The US just doesn’t have the mindset–Witness the active sabotage, against even common sense, that Obama conducted of the Bush administrations Middle East policy. Blew up in his face, it did, did it not? If we had some sort of coherent national policy set, well… That would be a lick on us as a nation. But–The US is manifestly not your classic empire, a la the Soviets, the British Empire, or anyone else. You want a somewhat reasonable likeness from world history, you kinda-sorta have to go back to the Phoenicians and/or later Carthaginians. The US is not Rome, I’m afraid: It’s more like a Carthage or any of the other major city-states that the Phoenicians set up.

As such, decrying the lack of a coherent “national strategy” just isn’t something that you can or should expect from a phenomenon like the United States. Someone a few hundred or a thousand years from now may be able to make out some such thing, but I seriously doubt it. We’re too damn incoherent, and then there’s also the ease with which various foreign interests have been able to influence US national policy, going back to when the UK sucked us into their little war in Europe, and going right up to the present day, where we find ourselves under the malign influence of Islamists from Saudi Arabia and other oil-tick nations.