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After Obama: Trump Administration Confronts the Status Quo. Gregory Copley, Defense & Foreign Affairs.

US Strategic Policy Options in a Post-Obama World

Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs. US ….

Much of the rest of the world is already on the move in terms of policy thinking. The most reluctant to ad-just strategic policy thinking are the close historical allies of the US, most particularly, for example, Aus-tralia and some European states. This is particularly evidenced by their sense of denial of the voting changes in the US and the UK, and their belief that the US and UK must return to the status quo ante. Even Canada and Japan are stirring in their understanding that the world is changing, even if they are as yet unaware of the scope of change they require.

Several “new” macro-level realities are evident, and which are creating new and evolving dynamics:

 Russia and the People’s Republic of China have broken out of their earlier containment by the West;

………….  Some parts of Africa and the Middle East, now without overarching external power and economic influence to give them structure, are reverting to the influence of traditional factors. Inherent con-cepts of nationhood and sovereignty will begin to emerge, but will be resisted by the “modern” power structures — the post-colonial nation-state structures and borders of Africa and the Middle East — which were created in the 20th Century, and which have benefited from the exploitation of the inherent wealth of those societies. In other words, older ethnic, linguistic, and cultural struc-tures will begin again to re-assert influence;

 New security technologies and structures are emerging which render obsolescent many older sys-tems and doctrines, and yet capital-intensive legacy systems and thinking cannot yet be entirely abandoned. This is its own technology version of the “Thucydides Trap”: rising new security op-tions versus declining older capabilities. As a result, the risk of miscalculation in attempting stra-tegic confrontation has risen substantially, and in many respects this represents a generational gap in thinking as to how to technologically and doctrinally approach the transformed global archi-tecture;

 Totally transformed population cohesion in many societies — due to population decline (in many ar-eas), urbanization and trans-national migration — significantly impacts national productivity and economic planning, but in turn raises the viability of earlier (pre-globalism) approaches to self-sufficiency within nation-states; and so on….”