By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, February 28, 2012
Republicans and Democrats are blaming one another for
impending cuts to the defense budget brought about by sequestration. But with
serial annual deficits of $1 trillion-plus and an aggregate debt nearing $17
trillion, the United States -- like an insolvent Rome and exhausted Great
Britain of the past -- was bound to re-examine its expensive overseas
commitments and strategic profile.
The president's nomination of Chuck Hagel for defense
secretary was a sort of Zen-like way of having a Republican combat veteran
orchestrate a reduced military. In fact, Barack Obama has nurtured a broad and
diverse constituency for his neo-isolationist vision. Budget hawks concede that
defense must suffer its fair share of cuts. Libertarians want back their
republic and hate the big-government baggage that comes along with a big
military's involvement overseas.
Leftists agree, adding that the U.S. has neither the
moral authority nor the wherewithal to arrange events overseas. For liberals, a
scaled-back military presence abroad means more entitlements at home. For each
F-22 Raptor not built, about another 20,000 families could receive food stamps
for a year.
The American public -- exhausted by Iraq and Afghanistan
-- is receptive to all the above arguments. If our poorer grandparents thought
70 percent of the annual U.S. budget devoted to defense after the Korean War
was about right, we, the more affluent, insist that even the present 20 percent
is far too costly.
The result is that we lead from behind in Libya; France
leads from the front in Mali. Syria and Iran shrug off Obama's periodic sermons
to behave. Our reset with Russia was abruptly reset by Russia. American policy
in the Middle East could be summed up as "Whatever" -- as we become
only mildly miffed that distasteful authoritarian allies are replaced by more
distasteful Islamist enemies.
In his first major speech as secretary of state, John
Kerry did not worry about radical Islam. Nor did he warn Americans of a rogue
North Korea, a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran, or China -- bullying in the Pacific and
cyber-hacking the U.S. -- but mostly of the need for collective efforts to
address climate change. A shortage of solar panels and windmills, not impending
cuts in U.S. ships and planes, is Kerry's idea of existential danger on the
global horizon.
To the extent that there is a coherent American foreign
policy, it is perhaps symbolized by drone assassinations: Every couple of days
or so, just kill a terrorist suspect or two -- and as cheaply, as remotely and
as quietly as possible.
What will the world look begin to look like as the global
sheriff backs out of the world saloon with both guns holstered?
Japan and Germany, the world's third- and fourth-largest
nations in terms of their gross domestic product, have never translated their
formidable postwar economic strength into their past, prewar levels of military
power. Yet both in theory could quickly do so -- and make nukes in the same way
they make fine cars -- once they sense that there is no longer an unshakeable
U.S. commitment and ability to shelter them from regional threats. In fact, an
array of allies -- South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines -- would all be
frontline garrison states should the U.S. military vacate their bad
neighborhoods.
The world is full of hot spots apart from the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Shiite majorities in many of the Sunni-ruled and
oil-rich Persian Gulf kingdoms believe that a terrorist-sponsoring Iran is more
a liberator than rogue nation, and that Gulf oil has not been fully utilized as
a strategic weapon.
The Aegean, Cyprus, the former Soviet Republics, the
Falkland Islands, Central America and the Baltic are all deceptively quiet.
Potentially aggressive actors in the region don't quite know how the U.S.
military might react -- only that it easily could, and has in the past.
We lament the terrible American losses in blood and
treasure in tribal Afghanistan and Iraq. But privately, radical Islamists
acknowledge that the U.S. military killed thousands of jihadists in both
countries -- and hope never to see U.S. troops on the battlefield again.
Of course, a country that can neither budget the
necessary money nor maintain the will to oversee the international peace has no
business continuing to try.
But in our relief from the vast costs and burdens of
maintaining the postwar global order, we might at least acknowledge the truth,
past and present: Just as the world was a far better place after 1945 because
of an engaged United States, so it will probably become a much worse place due
to an increasingly absent America.
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