{"id":66719,"date":"2021-04-11T14:26:59","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T19:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=66719"},"modified":"2021-04-11T14:26:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T19:26:59","slug":"66719","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=66719","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Actually, it’s not “How will Joe Biden respond…<\/em>“, it’s how will his masters tell him. And really, it’s not even that. It’s “How will his handlers load the TelePrompTer for him to read<\/em>?”<\/p>\n

\n

BLUF:
\nHow will Joe Biden respond to these three powder kegs?\u00a0\u00a0The more important question is this: Is his mind so trapped in last century’s geopolitics that he’s now overestimating American strengths, miscalculating other nations’ resolve, and stumbling headfirst into global conflagration?<\/em><\/p>\n

Guns of April and Global War<\/a><\/p>\n

War between Russia and Ukraine looks\u00a0imminent<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Israel and Iran are engaging in tit for tat maritime altercations.\u00a0\u00a0And China is ratcheting up provocative incursions into the airspaces and waters of Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines.<\/p>\n

Any one of these regional conflicts is incendiary enough to ignite World War III (or, more accurately, each one is capable of transforming the cold, hybrid warfare of cyberhacks, technology thefts, financial markets manipulation, and perhaps even\u00a0biological attacks<\/a>\u00a0that has been underway for many years into total and unrelenting global bloodshed), yet trading markets and news media are\u00a0largely ignoring<\/a>\u00a0what’s unfolding.\u00a0\u00a0It’s as if the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1999 Kargil War between nuclear-equipped India and Pakistan, and the Soviet and Nazi Invasion of Poland were all happening concurrently, and the world decided it was too busy enforcing face mask mandates upon\u00a0religious congregants<\/a>\u00a0and following the turmoil of\u00a0Khloe Kardashian<\/a>\u00a0to care.<\/p>\n

Barbara Tuchman’s\u00a0The Guns of August<\/em>\u00a0paints a vivid picture of European elites so mentally imprisoned by the mores and cultural etiquette of the nineteenth century that they failed to grasp the reality of the geopolitical chessboard before them or the likelihood of the monumental carnage of WWI.\u00a0\u00a0Something eerily reminiscent of those miscalculations is going on today.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the thirty years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has squandered much of its time as the world’s sole superpower.\u00a0\u00a0Rather than winding down NATO’s mission in a post-Soviet world, the West redirected and revitalized the alliance after 9\/11 into a global military engagement against “extremism,” with the U.S. fortifying its role as the world’s policeman.\u00a0\u00a0And rather than using the end of the Cold War to balance budgets and fix America’s unstable financial footing, the U.S. aggressively burdened itself with new and unsustainable levels of debt.\u00a0\u00a0In effect, the U.S. rejected the possibility of multipolar peace, assumed the role of global hegemon, and never saved up for a rainy day.<\/p>\n

Instead of broadly integrating a shaky post-communist Russia into European and trans-Atlantic institutions, the U.S. has wobbled between treating Russia as an ally in the “war on terror” and as a Cold War adversary that must be contained by driving the expansion of NATO-allied member countries all the way to\u00a0Russia’s borders<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0One moment Hillary Clinton is promoting a “Russia reset,” and the next moment Barack Obama and Victoria Nuland are orchestrating a\u00a0Ukrainian coup d’\u00e9tat<\/a> to swap a Russia-friendly government with a fiercely anti-Russian replacement.\u00a0\u00a0In order to prevent Russia from becoming a thorn in the side of New World Order types utilizing the IMF, WTO, and World Bank as engines for maintaining American-led global governance, U.S.-controlled NATO and E.U. technocrats intent on building a European superstate have kept Russia relegated to the sidelines.\u00a0\u00a0And in recent years, Democrats in the U.S., “Remain” Brits opposed to Brexit, and European integrationists who have taken umbrage at Central European countries such as Poland and Hungary defending their own sovereignty have tried to scapegoat lost referendums on illusory “Russian disinformation” campaigns.\u00a0\u00a0The effect of this intentional ostracism has been to push Russia closer to communist China and into adversarial brinkmanship with U.S.-E.U. interests.<\/p>\n

