QUESTION: “Are the wars in Israel and Ukraine more than the United States can take on at the same time?”
POTUS: “We’re the United States of America for God's sake! The most powerful nation in the history of the world!”
“We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense. We have the capacity to do this, and we have an obligation to. We are the essential nation.”
This is pretty much standard fare for any American political leader in response to questions regarding the USA's role in the world. The real question is to what extent the sloganeering is backed up by the policies and agenda of the leader speaking it.
The problem is not so much the end as the means to the end - and there President Biden has been less than fully consistent. Suffice to add that, without going into detail. Mr. Biden's policies have been a mishmash of appeasement, assertiveness and a sort of quasi-isolationism that is the hallmark of politics in a populist era.
In the case of the Middle East, Mr. Biden has practiced a sort of appeasement toward Iran that is now, in the form of the current crisis in Gaza, coming back to haunt the USA. On the one hand, the USA is sending aircraft carrier battle groups to the coast off Gaza. On the other hand, the President can barely suggest the idea that Iran may be complicit in the making of the current Mideast crisis.
In the case of Ukraine, the Biden Administration has been a bit more consistent - supplying weapons to Ukraine and the like. Yet even there, the Administration has muted its' language in support of Ukraine. Thus paying the bills for a war for which it seems less than committed.
For the record, historically, Mr. Biden - forget about the "most powerful nation on Earth" rhetoric - has faced global challenges on multiple fronts and has emerged victorious. See also World War II, when the USA fought Germany and Italy in Europe and North Africa and Japan in the Far East. This was a major war fought on multiple fronts on a global level and the USA was crucial to the victory in that war.
The problem now is that American diplomacy has been inept. Driving Russia and China - historic adversaries - together. This is a combination that the USA and its' allies likely would have a hard time defeating. Two continental sized powers with large populations. One a supplier of raw materials and foodstuffs. The other a massive and increasingly technologically advanced industrial economy.
Moreover, geography serves them as their adjacent territories would allow them to freely trade with each other with minimal chance of interference by the USA and other Western powers. This presenting the USA with a strategic challenge even more massive than that which it faced in the world wars.
To date, the USA had benefited in that, even when both China and Russia were communist, they were rivals. Whatever their ideological affinities during the ideological contest that was the Cold War, their historic rivalries placed Russian and China at odds with each other. Indeed, it was that rivalry that the USA exploited to win the Cold War, beginning with President Nixon's opening to China.
Unfortunately, the problem facing the USA at the moment is that it continues to spout the rhetoric of American triumphalism - par for the course - but it lacks the skillful diplomacy necessary to divide America's enemies. This opening the door to potential strategic disaster - throw in the Biden Administration's neglect of the defense budget.
Long way around, the President's remarks are unremarkable. Pretty much any American leader would say some variation on the theme. Yet the underlying strategic realities - and the increasing unwillingness of the American electorate in a populist age to provide the means to support that rhetorical triumphalism - have changed and make that triumphalism at the very least risky.
Elbridge A. Colby, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development, reacted to Mr. Biden's remarks by saying
" That's a pretty audacious answer, given that his Administration has a) not significantly increased defense spending and b) only superficially started to revamp the defense industrial base.
And note he didn't mention China.
A massive mismatch between strategy and resources. "We're America!" just isn't going to cut it "
And before Mr. Biden's remarks, Mr. Kennedy had written
" In 1943, Franklin D Roosevelt’s secretary for war, Henry L Stimson, had observed that there was no place in the world that was not, “literally, in the interest of the United States…”. In the future, or so it seems, there will be many places where that simply will no longer be True. The American security blanket will be tighter, smaller, limited to those well-known places such as Nato-Europe, Japan, Australia, Israel, Korea, maybe Taiwan, and not much else. "
Don't disagree with Colby. As I said, Mr. Biden, as is his won't, was simply filling the air with boilerplate rhetoric. Par for the course in this Administration - or really even recent administrations. Not without risks coming from a sitting President, but there it is.
Also, it is to some degree a reflex action. The USA reached great power status during a period of ideological conflict. The First World War began as classic realpolitik, but ended, thanks in no small part to the Russian revolution and President Wilson's efforts at the Versailles peace conference, as an ideological conflict.
The Second World War and the Cold War were ideological conflicts flat out. Not just tests of power, strategy and resources, but efforts to define the way the world should be ordered.
Because the USA thrived in these ideological contexts, it has a bad habit now of defining ALL conflicts as ideological. This also being part and parcel of being a state defined by a creed - see also the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers, E pluribus unum and all the rest - rather than by nationality, ethnicity, language and such.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Suffice to say President Biden, perhaps one of the least reflective and intellectual Chief Executives in recent memory, simply lapsed in the habit of defining a complex foreign policy question not in measured language, but in the grandiose verbiage of "freedom, arsenal of democracy" and all the rest.
