Total War Is About To Make A Comeback

American Thinker 

Last week’s Republican beatdown may yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise. America and the West have been approaching the Rubicon for a while now. It is not simply coming; in many respects, we invited it in.

While we argue among ourselves, dismantle institutions, discard common principles and sense, and subordinate national interests to political expediency, our adversaries are fixated on a very different future. They are not distracted by our elections, grievances, or fractured societies; instead, they are focused on power, influence, territory, resources, and exactly how to overcome American hegemony.

They recognize an opportunity, and they’re exploiting it. Domestic issues matter, but international exigencies will increasingly dictate our priorities at home, politics be damned. We dare not underappreciate the moment we are in; everything we think we have is at risk.

The November 3rd election was another demonstration of a country divided against itself, where political victory mattered more than national cohesion and immediate gratification trumps long-term interests.

Our adversaries see a Western alliance struggling to agree on what it stands for, what it will defend, and what sacrifices it is prepared to make. They see leaders more concerned with holding or obtaining power than preserving our exceptionalism. They see weakness, which invites testing.

They see incoherence in our policies, as we have demonstrably turned our backs on our young white males in favor of almost every other cohort. Madness!

We should stop pretending that, except for America’s belligerence, our world would be sharing a kumbaya moment, or that economic globalism, diplomatic engagement, and wonderfully sounding declarations of peacefulness restrain adversaries.

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other hostile powers understand that war does not begin only after the first shot. Economic coercion, cyberattacks, political interference, information warfare, technological theft, military intimidation, and the exploitation of internal divisions are all instruments of a much larger plan. The lines between peace and war are deliberately blurred.

Inexorably, we are entering a period of total war in all but name, masked by euphemistic names like hybrid and grey-zone warfare. No armies are visible, but the struggle already encompasses our economy, technology, political institutions, information environment, and the military capabilities that sustain America’s socialism light model.

Most Americans don’t have a clue. They still think of war as something that begins with an invasion, a declaration, or gunfire. The next confrontation likely won’t begin with a shot but with an even more destructive electron. By the time Americans recognize what is happening, it may be over.

Much of the West still treats these challenges as diplomatic irritants rather than interconnected elements of a sustained assault on Western institutions. We debate individual provocations while missing the larger pattern.

The cost of defense is scrutinized; the cost of defeat is ignored. An uneasy calm is mistaken for safety, accommodation for diplomacy, and avoiding confrontation for peace.

That is not prudence. It is strategic denial, and it is our posture of appeasement.

Democrats and feckless Republicans alike have learned that principles are passé for what passes today for our educated electorate. Political survival takes precedence over national purpose.

Leaders calculate the next election while adversaries calculate the next decade. Immediate political benefits outweigh the long-term investments in defense, industrial capacity, and strategic independence.

We watch faith in America evaporate before our eyes as Western democracies no longer share an understanding of what truth even looks like. These are not just political problems. They are the strategic vulnerabilities that will lead to our demise, and our adversaries are counting on it.

China does not need to defeat the United States militarily to win. Its ambitions encompass technological independence, control of critical supply chains, military dominance in the Indo-Pacific, and greater influence over international commerce and institutions.

Economic dependence becomes political leverage; technological dependence becomes a national security vulnerability. A divided America, uncertain of its priorities and unwilling to bear the costs of defending its interests, is intended to become a manageable competitor.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated that territorial conquest by force is ascendant, and if it was a test, we failed it. Moscow has been willing to absorb enormous loss of life to pursue its ambitions.

Cyber operations, disinformation, destruction of infrastructure, and political interference, even sabotage in the West, extend the confrontation everywhere.

Russia is testing not just Ukraine’s cohesion and staying power, but fundamentally ours. Will the West sustain the commitment necessary to prevent aggression from becoming a repeating instrument of national policy?

Iran is teaching a master class on how a country with fewer conventional military capabilities can impose enormous costs through proxies, missiles, drones, maritime threats, and regional destabilization.

It can’t defeat the U.S. in a conventional war, yet threatens American interests, endangers allies, disrupts commerce, and forces Washington to expend resources at times incoherently. Different adversaries, different methods, but a common lesson: American power can be negated without overcoming its military superiority.

Europe offers a preview of where our own trajectory is leading. For decades, much of the continent treated American military protection as another entitlement. Europe sheltered beneath that American security umbrella while building welfare states it can no longer afford.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed those realities. European governments have begun increasing defense spending, but rebuilding military capacity, industrial capability, and readiness takes years. Political declarations can change overnight; military preparedness cannot.

A continent that once shaped the world has become dangerously dependent on American military power to defend its own interests. Its predicament should frighten us, not offer a model to emulate.

The deeper problem is not simply inadequate defense spending or occasional leadership failures. It is our political culture increasingly incapable of sustaining long-term commitments or recognizing their importance.

Defense budgets compete with demands for immediate gratification. Alliances become bargaining chips in domestic political contests. National security decisions are filtered through partisan calculations, and strategic continuity is vulnerable to every electoral reversal.

The international order has gone wobbly; the question now is whether America retains enough will to defend it, despite the current crop of Democrats.

We have enjoyed America’s superpower status for decades while paying too little attention to what happens when that power is no longer respected, feared, or effectively exercised. This is the moment of our comeuppance.

We cannot keep consuming the inheritance of previous generations while refusing to accept the obligations that it demands. Freedom, sovereignty, national independence, and the security of our allies are not permanent entitlements.

They require vigilance, sacrifice, and the willingness to defend them. Our adversaries understand this. Do we?

That reckoning is upon us. We can confront our weaknesses, restore our national purpose, and prepare for the world as it actually exists. Or we can continue down the present path until an adversary makes that choice for us.

History suggests the latter will be considerably more painful. Perhaps a crisis will awaken us. If so, we should not be surprised when it arrives. We invited it in.