Today is Flag Day and the US Army’s birthday. I remain hopeful for our republic.
There have been lots of alarming happenings this week that revved up WWIII chatter in the news and on social media.
To understand what’s happening now in world affairs, I think a good place to start is to realize big power competitions are as old as time and we are in the midst of a big power challenge that’s been unfolding long before Trump ever entered politics.
We can go back to the fairly rapid collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-1992 to see that the world power structure can change rapidly and pretty much in ways the overwhelming majority of the experts and pundits didn’t see coming. The end of the Cold War left the United States in a position of world superpower, which our leaders weren’t prepared for and more often than not didn’t leverage to America’s advantage.
The Reagan era ended and from 1992-2000 the Clinton administration kept trying to kowtow to and legitimize numerous miscreants and anti-American regimes around the world, while also embracing the role of world policeman and getting the US entangled in several UN interventions (some of which ended very badly). There was an emerging foreign policy view that the US should shift its world leader role to more of just part of a globalist alliance and subservient to UN agendas.
Early in GWB’s presidency 9/11, an attack on American soil, happened and from that point on America went full-throttle on a global war on terror, which later developed a parallel foreign policy pipedream of regime-change to implant democracy in hostile Islamic-ruled lands. Many Republicans and Democrats embraced this regime-change foreign policy – it wasn’t just one side. The idea that a sharia governmental system could also be transformed into a democracy was always delusional, in my view, since sharia law is a rigid theocratic system. That’s where US policymakers were though and in Washington, if a few prominent experts start selling a new policy, most of the other prominent ones will just get on board with it. Groupthink rules in US policy circles.
The Obama administration turbo-charged the regime-change efforts, that started in the GWB administration, with dismal outcomes to both the peoples we were supposedly saving by our regime change efforts and to the US military, which expended a lot blood and treasure, while remaining stuck in endless rotations to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and beyond. Decades of non-stop deployments degraded our military readiness, even before Biden came along and forced far-left social engineering policies on the US military. It’s a double whammy to our military, that has definitely left America’s national security in peril, I believe. Add in the Biden open border policies and America is at a very precarious point.
With all these efforts, the Obama policymakers operated as if they had no clue about the Cold War world map and many Republicans, who should have known better, jumped on board the regime change train too. The Russians deployed troops to Syria to prop up Assad, while the Obama administration went on the search for mythical “moderate” Syrian rebels to arm to fight both ISIS and Assad. I strongly suspect the CIA was engaged in gunrunning from Benghazi to Syria and that the “moderate” Syrian rebels they were arming were connected to Al Nusra, which was Al Qaeda in Syria. The Russians were Cold War allies of Syria and maintained a large naval facility at Tartus in Syria, so they weren’t going to sit by and allow the US to topple Assad.
The Obama administration also was ham-handed in Ukraine. Russia was propping up a friendly Ukraine leader, while the Obama team openly and clumsily aided the toppling of that leader. Russia responded by deploying troops into Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Well here again, the Russians had their Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol, a port city in Crimea. The Obama administration tucked tail and didn’t challenge the Russian annexation of Crimea… exactly how the Biden administration later had the situation in Afghanistan blow up in their face and then just let the Taliban humiliate the US with that debacle of a withdrawal.
Putin read that Afghanistan debacle as a green light and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. The US isn’t “poking the bear” by aiding Ukraine, because the bear is already on the attack. China likewise is on the attack – floods of cyberattacks on US infrastructure constantly – to take down our grid and water systems.
It’s the Biden (Obama crowd) weakness that is emboldening Russia and China, because they want to usurp America’s role as the world’s superpower.
This is the big picture of what’s going on. Russia will hype how the US and NATO are escalating things by arming Ukraine and Ukraine attacking Russian assets and supply lines in Russia, but this is hogwash. Russia launched the full-scale invasion into Ukraine. Russia has continually saber-rattled threatening NATO, Poland, Sweden, Moldova and even the US. Russia has threatened nuclear war more than once since invading Ukraine.
Russia is now embarking on boldly approaching US waters off of FL and engaging in naval exercises in Cuba. This isn’t the US poking the bear, this is at the very least Russia and China testing to see how far they can go and if the Biden administration will grovel. At worst, Russia is positioning and training for some actual hostile actions against the US that would surely involve China, Iran and other regimes hostile to the US. Since China, Russia and Iran want to see the US relegated to the dustbin of history (Iran’s rallying cry is “Death to America!”) and this presidential election year will be ripe for exploitation to escalate internal chaos, so all cards are on the table.
Reagan would never have worried about “poking the bear” and for the life of me I don’t understand how craven and silly so much of the right-wing has become. Sorry, the reality is the US will likely be dealing with more challenges to US power, especially if we appease Putin on his Ukraine demands.
These challenges to the US’s world position will continue regardless who is elected in November and in the meantime America’s adversaries want to create as much chaos, division and turmoil in America as possible. The expanding power and influence of China, Russia and Iran will inevitably lead to more clashes.
We have a left that’s become increasingly crazy and there are thousands protesting against Israel, who was attacked by Hamas and cheering on Hamas, a terrorist regime that invaded Israel and massacred over 1,000 people, mostly civilians. And and we have a right that likewise has become increasingly crazy and a crowd that believes not upsetting Putin and not providing Ukraine with arms will lead to peace. Putin invaded Ukraine in a bold effort to try to decapitate the government in Kiev, but there’s a segment of the right in America that blames Ukraine for all the problems. Putin will read the US and Europe abandoning Ukraine as another greenlight to embark on more territorial grabs, not as a time to broker a peace deal.
Has WWIII started? Well, I don’t expect the next major world power structure upheaval to be like WWI or WWIII, with massive armies and land and sea battles. I expect a lot more asymmetrical warfare and totally unconventional conflicts, which has already begun. How long could America withstand major asymmetrical attacks that succeeded, if the people are so divided and won’t unite to defend our homeland or they distrust all the information they hear? I’m more concerned about Americans being so divided than about what America’s adversaries are doing.
I expect things to get crazier as this year goes on, but I will continue to try to live my life as normally as possible – no matter what happens. During WWII British people packed tea and food to take to shelters during air raids and people in war zones still focus on everyday needs and taking care of their families. Trying hard to maintain as much normalcy in you life as possible, no matter what happens, is how you survive and thrive in adversity.
I’m thankful to live in America every day and today I’m proud to see the American flag still waving.
Note: I cross-stitched the picture above decades ago and still love the message: Our Country; Our Destiny.
libertybelle diaries 