Planet Earth could use a West about now

The increasing likelihood that the world stage becomes a free-for-all

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One ought to be careful about employing the assessment that the world stage is at a particularly perilous moment. In a sense, when isn’t it? But if one posits that the present moment is particularly so, one ought to come equipped with some substantiation.

Three areas on the global map provide that.

In Europe, Russia continues its daily savagery against Ukraine.

Russia also has violated Polish airspace with drones, spurring prime minister Donald Tusk to say that

Europe is “closer than at any time since the Second World War” after the country’s airspace was allegedly violated by Russia.

The Nato member has invoked Article 4 of Nato, to request a formal consultation with other members of the military alliance, after Donald Tusk told the Polish parliament its airspace was encroached on 19 times by Russian drones overnight during an attack on Ukraine.

It is not clear exactly how many drones were involved in the alleged incursion, with Tusk saying a “huge number” were involved. Poland’s interior ministry has said that the authorities have so far identified seven drones and the “remains of a missile of unidentified origin”.

Tusk said that he appreciated European leaders’ expressions of solidarity but said “the words are not enough” as he announced that Poland would request “much greater” support from Nato allies.

Article 4 has been invoked only seven times since Nato was founded in 1949 and most recently by eight eastern European countries after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Tusk said that the alleged drone activity was part of a wider display of aggression from Russia, which is expected to hold a military exercise with Belarus, which borders Poland to the east, later this week.

But Europe would have to hustle like nobody’s business to muster the unified will to respond seriously. Three of its biggest players are beset with fundamental problems. Britain is increasingly unmoored from its role a a defining force in Western civilization. It’s waging war on free speech. Less than half the population of England and Wales is Christian. The German economy is no longer economically competitive internationally. France has gone through six prime ministers in five years. The latest one to not survive a confidence vote tried to champion an austerity budget for the debt-saddled country, and got his tail end handed to him for his efforts. Poland and the Nordic and Baltic countries are doing what they can to respond to current circumstances responsibly, but they can’t do it by themselves.

The crisis in the Caribbean involves several factors that have to be considered. The United States does have a fentanyl - and cocaine - problem, but most of that is coming here along other routes.

And, upholder of the rule of law that the US has been, don’t we need to have out Ts crossed and Is dotted before we conclude that Tren de Aragua has Maduro’s imprimatur?

While there’s no question that Tren de Aragua has trafficked fentanyl into the U.S., the Trump administration doesn’t just see a cartel chasing profits. It sees a Venezuelan state-sponsored plot to destroy America from within. Where did that belief come from? An internal Department of Homeland Security document produced late last year during the Biden administration and leaked to me offers the clearest picture.

The memo from ICE’s then-Acting Director Patrick Lechleitner is addressed to Rep. Lauren Boebert and states that “emerging information surrounding TdA [Tren de Aragua] triggered a renewed focus within ICE,” especially in Colorado.

ICE intelligence, developed by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Lechleitner says, has concluded “that members of TdA were establishing command and control centers in residential complexes in communities largely populated by Venezuelan nationals” in the United States.

“…ICE has been working with federal, state, and local law enforcement partners around the country, as well as the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado and the Colorado Judicial District Attorney Offices to identify, investigate, indict, arrest, disrupt, and dismantle TdA factions operating in Colorado.

More specifically, in September of 2023, HSI Denver, Colorado initiated an investigation into the violent Venezuelan TCO known as TdA. HSI Denver had developed information from confidential sources and law enforcement partners, indicating that members of TdA were establishing command and control centers in residential complexes in communities largely populated by Venezuelan nationals and other immigrant populations and perpetrating acts of violence as a means to threaten, intimidate, and maintain control.”

Command posts. It is language that invokes images of guerrilla camps nestled in American neighborhoods. At the top of a military chain of command is Venezuelan president Maduro (in the view of the Trump White House.)

Last month, the Justice Department offered a $50 million bounty for the arrest of Maduro, whom it describes as the head of TdA.

It’s not at all clear, though, that the intelligence community has backed ICE’s conclusions. A declassified assessment prepared by the National Intelligence Council concluded in April that the Maduro regime “probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TdA and is not directing TdA operations in the United States.”

And don’t we have to similarly keep other Latin American governments (particularly Mexico’s) disentangled from the narco-terrorist gangs plaguing them as we formulate an effective and responsible policy toward those gangs? Conflating gangs and governments can quickly jettison principle as a factor in tensions or outright conflicts between countries. And then we have a free-for-all on our hands.

And Maduro, tryant and friend to other tyrants that he is, now has an excuse to make this a government-to-government matter.

World opinion seems to be shaping into a consensus that Israel’s attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar was ill-advised. Even Ukraine calls it unacceptable. The rationale, which can be defended, is that the Qatar government is a neutral party, hosting as it does the US military base at Al Udeid. But let us not forget that “Qatar has been a key financial supporter of the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, transferring more than $1.8 billion to Hamas over the years.” It’s true that until 2023, that funds transfer had Israel’s and the US’s tacit blessings. I think we can agree now that that was a bad idea. In its defense, Israel thought the arrangement might increase its leverage in staving off a Palestinian state. That’s proven to be an underestimation of Hamas’s evil designs.

And it seems that top Hamas negotiators in Doha were spared in Israel’s attack. But some key top leaders were taken out. Couldn’t this be seen as upping Israel’s leverage if negotiations resume?

Not that they will resume. There’s a good chance things go the other way.

An actual United States of America, rather than the post-America in which we live, would

• understand that the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas situations are morally equivalent, and resolve to ensure the quick and decisive defeat of the aggressors in each

• have communicated to Europe the need to do more for its own defense in a more diplomatic fashion, stressing that the goal was a win-win for the West

• seized the opportunity for a fresh start in US-Mexico relations with the election of Claudia Sheinbaum, and sought a North American unity that ran deeper than the shifting political orientations of the continent’s three nations

• not elected a succession presidents who were, with the exception of George W. Bush, some combination of narcissist, leftist and horndog.

• not let its education sector fall under the sway of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, but rather steer that sector toward what classical-ed schools are doing - introducing students to the great thinkers of their heritage at the earliest possible age.

Alas, that’s not the current state of affairs. So the remaining shell of the West must make do with the cards in its hand.

Technical articles in specialized journals about the comparative military capabilities of various world-stage players can tell us some important things.

But the West is lacking in the two essentials its enemies have in spades: an understanding of what it is, and why it ought to continue to lead international affairs, and unified will.

If we don’t know what we want to win or why, defeat is inevitable.