If You Want War, Prepare for Peace

"Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum," Roman general Vegetius advised in his 5th-century work, "Epitoma rei militaris." 

"If you want peace," in English, "prepare for war."

But what if you wanted a nice, easy peace but without all the bother of those difficult things that Vegetius wrote about, like selecting good recruits for your army, training them hard, and being serious about providing strong leadership and secure logistics?

Well, you'd have a president who looks and behaves exactly like feckless octogenarian Joe Biden, Pentagon brass that's more concerned with political correctness and getting cushy contracting gigs after retirement, a defense manufacturing base that's too small and too concentrated into too few firms, and an economy that's reliant on strategic rivals like China for basic necessities — including for our defense needs.

We'd have a Navy that forgot how to build ships (much less navigate them) and an Army in a majority-white country that's driven away white recruits. 

To top it off, you'd have a State Department that cared as much — or more — about the welfare of civilization's enemies in places like Tehran and Gaza than about our allies' security requirements.

The result would be Europe's first major land war since 1945, chaos in the Middle East, increasing menace in the Pacific, and a diplomatic corps that flits from crisis to crisis without ever accomplishing anything except for more war, chaos, and menace.

If that sounds familiar, welcome to the fourth — and hopefully final — year of the Biden administration.

We can discuss in detail the problems with our defense manufacturing base in another column because they date back to the 1990s and aren't today's immediate concerns. But Biden's undeniable fecklessness is turning Vegetius' dictum on its head: "If you want war, prepare for peace."

That's the first thing that popped into my head when I read this bitterly funny tweet from the Washington Free Beacon's Noah Pollack:

Here is the cold, hard truth about war: It's going to take Biden admin time to prepare before we can retaliate against Iran. NSC needs to coordinate the interagency therapy session process. State has to prep for staff walkouts. WH staffers need time to gather signatories for anonymous statement[s] denouncing US militarism. Multiple federal agencies have to make posters for protests. Don't even get me started about the Islamophobia memos. There is a lot to get ready.

We're approaching the two-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. What Biden should have done was ask Congress for money to ramp up weak spots in our defense manufacturing base, particularly for essential items like artillery shells, missiles of various kinds, and small (but lethal) drones. Instead, he's been more concerned with keeping Ukraine's government afloat (and all the corruption that implies) than with keeping their — or our — military properly supplied.

Hamas launched a terror invasion of Israel in October, and despite promises that we'd help Israel finally destroy that genocidal organization, Biden threatens to cut off military supplies to Israel before its dangerous job is done.

China's navy now has more ships than ours, even if it is still smaller in total tonnage. But the trendlines are working against us, and if Biden has taken any notice of what his buddies in Beijing are up to, he certainly hasn't done a thing to beef up our Navy. His long-term plan seems to consist of cashing the checks.

Pollack's tweet was a joke. But to our enemies and rivals, it's an opportunity. They're taking full advantage.

I might ask, "What if Washington actually does want war and isn't dragging us into one on accident?" I might answer, "What difference does it make when the result is the same?" Whether they want peace or not, we're getting war for which we are not prepared.

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