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 modest-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.

“Is America already an empty shell of its greater self, and are its days already numbered? Only a fool would say with certainty, no.” David Horowitz, Final Battle

MADE IN AMERICA: A RELIC OF THE PAST

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 unless the nation is serious about incenting investors, and capital markets to come to the fore. In as much as an appeal to patriotic duty is not apt to move companies strictly fixated on the bottom line, they might consider it wiser to not be at the mercy of the whims and vicissitudes of other nations friend or foe.

Workers, too, need to evaluate the opportunities in manufacturing as there are now nearly one million job openings in manufacturing (the hope is that Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus wasn’t on-target when he said that Socialism is why “nobody works, nobody gives a damn.”). So, 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 $36 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.

WILL SERVICES GO THE WAY OF MANUFACTURING?

As manufacturing has continued its downward slope (it’s practically stuck at 11% of GDP),the services component grew to an all-time high level of roughly 78% in 2021. Everything from financial services, to healthcare, to insurance, to information technology, to accounting, to real estate, to retail and wholesale trade among many other sectors – outside of manufacturing, government, and construction – comprise the principal economic engine of the nation. 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 continue to feast on our indifference to service and do whatever it takes to secure and maintain a customer relationship. Already, approximately 300,000 jobs get outsourced off-shore from the United States each year according to independent review site Fortunly.

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 with technical disciplines across many parts of the world is that services delivered by off-shore locations are superior to ours. Much needed on our part, in response, is an apprenticeship initiative, jointly funded by business and government, aggressively directed to include science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations. This will, over time, make us more competitive in critical areas such as electronics, telecommunications, software development, and medical devices. 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, more service-oriented 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 – that is to say, national – 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 to mitigate the yokes around the necks of those who work hard to make ends meet; 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%); inflation which registered 1.2% in 2020 – the last year of Mr. Trump’s presidency – reached a  forty-year high of 9.1% in June of 2022, and was 6.5% for the full year; negative GDP during the first two quarters of 2022 (aka a “recession” despite the Biden Administration’s attempt to re-define the term); the national debt, at $31.4 trillion, means that each U.S. taxpayer now carries approximately $212,000 of debt  on his back, and is roughly three times the debt load taxpayers carried when President Obama first came to power;  the nation’s debt now exceeds 140% of GDP, which puts us within shouting range of the arthritic Italian economy (thirty years ago the U.S. ratio of debt to GDP hovered around 50%); and, interest spending on the nation’s debt, at about $500 billion, is expected to soar with further spending and with rising interest rates courtesy of the Federal Reserve. The FED seems to have forgotten, as recent bank failures show, that in addition to jiggering rates they are also responsible for supervising and regulating banks.

The FED clearly runs the risk of provoking stagflation (a slow economy and high inflation) by attempting to stabilize the economy with only monetary policy at its disposal. The FED’s handmaiden in the financial mismanagement of the nation’s economy is the Treasury Department. Janet Yelllen, as Secretary of the Treasury, has never railed against tax hikes or too much government spending. In fact, she has advised congressional leaders to spend more! Further, Ms Yellen has averred “… because almost everybody who wants a job has a job, growth has to slow.” Growth has to slow? Is that sage advice from the Secretary of the Treasury? In her previous role as FED Chair Ms Yellen also went on a non-portfolio and hardly analytical blather about increased “income inequality.” In this context, it is instructive to remember Aristotle’s words: “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” In any event, properly calibrated, the facts show, income inequality has decreased worldwide for decades.

Mandatory spending for items such as Social Security, Medicare and interest on the nation’s debt make up roughly two-thirds of all federal spending. That leaves little wiggle-room – in the hands of legislators that is – to spend wisely. But discretionary spending – at one-third of the federal budget – is on the threshold of becoming a perfect storm of out-of-control spending as less discretion and more abracadabra goes into spending appropriations by zealots of a welfare system of government. The growing number of baby boomers reaching retirement age and the population’s longer life expectancy will further exacerbate the nation’s economic health. But not to worry, as the progressive policies of the Biden Administration will attempt to solve every problem by printing more greenbacks despite the absence of any productive capacity to support it.

