Expanding upon the theme of “imperial overstretch” that he introduced in his 1987 classic, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers,” English historian Paul Kennedy wrote that “the sum total of the United States’s global interests and obligations is nowadays far larger than the country’s power to defend them all simultaneously.” What was seen by relatively few perceptive observers a third of a century ago is today a self-evident reality to people and leaders throughout the world.
Accordingly, the United States is implementing a relatively rapid — albeit overdue and not always well-thought-out — reduction in its global military commitments, with Afghanistan, and more recently Iraq, being highly visible illustrations of the same.
This ominous trend very likely will continue and even accelerate — the muddled intervention in Syria probably will be next — and each successive abdication will have greater consequences than the previous.
Already on the horizon are two other potential “extrications” that are vastly more problematic — Ukraine and Taiwan — because they threaten to bring the United States into direct conflict with the world’s other two superpowers, Russia and China, with all the attendant risks of dangerous miscalculation.
The long-simmering crisis regarding Ukraine began in 1991 when, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine declared its independence after centuries of being an integral part of the Russian state. The crisis dramatically escalated in 2014 when Russia reasserted its power in Ukraine via annexation of Crimea and sponsorship of a military revolt against the central government in the heavily Russian-speaking eastern portions of the country.
The Obama administration strongly denounced Russia’s aggression but went no further than offering financial and material support to Ukraine, which the Trump administration expanded to include limited military weaponry. That Russian President Vladimir Putin is utterly undeterred by this opposition was made clear through a 5,000-word essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” that he published in July, in which he reviews a thousand years of Russian/Ukrainian history, concluding that their common destiny shall never be broken.
In a recent Wall St. Journal article, “Why Putin Still Covets Ukraine,” Walter Russell Mead states that “Western powers would be well advised to take the essay seriously,” and further notes that “the West is hopelessly disunited on Russia policy.”
At the heart of this matter is a conundrum: Because Ukraine is not a U.S. ally and not a member of NATO or the European Union (EU), what U.S. national interest would be served by increased involvement in a bitter conflict geographically located inside the historic heartland of the Russian state — and to what extent would the American people be supportive of a direct and deepening conflict with Russia on this issue?
In stark contrast to Ukraine, Taiwan has a long history of close political and military alignment with the United States. From 1955 to 1980, this relationship took the form of a direct military alliance, which pledged the United States to defend Taiwan against any foreign (i.e., Chinese) aggression. However, in 1979, when the Carter administration formally recognized and established diplomatic relations with the mainland communist regime, that military guarantee was omitted from the Taiwan Relations Act of 1980, which remains the basis of U.S. relations with Taiwan today.
Thus, for 40 years the U.S. has maintained a legally and militarily murky relationship with Taiwan, compassed in the aptly- named doctrine of “strategic ambiguity” under which we diplomatically proclaim a “One China” policy but at the same time militarily sustain Taiwan as a de-facto independent nation and continue to provide sophisticated weaponry to further deter Beijing from any effort to seize the island by force.
Throughout his tenure, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made abundantly clear his strong determination to re-establish China’s full sovereignty over what he regards as the “breakaway province” of Taiwan and, as is the case with Putin’s quest for Ukraine, both history and geography give Xi important leverage in pursuit of that goal. While neither of these willful authoritarians can fully gauge the depth or duration of America’s current political disarray, they know it bodes well for their respective “unification projects.”
Polls showing broad-based support for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan make clear the American people’s growing fatigue and disillusionment with their country’s role as “world policeman.” What is less clear is where this road to American retrenchment leads and what the world will look like in the aftermath.
William Moloney is a fellow in conservative thought at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute who studied at Oxford and the University of London and received his doctorate from Harvard University. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.