Lend Lease was a defacto joining into the war. It was the updated version of the WWI arsenal of democracy thing, which indeed drew us into WWI. A solid argument can be made that we would have eventually needed to fight WWII, but in WWI we absolutely had no interest. That was solely the result of England begging, cajoling, and scheming to get access to US manpower. In fact, the England defacto declared war on us when we were neutral. They created an explusion zone, and stated intent to sink any US ship that wanted to carry cargo to a German port. They announced what US companies may not sell to Germans and their intent to enforce it on the seas.
This exclusion zone was established *before* the Germans did likewise around the British isles with submarines.
So yes i am very wary of foreigners who are eager to have us fight their wars.
The road to getting dragged in is arming one side. the other side quickly sees you as the enemy.
If someone shows up with hard cold cash, id let them buy something. But not F-22s, (which we destroyed the tooling for i believe) and nobody in their right mind truly facing combat, over water, over long distances, against Sukhois would want to buy an F-35.
But yes, lend lease and other prewar entanglements certainly did draw us in. Even the Japanese attack resulted from prewar trade embargoes on behalf of China.
It’s still not an American fight. For me the equation should be, “will the profits of a few weapons sales be worth antagonizing the largest holder of US debt?”. Say we sell 10 or 20 billion in weapons, (a HUGE sale) but lose a few Trillion when Chine refuses to buy anymore T-bills?
And i hear no mention of Australia. They are right there in the backyard of this. Do they want to go to war over this, or provide weapons to these squabbling asians??
I think our security problem is that China is already way too big. We embargoed Japan to prevent it from incorporating China into the Japanese Empire. We fought in Europe to prevent Germany from controlling all of Western Europe. China has a population that is industrializing rapidly and has 10 times the population of pre-war Germany and Japan combined and 20 times their land area. We may not have the luxury of letting China get any bigger. Imagine a China with twice its current population and land area courtesy of a PLA tour of East Asia. A Chinese Empire in the Far East that includes Australia and New Zealand will put an end to the regional squabbling. But it will also put in great danger our holdings in the Pacific.
Don't worry about antagonizing China by selling arms to their rivals. You - we - are already in an unstated economic war with China, and playing nice will not help a damn bit. You may as well gently push on their pressure points and sell some kick-ass warships to Taiwan + keep some friends in the area.
China cannot afford to divest themselves of the West's frankly worthless treasuries nor confront the US over anything until they have converted as much of their debt holdings as possible to Gold.
That's going to be the real battleground of the next two years: the possession of real money and the discovery of who actually has it.
Remember: the Central Bank of China is leveraged 1300 to 1, China's GDP figures are fairy stories and they have no spare water to frack for Natural Gas with: they have to tread carefully just like we all do.
Whereas America has about one oz of Gold per capita (assuming we can believe the official figures). This as you know is a high level of gold ownership. America is a Gold superpower.
If you guys can only rid yourself of that KleptoMarxist incubus Obama and exploit/export your vast natural gas reserves you should do very well over the next nine decades. America is a Natural Gas Saudi Arabia - but with every possible resource on earth and having possession of the greatest Naval power ever.
The paper dollar is doomed (just like all paper currency the world over) but once you get used to that idea you guys are well placed to take advantage of the rest of the century.
Don't let go of your Mahan advantage, and don't be afraid to leverage it to sell stuff in China's face. You don't have to invade the Spratleys, and the Chinese can't do anything to you that you haven't already done to yourselves.