security for us,” Dumas said.
In short, protecting our country using peace methods is a better idea than using military force to ward away possible threats.
On one hand, having a powerful military is important in a world with so much destructive technology. On the other, using all the manpower having too large a military makes a country look hostile toward potential international relationships.
Unfortunately, we Americans have used our “last resorts” pretty regularly. After World War II, we fought battles with Korea, Russia, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The use of force since the beginning of the first Desert Storm has taken an enormous chunk of stability from the United States, both relationship-wise and in regard to the economy.
The economy is in shambles, jobs are scarce and the federal government is sluggish when it comes tackling foreign policy issues.
Sometimes war is the solution. It sure was when Hitler was tromping through Europe with no one to stop him.
But it isn’t the solution right now, not for Pakistan, Afghanistan or anyone.
concerned reader • Feb 1, 2012 at 1:20 AM
Okay. I have a few concerns.
1. Please, please, please, EDIT YOUR STUFF. At the very least, PROOFREAD. If you can’t even spare the time to do that, surely you can spare the effort to run spell check. I’m pretty sure every spell checker in the world would catch “differNETly.” As far as the bad grammar and weak sentence constructions go, eliminating some of your passive constructions would bring about a HUGE improvement (four out of the first five sentences are passive. I’m no English professor, but that seems like a lot).
3. I’m not a journalism major, but I do read plenty of newspapers and magazines, and I haven’t read very many op-ed pieces that don’t introduce some sort of opinion (op?) within the first couple of paragraphs. Maybe I’m out of line and this is how these things are supposed to look (hey, everyone makes mistakes!), but I really think this piece could benefit from a LOT more op-ness.
I do LOVE the website, though, and enjoy most of the stories both online and in print. Y’all are doing good work and print important stories, but a little bit more polish before you publish (either online or in print) would go a LONG way in making The Wichitan appear more credible.
concerned reader • Feb 1, 2012 at 1:21 AM
And I need to proofread, too! LOL. Apparently I’m like Rick Perry and can’t accurately count to 3. Oops!