George Rebane
Among the many failures of the Obama presidency, I believe history will record that his chamberlainian naiveté and failures in foreign policy will eclipse the other disasters he has authored for America. More observers are starting to see the growing number of harbingers to war popping up all over the globe as America repeats its preambles to both 20th century world wars. Mark Helprin, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, warns that “Obama is weakening US defenses and credibility, but there’s little debate about the growing risk of war.” His latest piece in the 18apr16 WSJ opens with –
In this powerful nation with founding principles and latent capacities second to none, politics have become fit for the fall of Rome, the culture is sick with self-destruction, and the rule of law is routinely perverted. Though politics, culture and law are the arch of the nation, the keystone without which they cannot hold is defense. For war transforms whole peoples and threatens their sovereignty and national existence more decisively than any other force.
Today we (should) recall the prelude to WW2. Starting in March 1936, Hitler’s Wehrmacht remilitarized the Rhineland. Seeing no material response to this violation of existing treaties, Hitler then occupied Austria, then Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland, and finally the Memel territory it lost to Lithuania after WW1. The western allies’ response was Chamberlain’s tragi-comic visit to Hitler, and waving the famous ‘Peace for our time’ paper on his return. Hitler then concluded the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty on 23 August 1939 which set the stage for the start of hostilities barely a week later with the USSR overrunning the Baltics and Poland from the east and Germany attacking from the west.
During these pre-war years the US ignored world events as it tried in vain to end the Great Depression, in the process reducing its military to historically low levels. The takeaway here is that in the late 1930s the people of the interstitial countries between Stalin and Hitler knew that war was coming. (I was born into that war, and along with millions of Europeans the Rebanes became the hapless participants and victims of the greatest of human conflicts. I recommend historian Max Hasting’s Armageddon to get an idea of what really happened on the eastern front during 1944-45. See also the ‘My Story’ entries.)
As a reprise of such preparatory forays, we have quietly acceded to Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian and Georgian territories, and China making good its claim on the entire South China Sea. And today China announced it is building a large naval/air base in Djibouti at the mouth of the Red Sea. This coincides with Russia’s recent expansion into the Mediterranean with its new land and sea bases in Syria. In the meanwhile both countries harass our military in international waters and air space with their combat aircraft, which events go noticeably unanswered.
My own worry is a scenario in which Russia and China (Iran is the Lucky Strike extra participant) conclude a secret treaty to concurrently send their forces into the Baltics and, say, Taiwan and/or ethnically Chinese Singapore. The west would be overwhelmed with little capacity to do anything short of emptying its silos to start WW3 which we would not do without a direct attack on our landmass. While we and the EU scratch our collective heads and assure Russia and China that they are ‘on the wrong side of history’, they would annex Byelorussia and the Ukraine, and make South China the new inland sea of the reborn Middle Kingdom.
This more likely outcome would be a new world order, one that neither Hitler nor Stalin could achieve. This Eurasian alignment of powers will abandon ALL western values, and return the entire globe to a pre-Westphalian world in which territories that are mine are mine, and territories that are yours are in play. The resulting tripartite balance of power would be something like Orwell already envisioned in the 1940s.
And what kind of leadership do the Democrats have in the pipeline to counter any of this? The words feckless, ignorant, and inadequate come to mind. Given that the Comey vote will be corrupted, as president Crooked Hilary will implement Obama V3.0 and do little beyond what her dim foreign policy lights illuminated as SecState. And in the remote off-chance that the DoJ does think she looks better in orange, I cannot wrap my head around the prospect of Bernie, the dufus communist (nee socialist), sitting in the White House. So I’ll just leave it there.
On the other hand, what do the Republicans offer us? One is a politically indeterminate loose cannon whose message to the miffed masses is the simple singleton, ‘I’ll make America great again, just trust me.’ Another is a distant third middle-roader (with policies I can live with) who promises to change little with his already declared ‘go along to get along’ approach to governance. And finally we have the Texas senator whom no one is supposed to like, but given Trump’s ascendancy, more are coming to him as the convention nears (his policies come closest to my desiderata).
Right now the pundits tell us that it will come down to Hillary and The Donald in November. The above graphic gives a good summary of where their current (i.e. the primaries) support comes from. Each dot represents a county plotting its percentage support for the candidate as a function of the county’s 0-100 ‘Opportunity Index’ (national average is 54). The OI is “a measure of economic mobility, which combines data on jobs, education and community health.”
Perhaps putting a loose cannon in the White House will give pause to Russia, China, and Iran. But it will take a lot more than the bravado we have seen from the podium to muffle the war drums. And given Obama’s incompetence on the world stage, you can bet the ranch that our next president will be sorely tested by Putin, Xi, and the ayatollahs.
rebanesruminations.com 
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