Novelists and filmmakers have long developed alternative histories of major conflicts that should serve as warnings for complacent Americans.
Are we unable to imagine defeat? You might have thought that, having so recently lost a small war, Americans would have no difficulty picturing the consequences of losing a large one. But the humiliating abandonment of Afghanistan in 2021 has been consigned with remarkable swiftness to the collective memory hole.
Presumably a similar process would occur if at some future date the Ukrainian army, starved of ammunition, were overrun by its Russian adversaries. A year ago, US President Joe Biden traveled to Kyiv and told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy: “You remind us that freedom is priceless; it’s worth fighting for as long as it takes.
And that’s how long we’re going to be with you, Mr. President: for as long as it takes.” That turned out to mean, “For as long as it takes House Republicans to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy and cut off aid to Ukraine.” (McCarthy was gone by early October.)
Will the news networks replay Biden’s Kyiv speech the night the Russians march into the Ukrainian capital? Or will one of them air Tucker Carlson’s next interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin? And how will we react if — say, later this year — we are informed that Iran has successfully built a nuclear weapon and has unleashed its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, to rain missiles down on Israel?
For the rest of this column: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-02-11/what-would-america-look-like-if-it-lost-world-war-iii