[ericmay]

I think many outside of the US misunderstand the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Outside of political talking points and nightly news, the wars basically didn't exist. I mean if you just turned off the news, you'd have no idea that the US was fighting two wars. The military was at war, but not America. There weren't really any day-to-day effects and to the extent that there were, those are mostly long gone. I don't think that these wars have any bearing on additional US engagement, especially against China or Russia. In other words, I don't think the US is war weary at all, though I do think that out of the issues you mentioned some measure of the population doesn't think they're problems, except high energy prices which I think the US can mostly address domestically. I'd also add from a more realistic standpoint the military isn't preventing fixes for healthcare, poverty, or crumbling infrastructure. What's preventing addressing those issues is that some people don't think they are issues and those that do disagree on how to solve them.

The main threat to the US is dissolution of the democracy, but I think even in that case there would still be strong (maybe even stronger) support for defense of Taiwan because it's an existential issue for the US. For China to invade Taiwan with impunity would dissolve all American credibility in the Pacific and the ramifications of that are significant. It also would kick the US out in terms of trade in favor of China, which would do damage to the US economy.

There certainly is some concern that China may try to engage in a fast, hard engagement with the US and that could cause the US to withdraw, but given the significance of maintaining economic and military interests it's likely that it would just lead to a swift, hard response and from there we're probably in a pretty destructive war. I don't think even Trump or someone similar could prevent a US response here.