i don't talk as much about foreign policy as i used to, in part because i've come to think that foreign policy in and of itself is not the most important foreign policy problem for the united states. what does that mean?

well, let's take one issue for example. when i was a freshman in college, i cracked open a book about chinese military modernization. the authors warned that, while the chinese military wasn't in a position to challenge america today, it was improving and shouldn't be dismissed

year after year, people republish variations on the same claim of that book: the military balance in the pacific is shifting because of qualitative and quantitative improvements in the chinese military arsenal

so here you have a classic Policy Problem (TM). because of a shift in the material facts (chinese military power going up), the credibility of a policy commitment (american alliance politics in asia) is threatened.

you can respond to this in one of several ways

a) change the policy commitment (its not worth it, abandon commitment)

b) invest more resources to sustain the commitment

c) find more innovative ways of using existing resources

its not that the national security community has ignored any of this, its always been attentive (even during the GWOT years) to china. but politically, the looming specter of a possible rout for washington in asia has little purchase

this is something i often discuss with @Scholars_Stage, because even if we have some major disagreements about the idea of china competition we agree that washington has to decide soon whether or not

the american people are going to invest the resources necessary to sustain the current american disposition in asia or make the arrangements necessary to facilitate a transfer of power in that region to beijing

both are potentially legitimate choices, each of them containing some costs, benefits, and risks. neither are inherently better or worse. but the middle option of "sit back, watch chinese military power grow, and do nothing" is not legitimate

because it amounts to sitting in the middle of the road, in the way of a heavily armed person, and deciding that you are not going to seriously prepare to fight him and you're not going to get out of his way

its the worst of both worlds. you could avoid trouble and get out of his way. or, if that's unacceptable to you, you could start focusing your attention and energy on what it takes to make him back off. you're doing neither of those things.

but if you're an FP wonk, there's actually very little for you to contribute here. your training allows you to think through the political-military steps necessary to execute either option. what it doesn't so much speak to

is the issue of how to get the issue to the top of a decision-maker's increasingly divided attention span, how to make it resonate with the public, and how to shepherd it through domestic political ecosystem where things like

getting people to wear pieces of cloth and string to protect themselves from a virus is as hard as climbing mt everest

in a way, figuring out how many ships you need and where the marines should go is the *easier* task, because its scoped to a nominal goal you assume (increase or dial down US commitments in asia)

the hard task is almost entirely the thing of how an issue like this can be deliberated upon, resourced, and implemented if, say, every 4-8 years a US president overturns every major FP decision of the previous president

this is where, as @averyfjames has been saying, the parallels really are to american history prior to the mid-20th century, when political culture was more fractious and internal cultural conflicts more prevalent

its pretty alien to the worldview and experience of most FP/natsec analysts because their entire assumptions about how policy works and the cooperation/resources available for it are shaped by post-1945 US politics

recalibrating to changed assumptions is really hard, and in a way almost all major FP issues are now subordinate to the meta-issue of how public policy functions in the environment that has been slowly emerging over the last few decades

sometimes it leaves people feeling, understandably, quite glum. @IRHotTakes often posts about his lament that he 'wasted his life' studying fp/natsec when he really should have been posting more on 4chan, if US political culture is increasingly degenerating into shitposting

i can understand his sorrow and distress, but think its a little overly dark. these are always going to be important issues and important skills. but the environment in which they are used is not static

the environment in which policy is developed, advocated, and implemented has changed, and its still evolving in ways that are difficult to predict. the only thing that seems somewhat clear is that the meta-issue of policy in this new (or old, if you see it as 19th cen redux)

environment is the basic stumbling block to any kind of major FP ambitions the US has, and how to deal with it is going to occupy a lot of attention for the near future.