As a student of history, I am continually amazed at the repetitive nature of geopolitics, particularly by Western democracies. As for the U.S., we seem to be on a 30-40 year cycle of retraction followed by reactionary overreaction to world events. This happened during the 1930's, when we slept though the beginnings of WW2, and during the 1970's, when we pretended that the threat of Soviet hegemony over Europe was just some political scare tactic. In both cases, our belated response was a huge expansion of our military presence around the world and the legacy costs that entailed.
It seems that we are now repeating this cycle once again. Instead of leaving smaller residual forces at strategic locations (e.g., Iraq), we have have engaged in a nearly complete withdrawal from the world stage. The fact that the empty role we have created is being filled with bad actors should come as no surprise to those with any institutional memory. However, they are continually replaced with new crops of young, impressionable voters who are led to believe that they are smarter than all of their predecessors (SAT scores notwithstanding).
When will they/we ever learn?
It seems that we are now repeating this cycle once again. Instead of leaving smaller residual forces at strategic locations (e.g., Iraq), we have have engaged in a nearly complete withdrawal from the world stage. The fact that the empty role we have created is being filled with bad actors should come as no surprise to those with any institutional memory. However, they are continually replaced with new crops of young, impressionable voters who are led to believe that they are smarter than all of their predecessors (SAT scores notwithstanding).
When will they/we ever learn?
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