Thirteen months ago, at my old blog, I addressed a long-standing theme of my posts in the category War-Peace-Foreign Affairs. Here’s the post in question:
Afghanistan is the latest is a string of American military failures since World War II: Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq I (Saddam could have been removed but wasn’t), Somalia, 9/11 (a failure in itself), Iraq II, and Afghanistan. (Have I missed any?)
Why the failures? A combination of impetuousness and lack of resolve. Both go with the U.S. system of governance, which (except for World War II) results in frequent shifts of direction and is unduly beholden to “popular” (i.e., media-driven) opinion.
This will not change. It will only get worse. Unless there arises an immediate, existential threat (as in 1941). It must be a threat that is clearly dangerous enough to stiffen the resolve of U.S. (and Western) leaders and to overcome the anti-war, anti-defense bias of the media. But, even then, a sudden burst of resolve by U.S. (and Western) leaders may not be enough. Given technological advances since 1941, an enemy could probably cripple the West (e.g., see EMP) before U.S. and NATO forces and countermeasures can be mobilized.
In sum, monolithic regimes (e.g., China) can play the long game. The West cannot because of its “democratic” politics. Even a Churchill, if one were to arise, probably couldn’t salvage “democracy”.But by the time that China (or an alliance of convenience led by China) is ready to bring the West to its knees, an outright attack of some kind won’t be necessary. The cultural and political rot will have burrowed so deeply into the the West’s psyche that World War III will be a walkover. [It will be a] sniveling, hand-wringing affair presaged by Biden’s performance in withdrawing from Afghanistan and blaming others for his own failure.
And it won’t be a walkover for the West.
Now comes this from Francis P. Sempa, writing at The Federalist:
A month before China’s 20th Party Congress is scheduled to meet in Beijing, China’s President Xi Jinping will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Uzbekistan on September 15-16. The summit comes on the heels of what ABC News described as “sweeping military drills” by Russian forces, in which Chinese military units participated, and a Sino-Russian agreement to use yuan and rubles instead of dollars to pay for energy supplies.
Western media have speculated that the planned meeting in Uzbekistan will further solidify a growing strategic partnership that both leaders previously characterized as having “no limits.”…
A New York Times article noted that both countries have offered geopolitical support to each other in the current conflict in Ukraine and in ongoing Sino-U.S. disputes in the South China Sea. The Times speculates that the meeting “could offer further symbolism of a Chinese-Russian alliance opposing a Western-led world order.”
A better sense of the importance of the meeting can be gleaned from reading what Russian and Chinese spokespersons and media say about it and the Sino-Russian relationship in general. TASS quoted Kremlin official Yury Ushakov as stating that the meeting “will be very important for obvious reasons.” And Russia’s ambassador to China was quoted referring to Chinese leaders as “our partners.”
Even more revealing, however, was a Global Times piece entitled “China, Russia to strengthen cooperation on the way to a ‘multipolar world.’” This article, which reported on the recently held seventh Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, quoted Putin extensively and favorably. At the forum, Putin said “the West is failing, the future is in Asia,” and “efforts to isolate Russia were in vain amid a pivot toward Asia,” according to the Global Times reporters. The article notes that Putin “said Russia is abandoning the use of the US dollar and British pound” and that both currencies have “lost credibility.” The article boasted that “China is the top investor and biggest trading partner for the Russian Far East” and that both countries are cooperating on the emerging “Arctic shipping route.” The general theme of the article is that the Western-led world order is a thing of the past, and it is being replaced by a multipolar world order led by China and Russia….
Now, look at a map or globe: geographically the SCO occupies a huge swath of the Eurasian landmass, and the organization’s tentacles are spreading to the Middle East and Africa. The territories covered by the SCO also happen to be targets of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Xi–Putin strategic partnership poses a geopolitical danger to Western democracies similar to that posed by the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939–41 and the Sino-Soviet bloc of the early Cold War years. The real significance of the upcoming Xi–Putin summit: Who controls Eurasia, as Halford Mackinder warned, commands the world.
(There are some post-meeting doubts about the strength of the Sino-Russian relationship. But it seems to me that there such a partnership is inevitable, given the ambitions of Xi and Putin vis-a-vis the West.)
If there isn’t a de facto surrender by the West — marked by significant concessions on trade, sactions, and the scope of military operations and influence — there will be a World War III.
But I fully expect concessions by weak-kneed Western leaders. The concessions will be sugar-coated for domestic consumption and packaged in the form of measures (rationing, lock-downs) to fight the crises du jour, be they a pandemic, inflation, a depression, or the ever-popular threat of incineration by a temperature rise of a degree or two.
Well, yes, there was Mackinder.
And then there were Spykman and Mahan. A veritable conflict of visions, eh?