Are We Really That Stupid?

“International primacy” can be defined as a government’s ability to exercise more influence on the behavior of other governments with respect to more issues than any other government can exercise. It is a function, then, of weight, of power.

Empires will rise and fall, as they have since the beginning of recorded time. There have been many. The Roman Empire, the Manchu Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Spanish and British Empires all had their time upon history’s stage. They all had primacy in their day and in what was then the world, as they knew it.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in about 1989 to 1990, the United States has stood alone as history’s only truly global power with primacy over the entire world. The question for us today, then, is does the United States government want to remain a credible global power with world primacy? If so, what is it going to do to make that happen?

There are, basically, two views of history. The first we can call “the Mistake,” or the “Accidental View” or the “Negligence View.” I like to call it “the Dumb” or “Stupid View.” A person who holds that view believes that things happen internationally in politics because of the blunders and stupid mistakes of the world’s politicians.

The other view can be called “the Conspiracy View,” which holds that decisions are intentionally made to bring about specific, usually sinister, results by those who run the world.

Within the Conspiracy View, there are at least two types of views. The first is that the players are all visible and that their actions are simply an unlawful effort to increase their own personal power and their nation’s control over the world.

The second view is that things are rarely, if ever, as they seem; and that the players who are visible are simply pawns for an unseen hand that guides and directs them. In fact, an unseen hand guides all of history. This unseen hand is usually seen as leading the world toward some type of spiritual, occultist end.

Different people who look at the Middle East today and at United States’ Foreign Policy, in general, hold both of these views.

For example, the Dumb View is often cited as a reason for the failures of the Obama Administration in the Foreign Policy area. A recent article written by Ralph Peters in To The Point News, compares Mr. Obama with Hamlet. “He dithers and scratches his head,” Mr. Peters said. “He talks to his Ivy Leaguers and, when he finally makes a decision, it is too little and too late.”

The South China Sea area of the Pacific Rim would be a good example of this. The International Law of the Sea gives nations 12 miles of sea from their territory and a 200-mile economic zone from their territory. The question is then, “What constitutes their territory?”

Far from the Chinese mainland, China constructed seven artificial reefs atop islands that would otherwise be submerged rocks, at least most of the time. China then called these reefs “Chinese territory,” and declared an exclusion zone around them.

The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Japan and Taiwan all had claims on the area, at least as strong as those of China. These countries all have treaties with the United States, so they looked to the United States for guidance and for leadership.

Keep in mind that the disputed area is one of the most important shipping lanes in the world. It took many years for China to complete the project. Then they started militarily provisioning the reefs with artillery, missiles, etc. They built runways.

President Obama did nothing during this entire time. He was apparently trying to decide. He was “blithering and dithering,” and trying to decide whether to let freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most important shipping lanes be denied to the United States and to the whole world. He was trying to decide whether to do that or not.

Finally, at long last, he chose the mildest of actions and sent one ship through the area. He admitted that it was only to preserve his agenda for the Trans Pacific Partnership. Now, the Chinese are adding runways on the other side of the world, as I said, and only military action could dislodge them.

He says, “No boots on the ground in Syria;” but then he announced through his Secretary of Defense that boots were, in fact, on the ground, and that more were coming in the form of 50 Special Forces troops. It is obvious that it takes a lot more than 50 troops, even if they are Special Forces, to run an operation like that in Syria. Just the air support alone, which has been running for quite some time, would probably take hundreds of people.

The question then is, “Why now?” After refusing to do anything to oust Mr. Assad from Syria until the Russians came in to keep him in place, why would President Obama now send troops in?

Apparently, the Russians believe in the Conspiracy View of history. Said another way, they believe that the Americans can’t possibly be that stupid, so that it has to be a conspiracy.

Colonel Alexander Zihlin of the Russian Army, and a military expert with regard to Russian Military Policy, said recently that, “Russia has to do what it is doing.”

“In the event Syria fell, it would free up ISIS fighters for renewed campaigns in Chechnya, Dagestan and east of the Caspian as well, pushing north from Afghanistan into former Soviet Central Asia. Recall that ISIS is a rebranding and broadening of the same Saudi et al backed network of foreign legionary soldiers, which previously was called al-Qaeda and the Maktab al-Khidamat Network which preceded it.”

China, through its military spokesman, has recently stated that the Islamic State is lead by Sunni officers who are armed and funded by General David Patraeus, U.S. Commander during the Iraq Siege and former Director of the CIA. “The Islamic State,” he says, “learned its sophisticated tactics, its leadership and its use of modern weapons from America.”

The point is that the Russians and the Chinese believe that the United States started, trained and funded the Islamic State in order to destabilize the Levant Region of the Middle East, and to destabilize Russia, as well. Once these terrorist armies conquered Syria, they could continue into the southern part of Russian territory to Muslimize all of the infidels in the area.

Russia would then be preoccupied by fighting these Muslims. At least, that is what the Russians say they believe. They believe this, apparently, because they are unable to believe that the train-wreck that is American Foreign Policy can possibly be negligence. “Nobody is that stupid,” the Russians seem to be saying.

Is any of this true? I don’t know, but I do know that power abhors a vacuum. When power is absent, the vacuum will be filled by something, by somebody. Taking the offensive is usually better than playing defense, especially against people like this.

Finally, folks, is Barack Obama that evil or is he just an incompetent bumbler? Well, I report, you decide, but that’s the way I see it.