Econ not key to heg

Brooks 13 [Stephen, Associate Professor of Government (Dartmouth), M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Political Science (Yale), written in collaboration with Ikenberry and Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home America: the Case Against Retrenchment, International Security, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Winter 2012/13), pp. 7–51, ]

Why “deep engagement” best describes the current grand strategy Critics of deep engagement often call it “primacy,”10 but this terminology obscures more than it clarifies because it begs the core strategic questions at issue. Primacy is not strategy but a fact of international life: even if America “came home” and slashed military spending, it would retain the world’s greatest latent power potential. Indeed, the grand strategy debate presumes primacy—it is the United States’ unrivaled power and favorable geographical position that give it such a wide range of strategic choice.11 The strategic question is whether to translate that latent power into the global capacity to manage security affairs in multiple regions.