Thomas Sowell warned that it is folly to confer decision-making authority on politicians who pay no price for being wrong. President Joe Biden, his Democratic supporters, and their controlled opposition, the Placebo Party, (AKA the Republican Party), are giving testimony to the truth of Sowell’s warning.
From the moment President Biden took office, he, like his predecessors (with the notable exception of President Donald Trump), ignored the negative consequences of NATO’s 30 years of eastward expansion. Like the Neocons and liberal interventionists that dominate policymaking in the Senate and the House, Biden and his advisors dismissed the complexity of the situation on the ground in Ukraine and Kyiv’s importance to Russian national security as irrelevant.
Nothing mattered more than Washington’s long-term goal of refashioning Ukraine into a liberal democracy aligned with the West against Russia while also exploiting Ukraine as a platform for subversion and destabilization of the Russian State. Biden insisted on demonizing the Russian State and its leaders; on viewing them as total and incorrigible enemies with whom there could be no peace.
His wish is coming true.
After 1991, in the hands of old internationalists now called globalists, U.S. policy returned to the bad old days of Vietnam when national policy was determined by emotion, not reason; when U.S. military interventions from Somalia to Libya and Syria were turned into a series of moral crusades with unrealistic and unattainable aims.
Now, Washington’s neglect of strategic reality has become truly dangerous. While Washington pursued its strategy of interventionism, Army and Marine Ground Forces, its Senior Leaders products of low-intensity conflicts in the Near East and Southwest Asia, sank deeper and deeper into strategic irrelevance and self-delusion. The ground force is not simply untrained and unready for action, it’s more paramilitary constabulary than warfighting machine. Today, no amount of air or naval power can compensate for America’s glaring weakness on the ground.
It’s obviously time for the moralizing globalists to repent, or hide behind the U.S. Armed Forces they used to promote a destructive agenda and self-enrichment; a force more woke than ready for a fight the Russian Army that with all its faults is modern, 21st Century killing machine. Of the two choices, the Neocon Globalists would much prefer to sacrifice the forces they helped to make incapable of disguising the debacle with sophistry.
Against this backdrop, the most powerful states in Europe and Asia—predominantly Germany and Japan—are now waiting for U.S. diplomacy to fail and Washington to introduce financial and economic sanctions against Russia. When Washington announces these punishing measures, Germany and Japan will decline to participate and pursue their own interests. Why?
In Germany and Japan national security and military power are inextricably intertwined with the skilled exploitation of science, technology, and engineering within the framework of first-class educational practices designed to fuel domestic prosperity. These two states are not alone in their disinterest in war with Russia or China. Most of Asia wants to trade with China and most Europeans are focused on buying Russia’s natural gas.
Once the Soviet Union collapsed, instead of welcoming the emergence of a new Russian State divorced from communism, Washington began a search for new monsters to destroy in the effort to rescue NATO from strategic irrelevance. In an ironic twist, the search is ending in Ukraine on Russia’s doorstep.
Thanks to Biden’s profligate spending and economically damaging policies American national prosperity is now more dependent than ever on debt financing, a condition made worse by the last three decades of rising defense expenditures to support unrelenting and largely unnecessary military occupations overseas. Wall Street simply magnified the problem by diverting available capital to financial speculation that provides the ruling elites with higher returns than the real economy does.
The results of these disastrous policies are impossible to conceal. America’s large, dynamic economy and its ability to project military power have faded. Whereas Trump sought to reinvigorate American prosperity by avoiding armed conflict with Iran, Russia, and China, Biden is driving the nation to war and collapse. Ideally, President Biden and the globalist Congress should adopt a strategy of conflict avoidance designed to make the U.S. more secure and stop thinking with its missiles. Instead, Biden and his countrymen are staring into the abyss.
President Lincoln symbolized national unity, power, and reconciliation. In sharp contrast to Lincoln, President Biden is rapidly becoming a metaphor for a great nation in decline. In fact, the Biden Administration is embarked on a course that is nothing short of catastrophic for the Nation’s economy and its security.
The cumulative effects of the Biden Presidency on American National Power will be felt for decades. As a Colonel in the Pentagon recently told me, “Just as we never understood the Vietnamese or the Arabs, we’ve never understood the Russians, Chinese or Japanese. Hell, we don’t even understand Mexico! If we survive the 21st Century as an intact nation it will be a miracle.”
Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books. His latest is Margin of Victory, (Naval Institute Press, 2016).
Editor’s Note: This piece has been updated since publication.

a.viet vet
January 25, 2022 at 6:04 pm
COLONEL DOUGLAS MACGREGOR PHD’S ABSENCE FROM PRESENTING HIS VIEWS ON ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS AND CNN TELL THE NATION THAT GREAT REASONABLE THINKERS HAVE NO PLACE IN THE USA…CONTROLLED BY WALL STREET NEO BOLSHEVIKS.
Commentar
January 25, 2022 at 10:53 pm
Joe Biden clearly has NOT done his homework, obviously he being a ‘elders’ holiday president.
Biden can kiss his 2nd term GOODBYE. He doesn’t know what the heck’s going on elsewhere except in the white house with all the syncophants inside.
A war with russia will look like the one hitler once had with the Soviet Union. Destructive and world-changing with irreversible consequences for europe and Nato. The US could possibly evade major harm but not the rest of humanity.
