This is an excerpt from the latest on straightlinelogic, What Is Power?

Secretary of State John Kerry recently said that by annexing Crimea Russia was acting “in a 19th century fashion.” American foreign policy is rooted in a tangle of power politics and alliances, similar to the 19th century witches’ brew that led to World War I. Say Russian tanks rolled into the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; China lobbed missiles into Taiwan, fanned warships over the entire area it claims as its territorial waters in the South China Sea, engaged in naval battles with the Philippines, perhaps sent a few ships to the Senkakus, a pile of rocks in the East China Sea that both it and Japan claim, and for good measure its army joined North Korea’s in an invasion of South Korea. By treaty, the US would be obligated to come to the aid of all those beleaguered nations, and there is talk of extending our guarantees to Russian doorsteps Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova.

The military challenge of fighting simultaneous wars would be insurmountable, not to mention the politics of rallying the American people or the difficulties of paying for it, especially since China and Russia are our creditors and would quit lending to us. Some or all of the nations we’ve vowed to protect would realize what the putative beneficiaries on the other side of those $128 trillion in unfunded liabilities are going to discover: a promise from the US government isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.