Noel King

It is festooned with American bases.

What this is costing America, what moving stuff out of the Asia-Pacific is costing America is mostly political credibility.

And the big example of this is THAAD, which is this very expensive, very technologically advanced missile defense system that we put in South Korea in the 2010s.

China was really opposed to the deployment, and it punished South Korea very harshly for allowing the deployment of THAAD in South Korean territory.

Most notably, there was a complete boycott of the

South Korean supermarket chain Lotte, which was trying to break into China and was basically driven out of China as were a bunch of other South Korean businesses.

South Korean pop stars were banned from entering the country for a while.

They really paid a price, and now they see the Americans treating them like shit in the way that, you know, Trump has treated all of America's allies like shit.

The US military says it hasn't moved every part of THAAD out and that it's just moved some components, but the damage has been done anyway.

The South Korean press has widely reported it as THAAD itself being moved out, and the reputational cost is already there.

Okay, you said it, not me.

President Trump treats America's allies like shit.

And that raises some interesting questions here about diplomacy.

President Trump has not been able to get America's usual allies on board with the war, despite various, you know, pleas and whining and whatnot.

What does it mean for China that America's allies are like, uh-uh, guys, not this time?

Well...

America's entire power projection in the Asia-Pacific is very dependent on allies.

At any conflict in the Taiwan Strait, you're running a supply chain all the way up from Australia or from Japan.

You're dependent not only upon the big countries, or relatively big countries, you're also dependent upon these little island states on the way, where America has complicated historical relationships, but which have traditionally looked to America as a security patron.

So all of this is dependent on goodwill, and