Posted on 04/02/2024 7:32:34 AM PDT by daniel1212
America’s antagonists may not be formally allied, but they are aligned in a critical area — the Eurasian heartland — and in critical ways. An overstretched US cannot react to one problem without considering the impact on its ability to deal with others. The demands on American statecraft will be severe, as Washington confronts an array of problems it can’t easily walk away from and certainly can’t afford to see escalate all at once.
In some ways, America’s predicament resembles the period before World War II. Leave aside that no US rival has committed aggression or atrocity on the scale of the Axis powers — although China’s repression of the Uyghurs and Putin’s murderous war in Ukraine are haunting echoes of that past. Leave aside, also, that Putin’s brutal bumbling in Ukraine presently looks more like an imitation of Benito Mussolini than of Adolf Hitler. The basic patterns of geopolitics look painfully familiar.
Then as now, the international system was being battered from many directions. Japan was seeking dominance in the Far East. Hitler’s Germany was bidding for primacy in Europe and beyond. Mussolini’s Italy was making a bloody push for empire in the Mediterranean and Africa. The Soviet Union would ultimately end up fighting Hitler — but only after helping him carve up Eastern Europe.
There was little intimacy among these revisionist states. The differing racist ideologies that motivated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were fundamentally incompatible. Although Berlin, Rome and Tokyo did sign their Tripartite Pact in 1940, omnidirectional mistrust ensured that this was little more than a loose agreement to blow up the existing order and build separate empires amid the rubble.
Yet if the Axis powers made cynical partners, there was a deep, destructive synergy among the programs of radical expansion they pursued.
The dictators supported each other at critical moments: Mussolini’s backing aided Hitler’s bloodless conquest of Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938. Advances by one fascist power emboldened the others: Germany’s romp through Western Europe in 1940 helped persuade Japan to push into Southeast Asia and the Pacific at the expense of a defeated France, a desperate Britain and a distracted America.
Then as now, a democratic great-power facing trouble everywhere struggled to act decisively anywhere. During the late 1930s, Britain hesitated to draw a hard line against Germany while facing simultaneous threats from Italy and Japan. The US had similar problems amid worsening crises in Europe and Asia. “I simply have not got enough Navy to go round,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1941.
Even wartime mobilization didn’t fully solve this problem. From beginning to end, a fight against multiple antagonists forced the Allies to make agonizing trade-offs. It didn’t take a fully integrated alliance of totalitarian adversaries to throw the democracies off balance — and create the gravest, most generalized crisis of global security the world has seen.
In the 1930s, Western leaders struggled to foresee how quickly regional crises could cause a global meltdown. Similarly, most post-Cold War policymakers never thought America’s unipolar moment would end like this. It’s not news that autocratic powers have been building up their militaries and coercing their neighbors. What is new is that all these challenges are threatening to turn acute.
sounds like something you’d hear on a playground during recess.
China is going away.
Iran has nothing but oil, money, and crazy people.
Russia has a whole bunch but are decades behind the US in living standards.
so, we can outlast any of them.
Besides we have millions of potential Newcomers.
At least we got that going for us.
Not with the “woke” military we have today......
The only threat China poses is economically. Trump was moving us away from that, but Democrats wouldn’t have it. They love the idea of Chinese ownership of America. Russia poses no threat at all. Iran’s threat is in the form of international terrorism, which Democrats seem to ignore completely.
Nope.
America’s secret weapon is our transgender U.S. Army.
The new U.S. Army Ad slogan is:
“Be All The Genders You Can Be.”
What foreign enemy can top that?
We can’t/won’t even defend our own borders.
Not if we kick God out of our nation and mi,Italy like we have been doing! It won’t matter how strong we are mi,itarily, if we ignore God, and worse yet, ban him, then ti y natio s will be enough to be our nation s u doing b3cause God will be for the tiny nation and agaisnt our nation.
Some powerful armies went up agaisnt israel, and God was with israel, and agaisnt the enemy, and during the night, God sent his Ave ging angel into the camp of sleeping enemies, and wiped them all out. Israel didn’t have to lift a finger- and israel also would have been able to wipe the enemies, the giants, who inhabited the promised land had they just trusted in God, but they didn’t, and God wouldn’t allow them to take the land unti, their generation died of old age. Only the kids that came afterwards were allowed to go in.
[[In the 1930s, Western leaders struggled to foresee how quickly regional crises could cause a global meltdown]]
We saw a global meltdown xuring the covid scam as well. It was shocking how fast the world went into panic mode, and how quickly neighbor turned on neighbor, with even family members turning on each other, and breaking g apart!
[[ They love the idea of Chinese ownership of America]]
Yup, l3arned recently that there are over 270 Chinese run pot growing operations in Maine, and I’m sure 1000’s, maybe 10’s of 1000’s more across the nation
The liberal states look the other way, a d only occasionally shut down a Chinese operation to make it look like they are on top of the crime issue, but the ones they shut down are likely ones that refuse to give the governors and mayors a significant enouhg slice of their pot pies.
bkmk
Yes,
He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. (Matthew 12:30)
thus ultimately most of out neighbor are enemies of those who follow Christ (as we are if we choose to not follow Him), as are nations, with the difference only being a matter of degrees, and (in judgment) that of accountability.
But to some degree, we should be able to live in peace with those whom we have theological and ideological disagreements if basic moral rules of conduct are consented to, but no person or nation pointing arms nukes at us as peaceful moral persons is a true ally, nor those promoting wokeism. Putin does the former, as do the Chicoms and Iran, and fundy Islam, while Western Europe and Ukraine do the latter.
However, you may be able to work with a person holding to the latter, but those threatening to take over territory by force are the more immediate threat. Yet of course, on a large scale the issues are usually not clear who the fault mostly belongs to, though in chastened yet victim Israel vs. horror-able Hamas there should be no debate.
Sarcasm indeed.
He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. (Matthew 12:30)
thus ultimately most of out neighbor are enemies of those who follow Christ (as we are if we choose to not follow Him), as are nations, with the difference only being a matter of degrees, and (in judgment) that of accountability.
But to some degree, we should be able to live in peace with those whom we have theological and ideological disagreements if basic moral rules of conduct are consented to, but no person or nation pointing arms nukes at us as peaceful moral persons is a true ally, nor those promoting wokeism. Putin does the former, as do the Chicoms and Iran, and fundy Islam, while Western Europe and Ukraine do the latter.
However, you may be able to work with a person holding to the latter, but those threatening to take over territory by force are the more immediate threat. Yet of course, on a large scale the issues are usually not clear who the fault mostly belongs to, though in chastened yet victim Israel vs. horror-able Hamas there should be no debate.
Not with the current leadership, we would need a MAGA-minded, clever, bold street fighter that had a similar-minded administration for that.
And perhaps not even then given the "woke" status of our military (see Milley's back-channel assurance to the Chinese).
With our mighty pronouns, we can defeat anyone!
The real question is, “Can the U.S. continue to be owned by China, Iran, and every other country that’s buying off or blackmailing U.S. politicians?”
“so, we can outlast any of them.”
Until they realize that they are losing and the nukes fly. Like Long John Silver said in Treasure Island, “Them that die will be the lucky ones”.
It’s been years since our military prepared for a two-front war.
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