AMERICA’S ECONOMIC PRIMACY IS ON A SLIPPERY SLOPE

America’s economic primacy is pretty much behind us. And, I don’t believe there is any chance of reversing a trend that began thirty plus years ago. The best-case scenario for the nation is to slow the rate of economic decline – never mind social and cultural decline, which are probably lodged in irreversible decay.  As Robert Kaplan says in his book, The Revenge of Geography, we might prolong our position of strength by preparing the world for our own obsolescence and thus ensuring a graceful exit.  But even this outcome will require the strength of will and leadership skills such as the nation witnessed during President Trump’s term in office.

Economic primacy might be measured along many fronts – income per capita, rate of growth, productivity, foreign exchange reserves, among others – but if one looks at Gross Domestic Product (GDP), perhaps the coarsest measure of a nation’s economic well-being, then the United States has lost its economic primacy to China when compared on a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) basis.

The PPP approach levels the GDP calculation to each country’s relative price of goods. So, if a television set costs $500 in the United States while the same television costs $250 in China then, theoretically at least, we’re under counting China’s GDP by $250. Using the PPP rationale, China’s GDP was approximately $23.5 trillion in 2019 compared to that of the United States which came in at $21.4 trillion.

Some politicians, economists, lobbyists, and others, like to use a different measure of GDP to suit their own purposes. The nominal GDP, which looks at the total of goods and services produced at current exchange rates yields a substantially different calculation. The nominal GDP of the United States in 2019 came in at $21.4 trillion, a number which is identical to the nation’s GDP on a PPP basis. The reason for this is that the nominal GDP calculation is based on the dollar and so there is no currency conversion rate difference. By comparison, China’s nominal GDP came in at $14.3 trillion. If we only look at nominal GDP, it is clear we are being lulled into a false sense of economic security.

CHINA HAS UNRIVALLED DIPLOMATIC PATIENCE

Diplomatically, China has an edge on the United States. In the 1980’s, the then leader of the People’s Republic of China, Deng Xiaoping, enunciated his famous maxim of tao guang yang hui. Interpreted variously, the maxim is meant as a foreign policy directive that regardless how muscular the nation might become economically, geopolitically, and militarily it is always best to keep a “low profile diplomatically.” No more beguiling example of Deng Xiaoping’s maxim is in evidence than in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Simply put, China plans to build one “road” from China to Europe and thus control all manner of transcontinental commerce. Already, China controls or has a presence in ports that handle about two-thirds of the world’s container traffic. In Greece, the port of Piraeus, a storied port dating to the Fifth Century B.C., is majority owned by the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) which makes Greece a strategic entry point for China into the heart of Europe.

In Central Asia, China’s power projection is as undeniable as it is ominous. Through the auspices of the euphemistically named Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China has, in effect, expanded its borders westward by 1,500 miles to the Caspian Sea. Strategically, the mostly land-based route from Khorgos, Kazakhstan on China’s western border to Piraeus has now achieved super-highway potential from China to Europe. And, with the ignominious and cowardly cut-and-run of the United States military from Afghanistan, August 15, 2021, courtesy of President Biden and his band of armchair generals, China has indeed the potential to have gained yet another ally in this important region rich in iron, copper, lithium, and rare earth elements essential in the manufacture of reusable energy, electric vehicles and Defense Department applications such as precision-guided weapons, projectiles, and guidance systems.

China established the SCO with original signatories Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan for the ostensible purpose of promoting border security along its Xinjiang autonomous-region home to millions of mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghurs. Emblematic of China’s clout in the region, moreover, is that since the formation of the SCO both India and Pakistan have been granted membership in the organization. For the United States, it isn’t clear how much leeway it will now have to operate in Central Asia given the leverage that China has over SCO countries economically, diplomatically, and militarily.

Africa, too, is highly coveted by China. The Chinese have outmaneuvered the Americans economically on the African continent. As a consequence, China now does six times as much trade with African nations as does the United States. China has over ten-thousand companies doing business on African soil – mostly through State-Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) – and is now Africa’s number one trading partner and infrastructure financier. The Chinese presence in Africa is nothing short of startling. According to a report by consulting company McKinsey & Company published in 2017, Chinese construction contractors command around 50% of Africa’s international engineering, procurement, and construction market. For the West, China’s overwhelming presence in Africa demands a watchful eye. Especially in Western Africa, it’s more than just about bridges, dams, and railroads: a Chinese military presence in the Atlantic Ocean brings a potential Chinese naval threat within 4,000 miles of America’s east coast.

