While Vice President Pence was in Europe this week meeting with NATO, John McCain was in Munich, attacking Trump and threatening war with Russia. History may well judge one of those men to be a fool.
Pence, representing the Trump administration, is reassuring NATO allies that, while they need to increase their own contributions to their own defense, America stands with them against all potential enemies. One of those potential enemies is Russia. For those of you who do not know, Russia possesses 2,600 operational strategic nuclear weapons. These weapons are capable of totally destroying every medium and large city in the western hemisphere. Every one. The next largest nuclear stockpile is held by the United States with 1,900 operational warheads. In addition to their enormous nuclear stockpile, Russia has demonstrated its ability to use space based EMP weaponry that would render our industrial advantage meaningless in a global war. In cyberwarfare, if you believe Democrats and Establishment Republicans, the Russians are so advanced that they can "hack the election." In the conventional realm, Russia has more tanks, fighters, bombers, artillery, and air defense weapons than all of Europe combined. Its only real global equal is the United States. If Russia wanted to conquer Europe, it would take about a week.
We did not stop Hitler in Munich, and we did not stop Putin in Eastern Ukraine. As I wrote shortly after the West's flaccid response to the invasion, Ukraine is lost. Our best hope now is containment. http://libertyswindow.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-greater-of-two-evils-gathering.html.
The time to arm an insurgency against Russian aggression in Ukraine was years ago. Yet, John McCain and a number of his acolytes in the Republican Party see it differently. Marco Rubio, for example, wants the incoming Secretary of State to declare Putin a war criminal. Senator Rubio obviously does not understand the nuances of post-Bosnia international law. Such a declaration would require the United States and Europe to take affirmative steps to remove Putin from power and try him in the Hague. Senators Graham and McCain want the United States to arm a Ukrainian resistance and, along with all Democrats and former President Obama, want the United States to launch an all out cyber war against Russia in retaliation for hacking the DNC and embarrassing the Democrats. The entire political, military and intelligence establishments want to investigate President Trump and his administration for alleged "ties to Russia," and have threatened to impeach him if he refuses to cooperate.
Russia, for its part, is taking these threats seriously. As Putin consolidates his beachhead in the Middle East, he is now making public statements that he believes the Washington Establishment wants war with Russia.
He's not far off. Launching a "cyber war" against Russia is, in fact, an act of war. And, while most Russians could probably do without their internet, Americans would collectively jump off a cliff if we couldn't post our most recent selfies on Facebook. If our cyber attack were to actually cripple Russia's infrastructure, it is extremely likely that Russia would do the same to us. Here is what that would mean: no power, no food, limited water, no gasoline, no stock market, no commutes to work, no iPhones and, yes, no Facebook.
If we follow the McCain et al. strategy, and engage in direct conflict with Russia in the Middle East over Syria, we will be engaged in an industrial scale war with a military Superpower. If we choose now to indirectly attack Russia in Ukraine, Russia will likely decide to challenge the sovereignty of non-NATO countries in the rest of Eastern Europe. We will then have to engage in direct action to defend Europe and Russia will have to choose whether or not to respond with an invasion. Just in the event anyone is harboring any misconceptions about Russian resolve, Russian military doctrine includes the use of low yield nuclear weapons against any NATO advance in Eastern Europe. The Russians believe that NATO will retaliate in kind, but would not escalate the conflict beyond a stalemate.
If it sounds like 1950 (or worse 1936) that's because history is, sadly, repeating itself. John McCain is a war hero, but he fought a very different war than the one we are now facing. John McCain was a fighter pilot over Vietnam; a tiny, backwards country that was embroiled in a civil war. In all meaningful ways, the United States should have wiped North Vietnam from the map. McCain's plane carried more firepower than an entire unit of Vietnamese. His compatriots flying B-52 bombers could have ended the war in one raid. But we didn't. Instead we chose to engage in a limited war for more than a decade, with disastrous consequences.
At the conclusion of World War II, the Perpetual War Machine was born. What President Eisenhower nefariously labeled the "military industrial complex" took hold of our institutions of government. The result has been a constant state of "low intensity conflicts" for more than 70 years. In other words, perpetual war, again, with disastrous consequences. Those consequences couldn't be more clear than they are now. President Trump is the first President in the post war era to challenge this entrenched political and military industrial elite. He is a true citizen President, coming from outside any part of the Establishment. Like most Americans, he is sick of perpetual wars, political and military retreats from squishy strategic objectives, and the uber-entitled Washington power structure. As a direct result of his opposition to this superclass of Americans, he is being undermined by treasonous intelligence leaks and an unsophisticated media. If these agents of war succeed, America will face a series of conflicts unparalleled in its history.
For starters, war with Russia will be waged on an industrial scale. As I've said before, industrial war is entirely different from facing 50,000 Jihadis with technicals. http://libertyswindow.blogspot.com/2014/09/reality-check.html.
Industrial wars are fought with weapons that take hundreds of thousands of lives in a few hours. With the Greatest Generation dying off, we are increasingly left with men who lack combat experience and believe that wars are fought by dropping bombs on huts in the desert or unleashing Napalm on a jungle village. They are just wrong. Take for example World War I. More than 100 years ago, the world exploded in the first war since the Industrial Revolution. In one battle for the village of Verdun, more than 368,000 men died. In the first 36 hours of the war, more than 50,000 men died. In World War II, more than 80 million people died. In the bombing of Tokyo, which saw the first use of Napalm, 80,000 men, women and children were killed. And, of course, 250,000 Japanese died in two single bomb blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These are unimaginable numbers for the generations currently living and governing our nation. This is precisely why, after World War I, industrialized war was always a measure of absolute last resort. Only after every other solution has been exhausted can such a war even be considered. It certainly is not something my grandparents and great grandparents discussed casually, especially in foreign capitals.
We simply do not teach history anymore, and even our older leaders have all but forgotten their parents' epic struggle to survive. Only a complete idiot, knowing that history, would stand in the center of the birthplace of the Third Reich and declare war on a nation with whom 12 Presidents have managed to keep the peace. Donald Trump is no such idiot. Roosevelt dealt with Stalin, Kennedy dealt with Khrushchev, and Trump will deal with Putin. Stalin and Khrushchev were far worse.
John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio all ran for President. All three threatened war with Russia during their campaigns, and all three were rejected by the American people. That is not to say that Americans are afraid of war. We are not. It is not to say that Americans are against standing up to dictators. We are not. But the collective wisdom of the American people is more sound than three men who remain steeped in ignorance of the catastrophic consequences of another industrial war.
