| Rath said: It's a clever policy. There is no real loss (any attack by a state on America would be met by a hammer blow of military force anyway, everybody knows it) and you gain plenty of soft power. He's reversing Bush's policy of making the world fear the USA by trying to get the world to like the USA just a little bit more. |
The question was never if the US could appropriately respond. The entire point is not to be attacked in the first place.
The very crux of the matter that those who are fine with this seem to be missing in their excitement over the gains in soft power is that effective deterrents are few and far between while bargaining chips for soft power are easy to come by in comparison.
Soft power is only effective against those who will listen or be cooperative, and those aren't the sorts of groups and nations that are at all considering attacking the US, and consequently they aren't at all worried that we would ever nuke them.
The policy is the antithesis of clever, it is pure shortsighted bafoonery that trades away longterm high-value for short-term low-value.
How long do you think the credit of this move will last? Even if we're generous a decade would be the absolute longest we could trade on this. Meanwhile the threat of a nuclear retaliation is persistent and only causes worry for those who would consider attacking us in the first place.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