China has also learned to game international organizations in a big way.  Some examples should suffice to make the point: 1) The Paris Climate Accord, biased to begin with in favor of China, is a fraud as it has no enforcement mechanism. As a consequence, China burns far more coal than it officially admits. So, while emissions in the United States trend lower, potentially hobbling our fossil fuel energy sector, China’s continue to increase. China’ s shell game also involves the building of coal plants outside its borders to further fuel its economy without having to account for the consequent emissions domestically. President Trump wisely withdrew the United States from the accord – which in the end is nothing but a huge redistribution of wealth at the expense of the American taxpayer – in 2019 before the Biden Administration genuflected before globalists and the Left in his own party and agreed to re-enter the accord. 2) The World Trade Organization (WTO) is in China’s pocket as it refuses to rein in China’s channeling of state subsidies to its manufacturing companies so as to better compete on the world’s stage.  3) China’s membership on the United Nation’s Human Rights Council is ironic in the extreme. President Trump withdrew the United States from the Council in 2018 because of its hostility towards Israel. As Nikki Haley, American Ambassador to the United Nations said at the time, “Earlier this year, as it has in previous years, the Human Rights Council passed five resolutions against Israel – more than the number passed against North Korea, Iran, and Syria combined.” China has also been working diligently to defund peacekeeping missions in troubled areas around the world. Incredibly, China also sits on the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women alongside Iran known for its horrific treatment of women. 4) The most egregious example, of course, of how China has played international and presumably apolitical agencies lies with the country’s spread of the devastating and deadly Coronavirus and how the World Health Organization’s (WHO) was complicit in the coverup of China’s misdeeds. In December, 2019, when Taiwan warned about the infectiousness of the virus, the WHO refused to share Taiwan’s warnings with the rest of the world. Clearly, the WHO was doing China’s bidding. To this day, Taiwan, at China’s behest, is boycotted from participating as a full-fledged member of the WHO.

IF WE’RE NOT MAKING STUFF WHAT ARE WE TO DO?

Let’s face it, manufacturing was lost to our shores for all intents and purposes several years ago. In 2015, China displaced the United States as the top manufacturing nation in the world. In 2019, China’s value-added output – in essence, the difference between price and the cost of production – in manufacturing amounted to $3.9 trillion compared to $2.4 trillion for the United States. That gap will doubtless continue to grow.

There are now roughly 15 million workers in the United States engaged in manufacturing down from approximately 18 million in the 1980’s. President Trump, to his credit, was determined to revitalize manufacturing, steel, and coal but despite gains in these areas total employment numbers will continue to slip on a trend-line basis.  When one considers that China has approximately 112 million manufacturing workers, the competitive disadvantage for the United States becomes palpably clear.

In 2019 our nation’s goods deficit with China was approximately $345 billion. That gap is not likely to be made up in any of our lifetimes. So, that leaves Services as the new game in town. In 2019, Services accounted for roughly 69% of our nation’s GDP. And, as a nation, we better excel in that new cycle reality. It is true, the United States ran an annual balance of payments surplus in services with China of about $36 billion in 2019 – with U.S. exports amounting to about $56 billion and imports from China totaling $20 billion. But don’t let that fool you as a $20 billion gap will be easy for China to make up especially when one considers that China’s Services sector is growing at an average of 2% per year. And, unless we accelerate the rate of growth of exports – the rate of growth is about even for both imports and exports – we might soon be facing a deficit in this sector of the economy so crucial for the good health of the nation in the twenty-first century.

It is the remotest possibility, however, that we can salvage the service economy and consequently our nation unless our standard of performance is nothing less than service excellence in everything we do. But, from the way we treat our veterans, clients, patients, students, donors, and citizens – customers, all, to my way of thinking we have a lot of work to do before we can claim to excel in service. A survey by consulting company Accenture in 2007 showed that 41% of respondents described service quality as fair, poor, or terrible – more recent surveys suggest service is worsening. Perform any human endeavor at that level of proficiency and you are an abject failure. In the services sector, however, that is par for the course. In the Far East, cultural determinants do not confuse service with servitude. As a rule, suppliers will go the extra mile to please a consumer. In the West, and particularly in the United States, the most that a service worker can muster when asked to perform a personalized service is to utter something like, “no problem.” That kind of indifferent attitude is ingrained and certain to keep our level of service quality from climbing out of the aforementioned levels of mediocrity.

