It is hard to know the reasons for Washington’s hesitance about Israel’s final battle against Hamas, but it appears to be a symptom of a more general confusion about the nature and severity of the strategic challenges confronting America. In a sweeping and sobering essay, Seth Cropsey and Harry Halem explain both the challenges and the confusion, arguing that the U.S. faces a series of interrelated crises stretching from Gaza to Taiwan, and that it has so far failed to muster a coherent response:
The Middle East sits on the brink of large-scale war, which will not end absent a fundamental regional reorganization, and an enormous amount of human suffering inflicted upon Jew, Arab, and Persian alike. On the burning edge of the European continent, the Ukrainian armed forces hold off the Russian onslaught. In Asia, China menaces Taiwan, a legitimately representative democracy of 23 million with only the desire to determine their own fate and live unharassed.
All three instances of ongoing violence stem fundamentally from a crisis in American power. These theaters are afire because Washington refuses to recognize what it is—the center of a loosely democratic system that spans Eurasia and the Americas.
Simply put, the three states within the line of fire—Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan—have all adopted identities that reflect their conscious choices to join the Western camp. . . . Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan are all under direct threat from the anti-American revisionist axis consisting of Russia, Iran, and China. These three revisionists are ideologically diverse. . . . However, all three are authoritarian, closed societies with a shared set of economic-material interests. They are simply too large, and too bloated, to survive absent a world around them organized to their economic and commercial benefit. Hence their mutually reinforcing desire to destroy the U.S.-led Eurasian security and economic system.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentary.org/articles/seth-cropsey/america-shirking-global-responsibilities/