Kagan, McDougall

Read a nice piece by Kagan in Foreign Affairs on the geography of Chinese strategy. Most salient point (to me) was discussion of a possible American strategy of dropping back to the "second island chain" (aka Oceana), or in other words, emphasizing basing in Guam, the Solomons, Marianas, and Marshalls, vice Korea and Japan. More feasible, both politically and economically, and avoids needless provocation as the PRC inevitably expands. Of course, this option would presume that we can somehow extricate ourselves from the burden of defending Japan, Korea, and, of course, Taiwan. It also seems to lead to economic dominance of Beijing, not to mention the possibility of our former allies finlandizing toward China. But in the end, I feel that even these temporary setbacks would be a good thing, because they would tend to overburden the communist regime in Beijing and hasten the day that China either collapses or democratizes.

McDougall's piece on grand strategy corresponded with my own writing on ends, ways, and means. I was gratified that he nailed the current practice of verbalizing goals in the National Security Strategy without talking about means or ways.