Now that the United States doesn't have bodies coming home from the lesser paved parts of the world (the bodies we're generating tend to be locals and remain where we drop them...) the U.S. public can go back to sleep regarding it's foreign policy doin's around the world whilst the foreign policy nabobs can go back to the sort of stuff they enjoy; pondering Great Power rivalries.
And current events have had a way of bringing those rivalries up in the nightly news.
First back in October we had worries that the People's Republic of China was - at least - thinking about forcibly re-uniting the island of Taiwan with the Motherland.
Now the focus has shifted to eastern Europe, where Russian military moves appear to be directed against Ukraine.
The larger questions that arise from these potential conflicts are the same ones that have been in place since the end of WW2, namely that 1) as the Western hyperpower the United States is, effectively, the Western "big stick" in Great Power confrontation, but 2) there is always the question of the degree to which a United States would be and will be willing to risk escalation with the other big nuclear powers - Russia and China - over threats to the U.S.'s non-nuclear allies.
Some "allies" don't believe the U.S. is willing to do this at all; one of the prime drivers of the Israeli nuclear program was the desire to be independent of U.S. political will. France much the same (with a heaping helping of post-1940-defeat-shame).
My understanding is that the U.K. was the only Western nuclear power who hung on to the "special relationship", developing their nukes purely as a way to avoid sitting at the geopolitical kid's table.
There's also the issue of diplomatic linkage.
The European nations are militarily bound up with the U.S. in NATO. You nuke Berlin, it's going to cost you. Israel, too, has always had a (in my personal opinion an unhealthily) close relationship with the U.S.
In theory those polities can depend on U.S. military power to back their integrity if threatened. They can act as if they had a portion of that power, which gives them a certain degree of geopolitical freedom and international influence beyond their inherent military strength.
(At least that was the c.w. until Trump; now the GOP is full-on ethno-nationalist and "America First" and, frankly, if I was Berlin or London I'd be hesitant to make plans based on the notion that Uncle Sammy had my back 24/7/365. President Trump 47 (or Tom Cotton or Marjorie Taylor Greene) may very well be most unwilling to go to the mat for latte-sipping socialist Eurotrash.)
Smaller states with relations short of full alliance like Ukraine and Taiwan don't have those options. They pretty much have to design their relationships with their larger neighbors based on their assessment of the willingness - or, particularly, potential unwillingness - of the Land of the Big PX to risk a bigger fight rather than give their rivals the win.
And that means that the U.S. itself has to - or, at least, should - think hard about the degree to which it's willing to risk that fight for those polities.
After twenty years of lies, damned lies, and delusion the current U.S. administration finally admitted that there was nothing in Afghanistan worth the bones of a West Virginia grenadier.
Will a non-America-First administration be willing to risk that, and more, to ensure that Taipei remains free of PRC occupation? To keep the Donbass as part of the Ukraine?
What frustrates me about this, and the only reason that I'm writing this post, is because of the combination of indifference, stupidity, and hubris that seems to characterize the U.S. public and most political discussion about these topics.
The U.S. press spends about five or six more times the amount of talking nonsense about "critical race theory" than it does these potential collisions. The degree of public literacy about the risk-versus-rewards of an aggressive Taiwan policy in the linked article above is appalling; if damn near 70% of the U.S. public want their government to recognize Taiwan as an independent nation?
They've been face-down in the edible weed far too long.
There's discussion to be had - and, potentially, arguments to be made - for resisting Chinese and Russian aggression in places like the West Pacific and eastern Europe.
Those discussions are difficult and complex...and are not going on.
Instead the public and, it appears, most media and political talking heads, are trying to reduce the issues to simple us-versus-them jingoism.
Yes. I realize that's how a lot of "geopolitics" gets done here in the Land of the Freedumb.
But, frankly, after the twenty-year-long disaster that has been the Phony War on Terror?
It's really time that We the People grew up and started putting away these childish things.
A collision with China or Russia may, indeed, be inevitable (or, as Andy will remind you in the case of China, is already happening...)
But I'd like to think that if it happens it will happen for sound geopolitical reasons. For U.S. national interests.
I'd like to think that the systems of supposed self-government - the "free press", the representatives of the People in Congress, the foreign specialists in the Departments of State and Defense - would have conducted a thorough discussion and analysis of the potential gains and risks before it happens.
But.
That would mean thinking geopolitical strategy and, as former friend of the blog Seydlitz would tell you, the United States don't do "strategy".
We do the shit out of "critical race theory", though, so there's that.
Jesus wept.
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