In the meantime, off-shore locations feast on our indifference to service and do whatever it takes to secure and maintain a customer relationship. The oft-cited explanation for the comparative advantage of off-shore locations, namely, their low cost, is a facile response to a more complicated dynamic. It is true that off-shore locations enjoy all-in cost advantages vis-a-vis the United States. It is also true, that President Trump worked hard to enhance our competitiveness on the world stage by reducing the oppressive web of regulation; reducing our world-leading corporate tax rates; negotiating better trade deals; exiting globalist compacts financed on the backs of American taxpayers; offering a tax holiday for repatriated corporate profits, among other initiatives. Those initiatives, however, have either been rolled back or will soon be under President Biden’s Administration.

My experience is that, particularly in technical disciplines, services delivered by off-shore locations are superior to ours. An apprenticeship initiative, if it were aggressively expanded to include science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations, might make us more competitive in this area. In the rarefied world of supercomputers so critical to pushing the frontiers of science and technology, for example, the United States is out-produced by China on the order of two-to-one. So, until and unless we grow a much larger crop of more competent technical workers we will continue to be outperformed by nations more determined, better educated, more dedicated, and hungrier than we are.

THE NATION FACES SOME VERY STIFF HEADWINDS

The United States economy has structural defects which will not go away simply by holding rallies and mouthing rhetorical flourishes in the halls of Congress. Decline might be inexorable but we should not stand by as mere spectators. The will and purpose to restore our economic vitality must be marshaled by every American. It must begin, first and foremost, by demanding of our leaders, our institutions, and ourselves to be unafraid to serve in keeping with American priorities. 

We don’t have a lot going for ourselves: Labor productivity growth is stalled at near zero levels; the rate of household savings is paltry; regulation and taxation still suffocates businesses and individuals despite President Trump’s initiatives; unemployment – not the nominal rate but the U6 rate which measures the unemployed, those that are not looking for work, and those who have had to settle for part-time work –  is mired at levels of 7% (during the Obama years the U6 rate never got below 9.2%); and he national debt is now in excess of 120% of GDP. Entitlement spending while currently at a level of approximately 70% of the federal budget is on the threshold of becoming a perfect storm of out-of- control spending. The progressive policies of the Biden Administration will see to that as it attempts to solve every problem by printing greenbacks. The growing number of baby boomers reaching retirement age and the population’s longer life expectancy will further exacerbate the nation’s economic health.  

Perhaps the most troubling portent for the nation’s future is its inability to clamber out of a deep and black hole in education. Among the 37 industrialized nations which comprise the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for example, the United States ranks 31^st in mathematics and roughly in the middle on science. Clearly, all of the monetary and fiscal policies in the world will hardly fix this crippling deficiency which has more to do with a cultural indifference to serious and rigorous education.

Prior to Mr. Trump’s coming to office, the federal government was hell-bent on redistributing wealth rather than getting out of the way so that risk capitalists could create wealth. Unfortunately, President Trump’s reforms designed to bring back a full-throated and free market approach to the nation’s financial issues died the moment President Biden came into office. Indeed, the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom for 2021 shows that the United States recorded “its worst score and ranking ever, a result of out-of-control spending and a a loss of confidence by Americans in the even-handed rule of law.” The United states now ranks 20th just behind Chile.

Meanwhile, in the corporate world, business leaders are fixated on how quarterly earnings affect their pay packages, and when push comes to shove, cutting corners and worse. How else can one explain the utter disregard American companies operating in China have for the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on its people. Abuses such as forced labor (unions are illegal in China), the internment of over a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, bans on religious freedom and free expression, arbitrary arrests, and the repression of Hong Kong citizens seem not to bother the likes of executives at Caterpillar, General Motors, Ford, AMD, Micron Technologies, Intel, Texas Instruments, Nike, and many others which are doing a land-office business in China. Apple, most notably, has raised to an art form tax, regulatory, and labor dodges which allow it to stash hundreds of billions of dollars overseas while paying little or no income taxes in the United States. The company, apparently, is nonplussed by the fact that its armies of workers in China are employed for wages and benefits that would be in contravention of United States laws. How the CEO’s of these companies can live with themselves knowing full well that they are profiting from someone else’s misery is a testament to their greed and lust for power.

CAN THE UNITED STATES GUARANTEE THE PEACE?

