WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — James Jatras is a former foreign policy adviser to the leadership of the Republican Party in the US Senate.
"It’s really quite simple," Jatras said. "The next US president, he or she, [should be] willing to abandon the unlimited, ideological hegemonic assumptions behind post-Cold War US policy and adopt a national interest-based approach."
Jatras argued that focusing on national interest issues would rapidly eliminate the causes of conflict and tension between the United States and Russia since the two great powers had no major conflicts of interest on key policies.
"In terms of limited, national interests, the United States and Russia have few if any points of conflict."
Such a shift of perspective would require that US leaders came to recognize that other major nations such as Russia and China had their own legitimate areas of national interest that were as crucial to them, as America’s was to its own leaders, Jatras explained.
"This of course means conceding that Russia (and China) have legitimate spheres of influence, even as we have long claimed one under the Monroe Doctrine, legitimately so."
The Monroe Doctrine formulated by US President James Monroe in 1823 stated that the United States had as a priority strategic goal preventing any other major power establishing itself in either North or South America.
Jatras noted that Russia historically had an equally legitimate interest and right to prevent potentially hostile powers from establishing their own military bases or influences in areas around Russia’s periphery that could threaten her security and survival.
Nor did the United States have any current or historical crucial interest in those regions, where it was now establishing major air, land and naval forces, Jatras observed.
"What national interests does the United States have in the Baltic region, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Ukraine? Zero."
Control of foreign policy in the United States in both major political parties had fallen into the hands of extreme ideologues that fantasized that they could and should be running the entire world, Jatras warned.
"Unfortunately Republican neo-conservatives and Democratic liberal interventionists have been willing to encroach on Russia’s vital interest to create a US zone of dominance continuous with the planet."
This reckless and extremist foreign policy was indirect contradiction of traditional US strategic and diplomatic values and precedents, Jatras noted.
"Our Founding Fathers would be horrified."