More ominous is a massive tax hike that’s been in the offing since President Biden took office that would impact individuals by raising tax rates on income, capital gains, estates, and payroll. The step-up basis calculation of inherited assets would also be repealed. Businesses would face higher corporate rates, a minimum tax on profits, and capped deductions for the fossil fuel industry. If these proposals come to pass, even the advice of the darling economist of the activist Left, John Maynard Keynes, would be trashed as even he had to admit that “…taxation may be so high as to defeat its object” and that “…a reduction in taxation will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the budget.”

Now comes the latest boondoggle out of Washington – a bi-partisan boondoggle at that – a $1.7 trillion budget bill in the midst of a serious inflationary spiral which by all accounts is sheer madness. Heading the list of allocations that should disabuse the American taxpayer that Congress is looking out for its citizens is $410 million for enhanced border security – not at our own southern border, which would significantly improve the health and safety of all Americans but for five Middle Eastern countries.

Adding further insult to injury are the pork-barrel allocations – “congressionally-directed spending allocations” in Washington-speak – amounting to $15 billion: Retiring Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama wins the top prize as he is able to bring home in excess of $666 million; Republican Senators James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska each grabbed $500 million for their states; Yet another Republican, Senator Roy Blunt, secured $348 million for his pet projects in Missouri; and, retiring Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont walks away with more than $212 million. Prodigal spending habits die hard in Washington.

Clearly, few in Congress would choose to compromise lining their own pockets in support of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution as legislators in countries such as Switzerland, Germany, and Poland have done. The debt ceiling, per se, means absolutely nothing as it has been raised, ad -nauseam, for the last forty years by both Republican and Democrat administrations. In this context, it is good to remember the words of that principled and conservative congressman of the early nineteenth century from Virginia, John Randolph, who referred to legislators as “maggots” who bite. Nothing much has changed since the congressman first voiced his concerns but that the infestation has grown much more malignant.

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 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; the bloody persecution of Falun Gong practitioners whose only crime is their belief in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance as core principles; arbitrary arrests, and the repression of Hong Kong citizens. None of this seems 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.

These robber barons – Apple’s Tim Cook most prominent among them – need to heed the desperate plaint made by the authors of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party “[foreign]…investment has not brought democracy, freedom, and human rights as fundamental principles to the Chinese people.” American consumers, for their part, should think twice before patronizing brands whose workers labor mightily in the shadows.

As Alexander Hamilton observed more than two-hundred years ago: “When avarice takes the lead in a state, it is commonly the forerunner of its fail.”

EDUCATION: A HUGE STUMBLING BLOCK TO THE PROSPERITY OF AMERICA

Perhaps the most troubling portent for the nation’s future is its inability to clamber out of a deep and black hole in education. In 2019, for example, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), released its Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores in mathematics, science, and reading among 15-year-old students; and the results were disturbing if not predictable: Out of 79 nations participating in the study, the United States ranked 38th (eight places below the average), in mathematics, 19th in science, and 13th in reading. China, in contrast, ranked first in all three categories. It is no wonder that college admission test scores are the lowest in three decades.

At the university level the situation is grim. Having forsaken their classic role of instruction, debate, and free expression, colleges and universities have become hyper-politicized using all the tools and resources at their disposal to achieve some arbitrary social goal or another: “safe spaces,” “ethnic studies,” “green studies,” “peace studies,” “gender studies,” “microaggression theory,” “pronoun training,” and “cultural diversity” are now key mission goals.

Biased admission standards, speech codes, grade inflation, bloated administrative staffs (there are now roughly two times as many administrators as there are faculty members on campus), distance learning where teaching efficiency now trumps effectiveness, and curricula devoid of rigor in favor of a cornucopia of “feel good” elective courses all are meant to re-engineer the university from a bastion of serious learning into a romper room which coddles its students. Many of these students, upon graduation, will be hired by the university to fill teaching and administrative roles and thus continue a vicious cycle of indoctrination.

