Re: “During the cold war we were everywhere. Today we are withdrawing from the world stage, and that is inviting adventurism from various very bad players.”
Absolutely true. And, whenever the U.S. has attempted to avoid world stage involvement, it has turned out poorly for us, as well as the rest of the world suffering under oppression by prolonging that suffering, and by contributing to longer casualty lists for us through unpreparedness and having to play catch up while our forces and those of our allies paid the price for our getting caught with our pants down.
Only this time, it won’t be our soldiers in far off shores of the Phillippines or Midway that will bear the brunt of our unpreparedness and avoidance of involvement - it will be on our doorsteps.
I pray I am wrong, but history has demonstrated over and over again that avoiding or wishing the problem to go away always has disasterous consequences.
We’re on the same page there. I agree with you.
We’re a victim of our own success. Our military did such a good job, folks think the peace will magically continue when the military is no longer involved around the world.
China will break out, and people in that region will pay a heavy toll in our absence. You alluded to that sort of thing, and you’re exactly right.