"If you had been a security policy-maker in the world’s greatest power in 1900, you would have been a Brit looking warily at your age-old enemy, France.
By 1910, you would be allied with France and your enemy would be Germany.
By 1920, World War I would have been fought and won, and you’d be engaged in a naval arms race with your erstwhile allies, the U.S. and Japan.
By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said “no war for ten years.”
Nine Years later World War II had begun.
By 1950, Britain no longer was the world’s greatest power, the Atomic Age had dawned, and a “police action” was underway in Korea.
Ten years later the political focus was in the “missile gap”, the strategic paradigm was shifting from massive retaliation to flexible response, and few people had heard of Vietnam.
By 1970, the peak of our involvement in Vietnam had come and gone, we were beginning détente with the Soviets, and we were anointing the Shah as our protégé in the Gulf region.
By 1980, the Soviets were in Afghanistan, Iran was in the throes of revolution, there was talk of our “hollow forces” and a window of vulnerability”, and the U.S. was the greatest creditor nation the world had seen.
By 1990, the Soviet Union was within a year of dissolution, American forces in the Desert were on the verge of showing they were anything but hollow, the U.S. had become the greatest debtor nation the world had ever known, and almost no one had heard of the internet.
Ten years later, Warsaw was the capital of a NATO nation, asymmetric threats transcended geography, and the parallel revolutions of information, biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, and high density sources foreshadowed changes almost beyond forecasting.
All of which is to say that I’m not sure what 2010 will look like, but I’m sure that it will be very little like what we expect, so we should plan accordingly."
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We can take this retelling of how unpredictably great power politics can shift over time as a lesson to avoid ruling out things that seem inconceivable. As America experiments with the latest variation of isolationism I see a scenario that seems inconceivable as an increasing possibility.
In big power politics Europe has a good card to play: they could hand over physical instances of the F-35, Patriot, THAAD and a few choice others (and schematics, documents, any keys they've got) to China in exchange for China flipping from Russia to Europe (and Ukraine). This would make a world where two previously-unthinkable grand alliances dominate the news.
Of course, in the case of a world where there exists a North America-Russia power bloc in a cold war with a Europe-China power bloc, one of the two alliances would have all of the LNG and the other would have no LNG, so maybe Europe can see that already and will never initiate the flip.
