This author wants us to focus on East Asia rather than the Middle East. He has a point. We are a global power and in a perfect world, we won't always devote so much of our attention to the Middle East. If things go right, our intense attention (and casualties and loss of treasure) will pay off by allowing us to scale back our commitments and focus and address the rest of the world more. But this isn't to say that our attention right now in the Middle East is misguided. That misconception is at the heart of this mischaracterization of the problem:
This isn’t to say that the United States should be unwilling to intervene in the Middle East. Rather, it is to say that our interventions there should be more tightly connected to concrete objectives such as protecting the free flow of oil from the region, preventing terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies, and forestalling or, if necessary, containing nuclear proliferation as opposed to the more idealistic aspirations to transform the region’s societies.
It seems like I've been hammering on this point just about since I started this blog. It isn't idealism that has prompted our attempts to transform the Middle East's society. It is realism pure and simple. It is realism because it simply isn't possible to treat the symptoms of jihadi outbreaks while the region's societies continue to be incubators for jihadi rage. We are on the cusp of an age when weapons of mass destruction are no longer just for nations. We've seen how much damage jihadi terrorists can inflict even without WMD. How much worse will it be if we simply beat down the jihadis and exhaust them this round, but in another generation or two another wave of jihadi anger springs from the region and targets the West in the belief that we are at fault for their problems?
If chemical, biological, cyber, and even nuclear weapons are sub-national assets, do you think those new jihadis won't use them? And if the societies that spawn jihadis have as much enthusiasm for cheering on jihadis as these societies had before 9/11, do you think that we can escape the consequences?
The fact is, "realism" changed on 9/11. Yes, I would dearly like to be able to focus more attention on East Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Not that we don't address them now, of course. We have vast organizations of military and civilian personnel to work in those areas. But it is also true that our top leaders have only so much time to actively direct our foreign policy and so while they focus on the Middle East the rest of the globe is attended to mostly on auto pilot by lower ranking officials whose scope of action is limited by directives from above already in place.
But have no doubt. We are not distracted by the Middle East, and our attempt to transform the region's societies are not "unnecessary and ill-advised interventions and nation-building efforts." Or would you argue that America was distracted by Japan and Germany in World War II which prevented us from dealing with our relations in the rest of the world? Sometimes the reality of the world imposes the need to focus on one part of the world more than the rest.
Realistically, we have no other option but to try this course of action. If Middle Eastern society (that is Moslem society) doesn't turn fully and deeply against radical Islam, we will face a far grimmer future war with stakes so high (the destruction of our cities) that it really might become a war between civilizations.
