...to be continued.

Today’s news reports are talking about President Biden ordering a pause in arms deliveries to Israel.  Earlier press reports spoke of the United States slow walking arms deliveries to Ukraine and others spoke of our failure to deliver military equipment to Taiwan that they had bought and paid for.  It would appear that we are using our military aid to shape our allies’ actions.  This is not a new phenomenon.  It happens all of the time and is baked into the relationships that exist between us and our allies - all of them.  President Trump employs a version of it when he insists that he will withdraw from America’s long standing support of Europe, if European nations do not spend more on the common defense.  

I have been personally involved in a variety of similar efforts back when I was in government.  The question is not whether it happens or not.  The question is whether it is effective or not.  It is not a particularly pleasant experience in which to be involved.  The most painful example that I was personally involved in was Viet Nam.  I was there twice.  Once when we were engaged in pressing the war against North Viet Nam and once when we were in the process of abandoning South Viet Nam.  Doing the latter tour, I watched our allies struggle with inadequate amounts of ammunition as the North moved south.  It was a painful situation, particularly since I had earlier pledged my country’s support of their freedom and been part of the education of their military to fight battles according to our war making formulas.  Those formulas are based on enormous volumes of artillery fire and are therefore very vulnerable to manipulation by anyone with their hand on the resupply spigot.

Viet Nam was an education brought home by the fact that I had poured my heart into the American effort to build a strong South Viet Nam and then had been a principal in the disgusting abandonment of those that we had pledged to help.  I imagine that there are a lot of Americans that came out of Afghanistan that have similar feelings and I am relatively certain that many currently involved in Ukraine and Israel do as well.  Those of us that are back here in CONUS clearly do not understand any of this.  There is no way that anyone that has not been there can comprehend the magnitude of the injustice that political leadership engages in routinely.  Not just American political leadership - every nation’s leadership - no matter the form of government.  Some take to it readily, some reluctantly, but all engage in it, all the time.  Morality is never a consideration.  The human mind is capable of side stepping morality whenever necessary.

To be continued…