Academic standards of performance have thus fallen prey to the university’s extracurricular efforts to achieve equality of outcome – never mind the moral and intellectual differences among individuals – for its students no matter what. As professor and philosopher Allan Bloom said in his The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students: “The university must resist the temptation to try to do everything for society.” Having failed at fixing anything for society, however, the university has succeeded in undermining its own institutional framework and established a virulent form of mediocrity as its new standard of performance.

The financial consequence of such radical programs and policies is alarming. Keep in mind that there is no practical difference between private and public institutions as they both receive generous government aid. As a result, the cost of tuition at private four-year institutions over the past twenty years has grown by a factor of two; at public institutions the rate of growth is closer to three times; far exceeding the rate of inflation by similar multiples over the same period of time. Is it any wonder that undergraduate college enrollment has dropped by nearly two million during the last ten years?

These potential customers obviously voted with their feet and now the door is left wide open for non-woke institutions to capitalize on the damage left behind by what Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA refers to as the “college cartels.”

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 the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe is no longer considered a theoretical hot spot as might be depicted in simulated war games. In the European theater, NATO and U.S. forces are outgunned, outmanned, and outranged on the ground by Russian forces. In Asia, China’s land-based forces outnumber United States forces by a factor of at least five to one. Incredibly, with the United States facing potentially bad actors ranging from China, to Russia, to Iran, and North Korea, The Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength, concludes that “…the current U.S. military force is at significant risk of not being able to meet the demands of a single major military conflict,” and is ill-equipped to deal with two nearly simultaneous major military conflicts. This is indeed a bad case scenario following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s continued violation of Taiwan’s air space.

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.

Seth Cropsey, Director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower and former Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy, reminds us in his chilling Mayday the Decline of American Naval Supremacy, that China was the naval hegemon in the fifteenth century. Under the leadership of Admiral Zheng He – the powerful eunuch subservient only to emperor Zhu Di of the Ming dynasty – 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. Keep in mind it takes an average of five years to build a new destroyer and twice that long to build a new aircraft carrier. So, in all likelihood, it will take the United States a generation, assuming proper funding and political will, to rebuild the U.S. Navy so that we can confidently state that the nation can project power and protect seaborne commerce beyond the horizon.

IS THE UNITED STATES NAVY SAILING OR SINKING?

The nation’s principal bulwark protecting our shores is clearly in steep decline. The United States Navy is but a ghost of its former self. The aforementioned Heritage Index rates the military power of the Navy as “Weak”. The nation now has fewer vessels than it had before World War I. Most notably, according to Seth Cropsey, 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.”

So, what does the Navy do to address its being undermanned? It lowers its admission standards to accept applicants who score in the tenth percentile on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). In effect, an applicant who scores forty points below the fiftieth percentile, which is to say average, is now acceptable to the Navy. The Navy’s leadership rot does not end there, however, as is has now employed drag queens to appear in its recruitment advertisements. It obviously hasn’t occurred to the Navy, or the other branches of the armed forces, that everything from vaccine mandates to radical woke policies have removed the allure and prestige of being a member of the American military.

But there is more to the Navy’s problems than simply being undersized. Management incompetence, indiscipline, and lack of supervision are also to blame. How else can one explain the deployment of Zumwalt class destroyers – the so-called ship of the future and seven years in development – at a cost of $8 billion a throw when its “advanced” weapons fail miserably, its engines stall, and its stealth capabilities become highly questionable?

What about a top engineer and his wife attempting to sell highly-classified information regarding the propulsion system of our nuclear submarines? Or the case of the 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 as 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. Greece, as a notable example, used to provide home-port facilities for Sixth Fleet destroyers, and thousands of service members, at the gulf of Elefsina near Athens. The United States presence has now shrunk and is presently consigned to a single base on the island of Crete.

