The Balance of Power

I feel better about my country today. It's not that anything in America has particularly gotten any better, it's just that my perspective has changed. I fell victim to what I think might happen to a lot of people in this country: I lost my historical perspective.

America is a young country. It's always had a balance of outright hubris and a feeling of paranoia or panic. This makes sense for an adolescent trying to find it's place in the world doesn't it?

A few days ago, President Barack Obama announced that he might be willing to cancel the missile defense program in exchange for the Russian's help in containing the development of Iran's nuclear program.

At first, I was willing to throw rocks at Obama for even thinking about canceling the missile defense program. I have a special place in my heart for a national missile defense program. President Ronald Reagan announced the program on the day that I was born. I don't know if there is a coincidence, but in any case, I have always been fascinated behind the technology of missile defense. Not to mention the feeling one gets by watching a giant rocket in a contained skyward explosion. Sheer power. Grunt.

Obama's willingness to seek help from the Russians is simply an effort to seek a restoration of the balance of power that existed in the Middle East during the Cold War. Hear me out. During the Cold War, the thought of the emergence of a regional power in the middle east was always prevented because the Soviets and the Americans would have immediately exchanged blows in response. No one dared moved in the middle east during the Cold War.

Problems in Afghanistan began when the Americans tried to subvert the Soviets by funding a resistance effort in the country. When the Soviet Union fell, the forces that had been trained in the American military way of covert intelligence gathering, equipped with American military arms and equipment turned against the United States. Surprise.

Although the Soviets were the military enemy at the time, they served to counter the development of any regional power. There may have been individual military engagements since then, but there has not been a development of a regional power.

Even if Iran develops the capability for nuclear weapons (Indeed, many say it already has them) it is not likely that a regional power will develop. The United States holds the keys to far too many players in the region.

The strategy of the United States is not to win wars, but to serve as the disrupting force to anything that counters the power of the US.

I have the full confidence that the United States can counter any threat that comes it's way so long as the economy is still as vibrant as it has been. We still have the largest economy in the world. As long as other countries still seek to trade with us, we will always retain our existing superpower status.