Obama Fails to Start a War and Our Allies Are Worried

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For some reason, I’ve been thinking lately about news memes that I’m tired of hearing about. For example, I’m tired of hearing about how containers revolutionized shipping. I’m tired of hearing about Van Halen’s brown M&Ms. And I’m tired of hearing endlessly about how US allies are supposedly worried because we haven’t started a war over something. According to the New York Times, the latest sign of America’s worrisome restraint is President Barack Obama’s response to China’s seizure of one of our research drones near the Philippines:

Across Asia, diplomats and analysts said they were perplexed at the inability of the Obama administration to devise a strong response to China’s challenge. It did not even dispatch an American destroyer to the spot near Subic Bay, a former American Navy base that is still frequented by American ships, some noted.

…The end result, analysts said, is that China will be emboldened by having carried out an act that amounted to hybrid warfare, falling just short of provoking conflict, and suffering few noticeable consequences. “Allies and observers will find it hard not to conclude this represents another diminishment of American authority in the region,” said Douglas H. Paal, the vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Who knows? Maybe this kind of thing really does worry our allies. But if that’s the case, maybe our allies need to settle down. Not everything is worth a military response. Not everything is even worth a sternly worded note. These kinds of penny-ante provocations are usually designed precisely to evoke a response, and it’s usually best just to ride them out. That’s especially true when there’s nothing much we can do in the short term anyway, which means that any kind of aggressive response would almost inherently end up looking weak and incompetent.

Anyway, I have a feeling that if Donald Trump starts responding more belligerently, we’ll start getting stories about how our allies are worried that America is stirring up trouble and they’re the ones who will have to pay the price. They should be careful about what they wish for.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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