America needs friendly or at least non-threatening states on its northern and southern borders to be the superpower it is.
Yes:
The United States lives in a fundamentally unique geopolitical reality. It’s the only major power that doesn’t face the risk of a land war, so it doesn’t need a massive force to defend the homeland. Instead, it can concentrate on maintaining control of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. If it retains control of the seas, the only threat to the United States would be air and missile attacks. These are not trivial threats, but they are far more manageable without having to worry about an invasion by land or sea. The United States itself has offensive options it can indulge in – even if it doesn’t always use them prudently, and even if it leads to defeat elsewhere. The U.S. has not faced a foreign presence on its soil since the 19th century. Even nuclear weapons are countered by mutual assured destruction, which has protected the U.S. homeland for over half a century.
We remain the off-shore balancer who can intervene in Asia to sway the balance of power decisively against China.
Which is why I don't lose sleep at night over China's rise in power and wouldn't change places with them. Oh, if China is able to focus their power on a localized area, like Taiwan, they can generate local superiority for a short time--perhaps long enough to win that battle--but if we are able to mobilize and deploy our power, we can beat China on any battlefield. And we'd likely have powerful local allies to help us. China is a threat to our interests even now, but only if they catch us off guard.
Remember that geography (and our completely dominant Navy) means our power is free to deploy worldwide while China is hemmed in by hostile or potentially hostile neighbors. It's the Expeditionary Kingdom versus the Trapped in the Middle Kingdom.
That's an old post. So our Navy is no longer completely dominant. But the broader point remains true.
And I assumed friendly Mexico and Canada to explain the then-existing situation. Of course, this ability to project power to bolster allies and leverage their military power to fight at our side relies on preventing serious threats on our continent from evolving.
Friedman explains that:
Any attack on the United States must either be an amphibious assault from across the sea or a land assault from either Canada or Mexico. The U.S. fought numerous times with Mexico in the 19th and very early 20th centuries, and in the 1960s, the Quebec independence movement prompted fears in the U.S. that an independent Quebec might align with the Soviet Union. But today, neither country can attack the U.S. itself, hence the first layer of American security. The second layer is that neither country wants to align with powers hostile to the United States. Had Germany secured their allegiance in World War II, or had the Soviet Union in the Cold War, or had China in the past few decades, the risks to American security would have soared, and the U.S. invulnerability to war on the homeland would have evaporated. American history would have been very different, along with the history of humanity.
Read the whole thing.
Yet America suddenly cancels the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to satisfy a small domestic constituency over something important to Canada.
And rather than help Mexico secure its southern border as Mexico asked, America blames Mexico for our southern border migrant crisis.
We assume we have the foundation to project power globally. But it requires work by America to maintain. And if our enemies want to hurt us they would try to destabilize our neighbors and increase our friction with them.
Gosh. I wonder if they are doing that.
