As US missiles leave South Korea, the Philippines asks: are we next?

noduerme

America is a bit overstretched at the moment. As far as I can tell, we spent about 50 years in the cold war talking up liberty and democracy, but that was essentially all kind of a BS cultural-supremacy soft-power fig leaf until the cold war ended. Then we had about 20 years of politicians who thought the soft power stuff was all you needed. About a decade of unwinding that position, and the new paradigm is to get back to creating a global order and dispatching regimes that disrupt our commerce. The security concerns haven't changed, but the way of dealing with them has. The only trouble is, we are no longer the superpower that we were in 1950 or even 1980. What I think will be interesting from this realignment is how our alliances will probably shift toward countries which are strategically aligned with us even if they're much less ethically or ideologically aligned with our stated beliefs. South Korea and the Philippines are both "capable allies" in the sense that Israel and the UAE are, and in the sense that much of Europe is not. I'm confused as to why Filipinos are protesting against taking out the Iranian regime; it's a direct blow to Chinese expansionism, as well as the jihadist groups in the south. But America's taking out the weakest links in the Russian-Chinese-Iranian-Venezuelan axis. A short-term rotation away from East Asia doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad strategic move.

zacklee1988

This is basic force projection math. The US doesn't have an unlimited stock of deployable intermediate missiles, so pulling from one station means shifting capability to another.

calvinmorrison

Oh the Philippines, an actual American colonial holding!

expedition32

If the US has problems with Iran imagine how the Chinese could darken the skies with drones if they wanted to.

justinclift

No paywall: https://archive.md/CsfTL But note that SCMP is a known pro-China website, so keep that in mind when reading the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Morning_Post

ourmandave

The Phillippines? Get in line. Dear Leader is currently threatening Cuba with regime change, because reasons. I wonder what stupid obvious lies the administration will tell when they start blowing up that sovereign country and killing or kidnapping it's leaders.

coldtea

"North Korea couldn't stop the pull-out. Now, Manila must figure out if it is indeed a strategic partner or just another supply depot" "strategic partner"? LMAO

throwaways122

> Now, Manila must figure out if it is indeed a strategic partner or just another supply depot. I think Manila already knows the answer. The Gulf Arab allies invested trillions, literally trillions of dollars in the United States, and are basically left to fend for themselves after the U.S. pulled out its entire military and air defense assets to defend the "greatest ally" in a war instigated by said ally - an ally that gets billions of dollars in aid from the United States and doesn't even say thank you.