Living in Appeasement World

[Geee]

National Review:

Contrary to the famous advice of Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union message in 1941 — “We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal would preach the ‘ism’ of appeasement” — the United States is now effectively an appeasement power. Because it is so helplessly dependent on imported oil from unfriendly places (unlike Canada), and the American public is so cranky and churlish about paying what other countries pay for imported petroleum products, and the political class of both parties for 40 years has been so hopelessly feeble about explaining the problem and trying to persuade the country to face up to it, the U.S. tolerates the subsidization of Islamic extremism by Saudis and seems to be afraid to do anything to prevent the nuclear militarization of Iran.

Because the U.S. is so debt-ridden and the political class of both parties has generally been incapable of speaking straight to the country about public-sector debt and the related burden of the current-account deficit (half composed of oil imports), and because so much U.S. government debt is held by China, the country’s government is afraid to encourage China’s neighbors to coordinate even an unprovoking and entirely civilized response to China’s high-handed condescensions to India on the Himalayan frontier and puerile expansionism in the South China Sea, presumably for fear of China’s response as a large creditor of the U.S.