The Siren Song of Militarism

Thomas Mahnken uses every discredited hawkish talking point to sell a “three-theater strategy.”

Thomas Mahnken uses every discredited hawkish talking point to sell a “three-theater strategy”:

The United States is currently involved in two wars—Ukraine’s in Europe and Israel’s in the Middle East—while facing the prospect of a third over Taiwan or South Korea in East Asia. All three theaters are vital to U.S. interests, and they are all intertwined. Past efforts to deprioritize Europe and disengage from the Middle East have weakened U.S. security. The U.S. military drawdown in the Middle East, for instance, has created a vacuum that Tehran has filled eagerly. A failure to respond to aggression in one theater can be interpreted as a sign of American weakness. Allies across the world, for example, lost faith in Washington after the Obama administration failed to enforce its “redline” against chemical weapons use by Syria. And the United States’ adversaries are cooperating with one another: Iran sells oil to China, China sends money to North Korea, and North Korea sends weapons to Russia. The United States and its partners face an authoritarian axis that spans the Eurasian landmass.

Most of Mahnken’s claims here are false or wildly exaggerated, and he makes those claims to justify another huge military buildup that makes no sense for the United States. It is a good reminder of how flimsy and absurd many conventional assumptions about the U.S. role in the world really are. Some of these claims might sound plausible at first glance, but on closer inspection they fall apart.