Too bad, the USA needs a Lord Palmerston or Theodore Roosevelt at the moment. Instead it has an inept Woodrow Wilson.
Although on the various writings of Mr. Colby seems to me a little too pessimistic for the USA and too optimistic for China. For him, even if aid to the Ukraine and Israel is necessary, the US should not spread itself too thin and concentrate on China and the Indo-Pacific. He thinks that the Americans don't necessarily realize that they don't necessarily have the strategic advantage over China, which is close to Taiwan, whereas the USA needs to cover a huge area if it is to be able to face up to the dangers of China.
However, for me, the USA still has the advantage because it has the world's biggest economy, which makes it the world's biggest military power, and you have important alliances in the region, not to mention the fact that the USA, thanks to its control of shipping lanes, could cut off Chinese trade. China can't do the same.
The USA has definite advantages and I do not mean to discount them. However, we need the diplomacy of a Bismarck or a Cavour or a Disraeli or a Palmerston or, as noted, as Theodore Roosevelt.
Where at the moment we have the diplomacy of an evangelical preacher or Woodrow Wilson. It lacks nuance and its' net effect has been to unite Russia and China, two historic adversaries, in an alliance of convenience.
That convenience is America's leverage point if it can exercise the dexterity to take advantage of it. However, at the moment, it has been content to go to the extremes of either a righteous moralism or a neo-isolationism. This is dangerous as a China-Russia alliance is not likely one that even the USA and its' allies could defeat.
As to too much pessimism, I recur to a famous line. As James Branch Cabell said, "The optimist believes that we are living in the best of all possible worlds - and the pessimist fears that he is right."
@Matthias345 Not sure of the logic of that. My own read of President Macron - at least from the American side of the Atlantic - is he has not been that bad. Gosh knows, France has had worse.
However, leaving that debatable point aside, I am not sure why we should not complain about our own bad President because someone else has a bad President. The one is not contingent on the other.
The US can't afford to run itself in peacetime let alone two warfronts, but he's technically not wrong if you look at this a bit differently. The TLDR version is that no president or VIP of any kind regarding the military will ever admit to a weakness or shortcoming, even if it's undeniably true. Doing so would be political suicide, because ultimately, national defense is their primary job above all others.
Israel does not want, and has outright banned our troops from setting foot in their country aside from diplomatic guards and a handful to deal with evacuating our citizens. We have one carrier nearby that was already in the area anyway, and a second one that just left port a few days ago en route that didn't deviate from its original schedule that much. Furthermore, unlike a lot of our other allies and certainly Ukraine, Israel actually pays for the hardware we send them. This situation is getting wall to wall news coverage, but in truth it's not much more than business as usual from our perspective for now (we didn't even commit military transport planes to evacuate people). That could change if Iran gets directly involved however, in which case Ukraine's support would be significantly reduced at least in certain areas.
Ukraine should have all support pulled until they can account for 100% of every dollar and piece of equipment we send over there, because the corruption and lies through omission on this subject are so insane that it would get rejected for a comedy movie. If you omit the fact we have now sent them several years of production worth of missiles and artillery shells, and as long as actual troops on the ground aren't being committed, the argument is made that it "isn't affecting our readiness." That's an overt lie especially on the logistics level. An admission of not being ready is career-killing kryptonite in the military, though- My brigade and battalion commanders used to blatantly gaslight us about how super duper ready and lethal our unit was even when 11/14 tracked vehicles weren't capable of leaving the motor pool. It's also entirely plausible that Biden as well as his equally stupid advisors have no idea what the readiness levels of the military actually are... The story got completely eclipsed and ignored due to COVID dominating the news, but it broke that over 200 senior officers (including some household names) mostly at the Pentagon had knowingly lied to the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations about those facts as well as situations on the ground, presumably to make themselves look better despite committing what is equivalent to a felony in the process. Does anyone really think that isn't still happening?
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What the actual fuck. No, let them take care of themselves. Especially Israel, they already have a strong military thanks to American taxpaying money. Haven’t we helped them enough? Why do we need to baby them? Keep American taxpaying dollars for American use.
actually israel and u. s. are closer allies than most countries that get federal aid such as kenya and others. israel is the only democracy in the middle east so it deserves favoritism. im 2021 palestinian pretended to be democracy planning elections that the dictator canceled as expected. lame.
It's not ideal to be in any wars, of course. Fighting the dual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance, was a difficult period. And in no small part because those wars were both ill conceived and instigated by us. They were instigated somewhat blindly (by a Republican President, no less) because there was a very delicate balance in the regions that, when disrupted, would trigger ripple effects we should have anticipated.
These new conflicts are also complicated. And there are reasons to question our involvement in both. However, there are key differences from the Iraq-Afghanistan situation. With Israel and Ukraine, we did not instigate either conflict. And the goal of each intervention is to end bloodshed. That's a more noble outcome. We are also not sending our soldiers to either front.
