We are squandering the peace dividend

There are wars and there are catastrophic world wars: we must not stupidly stumble into the latter.

Isoroku Yamamoto was a student at Harvard University from 1919 to 1921. At Harvard, his classmates taught him to play poker, and he became quite expert, and addicted to the game, staying up all night and piling on his winning hands. He used his poker money to hitchhike around the U.S., to see America. Later on, he returned to the U.S. as a naval attaché at the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C., where he played poker with American military officers. He was not impressed with their skills.

Photo by Candice Seplow on Unsplash

As you may know, if you know any history, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto became the commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy combined fleet; the fleet that was ordered to attack the U.S. As a poker player, Yamamoto knew that Japan’s entry into a war with America would be a losing proposition, but he also knew that the best way to bluff through a bad hand was to go all in. Thus, the Pearl Harbor attack was planned. American leaders knew war was coming to us, regardless of Europe’s embroilment with the Nazis and Italian Fascists. But we believed it would come first to the Philippines, not Hawaii, because that’s what we would do. We didn’t think like Yamamoto, and he knew we wouldn’t.

Of course, we’ve had lots of wars since World War II. Most of them have been in service to “containment” of communism, and most of that has been proxy wars fought against the Soviet Union, with the exception of the Korean conflict, which still festers, which brought China into direct battle with American forces. Note that in all the years since the Soviet Union was birthed, through its end, American or NATO forces never once entered a pitched battle with the USSR or Warsaw Pact. We maintained a strategic distance, while grabbing our enemy “by the belt buckle” (a phrase made famous by General Vo Nugyen Giap, the North Vietnamese commander who defeated the French, then the U.S.).

Part of our strategic distance was keeping certain nations that fought in World War II, namely Japan and Germany, as docile allies, meaning on our side, but militarily (mostly) inert. We did that by stationing our own troops on their soil for decades. Over time, this has lessened, but never really ended. Now, with what I could loosely refer to as the Trump Doctrine, meaning “pay up or get out,” America has abandoned the strategic distance theory, and with it, abandoned our long-time allies to deal with their own geopolitical and military requirements.

In doing so, we are squandering the peace dividend we reaped after World War II.

People tend to misunderstand that peace dividend, thinking it’s some “no war” card to be played. It’s not that at all. Since the end of WWII, the U.S. has seen 63 years where we’ve been fighting in some active war or another, and only about 16 years where we haven’t. But during that time, neither Japan nor Germany have fought in an active war, outside some NATO peacekeeping efforts by the German military, and some humanitarian or U.N. peacekeeping efforts by the Japanese.

In fact, Germany’s official policy and Grundgesetz, their Basic Law, equivalent to our Constitution, prevents them from engaging in offensive war, only in defense or NATO obligations. Japan’s constitution, Article 9, prevents its government from engaging in any war whatsoever, other than self-defense. America’s presence in the Far East, and as a tripwire against North Korean aggression, along with our European and NATO forces, has largely kept the rest of the world at peace.

(I won’t spend a lot of time dealing with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They were ill-advised efforts at “nation building” but that really disguised the true purpose, which was red, white and blue vengeance for 9/11. We got our pound of flesh from ISIS, the Taliban, and the Husseins in Iraq. And terrorism still thrives, and extremist Islamic jihad still exists. So much for our blood and treasure.)

Withdrawing from Europe; abandoning Ukraine to Russia; forcing Korea to pay us for protection; and now questioning the “security umbrella” America provides for Japan, is a repudiation of history that we cannot afford.

The biggest reaper of the peace dividend, for a really small piece of our economic monster engine, is the United States. Our investment (again, discounting the few trillions we poured into the long running Gulf and Afghanistan wars) in strategic containment and security umbrellas has paid off more than we can calculate. Fighting world wars every generation is an economic and social drain that our nation chose not to pay. Instead, we paid a small fraction to defending our interests overseas, including the Korean War, and—hellishly terrible—the Vietnam War. Those wars at least proved we were serious in our defensive strategy, and it allowed us to develop the most lethal military in the world. I suppose you could say something similar about Iraq and Afghanistan, and I used to think that, but no longer believe it.

Now, for a few handfuls of useless treasure, the MAGA folks are selling our entire ability to prevent the next world war.

Say what you want about Ukraine and Russia, but the longer that war goes on, the more Ukraine’s military industry prospers and that country is able to propel itself (and the world) into the next generation of warfare. At the same time, Russia is more dependent on Iran, China and North Korea. Time is on Putin’s side in the sense of fighting the war, but in the larger strategic sense, time is on the West’s side, because having a sharp, well-armed, and technologically advanced Ukraine as a buffer to Putin’s Russian empire is a small price to pay for not having to fight Russia with our own men later.

Trump is just flat out wrong. Our “beautiful oceans” are no longer any impediment to our enemies in fighting us. Sure, the U.S. can never be invaded in the historical sense. Even President Abe Lincoln knew this.

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

The U.S. will not prosper by having resources (which we cannot get from within our own borders) threatened, and having to constantly bully nations into giving us (like Denmark and Greenland and Ukraine) what we need. It cannot come from abroad, but if we eliminate our ability to make friends abroad, defeat will eventually come from inside, as we need those friends.

Remember, Japan has the largest stock of bomb-grade plutonium in the world. It is a non-nuclear power by choice and law only. It can change its law, and become a member of the nuclear bomb club in a shockingly short time. Germany, likewise, has no nuclear weapons because they choose not to. Both countries histories and social frameworks make staying out of the nuclear club a wise course. But if the U.S. is not there to give them security, this will change quickly.

I’m not saying Japan and Germany will become the next Axis powers like World War II. I’m not even saying that we will fight against them. But they have their own geopolitical issues, and their own peace dividend, which the U.S. made possible and vouchsafed for 80 years. They will act in their interests to protect what they have. And they won’t give the U.S. much of a thought if we keep going down the road we’re on. Four years of this might be enough to tip the scales of strategic distance. What some feel like is “winning” is really selling the farm for a few months of feasting.

One day, another Yamamoto will arise and go “all in” against the U.S. If we squander our peace dividend, we will not see it coming, and those who do, will not be able to stop it.

The danger in Trump’s actions isn’t that he brought Ukraine to the table in bending to Russia (that by itself might be the best course anyway), but in the larger sense, the way he did it, and the framework of “America First,” and his imperial talk, is quickly draining any strategic reserve we have with the best investment America has ever made in our history.

SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS: You can follow us on social media at several different locations. Official Racket News pages include:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NewsRacket
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/NewsRacket
Mastodon: https://federated.press/@RacketNews

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@theracketnews
David: https://www.threads.net/@captainkudzu71
Steve: https://www.threads.net/@stevengberman

Our personal accounts on the platform formerly known as Twitter:

David: https://twitter.com/captainkudzu
Steve: https://twitter.com/stevengberman
Jay: https://twitter.com/curmudgeon_NH

Thanks again for subscribing! Don’t forget to share us with your friends!

CHECK OUT Risky Tales, my site for fiction. I have moved my latest story, “Organ of the State: Chapter 1” outside the paywall. Why? Because days after I published it, the New York Times published an exposé on organ transplant “cheating” the list.