by Jim Rickards, Daily Reckoning:
From a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. today has never been weaker than since the post-Vietnam era.
Remember the images of U.S. helicopters taking off from its South Vietnamese embassy in 1975, loaded with refugees trying to escape the country?
It was a national humiliation.
So was the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2022. Desperate Afghans, eager to escape Taliban rule, clung to American transports leaving Kabul.
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It might represent an even greater national humiliation.
In both cases, U.S. weakness was on full display for the world to see. Its defeat in Vietnam led to Soviet geopolitical gains throughout the world.
U.S. credibility around the world was restored during the 1980s as Reagan rebuilt the U.S. military into a powerful force.
U.S. geopolitical power peaked after its dramatic victory in the First Gulf War in 1991. But the U.S. proceeded to squander that power in the wake of 9/11, with strategic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, for the past 20 years, the U.S. focused on fighting terrorists that have limited combat capability, not serious rivals like Russia with significant conventional forces.
Wonder Weapons?
Many U.S. weapons systems supplied to Ukraine have proven to be inadequate or in some cases, total failures.
Patriot missile batteries cannot shoot down Russian hypersonic missiles. The Patriot batteries are being blown up one-by-one at a cost of $1 billion each.
U.S. Bradley fighting vehicles have been left in flames and ruins on the battlefields of Ukraine due to Russian mines.
The M-777 howitzers the U.S. and its allies have sent to Ukraine have proved too fragile to withstand the high rates of fire required on the Ukrainian battlefields.
And U.S. HIMARS precision artillery doesn’t always work because the Russians have learned to jam the guidance systems with electronic warfare techniques.
Don’t think that the rest of the world hasn’t taken note of all this.
Meanwhile, the U.S. industrial capacity to provide the weapons and ammunition to fight this type of attritional war is highly inadequate.
The U.S. produces about 14,000 artillery shells per month, which it hopes to double over the next few years. That might seem like a lot. But 14,000 shells is only enough to supply Ukraine for about a week at current firing rates.
On the other hand, it’s estimated that the Russians are producing anywhere from 250,000-400,000 shells per month.
You do the math.
The Weakest Link in the Chain
But the weakest link in the chain isn’t inadequate ammunition or substandard equipment. The weakest link in the chain is U.S. senior leadership, particularly Joe Biden. The Russians and the Chinese have taken note.
They just conducted joint naval operations off the coast of Alaska and well within sight of U.S. territory in the Aleutian Islands.
Few Americans may realize or recall that, during World War II, the Japanese Imperial Navy actually did invade and occupy parts of Alaska close to where the Russians and Chinese are conducting surveillance today.
Weakness breeds weakness and eventually war. The weak leadership in the U.S. is inviting unprecedented challenges from our main rivals. Expect more of this until someday two ships collide or two planes collide in mid-air, potentially leading to a shooting war.
This wasn’t inevitable. For years, the U.S. has driven Russia into the arms of China through a combination of hubris and strategic shortsightedness. That was a massive mistake.
Worse Than a Crime, It Was a Blunder
Russia, China and the U.S. are the only true superpowers and the only three countries that ultimately matter in geopolitics. That’s not a slight against any other power. But all others are secondary powers (the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, etc) or tertiary powers (Iran, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc).
One of the keys to U.S. foreign policy in the last 50 or 60 years has been to make sure that Russia and China never form an alliance. Keeping them separated was key.
Specifically, the U.S. has strived to ensure that no power, or combination of powers, could dominate the Eurasian landmass.
This meant that the ideal posture for the U.S. is to ally with Russia (to marginalize China) or ally with China (to marginalize Russia), depending on overall geopolitical conditions.
The U.S. conducted this kind of triangulation successfully from the 1970s until the early 2000s.
In 1972, Nixon pivoted to China to put pressure on Russia. In 1991, the U.S. pivoted to Russia to put pressure on China after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Unfortunately, the U.S. lost sight of this basic rule of international relations. It is now Russia and China that have formed a strong alliance, to the disadvantage of the United States.
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