“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
If you were the emerging world power but knew that aggressive military action against the United States would guarantee mutual destruction, how would you go about subduing your opponent? Cripple their economy? Make key politicians loyal to your support. Attack their vulnerable healthcare system?
I’m just asking.
We just marked the one-year anniversary since the public became aware of the China virus that was allowed to ravage the globe. It first traveled to Milan and Rome, then on to New York City and the rest of the United States. No corner of the planet has been left untouched.
We now know that China knew about this scourge much earlier than they let on. Though the messages were lost in the fog of political transmission, the truth is, China's leaders were aware the deadly virus was headed for Europe and beyond.
As Americans watch the betrayal by globalist powers in high tech, politics, and media of our nation’s independent status, former President Trump's hard stand on China makes more sense by the day. He knew they did not take us seriously, and both his rhetoric and policies were not exaggerated hyperbole.
China is now positioned geopolitically the way the U.S. was in the post-World War II era of 1945. For very different reasons than the U.S displayed then, China is now the emerging hegemony. Of course, unlike the U.S. then or now, it is also the dragon head of a totalitarian state. So what are the lessons still not learned?
Not every world power aspires to be democratic. Nor do they think ours is the best system; please don't be so naive. I’m the first one to salute the flag and shed a tear for those who died at Normandy, but compared to 5,000 years of cultural struggle for identity, we are high school teenagers.
Remember that our ill-informed neo-con vision of a whole world of Apple Pie and Chevrolet, turned into massive conglomerates like Amazon and Apple becoming unregulated empires. Chinese suicides and sweatshop conditions, and a rust belt in an opioid crisis at home.
America, like it or not, thrived because of very specific factors, starting with geography. Once we broke away from the King’s Britain, we were separated from the world by two oceans and made it holy writ not to get entangled with foreign nations. We had clear national interests and borders.
George Washington, in his farewell address, warned, ”It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.” Thomas Jefferson pledged, in his inaugural statement: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."
We were largely Anglo Judeo-Christian refugees, collected into loosely federated states with Roman-style landowners. The Jeffersonian ideal was a small government—checked, balanced, and scrutinized by an educated middle class who could think and write to defend themselves against the State.
How we became a polyglot of multicultural global interests, cheap labor, and multi-national corporations without loyalty to America’s destiny is a shameless sign of what unbridled economic interest can do. I’m reluctant to say, the same end predicted by Karl Marx, high concentration of power and technology.
Today, world powers no longer fight with conventional warfare, even of the long-distance rocket variety, ala Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan during the Trump administration. The world has changed, and so has the military. Our new battlefields are in cyberspace and in biological warfare.
The easiest way to weaken a powerful nation like America is to first flood its people with a current of shame-based, self-loathing media propaganda that makes them question their own legacy. Next, saddle their economy with an enormous burden. Then, for good measure, hit the population with an immunity-compromising biological weapon.
In no way is the U.S. finished, but we burgeoning high schoolers have to survive our launch into adulthood by recognizing and owning our learned mistakes. We must detach from these international loyalties and commitments that have provided entrée to the radical left, a cause for internal chaos.
Sun-Tzu said, “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
America, sadly in the name of being open, diverse, and free has let in a disloyal foreign body, and we cannot recapture a body politic when so diseased. We will need to build new checks and balances in the form of parallel media, economy, and political models, as a modern anecdote.
One leak of the virus has set us back almost 10 trillion dollars. Combined with fear, it has weakened our once rugged nation-state, which now appears blindly committed to its own silent decline. If you were in China, and the self-destructive war was the only alternative, isn’t this what you'd do?
I’m just asking.
Author's note: To learn more about the book and film visit www.thechinatrapfilm.com