Dear Editor:

Attacking a country that poses no imminent threat to our national security is very expensive, short-sighted, and often unsuccessful.

More ethical, much cheaper, and in the long run far more beneficial to both countries is the use of “soft power.” Foreign aid, foreign investment, cultural exchange, and strategic cooperation reduce tension and conflict, while diminishing the reach of imperial powers for global dominance.

If the goal is hemispheric hegemony, as President Trump’s was until he reignited war in the Middle East, the Chinese model of soft power is much more effective. Offer the benefits of free trade and expanded legal immigration, join regional security alliances and hold out the prospect of mutual prosperity: the knock-on benefits are limitless.

We have already borne the costs of Trump’s “America First’ policies. Unsurprisingly, they have resulted in a new and dangerous “America Alone” reality — one in which our former allies suffer punishing tariffs and public humiliation; when called upon for assistance, they rightly suggest that we use our own military assets to finish the conflicts we have begun.

To maintain this belligerent, hard-power and zero-sum foreign policy, we bear the tax burden of financing an increasingly bloated defense department to the tune of a trillion dollars, soon to be bumped to 1.5 trillion. The warlord who promoted himself from president to king and now to emperor has set us on the path to imperial ruin: dividing the nation along class, ethnic, gender, and religious lines, he is driving up our national debt with military overreach. History is littered with the corpses of unsustainable, hegemonic states.

Phil Klay of The New York Times deftly summarized this thesis: “Our greatest wartime leaders thought we should wage war only when it was absolutely necessary, that we should articulate the clear moral and political objectives to guide our strategy, and that we should treat the shedding of blood with the seriousness it deserves.

“Power does not grow out of the barrel of a gun, cruelty is not the same as strength, and a politics built on such ideas promises ruin, delusion about the limits of our power and a betrayal of the promise of our founding.”

Bill Hammond

Boothbay