OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
There are some truths that I strive to preach, for lack of a better word, in today’s information culture wars propagated in our corrupt mainstream media. Here are a few: Nationalism is not racism, adherence to principles is not hate, masculinity is not toxic and there are only two sexes.
However, there are obvious truths in geopolitics as well. Chief among these is the fact that standing up to tyranny is not an attempt to maintain “unipolar world” or “dominance.”
Here are a few facts. The South China Sea is an international waterway that a large part of the world relies on for commerce. There are treaties that China has signed to protect right of passage in that area. However, China has decided to militarize it and seize that region of the world for itself.
The United States will stand up for these rights of passage. The United States will stand up for our ally, Taiwan. These two facts have nothing to do with an “aggressive” United States that wants to take over the world.
China wants to take over and be dominant in the world, not America.
Michael Pillsbury, in his eye-opening book “The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy,” talks of China’s long-term strategy to achieve dominance over the West. “‘The Hundred-Year Marathon’ reveals China’s secret strategy to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant power, and to do so by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic,” reads the intro. He also discusses in-depth the deceit and treachery China has used to achieve its goals in its relations with the United States over the decades.
President Trump is the first American president to get this obvious fact, and has decided to confront China. He is the first president to use the full weight of American power to achieve this end — economic, military and political — to level the playing field with Beijing, to stop China from cheating on trade, forcing technology transfers and stealing intellectual property from American companies.
China signed trade agreements, and entered the World Trade Organization, only to cheat.
Mr. Trump is calling them out. That is not an attempt at American dominance; it is protecting American interests and national security.
The Kremlin has also completely embraced the new information hybrid warfare. Russian generals have openly discussed using disinformation as the vanguard to kinetic conflict.
Moscow has also signed agreements, like the INF treaty, the Chemical Warfare treaty and a promise to protect Ukraine’s integrity. They have broken all of them.
Mr. Trump standing up to Russian deceit is not an attempt at world dominance either; it is protecting American national security.
As far as a nuclear war goes; Russia does not have the conventional forces to match the U.S. in a sustained conflict outside its borders. No one believes NATO is going to invade the Russian Federation. The only card Moscow has to play therefore is the nuclear card, which it has begun to play often, to maintain its prominence on the world stage.
We are not going to have a nuclear war. It was possible under President Obama as he was so weak. However, Mr. Trump is rapidly rebuilding our armed forces after the Obama capitulation. He is focusing on modernizing our nuclear deterrent.
China and Russia have already militarized space. America protecting itself in this arena is again, not an agenda of world dominance; it is protecting American national security.
The one thing I do agree with Ed Lozansky on is NATO enlargement. I have written about this subject on these pages. Pushing the alliance to Russia’s borders is madness and serves no purpose but to give President Putin an enemy for political use.
No, President Trump doesn’t need to or will play the “China Card” in an attempt to split Moscow and Beijing. However, he can, and will, continue to confront China in its attempt to dominate the world economically and militarily. That does not mean to say he is reckless; he simply will put America’s interests first.
The world is simply getting used to this new, real, “reset.”
Thank God for Donald J. Trump.
⦁ L. Todd Wood is a former special operations helicopter pilot and Wall Street debt trader, and has contributed to Fox Business, The Moscow Times, National Review, The New York Post and many other publications.
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