The post Less Diplomacy Means ‘More Ammunition’ appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

“If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition” — Former Defense … More Secretary James Mattis. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch – Pool/Getty Images) Getty Images In his January Inaugural Address, Donald Trump said, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” If that’s the president’s most crucial foreign policy metric — and it’s a good one — then it’s hard to understand why Washington is pulling back on investments that have prevented war and promoted peace for decades. Especially when foreign aid accounts for only about one percent of the federal budget, much of it actually spent within the U.S. Every American should hope the White House reconsiders its strategy before it’s too late. In 1947, America did something unique in world history when it launched the Marshall Plan, spending $187 billion in today’s dollars to rehabilitate the economies of 17 European countries. Most extraordinary of all, we spent over 20% of those funds on the recovery of our World War II adversaries, Germany and Italy. The plan worked, establishing a stable and prosperous Europe, a network of reliable allies, and a massive market for U.S. companies. Last year, the U.S. exported almost $250 billion of goods alone to Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. This exercise of “soft power” — which describes the use of foreign aid, diplomacy, and the promotion of American values abroad – turned out to be every bit as consequential to strengthening America and winning the Cold War as our military’s “hard power.” But soft power is on the outs in Washington. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the administration plans to reduce the Department’s staff…

---

Filed under: News - @ June 18, 2025 10:25 pm