America’s international strategists are caught in a dilemma of their own making. They realize their military forces are overextended, but they can’t decide where to concentrate them and where to scale them back. Since World War II, Washington has spread limited resources over vast distances in Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific, hoping they would not have to fight in all three regions simultaneously.
This three-front approach has fallen into disfavor as Obama and his successors concluded that China is the greatest challenger to American dominance. They have tried to strengthen U.S. ties in the Pacific while reducing them in Europe and the Middle East, but that plan has failed. The invasion of Ukraine and protracted wars between Israel and its enemies have forced Washington to devote more attention than ever to European and Middle Eastern crises. Meanwhile, China has expanded its Asian and Pacific spheres of influence with relative ease. As a result, American strategists are more frustrated than ever—sensing a greater urgency to confront China directly, but feeling tied down in endless conflicts elsewhere.
Trump thinks he can counter China’s rise by cutting America’s longstanding commitments in Europe and the Middle East. He believes that American interests will be better served if Europe leads its own defense against Russia and if Israel dominates the Middle East. In this view, the U.S. will be free to tackle China in the main event—the struggle for global leadership—while wars in the regional side shows—Ukraine and the Middle East—will be left to the mercies of Moscow and Jerusalem.
In fact, Trump’s plan goes far beyond the “pivot to the Pacific” that his predecessors embraced, but could not implement. He has thrust the Western Hemisphere into the center of the picture, insisting that greater U.S. control of North and South America is a precondition for projecting power in the world at large. Washington’s new leaders believe they must tighten their grip on the New World if they hope to blunt China’s steady advances in the Pacific and across the entire Eastern Hemisphere.
Trump’s foreign policy is filled with contradictions. The pivot to the Pacific is combined with a neoimperialist assertion of U.S. demands against neighbors in North and South America. Instead of confronting China in its backyard, Trump has opened a path for Beijing to gain ground in every American country that resents Washington’s bullying. The Trump team are not focusing U.S. commitments or gaining leverage against their main rival. On the contrary, they are needlessly picking new fights close to home—undermining what remains of Washington’s home-field advantage precisely when the Chinese are turning the tables in their favor.
An even bigger fallacy is the notion that the U.S. can walk away from wars in Europe and the Middle East without paying a price down the road. Obama and Biden learned the hard way that festering conflicts tend to deepen just when Washington thinks it can turn to higher priorities. Trump’s misjudgments are far worse. Empowering Russia and Israel will not pacify Europe and the Middle East. Instead, Moscow and Jerusalem will become more inviting targets for enemies resisting the use of force to deal with territorial and political disputes. The land-grabbing triad of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu will merely spread the fires that the rest of the world has been struggling to contain—and light new ones whenever it suits their interests.
Beyazomar 