America is a global super power and not a regional power with limited horizons. Efforts around the globe are made on a sliding scale of effort and not governed by on/off switches.
The Army's top officer in the Pacific is alarmed by China's rapid military capability expansion. Others make a dangerous if true statement about the situation:
Critics say the U.S. has been slow to respond to the shift, bogged down by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Its shipyards are already struggling to keep up and its defense industrial base can’t sustain a protracted fight.
It is true that America is fighting in the Middle East. It is true that America is supporting a fight in Ukraine. It is true that American shipbuilding is inadequate. It is true America's defense-industrial base can't sustain a long war. But claiming those realities have slowed America's ability to face China is either wrong or misleading.
American military strength in CENTCOM and EUCOM has been slashed since the War on Terror wound down and since victory in the Cold War, respectively. There are limited bases in the western Pacific to handle an influx of American forces--and it isn't wise to fill them up within easy reach of China's growing missile arsenal.
American shipyard shortages and insufficient defense-industrial base capacity were not caused by the need to pay attention to the Middle East and Europe with limited assets. Indeed, they've provided real world incentive to fix both deficincies as we've coped with Iran attacking Israel directly and via proxies; and Russia invading Ukraine. America's long pivot to INDOPACOM didn't inspire us to fix those problems given the merely theoretical if obvious problems America faces to defeat the pacing threat of China.
And if America lets the situation in EUCOM and CENTCOM deteriorate, America won't be able to treat them as economy-of-force fronts to focus on China.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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NOTE: I grabbed the map from some .mil page.
