For starters, in a region replete with territorial disputes and old rivalries that are as bitter as the Arab-Israeli conflict, America faces a geopolitical environment with no security architecture and no agreed conflict-resolution mechanism. The division of the Korean Peninsula, the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, and the question of Taiwan (which by 2020 the US will no longer be able to defend from a Chinese attack, according to a 2009 study by the RAND Corporation) appear as intractable as the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
首先，在充满了领土争端和激烈程度不亚于阿拉伯-以色列冲突的历史恩怨的亚洲，美国面临着缺少安全结构和一致的冲突解决机制的地缘政治环境。朝鲜半岛的分裂、印度-巴基斯坦在克什米尔问题上的冲突以及台湾问题（根据兰德公司2009年的一项研究，到2020年，美国将无法抵御来自中国大陆的袭击）的棘手程度不亚于以色列-巴勒斯坦争端。