Do Not Become Confused About Paying Any Price and Bearing Any Burden

Rhetoric is not reality. America only bears the cost when it must

America clearly doesn't bear any price or bear any burden to sustain our military, economic, and societal security.

I strongly disagree with this assessment of American post-World War II policy that is supposedly now being rejected:

[Many] Americans questioned the assumptions that had guided decades of the U.S. approach to the world—in particular, the idea that an international order backed by American military hegemony was self-evidently worth maintaining, no matter the cost.

Many Americans have certainly questioned the price we've paid for what looks like incomplete victories or even losses.

But one, America has not in fact used military power "no matter the cost." You want to see fighting for an international order no matter the cost? Try looking at Russia trying to conquer Ukraine. Indeed, is the Russian overseas "empire" the figurative canary in the coal mine warning Putin to back off lest he risk his continental empire? Will Russia really keep attacking Ukraine and risk worse? Does Putin appreciate how much worse the price for its burden could get? And that isn’t totally hyperbolic.

Second, the fact that the charge of "losing" wars goes along with questioning of America's role abroad should make it clear that we do in fact cut our losses and retreat rather than bear any burden. We left or ended wars without trying to impose our will with total victory "no matter the cost." Because these wars were not wars that needed to be completely won or won at all at some point based on the facts around the individual wars.

Ending wars without complete military or post-war political victory can be explained by viewing our wars as campaigns in the grander war of defending the international system that sustains American physical security, economic prosperity, and a republican form of government.

Expending too much effort in any single campaign would have depleted our ability to sustain the system as a whole—the real objective of our wars. And preventing that level of effort from being unsustainable really does require maintaining allies abroad as the initial authors state, despite my general disagreement with the direction of their arguments.

Face it, there has been no "imperial overstretch" for America because our overseas military deployments in peace and war because military effort clearly ebbs and flows based on threats to ourselves or allies. Our defense spending as a burden on our GDP clearly goes down when active threats are reduced. If anything breaks American power it has long been clear defense spending won’t be the culprit. It will be the bureaucratic empire of domestic spending.

Don't count America out as an excuse to retreat. Many challengers have tried and failed to pass America by. Keep working the problems and don’t expect perfection.

NOTE: I made the image with Bing.