Yes, I know much on the domestic front bears watching. All the drool-besotted, performative clowns in he House of Representatives (including George Santos, who is even too hot a potato for his fellow drool-besotted performative clowns) have their committee assignments. Kevin McCarthy is even speaking in a laudatory manner about Marjorie Taylor Greene ("I will always take care of her"). Nobody on either side of the aisle has the clarity, maturity or courage to address the real causes of the debt and deficit situation. The latest incident of police brutality, this one in Memphis, is leading, in clockwork fashion, to a fresh round of civil unrest.
But some current developments on the world stage are enough to stand one's hair on end.
Let's start with this:
A four-star Air Force general sent a memo on Friday to the officers he commands that predicts the U.S. will be at war with China in two years and tells them to get ready to prep by firing "a clip" at a target, and "aim for the head."
In the memo sent Friday and obtained by NBC News, Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, said, “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me will fight in 2025.”
Air Mobility Command has nearly 50,000 service members and nearly 500 planes and is responsible for transport and refueling.
Minihan said in the memo that because both Taiwan and the U.S. will have presidential elections in 2024, the U.S. will be “distracted,” and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have an opportunity to move on Taiwan.
I agree with Tom Nichols that the West must supply Ukraine with M1 Abrams and Leopard II tanks. Western nation really ought to send F-16s as well. The stakes are existential. But Russia is, as one might expect, furious about it, becoming more explicit in its wider-war talk:
"There are constant statements from European capitals, from Washington, that the sending of various weapons systems, including tanks, to Ukraine in no way means the involvement of these countries or the alliance [NATO] in the hostilities that are taking place in Ukraine," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. "We categorically disagree with this... everything that the alliance I mentioned and the capital [Washington] does is perceived as direct involvement in the conflict, and we see that it is growing."
A senior Russian politician and ally of President Vladimir Putin cast a dire warning exactly one week ago of how Moscow might respond to a perceived military defeat in Ukraine.
"The defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war can trigger a nuclear war," former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
North Korea is taking the opportunity to strengthen the notion of an alliance of rogue states:
North Korea condemned on Friday the decision by the United States to supply Ukraine with advanced battle tanks to help fight off Russia’s invasion, saying Washington is escalating a sinister “proxy war” aimed at destroying Moscow.
The comments by the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un underscored the country’s deepening alignment with Russia over the war in Ukraine as it confronts the United States and its Asian allies over its own growing nuclear weapons and missiles program.
North Korea has blamed the United States for the crisis in Ukraine, insisting that the West’s “hegemonic policy” forced Russia to take military action to protect its security interests.
It has also used the distraction created by the war to accelerate its own weapons development, test-firing more than 70 missiles in 2022 alone, including potentially nuclear-capable weapons believed able to target South Korea and the U.S. mainland.
She elaborates:
Kim said the Biden administration was “further crossing the red line” by sending its main tanks to Ukraine and that the decision reflects a “sinister intention to realize its hegemonic aim by further expanding the proxy war for destroying Russia.”
“The U.S. is the arch criminal which poses serious threat and challenge to the strategic security of Russia and pushes the regional situation to the present grave phase,” she said.
“I do not doubt that any military hardware the U.S. and the West boast of will be burnt into pieces in the face of the indomitable fighting spirit and might of the heroic Russian army and people,” she said, adding that North Korea will always “stand in the same trench” with Russia.
North Korea is the only nation other than Russia and Syria to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, and has also hinted at plans to send workers there to help with rebuilding efforts.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have been heating up again, to levels not seen in years.
The situation is not helped by the fact that conservative-leaning political parties in Israel have of late been skewing toward the kind of nutty populism we see out of, say, Hungary, or the U.S. Republican Party. Netanyahu is trying to tamp down the crazy to some extent:
For now, Mr. Netanyahu has restrained some of his more hard-line ministers from fully exerting their will in the West Bank.
This month, he ignored demands from Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right minister, to stop the army from evicting an unauthorized Israeli settlement in the territory. But it is unclear how long he can continue to deny his coalition partner: He has promised to give Mr. Smotrich power over the military department that oversees construction and demolition in Israeli-administered parts of the territory.
We shall see how that goes. On Friday, the Jerusalem Post gave column space to a speculation about how close the country is to civil war.
And there's the development I noted here the other day: Iran's intention to station warships in the Panama Canal.
So let's keep our distractions under control. A number of people are emotionally invested in the outcome of the AFC championship and the Super Bowl. Awards season is getting underway for the entertainment industry. There's always some cool new restaurant to try. Our dogs and cats are cute.
The backdrop for such pleasantries merits out attention, though. Serious people with evil intent are not resting. Our times are as historic as any we've lived through or read about.
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