And ‘Mid This Tumult …

… Kubla heard ancestral voices prophesying war!

— Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Kubla Khan: or a Vision in A Dream

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I write today with deep pessimism about America’s future. The immediate source of my dark mood is the massive missile attack on Israel. The attack means that Israel’s war against its Muslim enemies is entering a phase that could directly involve the United States. Whether that’s a good or bad thing for the U.S. will depend on Israel’s success (or failure); subsequent responses by Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea; and subsequent U.S. military action. But it is telling that Iran chose to attack Israel directly, for a second time, despite U.S. warnings and the buildup of combat-ready U.S. forces in the region of conflict.

The (perhaps terminally foolish) boldness of Iran’s leaders reinforces my pessimism about the current U.S. administration’s willingness to take advantage of an opportunity to de-fang Iran and to let the other members of the axis of evil know that it’s time to stop messing around with Uncle Sam. By de-fang, I don’t mean a one-shot, tit-for-tat response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel. I mean a series of decisive military actions — undertaken in alliance with Israel — that remove Iran’s ability to wage war beyond its  borders, including the ability to make and deliver nuclear weapons.

The problem of unwillingness reflects, in part, the problem of inability, which is owed in the first pace to the problem of unwillingness. I refer you to my “Grand Strategy for the United States“, which is a few years out of date. For a current view of the state of U.S. military power, see Walter Russell Mead’s “U.S. Shrugs as Word War III Approaches” (The Wall Street Journal on September 16, 2024, paywalled). This is from Mead’s piece:

The news from abroad is chilling. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reports from Kyiv that Ukraine is “bleeding out” as its weary soldiers struggle against a numerically superior Russia. The New York Times reports that China is expanding the geographical reach and escalating violence in its campaign to drive Philippine forces from islands and shoals that Beijing illegitimately claims. And Bloomberg reports that Washington officials are fearful that Russia will help Iran cross the finish line in its race for nuclear weapons.

These stories, all from liberal news outlets generally favorable to the Biden administration, tell a tragic and terrifying tale of global failure on the part of the U.S. and its allies. China, Russia and Iran are stepping up their attacks on what remains of the Pax Americana and continue to make gains at the expense of Washington and its allies around the world.

What none of these stories do is connect the dots by analyzing the consequences of repeated American failure on the widely separated fronts of the international contest now taking place. To see what this all means and where it is leading, we must turn to the recently released report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. This panel of eight experts, named by the senior Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services committees, consulted widely across government, reviewing both public and classified information, and issued a unanimous report that, in a healthy political climate, would be the central topic in national conversation.

The bipartisan report details a devastating picture of political failure, strategic inadequacy and growing American weakness in a time of rapidly increasing danger. The U.S. faces the “most serious and most challenging” threats since 1945, including the real risk of “near-term major war.” The report warns: “The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today.”. . .

Should such a conflict break out, “the Commission finds that the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.”

To summarize, World War III is becoming more likely in the near term, and the U.S. is too weak either to prevent it or, should war come, to be confident of victory.

A more devastating indictment of a failed generation of national leadership could scarcely be penned.

(You should also read David Masci’s “The Wages of Fecklessness” at Discourse [September 29, 2024], and “America’s Enemies Race for Nuclear Dominance” by James E. Farrell and Bradley A. Thayer at American Greatness [September 29, 2024].)

If there is a decisive Israeli-American action against Iran, it will become evident to all (excepting the Biden administration and its leftist allies in America) that the U.S. was the junior partner in the undertaking.

That’s ominous enough. What’s perhaps more ominous than the prospect of America’s descent into the ranks of military also-rans is its almost-certain inability to prevent a series of devastating terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Such attacks will precede or coincide with a military demonstration by China, Russia, and North Korea (if not Iran). The military demonstration would include cyber-attacks on critical U.S. military and infrastructure targets. (See this and this about the threat of cyber-war.)

The aims of the terrorist attacks and military demonstration will be these, at least:

• Demoralization of the U.S. and its traditional allies in Canada, the British Isles, Western Europe, East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
• Acquiescence by the U.S. and its traditional allies in the territorial and economic objectives of the axis.

The terroristic aspect of this strategy will be executed by the army of terrorists which has been able to infiltrate the U.S. in the past several years due to the Biden administration’s effort to recruit illegal immigrants (future voters) to its quest for a permanent Democrat majority:

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants with sex offenses and homicide convictions could be loose on the streets, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data provided to lawmakers this week.

The agency provided data to Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, about national data for illegal immigrants with criminal charges or convictions. The data, as of July 2024, is broken down by those in detention, and those who are not in detention — known as the non-detained docket.  The non-detained docket includes illegal immigrants who have final orders of removal or are going through removal proceedings but are not detained in ICE custody. There are currently more than 7 million people on that docket.

The data say that, among those not in detention, there are 425,431 convicted criminals and 222,141 with pending criminal charges.

Those include 62,231 convicted of assault, 14,301 convicted of burglary, 56,533 with drug convictions and 13,099 convicted of homicide. An additional 2,521 have kidnapping convictions and 15,811 have sexual assault convictions.

There are an additional 1,845 with pending homicide charges, 42,915 with assault charges, 3,266 with burglary charges and 4,250 with assault charges. [Adam Shaw, “Tens of Thousands of illegal Immigrants with Sexual Assault, Murder Convictions in US: ICE Data“, Fox News, September 28, 2024]

What about terrorists? There have been reports of persons on terrorist watch-lists having been apprehended at the southern border. Obviously, there have been no reports of terrorists (known or unknown) who have eluded detection and are now setting their plans in motion. But given the magnitude of the incursion of criminals, it’s not inconceivable that there are tens of thousands of terrorists in cells dotted around the country, waiting for orders to proceed with a series of attacks.

What might these minions of the axis do? There are so many possibilities that I can’t begin to list them. I’ll restrict myself to a scenario that I depicted in 2011:

• A large but dispersed collection of improvised weapons for improvised, mortar-style attacks has been gathered in and around major U.S. cities and transportation and energy nodes.

• These weapons are positioned so that their activation, on a massive scale would create havoc and panic — and might well disrupt transportation and communication networks. (With a massive salvo, not every weapon must reach its target.)

• These weapons can be activated remotely — perhaps through signals transmitted from a single point — so that they can be fired in coordinated waves. Each successive wave disrupts and complicates rescue and recovery efforts that ensue from preceding waves, heightens confusion and panic, and lays the groundwork for economic disaster and political repression.

I added this in 2015:

It may be too late for a contemporary Churchill to reignite America’s long-lapsed fighting spirit. Moreover, if a contemporary Churchill were to ascend to power in the U.S., he would be reviled and opposed by the leftist quislings who have come to the fore in this country.

If the past is prologue, America’s wartime “exploits” since World War II foreordain its ignominious end.

Perhaps my dark mood will lift. I hope that the events of the next few days and weeks will cause it to do so.