I understand the arena is flooded when it comes to commentators offering their penetrating insights on the unfolding disaster in Ukraine. Whether it's Joy Behar explaining on national television the real tragedy:
Or best-selling author Candace Owens breaking the jaw-dropping news to her 3 million followers that it's possible Russian dictator Vladimir Putin may have actually been dishonest:
…I hesitate to try to compete with that level of insight. But here goes anyway.
First, as a believer, this whole crisis is fundamentally yet another reminder of how broken our lost world is, and how desperately all of creation groans for the final, kingdom-shattering return of the Prince of Peace.
But secondly, as foreign policy experts and political scientists debate what, if anything, the United States should do in response to Russia's invasion, I find myself asking something a bit more simplistic: what, if anything, could the United States do even if it wanted to? Let me take a moment to explain.
Russia and China are both focused on expanding their empires. They are aggressive, cunning, and seemingly dedicated to whatever dialectic approach they must employ to accomplish their objectives. Meanwhile, the United States has grown fat and lazy.
We are a narcissistic people who routinely choose narcissistic leaders. We prefer navel gazing to thoughtful geopolitical engagement. We invent problems to entertain us at home while blissfully ignoring legitimate, mounting threats materializing abroad. As Russia expands its territorial claims into Europe and China prepares to explode into Taiwan, the U.S. is, as columnist Ben Shapiro so bluntly puts it, "focused on expanding its national debt and exploding the gender binary."
An oversimplification? Of course. But one that stings only because it has a genuine degree of merit.
In early August of last year, the Russians were cementing their military presence in central Asia, deploying troops and conducting exercises in anticipation of what it saw in Afghanistan as the imminent fall of Kabul to the Taliban. As Putin directed a coalition of Russian, Tajik, and Uzbek troops in a Collective Security Treaty Organization exercise to flex its military muscle in the region, the Biden White House was paying social media influencer Benito Skinner to perform as his flamboyantly gay persona, "Kooper the Gen Z intern."
To be clear, Kooper is not responsible for the fall of Kabul, nor is he the reason Ukrainian families are needlessly suffering in this present moment. And there's no reason for anyone to believe that a superpower like the United States cannot multitask, enhancing and sharpening its military proficiency while at the same time playfully encouraging the American people to get a COVID vaccine.
The problem isn't multiple priorities, it's a lack of civilizational seriousness. We choose tribalism over competence. We prefer celebrity and showmanship to intelligence and statesmanship. We celebrate boobery so long as it "owns" our political rivals sufficiently. Our leaders move on the whims of Twitter hashtags and the latest Gallup poll rather than the bedrock of wisdom and experience.
That's why American citizens were left stranded in Afghanistan amid a chaotic retreat and bungled withdrawal. It's why American citizens have now, in identical fashion, been abandoned in Ukraine:
It's why the moment our world stands on the terrifying precipice of a global conflict, we have make-believe dignitaries trotting out not to lament the magnitude of death and suffering, but the carbon emissions a war could produce.
It's why, as Erick Erickson astutely explained in his recent newsletter, we are woefully unprepared to engage, should this volatile situation spill past Ukraine's borders into a NATO ally:
Under Barack Obama, the United States got rid of its Two War Doctrine. The doctrine had sustained the United States military since World War II. It merely stated that the United States must have the defense capabilities to fight two wars on two fronts at the same time. The Obama Administration shortsightedly concluded it was no longer needed and, by downsizing the military, the United States would save costs and reduce the military's carbon footprint. After all, according to the Obama Administration, climate change was a bigger national security issue than Russia or China.
Who would think that way? A fundamentally unserious leader. And who would elect such a person to power? A fundamentally unserious people.
It's hard to predict what will happen in the days and months ahead. What's not hard to predict is that if the American people across the political spectrum don't immediately start eschewing our preference for identity politics, news-as-entertainment, celebrities-as-leaders, athletes-as-activists, Twitter-trends-as-thoughtful-policy, the United States will be little more than a helpless spectator of whatever does.
