Around the world in a few paragraphs

Victor Davis Hanson analyzes the world, and why Obama's do nothing policies are not that unpopular with the American people.

The threat of a rival global hegemon in the Middle East like the Soviet Union is gone. China seems unable so far to craft regional power over its oil suppliers. Al-Qaeda is ascendant, but it is hard to know whether it thrives better under dictators who stealthily pay it subsidies to direct its violence westward, or under the tribal postwar chaos that follows the Western-inspired downfall of tyrants.

Intervening in Libya and considering it in Syria more likely hindered rather than enhanced U.S. readiness to preempt a nuclear Iran.

A similar diffidence seems to be occurring with respect to Latin America — an area, we are always lectured, that is on the verge of becoming the new regional powerhouse. Argentina is a basket case. The “new era” of democratization and free-market economics seems undermined by statist authoritarians in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Brazil and Argentina often sound as anti-American as our worst enemies — and in the Age of Obama, no less. If Mexico were in the Middle East, its level of violence would earn calls for U.S. humanitarian intervention in the manner of Libya and Syria.

Of course, much of Latin America’s hostility to the United States is just loud talk, given its growing cultural and commercial ties with the U.S. and its bizarre need to export millions of its people to a country it so publicly rebukes — as if to say, “I hate you so much that I’ve sent you my children to care for.” In general, the American people do not see any crisis in Latin America that warrants intervention. We mostly declaim that we want good will and prosperity, while privately we hope that Mexico refrains from sending another 15 million of its unwanted citizens illegally across our border.

What America should be concerned about is the ascendance of China in the neighborhood of our close allies Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan, and to a lesser extent the countries of Southeast Asia. Yet the U.S. already has a sizable presence in the Pacific, and Obama has promised to augment it. We should be concerned that our key allies — should they doubt this administration’s adherence to past commitments (a legitimate concern) — could easily become nuclear, and in a frighteningly rapid and effective manner. In any case, in times of regional crisis, other than at the 38th parallel, our allies and interests can largely be defended by air and sea. There seems little likelihood in the immediate future of a Pacific war fought along the lines of Vietnam.

In short, the more humanitarian crises develop, the less we are convinced that we could make things better by intervening — or, even if we could, that those whom we thought we were helping would actually believe that we did.