https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jdvanceusnavalacademycommencement.htm
以下为有关全球战略和外交政策部分。
Now, last week, the President took a very historic trip to the Middle East, meeting with heads of state in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Most of the headlines focused on the trillions of dollars of new investment the President secured for our country, and thats of course an important thing. But I actually think the most significant part of that trip is that it signified the end of a decades-long approach in foreign policy that I think was a break from the precedent set by our Founding Fathers.
We had a long experiment in our foreign policy that traded national defense and the maintenance of our alliances for nation building and meddling in foreign countries affairs, even when those foreign countries had very little to do with core American interests. What were seeing from President Trump is a generational shift in policy with profound implications for the job that each and every one of you will be asked to do.
Now, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, our policymakers assumed that American primacy on the world stage was guaranteed. For a brief time, we were a superpower without any peer; nor did we believe any foreign nation could possibly rise to compete with the United States of America. And so our leaders traded hard power for soft power. We stopped making things, everything from cars to computers to the weapons of war, like the ships that guard our waters, and the weapons that you will use in the future.
Why do we do that? Well, too many of us believed that economic integration would naturally lead to peace by making countries, like the Peoples Republic of China, more like the United States. Over time, we were told the world would converge toward a uniform set of bland, secular, universal ideals, regardless of culture or country. And those that didnt want to converge, well, our policymakers would make it their goal to force them by any means necessary. So instead of devoting our energies to responding to the rise of near-peer competitors like China, our leaders pursued what they assumed would be easy jobs for the worlds preeminent superpower.
How hard could it be to build a few democracies in the Middle East? Well, almost impossibly hard, it turns out, and unbelievably costly. And it wasnt our politicians who bore the consequences of such a profound miscalculation. It was the American people to the tune of trillions of dollars; but more than anyone, it was born by the people who were in your shoes just a few short years ago -- by our service members and their families. The tens of thousands of warfighters who sacrificed precious time, energy, and in some cases their very lives in the line of duty -- they are the ones who bore the cost of past failure.
Our leaders abandoned clearly stated strategic goals for lofty, often incoherent abstractions. This is how, for example, we wound up chasing a $230 million peer in Gaza that worked for a grand total of 20 days while injuring over 60 American service members in the construction and maintenance of that pier. Our government took its eye off the ball of great power competition and preparing to take on a peer adversary, and instead, we devoted ourselves to sprawling, amorphous tasks like searching for new terrorists to take out while building up faraway regimes.
Now, I want to be clear. The Trump Administration has reversed course. No more undefined missions. No more open-ended conflicts. Were turning -- returning to a strategy grounded in realism and protecting our core national interests. Now, this doesnt mean that we ignore threats. But it means that we approach them with discipline and that when we send you to war, we do it with a very specific set of goals in mind. In just the first 100 days of the Administration, we were able to reach a ceasefire and a conflict that had been ongoing for nearly two years.
Thats how military power should be used: decisively with a clear objective. We ought to be cautious in deciding to throw a punch, but when we throw a punch, we throw a punch hard, and we do it decisively, and thats exactly what we may ask you to do.
Now, that shift in thinking, from ideological crusades to a principled foreign policy, will help restore the credibility of American deterrence in 2025 and beyond. With the Trump Administration, our adversaries now know: When the United States sets a red line, it will be enforced. And when we engage, we do so with purpose, with superior force, with superior weapons, and with the best people anywhere in the world.
Let me say something about weapons and the future of warfare. It is, of course, a priority of this Administration not just to keep but to widen the technological edge between the United States military and our adversaries all over the world. In the wake of the Cold War, America enjoyed a mostly unchallenged command of the commons: airspace, sea, space, and cyberspace. But the area -- the era of uncontested U.S. dominance is over. Today, we face serious threats in China, Russia, and others nations [sic] determined to beat us in every single domain. From spectrum, to low Earth orbit, to our supply chains and even our communication infrastructure, technology has lowered the cost of disruption and so we must be, all of us, not just smarter -- we got to make sure that [when] we -- we send our troops to war, we do it with the right tools.
We can -- We can no longer assume our engagements will come without cost. Thats why the Trump Administration is investing in innovation, rewarding risk-takers at the Department of Defense, and streamlining weapons acquisition for the new century. Investing in cutting-edge weaponry like hypersonics is important, but just as important are the low-cost, high-impact technologies that are already transforming the battlefield -- things like drones. And by the way, when we talk about innovation, innovation is not just happening in the laboratory of a defense contractor, innovation increasingly is happening on the very battlefields that you will lead troops on, so that you...are not just recipients of innovation; youre not just users of tools; you will very often be developing tools in this new century.
Our lawmakers and military brass alike must learn to adjust to a world where cheap drones, readily available cruise missiles, and cyber attacks, cause extraordinary damage to our military assets and our service members. And it will be you, the graduates gathered here today, who will lead the way for the rest of us. Your service will bring new challenges and environments, including ones unfamiliar even to those who have served before you. You will deploy new equipment, new systems, and new technology. And through those experiences, it is you who will learn, who will teach others, and will help our services and our entire country adapt to the future were confronting.