Nobody decent loves war. The tragedy of humanity is that we wage them anyway. In Israel's conflict, the savagery of Hamas must be stopped. So must any barbarism by Israel, however much they feel it's a justified response. That is what Biden is trying to do.
In Ukraine, Putin has launched an illegal war. And he has authorized and overseen real war crimes. There is some reporting that Ukrainian soldiers have committed war crimes too. Once this is over, all of that must be investigated and punished. For now, Putin cannot be allowed to win in Ukraine, or it will not only embolden Russia, it will do the same for China in Taiwan, for multiple countries in the Middle East, and so on. Tyranny must not be tolerated or we lose the world. Already, to stand by is to sacrifice our humanity to either fear or ambition.
We fought World War II on multiple fronts worldwide and managed to pull through. We will do the same here.
luckily we have paper encyclopedia to preserve history for when people make up fake history. u. s. was helping kuwait or kurds in iraq and other similar situations libya afghanastin in 80's and 2006 etc.
It seems much like what we have heard before. Ukraine is supplying the boots on the ground as is Israel. So at most the US is supplying weapons & intelligence. But does the US have the production capacity as it did in WW2; particularly for smart weapons?
It seems to be a challenge to make artillery shells and the preferred explosive is scarce so TNT is being used instead. Smart weapons seem to have long supply chains. The ground launched small diameter bombs have had long delay. A problem seems to be production lines close down so it can be long lead times to make more.
It is all very well that the US has excellent weapons but if it can't produce them quickly enough in sufficient quantities that is where Biden's statement might ring hollow. Hope not.
I’m an American. I remember a time when most people had jobs sufficient to support a home on a single income. Those days are long gone and people are being driven out of their apartments where I live by “refugees” and other migrants who get subsidies from Uncle Joe. I remember a time when the small-town white males who formed the core of the US military’s fighting force were eager to sign up. Now there is a recruiting crisis because they see no reason to fight for a regime that spouts anti-white and anti-male rhetoric daily. This country is demoralized, suffering from a bank crisis that hasn’t played out yet, and is losing power due to dedollarization. I think he’s delusional.
He's an idiot who doesn't know or understand history.
Just in the last 2000 years there's been comparatively more powerful nations including - in no particular order:
The Roman Empire The Byzantine Empire The Mongol Empire Britain France Spain Austro-Hungary Germany Russia
The arrogance that because his country and it's under 300 year history can get somewhere faster means they're the most powerful is a joke. Britain managed over 33% of the planet before the telephone was invented. Napoleon Bonaparte dominated the globe with the French army. The Mongols controlled the largest empire in history when the fastest transport was a horse and a bow was the most deadly weapon. Rome grew from a single city to conquer the known world.
That rattling sound is Washington turning in his grave...
27.2K opinions shared on Society & Politics topic.
Sure, lets just print more money. All his donors will get rich, all the citizens will watch the value of their life savings disappear and the economy will suffer for the rest of us. But the check Hunter took from Ukraine and Iran have already cleared the bank and have been deposited in one of the shell corps that the Biden crime family have set up t olaunder all the bribe money.
Can or should? We can... I would say, positioning two carrier strike group in the region as a deterrence to other regional powers thinking of expanding the conflict is reasonable, but the conflict should have never been funded by Obama/Biden to begin with... That said, it is in our interest to observe.
The problem is Biden is funding expansion of the war very directly by unfreezing $6 billion for Iran, leaving behind $80 billion in US equipment and supplies in Afghanistan, sending another $75 billion in equipment to Ukraine, releasing known black market arms dealers from custody to trade said weapons, sending $75 million to the Palestinians, etc. What Biden is attempting to start is the Satanic vision of WWIII outlined by Albert Pike:
"The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the "agentur" of the "Illuminati" between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism (the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other.
Meanwhile the other nations, once more divided on this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual and economical exhaustion… We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil.
Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view.
This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time."
It's also why he's so adamant about funding Ukrainian Nazis that openly fly the Black Sun just as their predecessors in the SS and SA did... Biden is a satanic cultist just as Heinrich Himmler was...
The same thing is achieved by a government by printing money beyond the limit of the gross national product, and economic process called inflation. This puts a large quantity of money into the hands of the public and maintains a balance against their greed, creates a false self-confidence in them and, for awhile, stays the wolf from the door.
They must eventually resort to war to balance the account, because war ultimately is merely the act of destroying the creditor, and the politicians are the publicly hired hit men that justify the act to keep the responsibility and blood off the public conscience.
The US military has been long designed to fight Russia and China at the same time. Simply supporting two nations should not be an issue but we need additional factories to make weapons.
I was gonna say, which one but, it doesn't matter, they're ALL flat out lies!! As for this one, he MUST be dreaming!! He, single-handedly fucked us over to badly, we couldn't win a war fought with sticks and stones!!
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