Can the US handle conflict on 3 fronts?

Israel has an economy four times the size of Ukraine's, but in an area Mr. Mearsheimer refers to as "Greater Israel" being Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, the Jews represent around 7.2 million souls, and the Arabs about 7.2 million as well.

In both these cases, without outside military aid, including the provision of materiel, the position of the U.S.'s allies is fraught.

This means as the United States tries to pivot, it is operating on three fronts.

Manufacture capacity debacle

I think things are more dire than Mr. Mearsheimer's analysis suggests because when it comes to manufacturing, the West is in a disastrous position.

During the last 20 or more years, we have outsourced much of our manufacturing to China. This has turned China into a great power, fattened the balance sheets of Australian miners, and at the same time crowded out the shelves of households with electronic goods.

So far, so good. But it has also hollowed out our ability to manufacture, as well as centralising the production of some strategic elements in China.

For example, China dominates the rare earths market with 84 percent of world production, and these are used for the latest generation of hi-tech weaponry.

U.S. military manufacturing capacity has also declined to the extent where there are doubts as to whether Australia can obtain the AUKUS nuclear submarines from the U.S. because they might not be able to meet their own resupply needs for the ships, let alone supply others with them.

At the same time that manufacturing has been hollowed-out, we are also crippling the cost-effectiveness of what manufacturing we have by attempting to run a modern economy on windmills and solar panels.

China is radically increasing its consumption of fossil fuels for power generation at the same time as it hedges its bets with nuclear. Renewables are a tiny proportion of their overall power generation.

China's labour productivity is also such that its military is rapidly surpassing the U.S. in terms of size.

In 2005 the Chinese navy had just over 200 principal combat ships, and the U.S. had just less than 300. Not even 20 years later, the U.S. has 294, while China has 351. At the same time, the West has made it more difficult to extract domestic fossil fuels, forcing the price up, and increasing the West's reliance on the Arab Middle East (which in terms of the current Middle East war is a potential transfer of power to Israel's enemies), as well as unsavoury suppliers like Venezuela.