Anyone up for another Asian war?

Of course The Neutralist should stay on top of current events so that we can comment intelligently on events relevant to our mission.  Sadly our budget is non-existent so we have to rely on other sources.  Fortunately, they abound on the Internet.  One is always being warned that we cannot trust everything on the web.  Of course they never mean NYT or WAPO.  Moi, I'll take the new media over the old when it makes its points well.

It seems there is trouble brewing in Pacific.  None of it close to us, but thanks to our great victory in WWII, the country we leveled is our ally.  Now, if they have a war, it is our war.

In one of the newer media outlets, Antiwar.com's blog John Glaser notes that China is kind of tired of a large ocean being an American lake.

In Mr. Glaser's post, Abandon Hegemony in Asia-Pacific, Or Risk Catastrophic War, the title says it all.  Is maintaining the Pacific lake worth a war?  The few people who have been following The Neutralist cannot be in the dark on our position.  We have always been for the end of our country's policy of running the world.  In the end, it is unsustainable.  We are rattling swords with a big creditor in support of another big creditor.  Are we the indispensable power or a grand pawn?

Is China wishing to establish an Asian Monroe Doctrine or does she wish to have a lake.  The Neutralist can't say for sure, but believes, in the end, short of war there is no point to staying.  There are enough regional players such that if we leave, The Middle Kingdom will have enough problems sorting that out that they're not about to obtain a trans-Pacific landing force anytime soon.

Thanks to treaty obligations, bugging out will be complicated.  Even so, we should begin the process of negotiating our departure with all the powers now.

Actually, we should have begun the process in 1898 by saying to Spain, sorry about that boat, but send us a few pesetas comp and you keep the Philippines.  No, go back further, we should have told the sugar planters further south that we were not helping to depose Queenie.

Mr. Glaser sums it all up best here, “maintaining global hegemony does ordinary Americans little good. Such an exclusive hold on power in the sphere of international relations is greatly beneficial to political elites and the wealthy entities to which they are closely tied, but not much for the general population. Given this, the question of whether we prefer maintaining hegemony to “all-out conflict” in the Asia-Pacific is pertinent.”

It was maybe the Dole's in Hawaii, who wanted the Philippines is a good question, but elites set up a colonial situation that probably made war inevitable.  Why are we still there?  There are ample web sources to argue that, but be assured, Joe and Jane average will get nothing out of it.