If you thought for one moment that the embarrassing multi-decade debacle in Afghanistan would lead to some soul-searching from the failed interventionists responsible for America’s 21st-century Vietnam, think again. Instead of taking a step back to understand exactly why and how their grandiose plans to use the mightiest military in history to impose a top-down, secular, Western-style democracy didn’t quite pan out, they’re doubling down on failure.
When you’re a hammer, everything is a nail, and when you’re a global interventionist, wars fix everything. This time, their target is Ukraine. And Taiwan. Because why start a war with Russia when you can start a war with Russia and a war with China?
According to the same foreign policy blob that brought us such hits as “Saddam Hussein is going to nuke us with all his WMDs” and “Donald Trump is totally getting blackmailed by Vladimir Putin over a magical sex tape,” America needs to prepare for war with Russia because Russia is allegedly massing troops on…its own border with Ukraine.
America’s porous border with Mexico, across which hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants have been flooding unimpeded since the day President Joe Biden took office, is apparently no big deal at all and not remotely worthy of an American military presence. But Ukraine’s border with Russia? To the failed foreign policy blob, that is priority numero uno.
The Russia-Ukraine border must be defended, with American blood and treasure, at all costs. And if you suggest that maybe America should fix America’s border first, it’s because you’re racist or something.
Now don’t you dare ask proponents of a new war with Russia over Ukraine to detail exactly why Americans need to die to litigate a border dispute between Ukraine and Russia.
Don’t ask them why it’s our responsibility and not that of Ukraine and greater Europe.
Don’t you dare ask them to explain how the same government whose politicians lost a war against Stone Age goatherders — and then thought it was a good idea to abandon thousands of Americans and billions of dollars in American military equipment in Afghanistan — can possibly be trusted to wage any war right now, let alone one with a nuclear superpower.
Don’t ask them why Ukrainian border security is a bigger national security priority than American border security.
When you press for answers to those questions, you hear, “Russia bad. Putin mean. Something something Ukraine democracy.” If you demand specifics, they demand war — and not just in Europe. “Oh,” they retort, “you don’t want to fight for Ukraine? Well, you probably want to hand over Taiwan to China, too.”
In the process of agitating for war against Russia in Ukraine, they’ve demanded another war against China. Amazing how that works.
Ready for some real talk? Taiwan is a shiny object used by elites who have deliberately outsourced America’s economy to China to look tough on an issue where they couldn’t care less about America’s interests.
Do you want to hand over America’s capacity to make things while posturing as though you’re big and tough and super dialed-in on sticking it to the Chinese communists? Taiwan is perfect. You can beat your chest and saber rattle with one hand about Taiwan’s independence, while signing deals with the other hand to hollow out our manufacturing base so China can have even more money to build its army and navy.
Make no mistake: The Chinese Communist Party is evil. It cannot be allowed to grow bigger and stronger. Its vile social credit system –which is rapidly being imported to the West under the guise of digital passports that grant access to food or health care — cannot be allowed to infect American life.
While going to war in Ukraine or Taiwan might assuage the egos of interventionists who enjoy patting themselves on the back for having the courage to send better men to die for a war they’d never volunteer to fight in, and while it might pad the income statements of defense contractors reeling from having their gravy trains in Iraq and Afghanistan shut down, it wouldn’t do much at all to slow the gears of the economic engine that is the true source of China’s power.
China has been fighting a cold war against America for decades, and it has funded its newfound military might by capturing large swaths of the American economy. When America’s ruling elites decided a cheap TV manufactured overseas was more important than a domestic manufacturing base that formed the foundation of the American middle class for generations, they handed China a massive weapon to use against America and its allies across the world.
There is no Red China superpower without hundreds of thousands of red, white, and blue jobs and trillions of dollars being shipped overseas by a corporate and political establishment that sees itself more as a global profiteer than a protector of American interests. The lesson of the Cold War with the Soviet Union wasn’t that we should have had more Vietnam-esque wars over territory that meant nothing to America’s global interests, it’s that you cannot win a cold war without winning the economic war that funds it.
The Soviet Union didn’t collapse because of America’s military might: It crumbled because of America’s economic might combined with the weakness of a communist system that rotted from within.
China certainly learned from that example. Instead of railing against American-style capitalism, China co-opted it. It decided to use the strength of our capitalist economy against us by gobbling up our trade and using the money to build its military.
And what did the American political establishment do via its trade, economic, and monetary policies? It fed the Red China beast at every single opportunity. It is still doing so at this very minute.
Having successfully crippled the manufacturing capacity that made America the envy of the world, the corrupt establishment is now trying to destroy America’s energy industry by forcing everyone to stop using oil and gas — cheap, plentiful, efficient sources of energy — in favor of electric cars and gadgets that rely on rare earth minerals over which China is quickly building a global mining and production monopoly.
Economically, China is playing for keeps, and our leaders are asleep at the wheel. While China colonizes Africa to take over its rare earth mineral mines to increase its leverage over the global energy economy, our ruling elites hyperventilate over Ukraine and Taiwan.
If you want to win a war with China, you have to be serious about destroying the engine that powers the Asian nuclear superpower — and it’s clear that America’s ruling elite has zero interest in waging the kind of economic war necessary to neuter the country. We know the establishment is not serious about fighting that war and hitting China where it really hurts because the establishment fights those measures at every turn.
The issue of Taiwan isn’t raised because the foreign policy Borg deeply cares about Taiwan’s right to independence and self-determination — it’s raised because the foreign policy Borg wants a fig leaf to cover up its desire to milk China’s economic cash cow, America’s long-term economic and national security interests be damned.
Does Taiwan deserve freedom and independence from the crushing evil of China’s corrupt communist regime? Of course it does (as do all countries and people). That’s why its people fought so hard for independence.
The question for American policymakers is not whether Taiwan should be free. The question is whether it serves America’s long-term national security interests to engage in a war with Russia over Ukraine, and then another war with China over Taiwan.
Does this mean appeasement is required? Of course not. America has an array of non-military diplomatic and economic tools it can use to incentivize countries like Russia and China to not do the wrong thing. In the case of Russia, America could push to block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a major vehicle for Russian influence and power in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This was the tack taken by the Trump administration, only to be reversed by the Biden administration earlier this year.
But America has no obligation to deploy troops to every corner of the globe or wage war in any country where oppression exists or bad people rule. America’s obligation is to its own people and its own security. America’s interests come first, always.
That is where the real disagreement lies. Taiwan and Ukraine are proxy debates over the soul of American policy and the priorities of its government. Does our government exist to protect and serve us — whether it’s on our own border or our own factory floors — or does it exist to first protect the priorities of everyone else?