Contrary to all the yowling we have heard over the last two weeks, the U.S. is perceived as being so reliable that these other governments feel no urgency to improve their own defenses.
The framework about America's supposed need to "reassure" our allies is so detached from reality that a person from Mars who follows the headlines might end up thinking that the US was a weak nation besieged by regional threats, and which has to get support from other states in order to survive.
In reality, we are a superpower with a potential peer competitor in China. We have a longstanding formal alliance with NATO members despite the raison d'etra for NATO ceasing to exist 30 years ago. We continue to allow NATO members to maintain lavish welfare states in large part because we have been footing the bill for their defense spending for 60 years, 30 of them USSR-free. I would suggest that it would be to our benefit if these countries developed their own defensive capabilities and stopped freeriding on my tax dollars.
Taiwan needs to do this on their own with China, similarly to what South Korea needs to do with respect to North Korea. American interference in both relationships retards realpolitik, diplomacy, and negotiations.
I think some of our allies, at least the European ones + Japan and Korea, are still awaiting our assurances after the 2018 JCPOA pullout and subsequent economic coercion to accept new unilateral US sanctions. Hawks did not seem so concerned about the fretting of our treaty-allies and strategic Asian partners then.
The framework about America's supposed need to "reassure" our allies is so detached from reality that a person from Mars who follows the headlines might end up thinking that the US was a weak nation besieged by regional threats, and which has to get support from other states in order to survive.
In reality, we are a superpower with a potential peer competitor in China. We have a longstanding formal alliance with NATO members despite the raison d'etra for NATO ceasing to exist 30 years ago. We continue to allow NATO members to maintain lavish welfare states in large part because we have been footing the bill for their defense spending for 60 years, 30 of them USSR-free. I would suggest that it would be to our benefit if these countries developed their own defensive capabilities and stopped freeriding on my tax dollars.
Taiwan needs to do this on their own with China, similarly to what South Korea needs to do with respect to North Korea. American interference in both relationships retards realpolitik, diplomacy, and negotiations.
I think some of our allies, at least the European ones + Japan and Korea, are still awaiting our assurances after the 2018 JCPOA pullout and subsequent economic coercion to accept new unilateral US sanctions. Hawks did not seem so concerned about the fretting of our treaty-allies and strategic Asian partners then.