October 1, 2024

Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

The incoming defense commissioner of the European Union says that China sees the U.S. and EU responses to Russian aggression in Ukraine as weak. He’s right. Our show of weakness only invites further aggression by other rogue members of the “axis of evil,” including China, Iran, and North Korea.

As the world devolves into wars that strain U.S. and partner defense budgets—along with the borders that divide the democracies from authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, and North Korea—“the Chinese are watching,” according to the European Union’s first incoming defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius.

In the case of Europe’s response to Russia, according to a Sept. 22 report, “The Chinese will make one simple conclusion,” noted Kubilius. “The West is quite weak.” He said that despite economies that are 25 times that of Russia, we are not winning. “What is the reason?” he asked. “It’s a question of political will.”

It’s also a question of risk avoidance, of course. Democracies are more risk averse than autocracies when it comes to war. This makes sense from one perspective, as democracies care more about people—both in their own societies and those of other states—than do dictators and terrorists. It could also make sense from a strategic perspective if modern war is a “wood chipper” for attacking armies, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin rightly noted in 2022 regarding Ukraine.

The axis dictators are power-hungry to the point of a willingness to kill tens of millions in pursuit of their territorial and ideological ambitions. The number of Russian and Ukrainian dead from the current war has now reached approximately 1 million, according to a Sept. 17 report. Even more have been wounded. And Vladimir Putin is raising the stakes by frequently threatening nuclear strikes that could escalate to a direct war with the United States.

Iran is following the same strategy of feeding its proxies into the wood chipper, with its pursuit of nuclear weapons and support for terrorist proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah against Israel, giving just cause for a robust defense. On Sept. 22, the United States warned Israel against starting a full-scale war against the latter terrorist organization after Hezbollah refused to end its cross-border rocket attacks and let tens of thousands of internally displaced Israeli refugees return to their homes in northern Israel.

U.S. and allied ammunition reserves are running so low due to these wars—for which the United States has served as the “arsenal of democracy” since World War I—that Taiwan is now searching for new sources of ammunition necessary to defend itself in a war against the People’s Liberation Army, according to a Sept. 21 report.

Perhaps that is why Beijing tacitly approved of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and why the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allies with Iran in its negotiations with the United States, thus encouraging its violence against Israel and Saudi Arabia. The CCP bankrolls all of the “axis of evil” companies through energy purchases from Russia and Iran and being the biggest trade partner of North Korea. The CCP has a motive for encouraging these far-flung wars and North Korea’s nuclear saber-rattling. It distracts the democracies, depletes our arsenals, and thus will make it harder to defend Taiwan if that day comes.

Xi Jinping has told the People’s Liberation Army to be ready for a Taiwan war in 2027, and the chief of Naval Operations of the U.S. Navy, in turn, told her forces to be ready for a war with China by the same date. Meanwhile, the FBI continues to discover Beijing’s preparations for massive cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure that could disable us during a Taiwan war. Such preparations are destabilizing as the first to strike the other’s electricity grid and satellites, for example, will have a major advantage on the battlefield.

So the question of U.S. and European weakness that Kubilius and Beijing perceive matters. What we do to defend Ukraine matters to whether the CCP decides to launch a war against Taiwan in 2027. Defeating Russia in Ukraine by 2026 could avoid a war with China that year that blacks out the entire United States and destroys us as a global superpower, even if we win. In that case, we would not be very helpful in defending Europe.

Kubilius of Lithuania is one unlikely successor to former president Ronald Reagan and his doctrine of “peace through strength.” But this is his approach. He wants the European Union to borrow money to massively increase defense spending. He wants to require each country in the EU to stockpile enough ammunition for a war with Russia that could come within a few years, he said. Germany, according to a report in 2022, only had enough ammunition for two days of war. That explains its general willingness to give in to Russia, China, and Iran.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likewise believes the European Union must spend far more on defense to deter war with Russia. She estimates that the EU must spend approximately $560 billion to account for low defense spending that stretches back to the wishful thinking of the 1990s when some in the United States thought we had achieved global “primacy.” In fact, the enemies of democracy were just regrouping for a future fight.

