Can Offshore Balancing Be More Realistic For The United States’ Foreign Relations?

Although the United States’ old grand strategy was almost forgotten since the fallen of the Soviet Union, but after so many unfinished businesses around the world such as in Afghanistan and elsewhere the United States may have to revisit an old grand strategy which is known as offshore balancing.  According to Stephen Walt in the video right after the break, he suggests that the United States would be better off in foreign relations in applying offshore balancing for foreign relation building.  Offshore balancing may save the United States from overspending in foreign policy matters, but offshore balancing isn’t discouraging in building healthy relations with foreign powers.  Perhaps, if offshore balancing is done right, the United States may have even more friends than enemies while building a stronger nation at home.  Anyhow, I guess no known strategy is invulnerable to everything, and so offshore balancing may not always be best for certain situations.  In my opinion, Stephen Walt does sound very convincing in his argument that the offshore balancing may help the United States navigates the evermore dangerous globe in a more efficient and healthier manner.


World Powers Of Today Won’t Be Around When World War III Reshuffles World Players

I think we are living in a period in which is very similar to China’s Warring States period.  Of course, there are many things that will refute this point of view soundly.  For an example, we can say that this is the modern era with modern technologies of all sorts, weaponized or not, and so we should not go back too far into the past to figure out the future.  In respect to modernists and contemporary thinkers, I think they have an argument if they’re trying to make this case, but I don’t think they are 100% correct.  In a grander picture, China’s Warring States period reminds us how states were fighting for supremacy.  Once, there were many in the East, but once relatively modest Qin state became the supreme State of them all.  In today picture, we are seeing the same struggle in a larger scale of course, because we are talking about a possible World War III.

United States is trying to retain the global supremacy at a cost of spending greater sum of money for military and whatnot.  Russia is trying to stand up tall and strong again like it once was a super power.  China is re-emerging as a Middle Kingdom again.  Many other important region players such as Turkey, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and so forth are trying to carve out more world space for themselves by taking the advantages of the struggle between huge powers (e.g., United States, China, Russia).  If we look closer at this big picture, it seems the world is playing a similar rhyme to the one in China’s Warring States period.  In fact, this scary picture may also look like any other past period that got many world powers struggling for resources, territories, and cultural supremacy.

I’m sure there were ups and downs for a state that was trying to survive China’s Warring States period.  Thus, it is obvious that at the time, small state that should look harmless was able to dominate over the stronger ones.  Just like life, in natural state, things can go awfully weird and non-straight line.  This means, it’s possible for a harmless, small state of today to dominate the future, globally.  This means we should not think arrogantly that United States, China, and Russia would always be the dominant powers.  Furthermore, we can look back at World War II and see that this war had completely reshuffled many world players’ strengths at the time.  I think Britain was most noticeably shrunken and given way to the United States rise till now.  Although, I think the United States was risen for quite some time already before the WWII, but the rising pace was accelerated even faster and more intense as WWII played out.  Right after WWII, many European powers were drained out of resources, money, and whatnot, thus the United States and Russia became the two most dominant players that created the so called the Cold War.

I’m not a history buff, but I think even with my measly historical knowledge it’s enough for me to see that if World War III to occur, the world will once again see a reshuffle of world powers.  Perhaps, the so called the superpowers of today will no longer be the lead countries after the next world war.  This is why it’s rather sad to see so many online commenters who joked casually about the next world war as if they wished for the next big war to happen, according to their online comments under various online news articles.  Perhaps, Einstein would be dead wrong on the next world war, because it’s possible that cooler heads in the future might use nuclear weapons in limited way, preventing the nuclear winter here on earth.  Nonetheless, such an aftermath won’t look pretty either, because the depopulation of earth in such a scale won’t be easily recovered.  It’s sad to see that us humans dare to think about depopulation, because we fear of running out of resources and spaces.  Why don’t we be constructive instead and think up way to share available resources.   Even better, we can improve our technology to allow us humans to colonize outer space planets and moons so we can mine for even more resources.  Basically, there is untold and near unlimited amount of resources that are waiting for us to mine out in space, and yet here on earth we are killing each other for scraps.

Why am I writing this blog post now?  I’m seeing so many countries are preparing for the next big war.  Especially, the big boys like the United States, China, and Russia are spending even more money on their military.  Perhaps, I’m just paranoid about this, but I fear that countries with stronger military incline to push for war as they think that their military can win war.  Of course, it’s not wrong for a country to have a strong military in case she needs to defend herself in an unexpected war.  With that being said, I don’t think it’s right for a country with strong military to encourage illogical war.  Furthermore, we are no longer in a time period in which weapons can only kill hundreds, but we are in a time period in which our weapons can annihilate a city in one go.  In such a scenario, the aftermath could render a city unusable for decades to come and more.  I don’t think war is wise, because death and destruction do come only when nothing can be agreed upon.  We humans are built to think, and so we should let common sense runs wild!  We should not be like animals that may eat their own children.  Bringing the next big war to fruition may have the consequence that is no different than animals that eat their children.  Such cannibalistic behavior should only be reserved for Hollywood films and not for real life.  In my opinion, the next big war will definitely reshuffle the world powers of today!