Vulnerability

Is our nation at risk from outside enemies? Is it at risk from within? What risks are we speaking of here?

Well, if you are conservative, you will complain endlessly on external threats wishing us disaster, and those from within who make us vulnerable to ‘attack’ from outside our borders. The boogie man figures large in their sense of the world. I know this because I was once one of them.

But then I learned a lot about the world, how it works, its stories and histories throughout most regions of the globe. And different cultures, religions and philosophies. An open mind was the result. Also a mind willing to research and study what was not usual for me. Now the usual and unusual are one and the same!

I have been impressed by how outside cultures and political ‘unfriendlies’ push and pull at us on various issues. They seem intent on testing us and our resolve. Most likely they end up frustrated because officially America does not react to such irritations. They are minor. Outsiders probably don’t understand this about America, but it is a true trait of ours.

China is pressing its desire to expand its borders into shipping lanes that are clearly in international waters. Russia doesn’t care about this but they do support China’s move if it pushes America’s buttons. The problem, though, is not America, China or Russia. It is the international global community. If one nation bullies itself into cowing other nations, we all lose. So the United Nations (ever slow to act!) will get its interests served by America’s military machine. Our navy will push back at China’s illegal assumption of territory in international waters. Someone has to push back; only those with the might can. So we step into the issue.

Russia sweet talks the global community while hosting the Olympics, and then takes over the Crimea (its only the citizens of the land, folks, who wish to be included in Russia’s borders!). Or so they would like us to think. But the veil of truth is quite thin here and Crimea fell to violent overthrow. Russia’s position on this issue is naked. We see it clearly.

And so, emboldened, Russia claims the same or similar movement in Ukraine and attempts to take it on. But the world community once again steps into the fray and balances the power struggle to keep the status quo until cooler minds can sort it all out.

Push and push back. Struggle over power and realm. Political or not? International game playing?

What about Russia’s play in Syria? To prop up a tyrant or to edge into a power vacuum they can play upon later? In cahoots with Iran and Syria to make a larger play elsewhere? And when? What is this game of chess Russia plays? Is it serious or only a toying with America’s influence in the region.

One must always ask what the benefit of any strategy is to the players. For America it is stability, open trade in and out of the region, peace and its benefits, and stable oil production and flow. It is not power and might against anyone. ISIS is an enemy of everyone. It is a narrow violent sect/cult that has no authority other than its bilious religious extremism. It has no theological authority. Or political authority. Or moral authority for that matter. Its violence alone is its power. That’s it. So America and other nations rally around to protect the rest of the global community from ISIS. Does Russia?

Well we don’t know that at this moment. Putin says it is so but his actions are quite dubious. 

Well, the world stage is outlined above and its struggles. What concerns me most is the inner decay of our own social order and its inability to maintain strength in common so the world community doesn’t get the wrong idea. America is not weak. Far from it. But international adventurers might think otherwise if they witness the fall of John Boehner, the do nothing status of Congress, and the gridlock Congress has embedded throughout the nation. The White House fights its lonely struggles for the good of the nation. But to outsiders they may get the mistaken impression that the President is weak and cannot muster the strength to fight off outsider threats.

They would be grossly mistaken. But then they do not know us well. Nor we them.

It is the danger of adventurism. One thinks the world too simple than it is. And then falls into a pit of miscalculation easily.

Beware China and Russia and ISIS. You do not know thine enemy well enough to toy with such miscalculation.

November 4, 2015