The CCP regime is indeed watching as Ukraine and Israel struggle to put down dictatorial and terrorist aggressions against them. Calls in the United States for them to moderate their responses, however popular among our voters, look weak to the CCP. Similar calls over the decades for Taiwan to moderate its response to the CCP also look weak. To keep the peace that is left in the world, we need to meet these aggressions not with fear and weakness but with strength and courage. That is the surest way to not only a lasting peace but to one with justice.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn gave gave must-watch speeches last weekend at the ‘Rescue The Republic’ rally in Washington D.C. – which was organized to promote free speech and the 8 pillars of ‘Join the Resistance.‘

Taibbi torched the establishment, starting with John Kerry – who recently said he wants the First Amendment “hammered out of existence” so the elites can control information.

Taibbi also went full Les Grossman on the ‘anti-disinformation’ dickheads from the censorship industrial complex…

Let me pause to say something about America’s current intellectual class, from which the “anti-disinformation” complex comes. By the way: there are no working-class censors, poor censors, hungry censors. The dirty secret of “content moderation” everywhere is that it’s a tiny sliver of the educated rich correcting everyone else. It’s telling people what fork to use, but you can get a degree in it. –Matt Taibbi

But while “the Michael Haydens, John Brennans, James Clappers, Mike McFauls and Rick Stengels who make up America’s self-appointed behavior police” keep trying to censor, they’re on “a fool’s errand.”

But “Motherfucker, I’m an American. That shit does not work on me. And how can you impugn my patriotism, when you’re sitting in Klaus Schwab’s lap, apologizing for the First Amendment to a crowd of Europeans? Look in the mirror.”

Watch:

Novelist Walter Kirn also spoke at the event, telling “a little bedtime story” about his childhood in rural Minnesota – “the land of the deplorables,” that can best be summarized by the man himself via Racket News (emphasis ours);

When I was a kid in rural Minnesota, the land of the deplorables in the late sixties and early seventies, my mother had a little record player. The problem was, she only had five records, and all were protest music. Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary. I used to listen to the records, and I had a favorite song. Maybe you know it: “If I had a Hammer.”

It was very strange that my mother had these records, because she was a young Republican. Anyway, I was eight years old, and I had no idea what this song meant. It seemed to have something to do with being powerless, and dreaming or fantasizing that you had power. If I had a hammer, I’d hammer out justice. I’d hammer out freedom all over this land. I’d hammer out love between the brothers and the sisters…

That was my favorite line, because it was so puzzling. Isn’t love between brothers and sisters incest? As I said, I found this song confusing, and the thing that confused me most about the song was: Why didn’t the singer have a hammer? What had happened? Who’d taken it away?

This morning, I was reading Twitter and I was reminded of this song in the most unlikely way. I saw a clip of a discussion at one of those big international conferences that you and I are never invited to, and on this video was John Kerry, former Secretary of State, former Skull and Bonesman, that secret society at Yale — the same secret society that George W. Bush belonged to. The guy who ran against John Kerry for president in 2004: Skull and Bones versus Skull and Bones. Talk about the illusion of choice.

Anyway, what Kerry was talking about was the First Amendment, and how it was a problem. A big, big problem. He had a peculiar complaint about it.

The First Amendment stopped people like him, he said, from trying to “build consensus.” Now, that’s how these people think about themselves, as builders of consensus. What does that make you and me? We’re construction materials!

John Kerry, master builder, had a complaint. The First Amendment, he said, was a “major block” for people like him from stopping what he now calls disinformation. It kept him from, he said, “hammering it out of existence.”

Now, I’m pretty sure that in 1949 when Pete Seeger wrote, “The Hammer Song,” or “If I Had a Hammer,” he didn’t mean if John Kerry had a hammer. He didn’t mean if they had a hammer:

If they had a hammer,

They’d hammer out disinformation.

They’d hammer out vaccine hesitancy,

All over this land.

They’d hammer out Kennedy.

They’d hammer Matt Taibbi….

That is not the song, and John Kerry has it wrong. The hammer does not belong to him.

That hammer belongs to us. It’s ours. But why don’t we have it? That’s the mystery.

That’s the question I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure out. Look at this gray hair. It’s been a lifetime. Why doesn’t the singer have a hammer? Why? Why do we have to dream to fantasize? Why do we have to wish we had one?

Well, I think I’ve finally answered it. We have it right in front of us. The question is, will we pick it up? The question is, will we use it? So, I have a request for you. When you go home tonight, when you get home, pick up your hammer. Pick up your hammer and use it. It’s time to build.

My mother had one other record. It was by Simon and Garfunkel. It also had a song I loved called El Condor Pasa. I think you remember its greatest line: “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.”

Don’t be a nail. Pick up your hammers. Go home. Let’s build a New America.