Reality Check wrote:
> I wonder if this is what it felt like before World War II.
> The players are different of course.
> The Philippines or Vietnam may play the role of Poland, and Japan
> perhaps France.
> Or maybe Japan is Poland and the United States France.
> One could see when threatened with "a nuclear winter that no one
> could win" Obama would abandon Hawaii and other Pacific Island
> territories, plus the Panama Canal to China, and withdraw all
> surviving U.S. military forces out of the Pacific Theater leaving
> the U.S. west coast as a hostage guaranteeing U.S. neutrality.
> As preposterous as this sounds, France surrendered in World War II
> to Germany with the vast majority of the French Army intact.
> The French Army was the largest Army in the world at the start of
> World War II and considered one of the most well equipped with
> artillery and infantry weapons. France also had one of the
> largest Naval Fleets in the World. Most of the French Army sat on
> the border of Germany at the time of surrender with no significant
> German forces between that border and the German industrial
> heartland.
> The bulk of the German army was far behind French lines, near
> Paris and other Northern French cities, with tanks and troop
> transports, but no fuel supplies that would allow those tanks and
> troops to withdraw and defend Germany.
> The French just decided not to trade the destruction of French
> cities for the destruction of German cities.
> One could only guess what would happen in Western Europe and the
> Middle East if the U.S. was no longer willing to risk anything to
> defend U.S. allies.
The situation with France in WW II is a fascinating one. France had
fought the bloody Battle of Verdun and Battle of the Somme, resulting
in tens of millions of deaths. It was horrific. And then what
happened? First the Americans came over. Next, the Germans
surrendered, not because they were defeated on the battlefield, but
because of internal political squabbles in Berlin's government during
their Unraveling era. And after the French fought all those bloody
battles, who got all the credit for winning? The Americans.
So in 1940, there were still memories of the 1871 Paris Commune, where
tens of thousands of Parisians rose up and killed each other in a
battle that was historically viewed as insane. And everyone
remembered WW I, where there were tens of millions of deaths with,
once again, an insane result. So in 1940, the mood was, "Hey, here we
go again. Let the British fight this one. Let the Americans fight
this one. We're going to sit this one out, because to do anything
else is insane."
It's like the situation in South Sudan that I wrote about a couple of
days ago, where thousands of people are fleeing to U.N. compounds
because they expect a repeat of the Bor Massacre of 1991.
There is a parallel between France in 1940 and the U.S. today. For
France it was the Battle of the Somme, for America today it was
Vietnam. Obama and Kerry have abandoned the post-WW II view of
America as policemen of the world, and consider any American
participation in any war anywhere to be insane, and not worth
fighting. The phrase "leading from behind," which originated from the
Obama administration, captures this idea that it's insane for the
U.S. to get into any war -- just let the Europeans fight it out if
they want. "Leading from behind" may even be the correct description
of the mood of the French people in 1940. However, that attitude was
universal in 1940 France, and is by no means universal in today's
America.