If the nation has ceded its economic primacy, its military primacy is being severely tested. United States’ land-based forces are heavily committed to counterinsurgency operations to fend off non-state actors while conventional warfare strategic planning appears to be dead. In Europe, a likely conventional hotspot, NATO and U.S. forces are outgunned and outmanned by a factor of at least ten to one by Russian forces. Worse, China’s land-based forces outnumber United States forces by a factor of at least two to one. Incredibly, with the United States facing potentially bad actors ranging from China, to Russia, to Iran, and North Korea the nation’s National Defense Strategy, according to The Heritage Foundation’s 2019 Index of U.S. Military strength, is not equipped to deal with a “two-war” scenario. This is indeed a bad case scenario considering that Russia is currently saber-rattling in the Ukraine and China similarly over Taiwan.

When it comes to cyber warfare our prospects are grim: the Pentagon’s former software chief, Nicolas Chaillan, recently resigned his post because he could not get the huge bureaucracy at the Department of Defense to move against China’s cyber threat. General John Hyten, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of echoed Mr. Chaillan’s views. “We can go fast if we want to. But the bureaucracy we’ve put in place is brutal.” To further emphasize the point, Mr. Chaillan claimed, some U.S. government systems, were “kindergarten level.” Apparently so. It has now come to light that China launched a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August of this year which caught the U.S. military by surprise.

Our ocean defenses are in no better shape. The nation’s principal bulwark protecting our shores is in steep decline. The United States Navy is but a ghost of its former self. The nation now has fewer vessels than it had before World War I. Most notably, according to Seth Cropsey, Director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower and former Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy, our aircraft carrier fleet which must number sixteen in order to patrol three separate ocean theaters now numbers ten or barely enough to protect two theaters. Indeed, in a study dated July 12, 2021 titled “A Report on the Fighting Culture of the United States Navy Surface Fleet” authored by USMC (Ret.) Lieutenant General Robert Schmidle, and USN (Ret.) Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery found that “The Navy is too small to accomplish all the missions with which it is tasked by civilian leaders and combatant commanders.” But there is more to the Navy’s problems than simply being undersized.

Management indiscipline and lack of supervision are also to blame. How else can one explain a top Navy engineer and his wife attempting to sell highly-classified information regarding the propulsion system of our nuclear submarines?What about a junior sailor’s setting fire to the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard which needed the 40,000 ton vessel to be scrapped? This is nothing new. In 2012, a shipyard worker set fire to the nuclear submarine, USS Miami, which required the Navy to scrap that vessel s well. Most tragically, the terrorist attack on the USS Cole which cost the lives of seventeen sailors was due according to the Navy’s own investigation to a lack of “…intelligence, focused training, appropriate equipment or on-scene security support…”

In the Mediterranean, the U.S. Sixth Fleet is a non-entity the result of which is to have created a vacuum that is now filled by the Russians, Syrians, and Iranians. In the South China Sea, American Navy vessels and submarines seem unable to sail without colliding into tankers, containerships, and seamounts. Most notably, on October 2, 2021, the USS Connecticut, a three-billion-dollar nuclear-powered submarine ran into an underwater mountain in the waters of the contested sea. The naval investigators which looked into the incident concluded that “… sound judgment, prudent decision making, and adherence to required procedures … could have prevented the incident.” As a result, the submarine’s top leadership including its commanding officer, executive officer, and chief sonar technician were fired. This is not the first time a U.S. submarine has been involved in an underwater collision. January 8, 2005, the USS San Francisco also ran into an underwater mountain while traveling at maximum speed near Guam in the Pacific Ocean. That incident cost the life of one sailor and injured scores more. Again, naval investigators concluded that if the submarine’s leadership had “complied with requisite procedures, and exercised prudent navigation practices the grounding would most likely have been avoided.”

The United States is clearly being challenged by a territorially aggressive and technologically advanced Chinese Navy. Already, an armada of sophisticated dredging vessels is reclaiming land from the sea for the sole purpose of building military airfields, hangars, radar installations, missile systems, anti-aircraft gun emplacements, and naval port facilities. China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea would be laughable if they were not so ominous: China asserts that it has “historic rights” to approximately 90% of the South China Sea including the Spratly island archipelago which is roughly 1,200 miles from the Chinese mainland. A United Nations Tribunal on the Law of the Sea unanimously tossed out China’s claim in 2016 ruling in favor of the Philippines which filed the case in 2013. True to form, China has stated that it will not abide by the court’s ruling. More worrisome, Chinese fighter jets and bombers now violate Taiwan’s air space with impunity and regularity.

