The Rise of China and the Decline of the U.S. Army by John J. Mearsheimer

The Rise of China and the Decline of the U.S. Army Reviews

• 
  Reid tries to read

  Mearsheimer is very much in that Niall Ferguson vein of conservative thinking, where they view the American Empire as a global force for good but dislike the way it is currently being run. This obviously leads to flaws in their analysis and makes them pieces of human garbage, but I still think it’s important to look at why American hegemony is failing straight from the horse’s mouth. In this transcript of a short Mearsheimer lecture, the ‘realist’ thinker lays out how America’s “pivot to China” is a net-negative for the American army. This is not something Mearsheimer is thrilled about; he even says “I want to emphasize that I am not hostile to the Army in any way. Indeed, I have a special place in my heart for that institution… being a former enlisted man in the Army as well as a West Point graduate”.
  
  4 things are happening that, in Mearsheimer’s view, will castrate the army in the coming years:
  1) The pivot to fight China in Asia emphasizes the use of the navy and air force over the army’s ground troops
  2) The failure of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations have diminished the army in the eyes of policymakers and made occupation and counter-insurgency campaigns less likely in the near future.
  3) American economic decline post-2008 means that corners will be cut and parts of the military that are expendable will be cut back on. I disagree with this view, as the M.I.C. Is far too entrenched to allow strategic/budgetary concerns to stop its flow of easy profits from taxpayers into the pockets of the CEOs of Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the like.
  4) As the army begins to fight for its budget amidst its diminishing importance, it will also be undercut by the marine corps since the marines perform similar functions but have much better public relations than the army, while also being integral to the Navy in ways the army is not.
  
  The United States is pivoting from seeing Europe as the pre-eminent region of geopolitical importance to viewing Asia as the most important region of the world. This is due to the fall of the USSR and subsequent rise of China. A pivot inevitably means that America must de-emphasize its focus on one area so that the money/military equipment put towards one can be shifted to the other. He argues that we will pivot out of Europe, rather than the Persian Gulf; the recent pull out of Afghanistan and proxy-war in Ukraine suggest Mearsheimer was incorrect in this assessment. His logic was that the energy resources of the Gulf are too important for America to weaken its influence in the region, especially seeing that India and China both heavily rely on oil and gas from the gulf, and this reliance will only grow in the future. Maybe America’s pivot is only temporary, and we will move back into the gulf while making our European vassals finance their own defenses/war against Russia. He also correctly argues that the financial crisis has permanently corroded the power of the EU, weakening the only true force in the region capable of checking U.S. power. This, again, should have been a reason for America to focus less on Europe, but maybe the Ukraine proxy-war is just a contingent event that was too far out of left field for Mearsheimer to possibly predict.
  
  Either way, in Asia the most likely areas of conflict (besides the Korean Peninsula) would not require many American ground troops, if any at all depending on if we use proxy-forces instead. “potential conflict scenarios in the Asia-Pacific region that might involve American military forces include 1) Taiwan, 2) the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and 3) the South China Sea. None of them, however, are likely to involve large-scale American ground forces. Indeed, it is not even clear that US troops would be involved in any of those fights. And if they were needed, it might very well be the Marines and not the Army that joined the fight”. On top of this there is an overwhelming feeling of disillusionment with the army, similar to the post-Vietnam era. It is much more likely that we use weapons such as drones (like in Libya) or local forces, like in Ukraine today, rather than sending our army in to invade.
• 
  Guillaume Dohmen

  A book that is well out of date. If one follows Meersheimer’s reasoning one could arguing that he is talking about another terrorist state. The number of people killed by th US worldwide since the last war has been quite large and this is never talked about. Very soon the US will not be able to compete with China and Indian.