> Much of the post-WW2 American-led world order was founded partially on the United States using its military to keep international waters open.

This completely ignores the MAD era and the Soviets taking over Eastern Europe by force. It also ignores the Korean war stalemate, the Vietnam war loss, as well the most recent Afghan loss.

Post-Soviet disintegration management, the successful integration of Eastern Europe, China, and India into the Western Bloc ways were genuine wins. That's post-1989, not post-ww2 (yes, I realize technically that's post-ww2). So there was not really a world-wide dependency between WW2 and 1989 on the American military. Western Bloc, yes, world-wide no.

The current stalemate is only a surprise to the unaware and folks listening only to American news channels. Before the beginning of the current conflict, even $20 chatgpt provided enough insight to accurately chart the course of the conflict in probabilities. Even without chatgpt, folks keeping track and keeping an eye on real news and past policy decisions and progress were able to predict that Ukraine had a very good chance of stopping Russia in its tracks.

The trouble isn't with the availability of this data, it's hubris. Time and time again. Caesar. Napoleon. Hitler. Korea. Johnson in Vietnam. Soviets in Afghanistan. US in Afghanistan. Ukraine. Iran.

But hubris exists because sometimes it works, and for quite some time. Genghis Khan. Pax Romana. Soviets in Eastern Europe. US in Western Europe. Europeans in the Americas. Russians in Eastern Asia. Europeans in Asia and Africa. Palestine. Tibet.

Why it works, and why it doesn't, is an active research topic. [1]

Analysts paid to predict the future will of course argue this vehemently from their pet PoV. And the decision-makers are too domain-challenged to know whom to believe*. They didn't have chatgpt :-)

[1] https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/phillips-payson-obr...

* Or they just don't care