In the South China Sea, American Navy vessels and submarines seem unable to sail without colliding into tankers, containerships, fishing vessels, tugboats, and seamounts. The Navy’s rap sheet in this area is a lengthy one: June 2017, the destroyer USS Fitzgerald collided with a Philippine container ship. Seven American sailors died as a result. Incomplete radar information aboard the destroyer was said to have caused the collision; a scant two months later, the destroyer USS John McCain collided with a Liberian-flagged tanker killing ten American sailors. The National Transportation Safety Board’ final report concluded that “…insufficient training and inadequate bridge operating procedures” led to the collision; 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.”

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 around 178 privately-owned, oceangoing vessels – only 61 of which are tankers – or less than one-half of 1% of the total vessel count worldwide; carrying a mere pittance of the total volume of goods and materials that transit through our nation’s ports. Worse, there is a shortage of senior-level mariners capable of sailing heavy vessels.

Now comes news that Vice Admiral, Joanna Nunes, has been appointed the new Superintendent of the Merchant Marine Academy. A warrior? Hardly. In her former role, Rear Admiral Nunes was Assistant Commandant for Human Resources at the Coast Guard where she helped spearhead efforts to expand “diversity and inclusion.” 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.

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 recent comments made by the current Commander in Chief when he said, “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…” Or, when he told a group of Air Force airmen that “…the greatest threat facing America was global warming.”

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, as well as the military service academies the merits of so-called “critical race theory” whose first tenet reads that “racism is ordinary, not aberrational.”

Secretary Austin has done little to enhance the fighting spirit of our military men and women. Rather, he has done his level best to defang and demoralize our troops by ordering a sixty-day military-wide stand down to address “extremism” and appointing Bishop Garrison to monitor Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the ranks. Setting aside the ridiculous notion that this is anywhere near a military priority, the appointment of Mr. Garrison is repulsive: this is the same man who has defamed both President Trump and his followers as racists. How is that for someone in charge of “inclusion”? Not to be outdone, Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, has now added Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist, to his list of suggested readings. “Capitalism is essentially racist” argues Mr. Kendi to our troops.

Milley, for his part, is apparently struggling to deal with his own “white rage” which he has made abundantly clear in public; which, if true, should be a matter between himself and his psychoanalyst, and no one else. Clearly, Milley’s troubled psyche – never mind his sociological prattle – should never stand in the way of the nation’s military readiness.

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. Incredibly and most shamefully, retired rear admiral, John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications, and a former spokesman for the Obama administration, as well as a military analyst at CNN, stated “for all the talk of chaos, I just didn’t see it.” It should come as no surprise that Senator John McCain once referred to Admiral Kirby as an “idiot” after the Admiral’s rambling circumlocution to a simple question. The ISIS-K bomber – positively identified and confirmed by intelligence officers – could have been taken out before he committed his heinous act by Marine snipers – one of whom lost an arm, a leg, and a kidney in the bombing – but for the clumsy ineptitude of a confused chain-of-command who refused to approve the kill. A more cruel and deadly dereliction of duty can hardly be imagined. Unfortunately, this is not the first time. Countless Americans have died due to the military’s restrictive rules of engagement.

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 in retaliation for the suicide bombing killed ten innocent people including seven children.

Military incompetence 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.” That is pure cant as the General has never decried the death, destruction, and violence which gripped the nation in the Summer of 2020. Clearly, General Milley – perhaps, President Trump’s worst personnel decision – has proved to be more adept at polishing his woke celebrity credentials for some future non-military gig 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.

Gender-integrated combat units, reduced physical fitness and cognitive standards, HIV-positive service members in combat areas, transgender surgeries at taxpayer expense, inexplicably muddled and ultra-legalistic rules of engagement, these and other woke policies are now so ingrained that they might be difficult to unwind no matter who occupies the Oval Office and no matter the extent of the much-needed housecleaning. 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).

CHINA HAS UNRIVALED 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. Launched in 2013 by Xi Jinping, China”s plan is to build one “road” (actually three separate roadways) from China to Europe. Strategically, the mostly land-based route from Khorgos, Kazakhstan on China’s western border to Europe has the potential to give China super-highway access to both Central-Asian and European markets. Just as troubling for the West, is the fact that 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 maritime entry point for China into the heart of Europe. It remains to be seen whether Greece participated in a Faustian bargain which it will eventually regret.

