Defense Strategy Course
Lesson 1, Writing Assessment

Essay Topic: Understanding Sharing Power?

Date: 20 JULY 2015

Name: Vasquez, Manny
CW5 (Proponent: USA)

Dr. Patrick Parker’s proposition is correct in that the United States can continue to be the world’s lone hegemon, but it must also recognize the rise of regional powers. In other words, the American government cannot totally isolate itself from world events nor can it continue being the world’s lone overbearing policeman or benefactor. He suggests that future American grand strategy must consist of a middle ground that gives it the ability to protect its national interests while wisely flexing its instruments of national power when dealing with competitors, adversaries, and up incoming regional powers.
At the conclusion of World War II the Soviet Union became one of two dominate superpowers. The Soviets had the ability to influence its immediate neighbors and offered countries a communist ideology that discredited capitalism and blamed it for starting the Great Patriotic War. The Soviets used propaganda on devastated European populations by demanding acclaim for being the principal reason why Hitler’s Germany was defeated. They maintained an occupation army stationed in Eastern-European countries under the pretense of liberators, but in reality, the Soviet soldiers were enforcers over buffer satellite states. The Soviets were one-half of a bi-polar world and principal antagonist of the western world until the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991.
The United States came out of the World War II largely untouched, a tremendous global military, and an economic powerhouse. Due to the peace dividend, American politicians decided to demobilize the military that was fourteenth in combat power before global hostilities began to being number one at war’s end. It was