John Nantz: The Russian Bear Is A Paper Tiger

The Russian war machine is floundering in Ukraine. The Biden administration’s response is characterized by indecision and cowardice. I’m not advocating for war—I’m advocating for a robust response that would have prevented war. When America projects strength, the world knows peace. When America is diminished, the world breeds chaos. 

Former Vice President Biden equivocated for weeks, quaking behind his varnished podium festooned with the blue and silver of the Presidential seal. He bleated incoherently about sanctions, fearing confrontation with the great nuclear armed bear. When the struggling octogenarian managed to string together a sentence, he came up with the “minor incursion” position, signaling to Putin our commitment to passivity. 

Biden is a weakling and nations play by school yard rules. The bullies are only emboldened and encouraged by the yellow streak in their victims. These are terrifying times. We teeter on the brink of war with a “President” barely in possession of his faculties and statists who beat the war drums in time with the military-industrial complex.   

Like all his placating predecessors—progressives whose spines are like the rotten core of a diseased tree—Biden lacks the courage of principle. Progressives like him, and the toadies in his administration, are globalists. They think politics are relative. America has no more right to dominate geo-political politics than China, Russia, or Iran. Moreover, diplomatic appeal may be made to people’s “best nature,” in the hope that, ultimately, the good inherent in people will assert itself, and the Axis of Evil will suddenly sprout angel’s wings and the humanist utopia will bloom. This kind of naïveté is fatal and breeds conflict. It may seem oxymoronic, but placating despots only feeds their thirst for conquest. Any school yard kid who has faced down a bully can tell you the simple, ferrel rules—resist the devil and he’ll flee from you. 

But why do progressives always seek to make Goliaths out of totalitarian regimes? The short answer: because progressives like Biden admire them, and fantasize about amassing that kind of unassailable power. Utopia is only one administration away, if power could be seized proportionate to the all encompassing task. When you are dazzled by a thing, it’s hard to see its flaws. And make no mistake, Biden and his ilk are dazzled by the despotic powers exercised by Russia, China, and Iran. 

After the 9/11 attacks, we invaded Iraq. At the time, Iraq possessed the third largest army in the world. Its military forces were armed and equipped with the latest in Russian and Chinese hardware. The Iraqi army fielded primarily two different tanks, the Russian T-72 and the Chinese Type 69. Both were modern and representative of some of the best equipment the Axis of Evil could field. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, many progressives on Capitol Hill predicted a prolonged invasion with staggering U.S. casualties. They discounted U.S. military capability and embarked on rhetorical campaigns designed to demoralize the American people and, wittingly or not, provided a measure of aid and comfort to the enemy. History is witness to the overwhelming success of the American tank campaigns in the Iraqi desert and the “highway of death,” wrought by American air power. The modern Russian and Chinese tanks were destroyed wholesale by American and coalition forces, leaving burning husks in their wake.

Our enemies are dangerous, and make no mistake, China, Russia, and Iran are our mortal enemies. But the American people are exceptional and we are, rightfully, a superpower. Engaging in a globalist fantasy and basing national policy on a false narrative created by Chinese and Russian disinformation agents doesn’t make us safer. 

Globalism is a dangerous fantasy, and nation states exist for a reason.

A one world utopia isn’t a new idea. In fact, it’s about 4,200 years old. The first known attempt at uniting the world under a single humanist banner occurred in ancient Mesopotamia, during the construction of the Tower of Babel. Brick by brick, it was man’s first attempt to climb a stair to heaven. The Biblical account can be found in Genesis 11. The descendants of Noah coalesced, combined their resources, and began construction of a tower meant to usher in an age of comity, prosperity, and the elevation of man and government to the divine. 

In this unity, man would be capable of achieving whatever his imagination could conceive. However, unbounded autonomy always results in suffering—just open a history book and examine the results of any “people’s utopia.” In fact, collectivist regimes the world over are responsible for a staggering death toll, far outstripping the combined body counts of every religiously inspired conflict in history. Estimates for the death toll inflicted by communism during the 20th century ranges as high as 90 million. Secular, statist utopias make individuals into cogs serving the statist machine, and because hierarchies are inherent in every relational construct, a leader always emerges and accretes wealth and power. Only decentralization and the dispersion of power (politically in the form of democracy and economically in the form of free market capitalism) have proven to result in the most equitable distribution of wealth and power known to man. It seems God knew what he was doing when he confused the languages at the Tower of Babel and prevented mankind from constructing his own hell on earth. 

But arrogant fools like former Vice President Joe Biden blunder heedlessly, deluded by fantasies of a new world order, exposing all of us to the existential threats from Russia, China, Iran and every other rapacious regime the world over. Nation states are a good thing—they act like the watertight chambers in a battle ship. If one compartment floods, the rest can be sealed off to save the entire ship from sinking. 

Our foreign policy should be driven solely by national interest, and executed decisively by people who understand what is in our interest. That assessment cannot be made by politicians deluded by globalism—the modern Tower of Babel. 

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