Op-Ed: A street fight with evil

Most of the world is run by bloody-minded brutal thugs. Only in the fortunate West are politicians elevated by appealing to voters. This is the exception. The norm is that the most effectively vicious brute triumphs.

This is why the United Nations Organization is a farce. Since decolonization, the vast majority of member nations are in the hands of tyrants who parasitically feed off of their own people.

This is why fantasies like the League of Nations, the World Court at the Hague, and International Law are perpetually incapable of deterring aggression. The idealists who dream that the world is defined by enforceable rules delude themselves into thinking that the world they wish existed is the world we live in.

Nothing could be further from the truth! International relations is not about diplomatic debates which peacefully resolve disputes through compromise. Fights, when they do break out, are not conducted according to the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

“Politics” in the internal affairs of the non-Western World are no-holds-barred street fights. So are conflicts between non-Western nations. In the Bronx, I learned that in such a fight nothing mattered except traumatizing your opponent before he permanently damaged you. The fight ended with one or both participants insensible, crippled or dead.

This reality is not accessible to the cosseted and genteel people who comprise today’s American and international elites. They desperately want their special status and evolved sensibilities to redefine human nature into something safe and manageable.

Many everyday people also share in this illusion that the world is led and populated largely by, “people like us”; people who want to live in peace and mutual good-will.

The only refuge from this unremitting slaughter of innocence lies in culture. Institutions such as the family, law, faith, philosophy, good manners, and common decency can channel aggression into something less than calamitous.

Just because we Americans have been conspicuously blessed in these regards does not mean that such gifts are universal.

Russia’s Putin, and China’s Xi, exemplify the reality of power in most of the world. They are, each in their own ways, predators. Their goals are vainglorious, and their methods murderous. They have not a shred of restraint or remorse. They, and the authoritarian and totalitarian systems that they rule, are by every civilized standard nothing less than evil.

Our goal should not be to preserve the peace at all costs. That predictable Western obsession is seen by these predators as weakness. The Romans well understood that, faced with such dangerous men, if you want peace then prepare for war.

We should instead pursue this new Cold War resolutely, supplying weapons to Ukrainian resistance fighters. As the Communists did to us in Vietnam and as we did to the Soviets in Afghanistan, we should help those who are faced with invasion to kill their would-be conquerors.

We should boost NATO military spending across the board, and offer weapons and intelligence to those who would fight the Russians if they expand their attacks into Belarus and Moldova.

We should prepare every NATO nation to fight a conventional war if Putin violates NATO territory. And, as Putin has already alluded to his Chemical/Biological/Nuclear capabilities, we should make crystal clear that his use of Weapons of Mass Destruction will immediately trigger an Apocalyptic response.

Remember, Putin is not attacking because he is strong. His domestic position is fading, and he is aging. This new war in the Ukraine is a desperate gambit to turn around his deteriorating domestic situation.

Every energy resource in the Western World should be rapidly brought to market to collapse the global prices of oil and natural gas. This will implode Putin’s domestic economy. Coupled with a Ukraine that provides nothing but casualties to Moscow, such policies could plausibly topple his regime and usher in a new Russian government less focused on reclaiming Soviet glory.

Such hard core responses to Russia should be accompanied by formalizing an Anti-Chinese Asiatic Alliance including India, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and the U.S. China must see that their gambit in activating Putin to distract us and reveal our weakness in advance of their planned invasion of Taiwan has failed.

Americans, the world is a savage place. Brutal tyrants only understand naked force. The West must awaken and show its teeth. We must remind the Russian and Chinese Dictators that we in the West remember how to hurt our enemies. If we want a return to peace, we must become dangerous again.

Of course, the only problem with pursuing this strategy is that most Americans persistently insist on seeing our enemies as reasonable men with whom we can negotiate. Also, we are led by a senile mediocrity who is obsessed with domestic politics and corrupted by illicit Ukrainian and Chinese money. His VP is utterly out of her depth.

History tells us that, if we do not fight the initial aggression of predators to a standstill, their appetites and depredations will only grow. So, despite our society’s decadence and our poor Presidential leadership, we citizens can still advocate for us as a nation to bravely take decisive action to hurt the violators of the peace. Only such action might prevent a new General War.

• • •

In Maine and then Idaho, Ralph K. Ginorio has taught the history of Western Civilization to high school students for nearly a quarter century. He is an “out-of-the-closet” Conservative educator with experience in special education, public schools and charter schools, grades 6-12. He has lived in Coeur d’Alene since 2014. Email: rginorio@cdapress.com