In the South Pacific, China has signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands where it is expected to have a naval, if not military, presence approximately 2,000 miles from the Australian coast. The irony of of this agreement could not be more devastating to he United States as over 7,000 Americans lost their lives on Guadalcanal, the largest of the islands in the Solomon archipelago, as they struggled to push Hirohito’s imperial forces back to Japan.

In the Middle East, China has proved to be the diplomatic better of the two superpowers by brokering a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia that will result in the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the reopening of embassies in each other’s capitals. As a result, the United States finds itself, once again, on the outside looking in with diminished geopolitical leverage in an increasingly dynamic and unstable region, and with the fate of Israel in the balance. President Biden’s overbearing and arrogant behavior towards America’s two most trusted allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia, has clearly redounded to China’s benefit.

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 ability to not just swell its influence but to establish commercial as well as military hubs throughout the region. 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.

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. The scamper out of Afghanistan not only cost the lives of thirteen brave American service members but it gifted murderous Taliban regime $7 billion worth of American armaments; far worse,strategically, was the abandonment of the Bagram Air Force base – roughly equidistant between Iran and China at about 500 miles each – with its 10,000 and 12,000-foot runways. Occupation of the base by Chinese forces is probably already in the cards.

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 on Africa’s Atlantic coast brings a potential Chinese naval threat to within 4,000 miles of America’s east coast.

Speaking of the potential for Chinese mischief closer to home, we had better keep an eye on the ever-growing influence of China on the island of Cuba. China is now Cuba’s largest trading partner and plays a key role in the deployment of the island’s telecommunications infrastructure. Cuba now joins Brazil, Chile, and Peru as China’s largest trading partner in the region.

There is more to come. Supplicant world leaders in Europe, Asia, and South America have turned the other cheek at China’s repression at home and offensive behavior abroad in order to queue up before the mob boss that is Xi JinPing who is all too eager to dispense favors in return for a vote of confidence in a new communist world order.

On a more personal note, years ago I received a delegation of computer technicians, including a designated apparatchik in full Mao regalia, from China. The delegation was in the United States, courtesy of the United Nations, visiting various computer service companies to learn about new methods of plant automation. The meeting was friendly but tense. The Chinese wanted to automate a huge steel complex employing tens of thousands of workers using mostly manual methods of record keeping. Time and again, the lead spokesman would ask me to tell him what kind, type, and size computers were best suited for his steel mill application. I would respond that without more detailed information than he was sharing, I couldn’t be of much help. No matter. The same question was repeated several times. I had an interpreter on our side, and so I knew that our failure to communicate was not a linguistic failure. In the end, the Chinese never volunteered much information despite their best efforts to pump me for all I knew. After two full days, the fishing expedition was over.

CHINA HAS LEARNED TO GAME INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

Some examples of China’s wiliness and the commensurate kowtowing by the West 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, clearly 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 and thus continue their assault on domestic energy production.

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.  Twenty years after joining the WTO, China continues to systematically flout the organization’s principles of abiding market-oriented policies. The United States, for its part, mindlessly maintains China’s Most Favored Nation status even while the rogue state continues to savage American jobs.

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.” Incredibly, China also sits on the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women alongside Iran known for its horrific treatment of women, most recently in evidence in the beating death of 22 year old Mahsa Amini by the so-called morality police for wearing an “improper hijab.” The United Nations did, much belatedly, oust Iran from the Commission December 14, 2022 but the member-nation vote on the resolution reverberates with China’s influence on the world stage: China, Iran’s largest trading partner voted against the resolution as did Russia. India, Iran’s third largest trading partner – and generally acknowledged as the world’s largest “democracy” abstained from the vote.

4) China’s “peacekeepers” working for the United Nations are but a cloak that allows the CCP military to protect its overseas investments particularly in Africa where scores of nations have been snookered into participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

5) The Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, said on China state-run television network CGTN, “I respect China’s achievements…” Mr. Klaus went on to say that the “Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries.” Notwithstanding the profound idiocy of the statements made by the unscrupulous Mr. Schwab, they are sure to further legitimize the CCP when next the WEF’s plutocrats gather in Davos.

