Shuffling, Stumbling, Mumbling into War!
The long sad history of war is replete with multiple mistakes, misjudgments, erroneous information, and twisted thinking by leaders before and during conflicts. Beginning in the 1930s during a world-wide depression, poor decisions by the most powerful nations on earth resulted in the most sanguinary armed contest in history—World War II.
After World War I, the victors drafted more than a dozen “International Agreements” on new countries. borders, rules for warfare, the size and capabilities of armies, navies, and air forces. Most of them were rigorously adhere to by “democracies” and ignored by dictatorial regimes intent on expanding their power.
World War II began on September 18, 1931 when the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Manchuria in the first major step by Tokyo’s increasingly fascist government to gain control over essential raw materials. They also installed a military government in Korea to enslave its people. While U.S. and European leaders in Britain, France, and the Netherlands dithered and debated over “sanctions” on Japanese imports of steel, coal, oil, and rubber, the emperor’s army seized what they needed. By 1940, when they invaded French Indochina, Japanese troops had seized most of China’s productive territory and population.
In Europe, aging leaders relying on worthless agreements, ignored atrocities perpetrated in Stalin’s Soviet Union and “secret” pacts between Adolf Hitler other dictators led to a series of appeasements favoring Berlin. In 1936 the German dictator seized the Rhineland. In March 1938 he annexed Austria. Finally alarmed, Europe’s leaders met in September ’38 at the infamous “Munich Conference” where all agreed with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s proposal that Hitler could occupy the Sudetenland—the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia. In March 1939, German troops seized the entire country and on September 1st Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland.
On September 3, 1939 the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany—but not the Soviet Union. That evening, President Roosevelt announced in a radio broadcast, “…let no man or woman thoughtlessly or falsely talk of sending [our] armies to European fields. At this moment there is being prepared a proclamation of American neutrality.” On Sunday, December 7th, 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
Today, in an increasingly dangerous world, we should pray for leaders with accurate information —intelligence—sound judgement, and the ability to take decisive action. Despite Mr. Biden’s bold, “into harm’s way,” trip to Kyiv, Ukraine on February 20th for meetings with that beleaguered nation’s heroic president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the rest of the Biden administration appears to have failed to learn from history or events since.
The day after his trip to Kyiv. Mr. Biden made a speech in Warsaw, Poland which some have likened to President Ronald Reagan’s 12 June 1987 address before the barrier dividing Germany into communist and free sectors. In it, the president I was blessed to serve demanded, “Mr. Gorbachev, tears down this wall.”
On the 9th of November 1989, the wall came down. On Christmas Day 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved and eventually all 15 former soviet republics—Ukraine among them—became sovereign independent states.
Biden promised in Kiev and Warsaw: “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia—Never!” If those are more than words, he must act now as Putin plots a spring offensive to seize Odessa, Ukraine’s most crucial city.
Last Friday, Xi Jinping, head of the PRC, America’s number one adversary, publicly “considered” overt support for Putin’s desperate search for war materiel . He also advocated a “Ukrainian Peace Plan” requiring a “cease fire” and a cessation of all arms deliveries. Both ideas should be totally rejected by all fifty nations now supporting Ukraine.
Biden must immediately replenish our depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserves, muzzle the Pentagon’s “woke” leadership, accelerate delivery of armor, long-range artillery, air-defense weaponry and authorize NATO delivery of F-16s.
Doing less invites a longer, wider war.
Oliver North is a combat decorated U.S. Marine, No. 1 bestselling author and founder/CEO of Fidelis Publishing LLC. Find out more at www.olivernorth.com. His latest book, “The Giant Awakes,” is available discounted at www.faithfultext.com.
COPYRIGHT 2023 OLIVER L. NORTH