Tregonsee
January 26, 2022 at 7:46 am
Thomas Sowell is thankfully not yet “late.”
T
January 26, 2022 at 8:34 am
Guys like this author give conservatives a bad name. Dude, do your homework. I was going to forward this story to a liberal to educate them but now I won’t.
Alex
January 26, 2022 at 9:23 am
There are good reasons why western democracies embrace former soviet republics and satellite countries, which have nothing to do with altruism. It’s simply because East-European countries do not have the economic resources and political maturity to stay non-aligned for long. Not receiving them into NATO and EU would have pushed them, sooner or later, into the Russian sphere of control (not influence) and would have helped to re-establish a de-facto Soviet Union.
Alex
January 26, 2022 at 9:28 am
Look no further than Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea: it’s bristling with weapons and can be used for pincer attacks against Poland and the Baltic countries. Look at Belarus, which is being absorbed into Russia. Yes. Montenegro has what, two million people ? But it has ports on the Mediterranean, which should NOT be accessible to Russia. Otherwise, why would Russia have attempted a coup in 2016?
Politics is (unfortunately) an upstream swimming sport: stop and you fall inexorably behind.
Michael Byrd killed a right wing terrorist slut
January 26, 2022 at 10:49 am
Right wing chimp-fags want to appease Putin like they did Hitler. It didn’t work than and it doesn’t work now.
Rob Welsch Sr.
January 26, 2022 at 10:52 am
Bircherism, pejorative.
Phil Roberts
January 26, 2022 at 1:15 pm
The Late Thomas Sowell…. do you know something we don’t? I agree with your sentiment at large but really hard to give much credence to your thoughts when the very first 4 words are wrong.
Kilmer Trotter
January 26, 2022 at 1:17 pm
stopped reading when you said that Thomas Sowell was dead. try doing a little homework.
Michael Gardner
January 26, 2022 at 11:11 pm
Mr. McGregor Is speaking truth to power. Finally 1945 stopped carrying water for Neocons. Hopefully this isn’t a tantrum to receive more cash for propaganda from military industrial complex.
a. viet vet
January 27, 2022 at 11:05 am
COLONEL MAC’S GLOSS ,,,,,,RE PROF SOWELL…..IT WAS PROF WALTER E. WILLIAMS OF GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY, AN ECONOMIST THAT DID THE RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOW FREQUENTLY….WHO DIED RECENTLY, BOTH ARE AFRICAN AMERICAN PROFESSORS……..
Alex
January 27, 2022 at 12:36 pm
The US wants a big war because of the soon economic collapse. The bubble inflated. They need a war. It’s just obvious.
Kevthepope
January 27, 2022 at 7:19 pm
This mess is created because Russian only respects one thing- Might. And they expect to be able to project it along with influence. We have tried to minimize their projection of might, and tried to maximize our influence while killing theirs off, which results in this. Options are limited at best. 1. Somehow sneaking in the equivalent of 2 armored divisions, which would smash at least 4 Russian divisions of Armor. This would take time obviously and have to be done if quickly by C-5 and C-17 flights, a massive exercise. More likely it will be 2 brigades by air, rest by sea. More troops needed beyond 2 divisions if Russia doesn’t just sit there and they add more troops (a dilemma for Putin, he doesn’t have 300 million residents anymore thanks to the death of the Soviet Union). 2. Ignore putting people in Ukraine, arm them to the teeth, bleed the Russians badly. This will only lose the region and bleed the Russians barring the Ukes making a huge armor push quickly, and that means somebody having their back literally with ability to invade on behalf of them into the Ukraine to secure the center and west. 3. do neither 1 or 2, but instead, put many, many NATO and US troops on the border with Kalingrad and Belarus, with clear implications shown by the Offensive- not Defensive- capability of what happens if you cross one border, then the Kanlingrad pocket threat gets wiped out. Russia respects Might. Lastly and 4. Once confronted quickly with this threat, get the Russians at the table, and then you can talk it out. You can’t drive human rights, an issue that people can’t seem to grasp that only internally can countries fix that, and outside interference has only strengthened the Russias and Chinas of the world. Only through allowing economic highways between former Soviet states and Russia will get a starting ground to foment some of the human rights fixes (if they have it this good in Lithuania, why can’t I have it in St. Petersburg?)as well as removing some threats to the Russian economy. Driving talks to a point where NATO and more importantly, the US itself, can have discussion to the point where joint US-Russia military cooperation might have real futures. after all, the average Russian has more in common with the average American than say the average Chinese resident, or French. With the strength will come the peace. The petty words of saying the Russian prez is a killer, he’s naughty, are a joke and Putin knows it. Trump, love him, hate him, whatever, realized you have to deal with it, and Russia’s best interest is retaining some influence in those countries (with no need to allow them fully in or run those countries) and let their natural resources fuel their economy. With countries going greener, and the US -prior to the idiot lowering the fuel industry- being able to slowly supplant alot of that Russian fuel, driving some diverse fuel sources and then with a bit of carrot and stick, driving the Russians SLOWLY into the fold of being another European member that all recognize she is still a great power. I’d rather have a great and friendly power in Russia than a dangerous, weakened one looking to look great, and they look pretty dangerous right about now.