Tag: fundamentally transforming America

Putin follows a classic pattern

The deployment of Russian military power to the Middle East, in alliance with both Iran and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, (who has committed massive human rights offenses and has violated international accords through his use of banned weaponry) provides conclusory evidence of Vladimir Putin’s worldview.

Simply put, it is unquestionably evident that the Russian President, who invaded Ukraine, dramatically ramped up his nation’s military spending, violated nuclear arms agreements, resumed nuclear bomber patrols along American coastlines, and is establishing bases in Cuba and Nicaragua, seeks to make his nation the world’s preeminent military power.

In his determined quest to attain his goal, Putin has ignored international opinion, arms treaties, and even the objections of several public figures within his own homeland.

He has succeeded. Despite the increasingly hollow sounding claims from the White House and politicians of both parties that America is the world’s strongest nation, the fact is that the Russian-Chinese-Iranian axis has supplanted the U.S.-NATO alliance as the globe’s most significant military.

That status is based both on the power of Putin’s armed forces and on his own steely determination. Unconstrained by public opinion, he has displayed no qualms about partnering with pariah states such as Iran and Syria.  He pays no political price for telling outrights lies, such as he told when he claimed he was going into Syria to fight ISIS, or that some of his new missiles do not defy treaty prohibitions, or that his claims to expanded Arctic territories are legal.  Indeed, he has unabashedly stifled dissent within Russia through physical, financial, and extralegal intimidation.

One of the key links in America’s victory in the first Cold War was the shared interest of Washington and Beijing in taming the Kremlin.  Putin has reversed all that, and the Chinese, with their booming economy and greatly expanded military, now are allied with Russia against the U.S.

In essence, Putin is the classic expansionist leader, not dissimilar from those that preceded him in Germany and Japan in World War II.  Indeed, it must be remembered that Russia began the Second World War in an alliance with the Nazis. Moscow only changed sides after Hitler invaded the USSR.

President Obama’s fundamental transformation

Putin, then, is not hard to understand. He is almost a stereotype.  But what about President Obama?

In the short span of his seven years in office, the United States has descended from the “world’s only superpower, the indispensable nation” to an increasingly irrelevant entity. This did not occur by accident, bad luck, inadvertence, or incompetence.

Almost immediately upon taking office, Mr. Obama began alienating America’s allies.  He gave up British nuclear secrets to Russia during arms negotiations. He backed away from agreements with Poland to base defensive missiles within its borders. He prematurely withdrew American forces from Iraq, which created the vacuum that gave rise to ISIS. He gave a departure date for the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and opened negotiations with the Taliban in violation of a long-standing policy against speaking with terrorists.  He failed to lodge even a diplomatic protest when China stole offshore territory from the Philippines, and when Beijing intimidated Japan.  He utterly abandoned and even assisted in the elimination of the pro-western regime of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and the anti-al-Qaeda regime of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. He engaged in a unilateral withdrawal of American tanks from Europe.

In complete violation of U.S. treaty obligations to the Ukraine, the White House failed to take any serious steps, other than minor sanctions, against the Kremlin in response to its Ukrainian invasion.

President Obama’s alienation of Israel has become so complete that, following Iran’s call for the elimination of the Jewish state, he ordered Secretary of State John Kerry and Ambassador Samantha Power to be absent when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke at the U.N. to condemn that despicable statement.

It wasn’t just nation-states that were abandoned. He failed to take into consideration the plight of Cuban dissidents when he opened relations with Cuba (a month after Havana agreed to let the Russian navy back in!) He failed to dwell on the oppression of dissidents in Iran and China in his discussions with the governments of those nations.
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Mr. Obama complemented his diplomatic withdrawal from the world and alienation of allies with his demoralization and defunding of the U.S. military. He signed an agreement with Moscow allowing it to gain, for the first time in history, superiority in strategic nuclear weapons. He has even floated a trial balloon about unilateral cuts in the already diminished American atomic deterrent.

The dire results of Mr. Obama’s actions are indisputably evident in the replacement of U.S. influence and power throughout the world with those who are antagonistic towards western interests. While there has always been a segment of the American political leadership and the general public that has sought to reduce defense spending and decrease overseas entanglements, the extreme degree of the current White House’s actions are far beyond any prior leanings in that direction.

The question that remains is why the President chose this course, particularly at a time when the expansionist actions of Russia, China, Iran, and Islamic terrorists render it a dangerous and clearly mistaken plan.

The answer lies in not in foreign policy, but in domestic spending programs. Mr. Obama’s desire to “fundamentally transform America” (which he stated explicitly in his October 2008 campaign stop in Columbia, Missouri, and implicitly in many other forums) requires vast funding. During his tenure in office, extraordinary increases in new and expanded entitlement programs have occurred as part of his transformation, and he seeks to do even more.

The U.S. already imposes the highest corporate taxes in the developed world, and individual income taxes are equally excessive. Increasing either is politically untenable.  Deficit spending has reached its limit with the U.S. already in an $18 trillion hole, and already threatens to institute a Greek-style meltdown even without further increases.

Defense spending, which accounts for about 18% of the U.S. budget, is seen by the current White House as a piggy bank to finance its goal of turning America into a European-style social welfare state.

There are two problems with that course of action. The first is purely economic.

In every instance where a social welfare-concentrated government has been attempted, the results have ranged from disappointing to absolutely disastrous.  Whether tried in the extreme, as in communist nations, or in moderation, such as the social democrat states of Europe, the concept has not produced a robust economy.  As Margaret Thatcher once said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Two factors have allowed Europe’s social –spending oriented states to survive as long as they have: the defense of the continent was provided by the United States, virtually eliminating the lion’s share of that burden (the United Kingdom, for example, spends only 2% of its budget on defense) and the comparatively unfettered American economy continued to be the economic engine of the planet.

European populations and governments have not shown the political will to replace the American defense umbrella, and their social welfare economies do not possess the ability to do so, particularly with the weakened U.S. economy incapable of being a driving force for financial growth.

President Obama apparently recognizes this. He made a reckless calculation that the only means to finance his domestic spending programs was to retreat from the U.S. post-World War II role as the bulwark of the defense of what used to be called the “free world.”  His apparent hope was that if America retreated from international activities and slashed defense spending, Russia, China, and other forces would do the same.

Obviously, that hasn’t happened. The exact opposite occurred. A militarily and diplomatically weakened America encouraged aggression on the part of expansionist forces. However, despite the abundant and overwhelming evidence that his gamble has completely failed, Mr. Obama refuses to change course.

That leaves the world at a precipice last seen in the 1930’s.