Americans are dangerously casual about war with Russia and China

The fear of a large-scale terror attack that was widespread after 9/11 quickly faded. There were no home front deprivations. Schoolchildren didn’t practice hiding under desks. We hung no blackout curtains. We were never at risk of invasion or airstrike. Indeed, our enemies in these last two decades generally had no airpower, let alone ballistic missiles capable of crossing the Atlantic. The war on terror has been long, brutal, and costly, but there was never a scenario in which we would be conquered.

That recent history, argued writer Freddie deBoer on Substack on Tuesday, has left too many Americans dangerously naïve and casual about war with Russia and China, nations far closer to being our military peers:

[W]e’ve gotten to a point where so many people feel comfortable getting cavalier about war with Russia. Yes, of course the Commentary crowd is raring to jump into a war that generations grew up dreading. But there’s a remarkable amount of mainstream fervor for being “strong” and “assertive” with Russia right now, and I can only guess that it largely stems from the fact that we’ve been insulated from the horrors of war really since Vietnam, thanks to the unipolarity of the post-Cold War world, the remarkable advances in emergency medicine made in the past 50 years, and our increasing focus on a “nimble” army. These things have made conflict easier to bear for a citizenry that, in turn, doesn’t fear conflict the way it should.