In his latest op-ed for Foreign Policy Magazine, James Traub, CIC senior fellow, comments on how the new U.S. National Security Strategy is a guide to protecting a liberal world under chronic threat.
The Biden strategy document instead organizes nations into concentric circles: a “core” of “democratic allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific” that fully share U.S. values; democracies that “share much of our vision for regional and international order” but “do not agree with us on all issues,” a euphemism for countries like India or South Africa that have largely remained on the sidelines during the war in Ukraine; nondemocratic states that welcome a “rules-based international order,” and the bad guys, who seek to disrupt that order.