Both parties have shifted dramatically towards hawkish positions since 2001, even in the face of waning public support for foreign adventurism. I'm curious to see how long it takes the pendulum to swing back.
Maybe the 2020s will see an end to support for war in the US, but it will take the continuing reduction of the old white conservative white people class, that seems to lose about 1% of the voting population a year. I'm a white person but not conservative, and I do come from that group. These demographic changes take a while to percolate through the political leadership, because the folks that liked military action will have to age out of leadership. So while I'm voting for Hillary, I wish she was a lot less a part of the conservative dems that generally support military actions.
I think what will probably happen is that the decreasing political power of conservative older (mostly white) people will lead to even more national extremism, and then the demographic changes will force the republicans to change to attract conservatives who aren't white. It saddens me to feel this is all but inevitable. I'm from a southern state but now live in one of those economically successful liberal coastal tech hubs. I wish there was more opportunity in the state I grew up in, but mostly I just see them wasting time and passing laws against gay people and transgenders in my home state.
Interestingly there is a similar issue facing China. If China and the US can avoid fighting a war against each other for 15 years, then the population of China will experience a movement to having many fewer workers per retired person, partly caused by having had so many more male than female children, they will get older. For example, see http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/chinas-t....
My fantasy then is China and the US don't destroy the world in a fight, and by 2030, China will be more focused on internal issues around retirement and economic retraction than trying to take small south China sea islands from the Philippines. Of course, US history shows that there's nothing that excites the population than a good war. Similar forces are at work in Russia too, with an aging population. And then China can gradually transition to being a real democracy (yeah, just like russia did, for a little while :-)). Putin is not going to live forever, but will he still be in power in 30 years?
