Over at The American Spectator, Jed Babbin is worrying about the hollowing out of the US military.
As in aircraft carriers that wouldn’t last a minute with the Chinese. As in aircraft like the F-35 that can’t replace the generation of the F-15 and F-16.
Yeah. It’s a pity we don’t have another crazy-cakes John Boyd around to design another series of fighter jets. So we get bureaucratic monstrosities like the F-35.
All very well, but what do we do about the Chinese? As Babbin says:
As I have written before, we have to conclude — albeit reluctantly — that Taiwan has to be defended because it is key to defending both Japan and Australia. The question is whether we could defend Taiwan — or win any similar peer-to-peer war — and the unfortunate conclusion is that we could not.
But then, just what would be the point of China invading Japan and Australia? Unless Xi wanted to keep an eye on rich Chinese sitting on the docks of their seaside mansions as in Crazy Rich Asians.
Look, I think it was a good idea to do the Cold War and keep the Soviet Commie bastards from taking over the world — assuming that they could.
And the American Empire has been jolly good fun, at least for a while.
It was great fun to humiliate the Spanish in the Spanish American War.
It was vital to send the doughboys off to Europe in WWI so Doris Day could star in On Moonlight Bay and the graduating college seniors could rip off their academic robes to reveal their army uniforms underneath.
It was the triumph of the ages to save the Jews from Hitler in WWII.
But really, ever since 1989, I’d say that the US Empire has not exactly been firing on all cylinders. Some people might say that US imperialism in the last 30 years has been an embarrassing failure, and that our ruling class is just not up to the challenges of empire. That’s what some people say. Of course, I couldn’t possibly comment.
Here’s my tour d’horizon. Russia is pretty clearly a basket case. We should terminate NATO, remove our occupying troops, and let the Germans figure it out.
China maybe needs a war or two to keep its CCP in charge. All politics needs an enemy, and what better than the rebels in Taiwan to play that role. But after that? The Philippines? New Guinea? South Korea? Japan? I doubt it. China has been reviving the old Silk Road with its Belt and Road Initiative, and if you ask me it is turning into a bit of a financial sink hole. Good luck with that, Xi.
And what about all the modern version of the Overseas Chinese? Are they all spies and agents of the Xi regime? Who knows? But I’ll bet that, while they are all proud to be Chinese, and glad that China has recovered from the Maoist nightmare, they kinda like things the way they are. My guess is that, in 30 years, the East Asians in the US will have taken over the Republican Party and the South Asians will have taken over the Democratic Party. But why? I’d say that current elite is “not fit for purpose,” as the Brits say, and Asian Americans just aren’t going to put up with the current ruling class.
See, I think that if we are smart — meaning if we throw out the current failed political elite — then we can put together a new era in which the leaders of the US wouldn’t get into another World War I, wouldn’t need to do it over in World War II, and wouldn’t care a fig for commie bastards, because they are all clueless losers.
Of course we’ll still need politics and enemies and all that. Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt makes that clear towards the end of The Concept of the Political. As he writes:
[The world] no longer knows war, but only executions, sanctions, punitive expeditions, pacifications, protection of treaties, international police, and peacekeeping missions. The enemy is no longer called the enemy but in return he is set up as a threat to peace[.]
And, of course, we probably still need domestic enemies like the armed insurrectionists of January 6. Because “there is no politics without an enemy.”
But I hope that all sensible people will agree to unite around the notion of AntiFa as the enemy. Why not? They wear black, the color of evil. What’s not to like?