US voters abandon distant wars once they yield no clear homeland stakes

Evidence

Since both China and the United States have missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons to the other’s territory, an implicit standoff occurs and these weapons are not used in the early phases of the war. Fear of such attacks, however, exists in both societies and is particularly strong in the United States. This leads many Americans to begin to ask why they are being subjected to this danger? What difference does it make if China controls the South China Sea, Vietnam, or even all of Southeast Asia? Opposition to the war is particularly strong in the Hispanic-dominated states of the southwestern United States, whose people and governments say “this isn’t our war” and attempt to opt out on the model of New England in the War of 1812. After the Chinese consolidate their initial victories in East Asia, American opinion begins to move in the direction that Japan hoped it would in 1942: the costs of defeating this most recent assertion of hegemonic power are too great; let’s settle for a negotiated end to the sporadic fighting or “phony war” now going on in the Western Pacific. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 879

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the domestic-opt-out dynamic of the War of 1812 and the Vietnam-era antiwar movement; echoes arguments about democratic publics tiring of costly distant conflicts.
• SEED: Essay angle: how Huntington’s hypothetical US-China war encodes an implicit argument that America’s post-Cold War civilizational identity cannot sustain hegemony far from home once nuclear standoff removes the direct threat.