Brent Scowcroft Center Nonresident Senior Fellow James Joyner writes for The Hill on the domestic policy agenda in the Obama administration’s “National Security Strategy”:
The Obama administration has released its long-awaited update to the “National Security Strategy.” While ostensibly a report to Congress on the president’s priorities for safeguarding U.S. interests globally, around which to base funding and procurement discussions, a fair amount of the domestic political agenda inevitably creeps in. This go-around, though, this was flipped on its head; the domestic focus predominates.
The second sentence of the report posits that, “America’s growing economic strength is the foundation of our national security and a critical source of our influence abroad,” and a remarkable amount of text that follows is related to that premise. Before any mention of external threats or challenges, we’re told that “we have created nearly 11 million new jobs during the longest private sector job growth in our history,” that “[u]nemployment has fallen to its lowest level in [six] years,” “[w]e are now the world leader in oil and gas production,” and “[w]e continue to set the pace for science, technology, and innovation in the global economy.”