Obama's Security Strategy Is Clueless | Ted Galen Carpenter | Cato Institute: Commentary

Obama's Security Strategy Is Clueless | Ted Galen Carpenter | Cato Institute: Commentary: "The principal theme in this NSS is burden sharing. The United States, the document stresses, cannot afford to be the world's sole policeman. Washington needs partners who are willing and able to meet security challenges and help preserve global peace and prosperity.

But administrations since the founding of NATO in 1949 have emphasized the need for such burden sharing — with a spectacular lack of success. And successive generations of U.S. officials have vented their impotent frustration. President Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, warned the European allies in 1954 that if they didn't do more for the common defense effort against the Soviet Union, the United States would have to conduct an 'agonizing reappraisal' of its commitment to Europe. The NATO allies treated his warning as the empty threat that it was. Their security free riding on the United States barely diminished throughout the remainder of the Cold War."