Growing up in the 50s and early 60s, I was heavily influenced by a steady diet of leftover B&W John Wayne propaganda movies depicting our victory in WWII– like Flying Tigers, Back to Bataan and Sands of Iwo Jima. Early TV also played its part. The series Victory at Sea, with its stirring musical score by Richard Rogers, likely had an influence on my post-college-graduation enlistment in the army at the height of the Vietnam War. That series, week-by-week, documented our progress of island-hopping across the South Pacific, constantly shrinking the Japanese empire until, ultimately, the need to actually invade the Japanese home islands was averted with the dropping of the two atomic bombs.
Those war-time cinema productions, and most of the other documentation of that period, emphasized our power and might, while minimizing the absolute military disasters of the early stages of the conflict in the Pacific. Of course there was Pearl Harbor. But that was always portrayed as less a critical lapse of intelligence and readiness on our side and more of a “sneak attack” by those crafty Japanese. It was only later in life, when I read Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Toland’s tome, The Rising Sun, that I learned how thoroughly our butts were kicked during the beginning of the Pacific conflict.
We were ill-prepared to carry out a war so far from our home shores. I certainly don’t mean to take anything away from the bravery and tenacity of our fighting men, but we lost a lot of ships and a lot of sailors and soldiers in that first year. Eventually the incredible industrial strength of America, its legions of skilled workers, and its railroads, allowed us to get past those disasters and achieve victory. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor, was right in his pre-war urgings to avoid war with the US, an assessment based purely on our industrial capacity, not our military strength.
So, jump ahead to today and the Chinese threat to Taiwan. Historically, Chinese dynasties have been content to force suzerainty from surrounding regions, subjecting them to mass rather than force. But that traditional equation hasn’t worked with regard to Taiwan, which has seen what happens, as in the case of Hong Kong, when entering into an “agreement” with the current version of Chinese imperialism. Up until now, the efforts of the US in bringing together a coalition of East Asian partners to contain Chinese aggression has given them pause. We’ve been at a stand-off. The Chinese hadn’t felt strong enough to invade, the Taiwanese don’t want to belong, and we’ve been the X factor.
Our carrot-and-stick approach worked for a long, long time. Through Quemoy and Matsu, through the degradation of US power wrought by Vietnam, and right up to the present. But now, with Trump’s flirting with Kim and Xi and his weakening of our military presence and commitment in the region, we’ve deconstructed the Pacific Alliance that both Obama and Biden rightly sought to build. And the Chinese are rushing to fill the vacuum. Our Pacific allies, Japan, South Korea, even Australia, feel they have to be looking over their shoulders to see if we’re still there.
What if the Chinese, on their widely-advertised 2027 timetable, proceed toward Taiwan? It likely won’t be an all-out invasion so much as death by a thousand cuts. Patience is an attribute at which the Chinese are masters. And, even then, what will we be able to do with a deranged, lame-duck president at our helm? History repeats itself. War gaming against the Chinese, on their home turf, even before Trump, has proven to be unsuccessful. And we certainly won’t start sending nuclear missiles skyward, with Guam, our Japanese bases, and even the homeland at similar risk. History will likely repeat itself, with the beginning of any hostilities wholly unfavorable to us, even if we choose to participate.
The difference now is that there is no industrial might to bail us out. No Ford factory that can be instantly converted to building bombers by the thousands, no GM plant that can turn from cars to tanks, and no willingness on the part of our aging citizenry to rush to volunteer in vast numbers. Add to that the fact that the Trump/Hegseth wrecking crew have so defanged our once-invincible military. If we can’t, or are unwilling, to help the Ukrainians, right next to our traditional NATO presence, what will we be able to do in the far flung reaches at the other side of the Pacific?
It’s going to be an interesting next few years, with the Trump administration’s total incompetence possibly causing us first to lose Europe and then the Pacific. Or, maybe, vice-versa. Empires come and they go. It’s highly likely that we may become isolated, our global influence gone and our power diminished to the point of simply being able to temporarily hold off the hordes of people streaming from the tropical areas of our own hemisphere as they flee the rapidly accelerating impacts of climate change. We’ll become another England, looking in the mirror at a Pax Americana that once was, with no idea what soon might be.
©2026, David B Bucher
