A few years ago I attended the Consumer Electronic Show or CES as it is commonly called. It was the year that 3D TV was being flaunted as the next big thing and virtual reality was on the verge of becoming a “thing”. One of the exhibitors had a room where you walked in and stood on a platform, surrounded by screens and speakers to create an immersive environment. The program material was a roller coaster ride that provided a realistic simulation of movement while you stood perfectly still on the platform. Having tried it myself and finding it stimulating I suggested to one of my friends that he should go in without telling him what the payoff was. What I didn’t know was that he had vertigo. As the ride proceeded he fell onto the floor and began trying to crawl out of the room. I ran over to help him and apologized profusely. After regaining his composure (and his balance) he said:
“I feel so stupid. All I had to do was close my eyes.”
For the last 25 years the so-called foreign policy “experts” in the State Department, politics and academia have been touting a new “rules-based international order” in which organizations like the UN, the WTO and the IMF would jawbone any aggressor into signing a treaty and abiding by it thereby ensuring “peace in our time”. Sure, there would be some little brushfire wars, the occasional terrorist act or maybe some tribal conflicts in deepest Africa where they could be ignored. But real war between civilized countries was a thing of the past.
At least that is what the ruling class tried to tell us. Right up to the last minute the media talking heads, the politicians, the foreign services and even some in the military establishment pontificated that Putin was just bluffing, trying to extract whatever concessions he could without actually going to war. After all, world opinion would be solidly against him (except for maybe China and Iran, oh and North Korea and Belarus and the Stans and, well, some other self-serving countries who would support whoever won). Anyway, he wouldn’t dare do it. The elites seemed to delude themselves right up until the tanks started rolling. No wonder they dwell in a land called “Foggy Bottom”. Foggy indeed.
Faced with the all-out military invasion of Ukraine by the Russians replete with tanks, artillery, machine guns, ballistic missiles and attack helicopters shooting real bullets and explosives they seem to be having a very difficult time giving up their utopian fiction. “What about the Minsk Agreement?” they say or maybe “We will cut Russia off from the SWIFT system!” as if waving a piece of paper will make the bombs stop in midair and rise magically back up to the pylons of the attack jets from whence they came. They pretend that the costs imposed by some half-baked economic sanctions will make the aggressor nation come crawling back to the One World Order begging for forgiveness. Putin has already done these calculations and found them unconvincing.
An entire generation in the West has been brought up believing that peace and prosperity are the typical state of things. In a rush of tech innovation they have gotten used to thinking that war is digital, either a game they play with their friends or at worst having their identity stolen or a hacker inserting malware onto their computer. Maybe even a real-world consequence like a pipeline shutdown that causes gas lines for a week or two, cyber-war where nobody dies and whole cities are not destroyed. War has been defined down by describing half-hearted government action, disapproval or disagreement as “war” (See: “The War on Women” or “The War on Drugs” or even “The War on Christmas”). We are technologically smart but have grown decadent and spiritually weak, weak in mental toughness, weak in effort, weak in our belief in our country and our culture. We don’t have the will to accept any suffering to preserve our way of life so we are bound to lose it.
When an aggressive nation looks at us and sees that we don’t have the will to enforce our own laws, to control our own borders, to spend within our means or to follow our own Constitution they are emboldened to take what they want, by force if necessary. They know we won’t do anything real to stop them. Harshly worded letter to follow.
I am a proponent of peace through strength and I believe that our warriors should have the best weapons that we can devise to accomplish the tasks assigned to them by their civilian bosses. But a craven ruling class guarantees that their hands will be tied when the actual need for these tools arises. I am not suggesting that we should jump into the Ukrainian-Russian war as if it were our own, far from it. We should limit our future foreign adventures to battles we are willing to fight and win, struggles that have the long-term support of a majority of the American people and that we can actually afford.
America might consider ceasing to waste its treasure on a large and expensive military, on bases in far flung places and on nuclear weapons. It is obvious that we don’t have the will to use them, not even to protect our own borders. Our elites send troops to a third-world country for twenty years but impose rules of engagement on them that prevent them from beating a rag-tag bunch of goatherds. We make dire threats to other countries about the consequences of developing nuclear weapons and when they defy us we just try to make a CYA deal and then slink away. (See: North Korea and soon Iran.) And now we have deployed our military to the Balkans with strict and public orders not to fight anyone, just act like the doorman at a nice hotel, you know, greet people and help them with their luggage. Maybe Biden should call Putin and tell him his Cornpop story. Don’t mess with us! This time we really mean it! Really!
The people of Ukraine, unintentionally and unwillingly to be sure, have put America to shame. Will alone cannot win a real war, if it could Ukraine would have nothing to fear. But lack of will is guaranteed to lose a real war. In our divided and divisive nation would we have the kind of unity, love of country and the support for our hereditary freedoms that the brave and patriotic Ukrainians are displaying? I wonder.
Too bad we can’t just close our eyes.