The aforementioned Seth Cropsey, in his chilling and sobering account, Mayday the Decline of American Naval Supremacy, reminds us that China was the naval hegemon in the fifteenth century. Under the leadership of Admiral Sheng He, Chinese sailors coursed the oceans from their territorial waters to the Strait of Hormuz. Chinese vessels of the time were of a length and tonnage that were not to be seen in the West until centuries later. China’s naval supremacy only came to an end when civil servants forced severe budget cutbacks on the kingdom. Does our own defense budget sequestration of 2013 under President Obama, with its mandate to, in effect, disarm the military, ring a bell? The results of each nation’s budget missteps are eerily similar. China, for its part, will probably not repeat its mistake. In all likelihood, it will take the United States a generation, assuming proper funding and political will, to restore the U.S. Navy so that we can confidently state that the nation can project power and protect seaborne commerce beyond the horizon.

Just as troubling as the rickety state of the nation’s military naval forces is the state of the United States Merchant Marine. The Merchant Marine fleet hauls cargo during peacetime and is attached to the Defense Department during wartime to transport troops and supplies into war zones. The United States should hope it does not get into a major conflagration oceans away as it has experienced a dramatic attrition in its Merchant Marine fleet and manpower inventory. In 1960, the United States had nearly 3,000 vessels in the Merchant Marine fleet. Today, the nation has fewer than 175 vessels or less than one-half of 1% of the total vessel count worldwide. Worse, United States-flagged vessels carry a mere pittance of the total volume of goods and materials that transit through the nation’s ports. The consequence of what is obviously a weak flank in the nation’s defense posture is that in the event of a major outbreak of hostilities the United States would be reliant on foreign-flagged vessels to carry troops, armaments, and supplies with all of the attendant security risks.

One can argue that China’s bellicosity toward the United States is as asymmetrical as it is frontal and direct: China’s theft of roughly $225 billion, at the low end and as much as $600 billion at the high end, annually in counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets from the United States; its monopoly of rare earth metals critical not just for consumer products but for Defense Department applications; its financing of over fifty Confucius Institutes on college campuses and schools designed to spread CCP propaganda; and its unleashing of the Wuhan virus which has cost the lives of more than seven-hundred thousand innocent Americans is proof positive that China’s strategy is to envelop the United States on all fronts. In this context, it is instructive to remember General George Patton’s admonition at the end of World War II that the Soviet Union posed an existential threat to Eastern Europe and the world at large that had to be confronted – an admonition that was ignored by then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and which cost the lives of tens of millions of people over a period lasting forty-six years. Patton’s words then ring eerily appropriate today when he said, “If we have to fight them, now is the time. From now on, we will get weaker and they will get stronger.”

PROGRESSIVE GOVERNMENT POLICIES HAVE SERIOUSLY DIMINISHED THE READINESS OF AMERICA’S MILITARY

President Obama could hardly hide his disdain for the military during his eight years in office. Progressive ideologues both in his Administration and in the Pentagon used the military as a social experiment Petri dish which has seriously undermined the combat readiness of those in a position to protect our shores in the event of war. Obama’s appointment of secretaries to lead the Navy, Army, and Air Force – Ray Mabus, Navy, Eric Fanning, Army, Deborah Lee James, Air Force – was a slap in the face to the fighting men and women of our armed forces. To a person, this farcical trio knew little or nothing about military matters but were instead motivated to bring their personal and biased cultural baggage dealing with so-called women’s issues, transgender initiatives, and “green” policies to the Pentagon without discussion or debate. In effect, these policies said “military readiness, be damned!”

The Biden Administration, unfortunately but predictably, picked up where President Obama left off. All you need to know in this regard comes from the current Commander in Chief: “We’re making good progress designing body armor that fits women properly; tailoring combat uniforms for women; creating maternity flight suits; updating – updating requirements for their hairstyles…” More emblematic of the fecklessness of our military leadership is noted by the fact that both the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, (who did not attend a military academy but who studied Political Science at Princeton), and his boss Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense are now actively promoting within the ranks the merits of so-called “critical race theory” whose first tenet reads that “racism is ordinary, not aberrational.” Milley, for his part, is apparently struggling to deal with his own “white rage” which he has made abundantly clear in public and which, if true, should be his personal business and no one else’s.

