By Donald Kirk
Donald_Kirk_200
The specter of pressure points from Ukraine to North Korea raises a disturbing question. Is the U.S. prepared for a multi-front war?
That’s not an esoteric, theoretical abstraction. Conflict can break out anywhere opposing forces face one another, often when not expected. Washington now is financing fighting forces in dozens of countries and promising to run to the rescue of more if they too are sucked into war.
Two of these wars are more than sporadic struggles between guerrilla forces. Ukraine and Israel, largely at American expense, are fighting for their lives.
Waning international support for Ukraine means Russia’s President Vladimir Putin must keep fighting, so that eventually his enemies, notably the U.S., will tire of pumping ever more billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry into Ukrainian forces. In a waiting game, the Russians, holding 20 percent of Ukrainian territory next to their own borders, including Crimea, could hang in for years.
Then there’s Israel’s war against Hamas, which is costing the U.S. billions more than the nearly $4 billion Washington already was committed to investing this year in Israel’s military establishment. It’s not likely, considering American political support for Israel, that the U.S. will stop giving whatever is needed to buttress the Israeli Defense Forces despite outcries against the war in the U.S. and just about every other country.
No one anticipated the outbreak of either of these wars in advance. The Russians had been nibbling away at Ukraine after taking over Crimea, but who knew they’d invade the whole country? No one, including the Israelis, imagined Hamas would walk into a kibbutz in southern Israel last month on the way to a gruesome massacre.
Both those wars now confront the U.S. and its allies with the terrible question of how they think they can stand up against potential enemies like China and North Korea if their leaders stupidly break the uneasy peace? Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has talked a great game in his latest swing through the Indo-Pacific region, proclaiming the tightness of the U.S. bond with its South Korean ally and cozying up to India and Indonesia, non-allies whom Washington would like to draw into its security network.
Behind the usual words of the “ironclad” U.S.-Korean alliance lies concern about whether the U.S., when push comes to shove, would live up to its obligations to Korea as well as Japan. And what would the U.S. do if China’s President Xi Jinping lost all patience and decided to try and take over the independent island province of Taiwan? What if China, not giving up its claim to the South China Sea, fires on American fighters cruising in what the U.S. says are open skies?
We’re past the debacle in Afghanistan and on to greater problems in Ukraine and Israel plus Gaza. American interests extend throughout the region. A flotilla of American warships hovers in the Eastern Mediterranean, loaded with warplanes ready to take off from carriers and marines pumped and primed to land on the beaches
Incredibly, about 8,000 U.S. troops are in Qatar, from which Hamas leaders direct operations in Gaza. The U.S. also has a critical air base in Turkey, a NATO ally whose president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said Hamas “is not a terrorist organization” and, of course, joined the call for Israeli forces to get out of Gaza. American advisory forces remain in Iraq advising on how to parry Iranian intrusions and influence, and they’re aiding Syrian rebels fighting the regime of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
How should the Americans respond to attacks on these forces by the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp? In one recent case, the U.S. sent two F15 fighter planes on a retaliatory bombing run against a place in Syria where weapons were stored – a warning of worse to come in case of more attacks on Americans scattered around the Middle East.
It’s possible to criticize the Americans for not responding more forcefully. It’s also possible to credit President Biden with exercising forbearance. Similarly, it would not be a good idea to take out the sites from which the North Koreans test-fire missiles or their nuclear test site in the mountainous northeast not far from the Chinese border. The result could well be Chinese and Russian intervention, North Korean strikes against the South and worldwide condemnation of the U.S., not North Korea and its powerful friends.
From Eastern Europe to Northeast Asia, the world is on edge. Mistakes could be catastrophic.
Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) writes about war and peace from Seoul and Washington.
Risking war from Europe to Asia
18
0
16.11.2023
By Donald Kirk Donald_Kirk_200
The specter of pressure points from Ukraine to North Korea raises a disturbing question. Is the U.S. prepared for a multi-front war?
That’s not an esoteric, theoretical abstraction. Conflict can break out anywhere opposing forces face one another, often when not expected. Washington now is financing fighting forces in dozens of countries and promising to run to the rescue of more if they too are sucked into war.
Two of these wars are more than sporadic struggles between guerrilla forces. Ukraine and Israel, largely at American expense, are fighting for their lives.
Waning international support for Ukraine means Russia’s President Vladimir Putin must keep fighting, so that eventually his enemies, notably the U.S., will tire of pumping ever more billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry into Ukrainian forces. In a waiting game, the Russians, holding 20 percent of Ukrainian territory next to their own borders, including Crimea, could hang in for years.
Then there’s Israel’s war against Hamas, which is costing the U.S. billions more than the nearly $4 billion Washington already was committed to investing........
© The Korea Times
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Donald Low
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
