The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of distinction between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
-- Sir William Francis Butler
The Sovereignty Solution is not an Establishment national security strategy. Instead, it describes what the U.S. could actually do to restore order to the world without having to engage in either global policing or nation-building. Right now there is no coherent plan that addresses questions like: If terrorists were to strike Chicago tomorrow, what would we do? When Chicago is burning, whom would we target? How would we respond? There is nothing in place and no strategy on the horizon to either reassure the American public or warn the world: attack us, and this is what you can expect. We’ve also never had a plan that says: respect our sovereignty and we’ll respect yours. There are two tracks to the strategy presented in this book: strengthening state responsibility abroad, and strengthening the social fabric here at home. Because no one considers the state of our social fabric in light of our foreign policy, or our foreign policy in light of what we might all agree America should stand for, this book is unique. Our goal? To provoke a serious national security debate that addresses and then redresses the gaps and disconnects between what the U.S. says, what the U.S. does, how the U.S. wants to be perceived, and how the U.S. actually is perceived. We offer a radically commonsensical way to recalibrate global security by getting countries to self-police.