A Republican neo-imperial vision for 2016

Don’t think for a minute that this president isn’t proud of his climate-changing energy program.  To be clear, however, I don’t mean his efforts to check the advances of climate change.  Consider the introduction to the new U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) his administration unveiled last week.  It’s a 29-page document filled with the usual braggadocio about America’s “indispensable” role in global leadership in a “complex world.”  And it’s true that part of that indispensability, the document claims, involves offering leadership when it comes “to turn[ing] the corner on global carbon emissions.”  Hence, assumedly, the recent deal with China on capping those emissions.

But when the president and his national security officials really walk the walk and talk the talk, that’s not what they’re focused on.  Read the NSS and the first fossil fuel reference you come upon, smack-dab in the middle of the second paragraph of that intro, goes like this: “America’s growing economic strength is the foundation of our national security and a critical source of our influence abroad... We are now the world leader in oil and gas production.”  You can practically hear the cheering in the background.