OPINION:
America is in grave peril.
Lawlessness reigns in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and other cities.
Our southern border hemorrhages with illegal arrivals.
The Border Patrol is using unmarked buses to dump thousands of asylum-seekers on the streets, at bus stops and in train stations in San Diego.
The United Auto Workers, embracing anti-capitalist ideology, have forced wage increases that torpedo the opportunity offered by the Inflation Reduction Act to catch the Detroit Three up with China’s electric vehicle industry. Pandering for votes, President Biden and former President Donald Trump walked the picket line.
Tesla’s national loyalty is suspect. It uses China’s subsidies to flood exports into Europe. Elon Musk’s Starlink denied Ukraine access to satellite resources to avoid assisting a major act of war against Russia.
Inept, divided and unreliable, Gaza makes painfully apparent that with each passing crisis, American diplomats have less clout in foreign capitals, especially beyond the Western alliance. They cannot hope to win adequate support to stop Iran or Russia with sanctions or lean against China in the Pacific.
India and much of the Global South are helping Russia bypass Western sanctions. With Saudi collaboration, Moscow is getting the price it needs for oil to fund a wartime economy.
The lack of a decent air force and other capabilities to soften Russian defenses and strike decisively at its logistical infrastructure has frustrated Ukraine’s warm-weather offensive.
Germany, Europe’s wealthiest power, has repeatedly failed to act. And Mr. Biden is always a day late and a dollar short with the weapons Ukraine needs.
Now, a battlefield stalemate plays into Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s hands.
Mr. Biden’s record of timidity is disheartening, but examine Mr. Trump’s own record of appeasement as president.
Mr. Trump says he would settle the Russia-Ukrainian war in 24 hours. Only capitulation — a rerun of his deal with the Taliban in February 2020 to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan — would accomplish that.
Mr. Trump’s principal GOP rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, vacillates on supporting Ukraine too.
In the South Pacific, the United States has been outflanked by China.
China has militarized the South China Sea. It could impose terrible costs on the United States in a battle over Taiwan and are building port facilities for its use in the Solomon Islands, where 7,100 U.S. and Allied troops died on Guadalcanal in World War II.
What’s missing is American resolve and power — or at least the will to use it.
In a mockery of American leadership — or testimony to the validity of the GOP’s assertion of Mr. Biden’s diminished mental capacity — the putative leader of the West recently addressed the U.N. General Assembly. Notably, none of the other leaders of the permanent members of the Security Council bothered to attend.
Our president hit all the bells — he talked about the need to defend member states against naked aggression, elevate the participation of the Global South in the leadership of world bodies, and combat poverty, hunger and climate change.
Mr. Biden said, “When we choose to stand together, we hold in our hands the power to bend the arc of history.”
Talk about senility. The U.N. doesn’t have the collective will or moral substance to pluck my guitar strings.
In the words of John Foster Dulles, who helped draft the U.N. Charter, the global body’s “lack of political power is a semi-permanent fact,” because the participating nations designed it that way.
The only way for America to start winning again is for it to become a respectable sovereign again.
A president should not stoke cultural wars or class divisions as Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are wont to do. Instead, he should bring inexorable pressure on the governors of New York, Illinois and California — no matter the political price — to restore domestic order. And stop the hemorrhaging at the border by declaring a national emergency to permit busing the migrants to Tijuana instead of San Diego.
We are simply stretched too thinly abroad. It’s time to neuter Mr. Putin to relieve the resource drain imposed by the war.
Alleviate global hunger by restoring Ukraine’s Black Sea exports through an allied naval escort, declare its ports under U.S. protection and put military advisers there. If Mr. Putin harms the hair on one American or Allied head, sink his navy and destroy his other assets in the Middle East and Africa.
Provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs, including the capacity to strike inside Russia.
Sit down with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Talk with him about power and his nation’s complicity in the war. Then the Global South might get religious about who the global bullies really are.
Perhaps we cannot stop Chinese President Xi Jinping from taking Taiwan, but we could give him ample nightmares about the cost.
After all, would he like America’s fleet of attack submarines hunting every last ship with a red flag?
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.