The Trigger

Introduction for "The Trigger"
by Dr. Tim Dosemagen

For decades, even the not so prescient had predicted the inevitability of a clash between the rising power that was China, and the undisputed reigning champion of the 20th Century, the United States.

But nobody expects World Wars, and certainly, nobody would have predicted this fight. The Americans still thought like champions. In the back of the typical American's mind, East-Asia was the weakest division in the league, at least militarily. How things had changed. From a post-World War Two high tide, with American power and influence following on the magical drawing forces of the implosion of the Imperial Japanese Empire, the Chinese Civil War, and the failures of the European Powers to re-establish former colonies throughout the region, the tides of history were due to turn, and slowly, they did.

Militarily, the disastrous Vietnam capitulation permanently removed U.S. forces from the Southeast-Asian mainland. Then, Taiwan completely weaned herself from direct U.S. foreign aid, repossessing its U.S. bases, bidding American forces a final farewell. On the Japanese archipelago, Okinawa was returned to Japan by the United States, as the oyabun-koyabun (older-younger brother) relationship between these two former enemies grew less one-sided, and at American urging, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces once again returned to the business of power projection, as befits the world's second strongest economy. Finally, humbled by the force of nature itself, U.S. forces withdrew from The Philippines with a salute from an angry Mt. Pinatubo. The powerful post-World War II U.S. Navy, even briefly rebuilt during the Reagan years, was a 200 ship shadow of its former self. South Korea, with its 30,000 U.S. troops, and Japan, with its significant U.S. Navy bases, were all that remained of the vast former 20th Century East Asian holdings of the U.S. military.

Economically, from the Korean Armistice in the mid-1950s,