There is something inexorable about events these days. Human
stupidity and short-sightedness seems to dominate the world’s affairs.
In Gaza the Palestinians seem to have reacted to Israel’s
attempts to stop the rocket fire by supporting Hamas even more strongly, apparently oblivious
to the fact that their pain and misery has been largely caused by Hamas. In
Israel the Israeli public is now almost totally behind the Gaza war, even
though there is no conceivable way they can fully suppress Hamas short of reoccupying
the Gaza strip, with all the guerrilla war that would entail. And Secretary Kerry seems to have managed to alienate
everyone on both sides with an unbelievably inept performance that has clearly
diminished America’s leverage in that region of the world.
Meanwhile in Russia the Russian people seem to have drunk
the cool-aid and largely bought into President Putin’s propaganda about Western
culpability in the Ukraine, and about the promise of restoring a “Greater
Russia”, never mind that the Russian economy, never strong to begin with, is now
headed down the toilet. Europe has
finally found their spine today, at least temporarily, and added some economic pressure
on President Putin, but he has probably already passed the point of no return on this
issue – backing down now after whipping his public up to a fever pitch would
probably end his political career, so he almost certainly won’t back down, but will probably double
down on his Ukrainian adventure. And
indeed he may calculate, perhaps correctly, that the Europeans are too feckless,
too greedy, and too worried about losing business to hold together in their
opposition very long. One can only hope that some of the oligarchs that support
him will feel the pinch enough to try to remove him –but it won’t be easy.
If the Ukrainian “rebels” continue to lose ground, despite
the continued flow of “volunteers” and heavy weapons across the Russian border,
Putin may well use the excuse of “defending Russians” to openly invade, and
there is no evidence that either Europe or America has the will to actively oppose
him with military forces, or even to supply the Ukrainian government with weapons to help defend themselves. And if he isn’t
opposed, he will no doubt move on to gather in other bordering regions he
covets, like Moldovia. This is eerily reminiscent
of the muted and temporizing European reaction to Hitler’s early advances, which led ultimately
to World War 2. So much for President Obama’s much vaunted “Russian reset”.
Meanwhile in the Middle East the new “caliphate” is busy
taking territory and killing anyone who doesn’t share their religious views
(with hardly a peep from the very media that is so outraged at the deaths in
Gaza), but the Iraqis can’t manage to get together to form a cohesive
government to oppose them, even with their very existence at stake. And in the background
the civil war is Syria just bubbles along like a festering wound, creating ever
more jihadist movements and recruits.
And across much of the world peoples and nations hope for
the diminution of American influence, even for the downfall of America itself,
apparently oblivious to the consequences that would follow. The disappearance of America hegemony in the
world would almost surely be followed either by a much more repressive hegemony
by some authoritarian nation like Russia or China, or more likely by the sort
of worldwide anarchy that is beginning to pervade the Middle East.
Perhaps it is because I have a cold today, but I really don’t
see much to be optimistic about in all of these situations. Our current
administration isn’t showing much competence in handling these issues, and I
don’t see anyone in either party who looks likely to do better. We in America are as trapped by the
illusions of our world view as the Russians are by theirs and the Israelis by
theirs and the Palestinians by theirs, etc, etc, etc. Barbara Tuckman’s excellent book “The Guns of
August” documents how the world drifted inexorably toward World War I through
the illusions and incompetence of the people in power, and the gullibility of their
publics, and it looks to me like much the same is happening now.
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