James Poulos

At Foreign Policy I take a grim look at America’s major strategic malfunction — and president Obama’s apparent fantasy that Europe is a sleepy, post-historical backwater:

The Obama administration seems to think Europe deserves to be treated with secondary importance because it is largely cordoned off from world events. But how can such a precarious hodgepodge as Europe remain, as the new strategy review describes it, “our principal partner in seeking global and economic security” now and into “the foreseeable future”? Europe’s ability to maintain its security position, much less project security, is on a precipitous decline.

A weakened, conflict-averse Europe will struggle even to respond militarily to unstable or adversarial neighbors in North Africa, the Middle East, and Eurasia. The deepening terrorist threat will siphon what military resolve there is into a preeminent urge to protect the homeland — an urge most likely exacerbated by austerity-driven civil unrest. Not only will the rest of the world continue to imperil European security, but Europe’s own insecurity is apt to spread like a contagion to surrounding regions.

At The American Interest, I take a look at how the new US defense review might tee us up for war with China:

Instead of a tit-for-tat race to the belligerent bottom, perhaps the Obama strategy augurs the dawn of a true sphere of mutual prosperity for East Asia.

On the other hand, the differences between the present situation in the Pacific and the one that led to World War One may be far greater than the similarities, and U.S. policymakers ought to beware the limits of such a comparison. In at least four key ways, today’s China is quite unlike the Germany of the now-distant past. More important than the rhymes or echoes of history are the novel circumstances that define the strategic contours of the US-China relationship. Those circumstances, combined with America’s response to them, may make the future of that relationship more dangerous than any that Britain or the United States experienced with the Germans. Unfortunately, American efforts to avoid a Guns of August-style tinderbox could be planting depth charges capable of touching off a worse conflagration to come.

Something I want to say more about. Toe dipped in at Ricochet:

Were Europe fit to shoulder even a third of our current burdens, offloading those burdens would not seem or look very much like decline. By contrast, the British Empire offloaded its burdens, beginning spectacularly with the handoff in Greece, because it was crumbling fast. Good thing it managed largely to do so, too.

We are obliged to start handing off burdens — and remember, it is not decline to resume our natural position of not solely shouldering all the West’s burdens and more — before the risk of an actual collapse of our position becomes a reality. Because if a collapse does come, hold on to your seats — the New World Disorder will be upon us. There is no backstop.

Priority number one of our grand strategy therefore should be to create at maximum speed a framework of major powers capable of assuming the burdens appropriate to major power status — in maximum accordance, of course, with our interests and values. Is Obama doing this? Haltingly, with India. Otherwise? I can hear a pin drop.