6) 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.

Contrast China’s cunning, with our diplomatic statecraft reliant as it is on the European Union, and Russian Ambassador to the International Atomic Agency (IAEA), Mikhail Ulyanov, to help us strike a nuclear deal with Iran; a country whose leadership shouts “death to America” and which is committed to the obliteration of the state of Israel. Now, that is an example of savvy diplomacy.    

CHINA’S BELLICOSITY IS AS ASSYMETRICAL 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 unbridled production of fentanyl which cost the lives of 71,000 Americans in 2021; its hoarding of gold to break the back of the U.S. dollar; its first-mover advantage in the development of a digital currency, the e-CNY, meant to undermine the U.S. dollar in international financial transactions; its financing of over fifty Confucius Institutes on college campuses and schools designed to both gather intelligence and spread CCP propaganda; its channeling of billions of dollars through less than transparent means to fund grants at predominantly research-oriented universities; its running of sub rosa “police stations” in the United States meant to track and intimidate Chinese dissidents in our country and their families in China (the Chinese I know dare only to speak in muffled tones and coded expressions when communicating with friends and family back home); its complicity in money laundering schemes to fund Mexican drug cartels; the wrongful detainment of hundreds of Americans in Chinese prisons; the development of a massive consumer-espionage ecosystem of which the social media app TikTok with tendrils back to the CCP, is but the tip of the iceberg; its attempt to influence American politics and policy through its orgy of graft, bribery, and corruption, its unleashing of the Wuhan virus which has cost the lives of more than one million innocent Americans; its efforts to infiltrate and undermine the Federal Reserve; its pell-mell rush to purchase agricultural land, some of it as the Epoch Times reports, within twelve miles of North Dakota’s Grand Forks Air Force Base; and its flying of a spy balloon over U.S. air space is proof positive that China’s strategy is to envelop the United States on all fronts.

Incidentally, the violation of U.S. airspace by a Chinese spy balloon for several days, across the entire breadth of the nation, demonstrates not only China’s brazen and aggressive behavior toward the United States but further underscores the fecklessness of our civilian and military leadership. When Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder said in a press conference that the spy balloon posed no “military threat” he was wrong. The General was clearly whistling past the graveyard. Espionage has always been and will always be a military threat.

When it comes to cyber warfare our prospects are bleak: 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 Staff 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, 2021 which caught the U.S. military by surprise.

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. In the light of China’s continued demarche towards the United States, Patton’s words 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.”

Perhaps America’s greatest strategic blunder of the Cold War was President Jimmy Carter’s announcement that as of January 1, 1979 the United states would follow a “One China” policy thereby recognizing mainland China and “derecognizing” Taiwan. That policy has been reaffirmed by both Republican and Democrat administrations since its inception more through the force of inertia than through careful strategic thinking. If the expectation of our adherence to the policy was that China would abide a code of conduct of integrity, transparency, respect for human rights, and that furthermore stability would be brought to the region then the United States was seriously bamboozled. Perhaps a new administration in Washington should make clear to the thugs in China that if further transgressions and abuses continue toward the United States it would move to rescind the One China policy.

AMERICA IS AT A CROSSROADS

The deadly and disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, the belated and halfhearted response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the failure to respond to the violation of United States airspace by a Chinese spy balloon, the thousands of illegal Chinese nationals streaming across our southern border with the potential to foment a fifth-column at Xi Jinping’s direction, the Pentagon’s massive leak of secret and top-secret documents by a low-level air national guardsman with the apparent foreknowledge by his superiors and with the potential to compromise the spying operations of both the United States and its allies all point, inter alia, to a civilian and military leadership incapable of protecting American interests.

As a Cuban-American who came to this great nation as a child with his parents many decades ago in search of opportunity and who toiled to build several businesses, I sense the “land of opportunity” is a rapidly fading dream if not a lost slogan.

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. The former world economic power, the United Kingdom, 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.”

“a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right…” Thomas Paine, 1776