That the Soviets were able to withdraw over 100,000 troops from Afghanistan in 1988 in an orderly way and over a ten month period – after their failed attempt to install a Communist regime in the country – makes a mockery of the amateurish way in which Milley and Austin directed the chaotic exit of the United States from Afghanistan. The slapdash exit from the country not only left behind billions of dollars worth of military equipment to the Taliban but most tragically cost the lives of 169 people including thirteen Americans when a suicide bomber struck a gate at the Kabul airport. The sheer incompetence of the U.S. military under its current leadership was further on display when a drone strike meant to demonstrate Biden’s machismo killed ten innocent people including seven children.

Military incompetence, however, is not the worst of General Milley’s character flaws. Most egregiously, Milley behaved more like a Chinese mole than a U.S. General when he went behind President Trump’s back and offered his Chinese counterpart a “heads up” in the event we should launch a preemptive strike. He also thought nothing of having tete-a-tetes about confidential White House matters with muckraking journalist Bob Woodward and other authors. This is the same General Milley who publicly apologized for being seen in uniform with President Trump at Lafayette Square because, as he said, “it created a perception of the military involved in politics.” General Milley was also vocal before the House Armed Services Committee when he stated that he was “personally outraged by George Floyd’s brutal and senseless killing.” Yet, hypocritically, the General has never decried the death, destruction, and violence which gripped the nation in the Summer of 2020. Clearly, General Milley has proved to be more adept at polishing his woke celebrity credentials than at protecting our troops. Milley’s deeds, and his words have done nothing but encourage our foes.

No worse example of our nation’s loss of a warrior ethos can be found than in Naval Academy Lieutenant David Nartker’s groveling before his Iranian captors in January, 2016 when the two riverine boats under his command sailed off course into Iranian waters due to his incompetence. “The Iranian behavior was fantastic while we were here and we thank you very much for your hospitality and your assistance.” Contrast the Lieutenant’s sniveling behavior to the dying words of Commander James Lawrence when he ordered “don’t give up the ship” during a battle in the War of 1812.

It is no wonder that in the aforementioned Report on the Navy’s Fighting Culture the authors’ findings include: “an insufficient focus on warfighting skills, the perception of a zero-defect mentality accompanied by a culture of micromanagement, and over-sensitivity and responsiveness to modern media culture.” The Navy’s hypersensitivity to cultural issues continues apace as it has just named a replenishment oiler ship after Harvey Milk, a gay rights activist and vehement Viet Nam protester. The USNS Harvey Milk, incidentally, was christened by a transgender veteran.

Sadly, officers who do speak their minds suffer the consequences. For one, Space Force Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeir, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and fighter pilot, was relieved of his command when he noted on a podcast that diversity and inclusion training “is rooted in critical race theory which is rooted in Marxism.” Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeir, a fifteen-year veteran, has since left the service under a cloud as his boss charged that Lohmeir was “unable to lead.” For another, seventeen-year veteran Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, a marine infantry officer and battalion commander was thrown in the brig when he challenged the wisdom and approach to the Afghanistan withdrawal. The Chinese must be laughing in their tanks! (For a full account of how progressive liberal policies have emasculated the American military read James Hasson’s book Stand Down).

AMERICA IS AT A CROSSROADS

In sum, if as the great military historian B.H. Liddell Hart suggests, a nation’s Grand Strategy is a composite of its political, military, economic and diplomatic tools in its “arsenal” which can be brought to bear to advance a state’s national interest then the United States appears to be convulsing in its gradual decay. As I have argued in my essay, The United Kingdom Is Resurgent, the former world economic power lost its supremacy because it failed to adapt to the winds of change which buffeted its shores long after the economy reached its apex in the early twentieth century.

It is also provocative to think that there might be a “natural” life cycle to nations as there is to human beings that is irreversible. Regardless of one’s view in embracing one or another theory that might explain the demise of nations, there is no reason to remain indolent in resisting such decline even if there is only the remotest possibility of such an outcome. Keep in mind that the demise of Rome was hardly cataclysmic but the result of a long succession of imprudent decisions made by the Empire’s leaders. The United States, two hundred years after its founding, cannot continue its righteous journey if it fails to confront those who unite either within or outside its borders against it. President Theodore Roosevelt admonished the nation to never shrink from strife, moral or physical: “For it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.”

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