Likewise, by largely ignoring China’s decades of human rights abuses and\u00a0normalizing trade relations<\/a>\u00a0at the turn of the millennium in an effort to tame a large but poor communist country through globalization and cultural assimilation, the United States has instead elevated China to an economic powerhouse increasingly capable of bending the West to its will.\u00a0\u00a0After hollowing out America’s manufacturing and industrial capabilities and orchestrating the largest intercontinental transfer of wealth in history from America’s post-WWII middle class to China’s emerging middle class, the U.S. now finds itself in a defensive geopolitical posture with a combination of national debt, crumbling infrastructure, and dependence on Chinese raw materials and imports endangering America’s\u00a0rules-based international order<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0In what should be seen as a shot across the bow of the U.S. financial system, the recent (and\u00a0almost certainly intentional<\/a>) self-destruction of the Chinese-controlled family firm Archegos that destabilized Western credit markets and threatened the solvency of numerous Western investment banks was a pointed reminder from China to the U.S. that the latter’s days of unilateral control of the global economy are over.<\/p>\n

Both China and Russia are deleveraging from American dollars, increasing their gold stores, and preparing for a future when the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency.\u00a0\u00a0Without that ace in the hole, the U.S. loses not only its ability to continue printing and spending money without enduring the normal consequences of monetary devaluation and collapse but also its ability to inflict financial sanctions as a way to “club” other nations into obedience.\u00a0\u00a0A\u00a0Sino-Russian alliance<\/a>\u00a0that utilizes Russia’s oil, coal, and natural gas leverage over Europe and its outsized military capabilities; China’s manufacturing dominance and Belt and Road Initiative extending across and linking Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America; and both nations’ wealth of natural resources puts them in a strategic position to forge a stable gold-backed digital currency that will instantly interconnect most of the world’s population.<\/p>\n

It is in this volatile\u00a0reshuffling of global power<\/a>\u00a0that an often addled and\u00a0confused Joe Biden<\/a>\u00a0attempts to confront the military chess moves of Russia and China while somehow transforming Iran from a destabilizing regional belligerent (almost certainly\u00a0already in possession<\/a>\u00a0of nuclear weapons) into some kind of U.S. and European partner capable of playing nice with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg have\u00a0laid out<\/a>\u00a0a military strategy in\u00a0NATO 2030<\/a>\u00a0that explicitly calls for the alliance to combat “Russian threats and hostile actions,” to “expand and strengthen partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia,” and to defend against Chinese “security challenges.”\u00a0\u00a0Ol’ Joe has reportedly given\u00a0personal assurances<\/a>\u00a0to President Zelensky that the U.S. stands with Ukraine, and he’s\u00a0publicly committed<\/a>\u00a0to defending Taiwan’s freedom.\u00a0\u00a0But “red lines<\/a>” coming from America are not the same after Barack Obama’s presidency.<\/p>\n

U.S. warships have entered the\u00a0Black Sea<\/a>\u00a0and are sailing through the\u00a0Taiwan Strait<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Meanwhile, even though the Biden administration has capitulated to Iran by unilaterally dropping sanctions, Iran has promised to “respond<\/a>” against the U.S. and Israel for the recent\u00a0Red Sea mine attack<\/a>\u00a0against a vessel purportedly used as a covert Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forward base.<\/p>\n

Russia has been very clear.\u00a0\u00a0It will not allow Kiev to reacquire Crimea or the Russian-aligned breakaway proto-states of Luhansk and Donetsk.\u00a0\u00a0It has responded to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s signing of\u00a0Decree No. 117\/2021<\/a>\u00a0directing the Ukraine Army to recapture and reunify these areas by flooding the Ukraine-Russia border with weapons, troops, tanks, and elite paratroopers.\u00a0\u00a0Russia is\u00a0ready for war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

China has been very clear.\u00a0\u00a0It considers Taiwan a renegade province and the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea as territorial possessions.\u00a0\u00a0It has promised to use military force to safeguard these claims and has built artificial islands in disputed territorial waters and sent fleets of “fishing vessels” to surround disputed island chains.\u00a0\u00a0China is\u00a0ready for war<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0And Taiwan\u00a0is ready<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

Israel has been very clear.\u00a0\u00a0It will not allow a nuclear-empowered Iran to become a Damocles sword threatening Israel’s very existence.\u00a0\u00a0Israel is\u00a0ready for war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How will Joe Biden respond to these three powder kegs?\u00a0\u00a0The more important question is this: Is his mind so trapped in last century’s geopolitics that he’s now overestimating American strengths, miscalculating other nations’ resolve, and stumbling headfirst into global conflagration?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actually, it’s not “How will Joe Biden respond…“, it’s how will his masters tell him. And really, it’s not even that. It’s “How will his handlers load the TelePrompTer for him to read?” BLUF: How will Joe Biden respond to these three powder kegs?\u00a0\u00a0The more important question is this: Is his mind so trapped in … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66720,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66719\/revisions\/66720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}