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January 1, 2024

They say the generals are always fighting the last war, and sometimes there’s truth to that.

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But in 2024, our ability to mount a wartime footing against our most likely enemy is most severely hampered, not by the readiness of our armed forces, but by our most likely enemy’s deep infiltration into not just our military, but the entirety of our civil life.

Consider our response when Russia  annexed Crimea in 2014, and then, again, when they escalated with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

We imposed economic sanctions on Russia and Belarus, banning many imports and exports. This was manageable because we have traditionally exported relatively little to them, and imported relatively little from them as well.  While these sanctions have certainly been enough to be felt (such sanctions tend to hurt us more than the other party, unfortunately), they could be imposed relatively easily, only because there was relatively little commerce to interrupt.

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If we were to maintain a neutral position on the war, we would not have needed to do this at all.  It is a critical step, however, if there is a chance of joining the conflict. You cannot continue to trade with a country with which you are at war.

Imagine if we had been dependent on Germany and Japan for either finished goods or manufacturing components, on the day that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor? We obviously lost all commerce in both directions from that day until the end of the war; all pending orders were stopped; any of our dies or molds or manufacturing processes essentially became unavailable enemy property until the war’s end. 

Luckily, our dependence on these countries was minimal in 1941; our manufacturing sector could become independent of any countries on the other side of the war’s dividing lines, and we could ramp up domestic production to a wartime footing relatively quickly.

Could we do so today?

As much as we may try to avoid thinking about it, we all know that the next country with which we are likely to go to war is the People’s Republic of China, a communist military dictatorship.

This isn’t an idle fear; China has been threatening our friends for years, recently ramping up not only the rhetoric but physical sea incursions as well.  Long known for funding and encouraging North Korea’s saber-rattling against South Korea, Japan, and the United States, Red China is now making actual moves on the Philippines and other South China Sea neighbors, as well as Taiwan.   As America’s leadership grows more impotent, China gets bolder and bolder, and understandably so.  Beijing knows that 2024 is likely their best opportunity ever to invade and annex at least one neighbor.  Such an invasion will surely create a larger war, and even if the U.S. doesn’t step in, there is no question but that all U.S.-China trade would necessarily come to an immediate halt.