I suspect the examples cited are not germane to the final paragraph. US involvement in the Levant and SWA/Afghanistan is at best, adventurism or a display of testosterone (not unlike Grenada and Panama) on the part of some US leaders. To draw conclusions from the engagements of the last 20 odd years about how the US might respond to a perceived existential threat is a mistake because no meaningful basis of analogy exists between the two sorts of cases.
BTW, the earlier appeal to Korea as an esample of US capabilities vis-a-vis PRC is equally a mistake. If memory serves, the principle global concern of the US senior leadership during the Korean conflict was the USSR advancing further in Western Europe. I seem to recall that the US sent as many or more troops to reinforce Europe as were sent to fight on the Korean peninsula.
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