(08-25-2023 05:26 PM)Attackcoog Wrote: This is where I depart from the Peter Zeihen narrative these days. He was right until maybe 10 years ago---those alliances and their US carrying costs no longer made sense. But now---theres a new Cold War---so his base theory that the old Cold War Alliance is superfluous and unnecessary doesnt really match the facts on the ground. One might argue the OLD alliance doesnt fit---but the idea we no longer really need alliances seems to no longer fit the facts on the ground.
I am more inclined, as you seem to be, that bribing up a military alliance worked against the Soviets, so how about bribing up an economic alliance against China.
I have thought about a multi-step approach:
1) Bring UK into NAFTA/USMCA to give them a shot in the arm after Brexit. As an aside, the really interesting thing would be the effect on Ireland. With Eire/Northern Ireland being the only land border between the EU and NAFTA/USMCA, I could see a huge logistics channel running through there and bringing tons of prosperity.
2) Continue to upgrade the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, USA) as an economic and military alliance and counter to China.
3) There is a CANZUK military and economic alliance (Canada, Australis, New Zealand, UK), propsed largely to counter China. Do whatever we can to help bring it about and develop some sort of cooperative alliance with it.
4) Expand to the British Commonwealth, possibly as some sort of associate member. If we have India, Malaysia, and Singapore in the fold, we can pretty much cut off China's westbound exports and inbound oil imports by closing down the Malacca and Sunda Straits, and that would pretty much crater their economy.
5) Expand through some sort of revised and improved TPA to bring in Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea--and possibly Taiwan.
Although this would be heavily an economic alliance, we would have to support this with a military commitment comparable to what we gave NATO, probably more Navy/Air Force oriented due to the geography of the region. We could also bring a lot of manufacturing out of China, essential stuff back home or at least to NAFTA, and other stuff as carrots to the alliance partners.
One objective would be to transfer some of our commitments to allies. India could certainly take over the Indian Ocean and make it a very uncomfortable for China, which has to operate there. Australia and Canada could help in the Pacific, particularly down south where China has to go to get west. And UK could cover some of Europe and the Med. There has been a proposal for a combine Commonwealth military (kind of like what the old British Empire had). Such a force would probably be the 4th strongest military in the world, and quite possibly the 2nd striongest navy in the world (a tad smaller than Russia and China, but more professional). We currently keep slightly over 100 ships deployed, many fulfiling commitments dating back to the time of a 600-ship navy. With a 290-ship navy, that is spending 1/3 of our time deployed, resulting in severe shortfalls in training and maintenance. With 600 ships, that average deployment time is 1/6, which is manageable from a training and maintenance standpoint. In order to get out of the current cycle toward less well trained sailors and less well maintained ships. So our solution is some combination of a) get rid of some commitments, 2) transfer some commitments to allies, and 3) build the USN back up to the 500-600 ship level.
