OPINION:
Suppose China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Iran’s Ali Khamenei and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un got together to plot the destruction of America. How might these dictators and evildoers proceed?
Chess grandmaster Putin might offer as Step 1 a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Putin knows that checker player President Biden will immediately support Ukraine with massive military and financial aid. This, in turn, will begin to strategically drain the U.S. military’s “arsenal of democracy” while driving America further into its increasingly crippling debt.
Mr. Biden will also slap Russia with stiff financial sanctions. “Bring it on,” the evildoers will cheer. America’s sanctions ad nauseam strategy will further accelerate a “de-dollarization” of the global financial system already underway and play right into China’s plans to build a yuan-based alternative free of U.S. coercion.
As for the inevitable oil and gas embargo Mr. Putin will be quickly hit with by the U.S. and Europe, this will merely drive up oil prices. While Russia may sell less oil, it will enjoy wildly higher prices, an overall revenue increase fueled by a robust black market, and a strengthening, not weakening, of the ruble.
Of course, any zeal for Ukraine will fade in the long run, both in an America fed up with foreign wars and a Europe fearful of “freezing in the dark.” In the short run, fellow plotter China, along with nonaligned countries such as India, will buy enough oil to fund Mr. Putin’s war machine.
Nor is Mr. Putin worried that a flood of American weapons will turn the tide of the war. Hopelessly corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs will sell many of the U.S.-supplied weapons on the black market rather than provide them to Ukraine’s cannon fodder, and the Russian military is too big to fail against Ukraine, which has relatively few military capabilities and natural resources. As Mr. Putin’s spiritual mentor Stalin once said, “Quantity has a quality of its own.”
China will, of course, use its veto power to shield Russia from any interference by the U.N. Security Council. Mr. Xi knows a successful Russian invasion, unhindered by U.N. opprobrium, will make it much easier for him to invade Taiwan.
Step 2 of the “box America in” plot might involve an Iranian attack on Israel via proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. This attack would come at a decent interval after Russia’s Ukraine invasion, when the U.S. is starting to feel both the financial pressure of funding Ukraine and the physical drain on its dwindling arsenal of missiles, tanks, bombs and ammunition.
After what is likely to be an initial Hamas attack from the maze of tunnels that crisscross the length and breadth of Gaza to kick off Step 2, Hezbollah will begin attacking from Lebanon, stretching out Israeli forces. Iran will then task the Houthis with disrupting Red Sea shipping and thereby further strain America’s Middle East fleet while Iran itself will escalate its terrorist attacks on U.S. bases in the region.
As these events unfold, the U.S. and Israel will be forced to fight wars on multiple and confusing fronts against a growing tide of pro-Palestinian world opinion. Meanwhile, large masses of Palestinians generously (and foolishly) given refuge in the U.S. will launch protests designed to ratchet up antisemitism and turn American public opinion against Israel.
Russia loves this Iranian gambit because it distracts the U.S. from the Ukrainian theater. China loves it because it forces the U.S. military to fight a multifront war at sea and on the enemy’s turf, far from American soil. This further reduces the probability America will intervene — or even be able to intervene effectively — if Mr. Xi makes his final move on Taiwan.
Such a Taiwan invasion may indeed be Step 3 of the plot. If the U.S. continues to drain the Pentagon’s arsenal at current rates and spreads its troops and fleets thin around the world, it will not be able to credibly respond in a timely manner 7,000 miles away to a Chinese armada crossing the Taiwan Strait backed by thousands of Chinese missiles on the mainland and hundreds of nuclear-tipped Chinese submarines in the East and South China seas.
Meanwhile, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will be as happy with this plot as a pig licking the remains of those political prisoners in his gulag who have been starved or worked to death. “Rocket Man” will be raking in hard cash, selling weapons to supplement the depleted Russian arsenal. He will also have an open invitation from the feckless Mr. Biden to resume a missile testing program Mr. Kim ultimately hopes will provide the capabilities to rain nuclear bombs down on Seattle, Chicago, and perhaps even New York and Washington.
As a final part of this plot to destroy America, China will send thousands of military-age men across the unsecured Mexican border into the U.S. Iran will likewise swarm Islamic terrorists through Mexico into the U.S. These sleeper cells can be awakened at any time to help deliver the coup de grace.
As these evildoers boxes Mr. Biden in, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea will use their formidable cyber warfare capabilities to destabilize America’s presidential election with a flood of bots and misinformation gambits aimed at the defeat of the one man who might eventually stop them: Donald Trump.
Can any of this happen here? Of course. It IS happening.
• Peter Navarro served in the Trump White House as manufacturing czar and chief China hawk. This column originally appeared at http://peternavarro.substack.com.
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