If there is a Third World War, historians will note that — like the First — it began with weak and unimaginative leadership and in the unlikeliest of places. No one could have known that an assassin's bullets in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, would begin a monthslong march to a global war from which Europe has not (and never will) culturally recover. If we're sliding into another global war, historians will write that the years-long march began in Kabul, Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021.
How did we get here?
It all started with cold, hard cash.
Almost as soon as Presidentish Joe Biden assumed office, he began making sure that bad actors around the world would have all the money they might need for acting badly.
Less than one month into his solitary, sad little term, Biden lifted former president Donald Trump’s restoration of U.N. sanctions on Iran. The White House and the State Steno Pool sold the move as something that "could help Washington move toward rejoining the 2015 nuclear agreement aimed at reining in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program." Trump had withdrawn from Barack Obama's "Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, in 2018, accusing Iran of serious violations."
Trump had Iran broke and boxed in. Biden unleashed the Kraken.
But Biden wasn't done there. At seemingly every opportunity, he freed up more funds for Tehran.
To give just one specific example, last year Biden-Harris unfroze $6 billion-with-a-b in Iranian funds to secure the release of five (!!!) Americans who were effectively held hostage by Iran's "justice" system.
"To facilitate their release," SecState Antony Blinken said at the time, "the United States has committed to release five Iranian nationals currently held in the United States and to permit the transfer of approximately $6 billion in restricted Iranian funds held in [South Korea] to restricted accounts in Qatar, where the funds will be available only for humanitarian trade."
Recommended: Was This President Trump's Ballsiest Play Ever?
The mullahs enjoyed a good laugh at that while turning $6 billion into weapons-grade uranium and loading up the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas with enough explosives and missiles to launch coordinated war efforts against Israel and global shipping in the Red Sea.
Also in February of 2021, Biden removed the Houthis from the Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist lists that Trump had finally put them on late in his term. That decision came "just over 24 hours after the Biden administration announced an end to American support for Saudi-led offensive operations against the Houthis in Yemen including a freeze on arms sales to the Kingdom."
The Houthis — who serve as Iran's proxies in what used to be Yemen — enjoyed two kinds of relief. You can see the results in the Red Sea, where they've waged war on international shipping for almost a year. They also fire the occasional medium-range missile barrage at Israel.
Biden "waited" until April of 2021 to restore American funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which has long served as an arm of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Again, the money rushed into yet another terrorist organization. You can read all about the UNRWA-Hamas connections here. The report is nothing less than damning, including no fewer than 100 UNRWA employees who are also Hamas terrorists.
Israeli intelligence failed to prevent or detect the Hamas Oct. 7 terror invasion of southern Israel. That's partly due to hubris on Israel's part and operational cleverness on Hamas'. But don't forget that, thanks to Biden-Harris, American tax dollars helped to underwrite the attack.
In between Biden-Harris dropping one match after another around the Middle East powder keg and that region exploding, full-scale war came to Europe for the first time since the end of the Second World War.
Russia's partial invasion of Ukraine on Obama's watch in 2014 — Obama sent blankets, not antitank missiles — ended with one spectacular success and one frustrating thorn in Vladimir Putin's side. His illegal seizure of Crimea was a textbook example of hybrid warfare. "Little green men" — Russian special forces, mostly, acting without Russian military insignia — took control of everything important in Crimea in very short order, presenting the world with a fait accompli that appears unlikely to be undone.
The same was supposed to happen in Ukraine's east, where ethnic-Russian partisans (acting as Moscow's proxies) would do the same in the Donbas. Unexpectedly spirited — and often ad hoc — resistance from Ukraine led to an eight-year stalemate, frequently punctuated by gunfire and artillery.
Putin tried to bluster and threaten his way into getting the rest of eastern Ukraine, including massive military maneuvers at or near the border. But he did not invade on Trump's watch.
Trump once told the story to friend and pro golfer John Daly about the time he put The Fear of God into Putin. If Putin invaded Ukraine, Trump claimed he warned him: “We’re gonna hit Moscow.” And “he sort of believed me, like 5%, 10%,” Trump added. “That’s all you need. He never did it during my time, John, you know... He didn’t do this during the last four years because he knew he couldn’t."
Biden and Harris tried to give Putin a similar warning.
Recommended: I Have Seen the Future of Drone Warfare and It Is Frighteningly Beautiful
"I think what you're going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades," Biden said in January 2022, about a month before the war. "And it depends on what it does. It's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do."
Biden signaled indecision instead of resolve. The White House tried to undo the damage the next day, with PressSec Jen Psaki warning, "If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that's a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our allies." But the damage was done. The signal had been sent. A mere worker-bee with a penchant for quarter-truths like Psaki carried no weight in the Kremlin.
Nor should it have, not after Biden had enriched Moscow with actions like de-sanctioning the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
A last-ditch effort to secure the peace by sending Harris and Blinken to the Munich Security Conference in February 2022 would have been comically inept had the stakes not been so high. At the time, CNN called the Munich conference "the most critical foreign trip of her vice presidency," but no one in the State Steno Pool seems to care much that she flubbed it now that she's the Democrat nominee.
"Let me be clear," Harris said at Munich, "I can say with absolute certainty: If Russia further invades Ukraine, the United States, together with our Allies and partners, will impose significant and unprecedented economic costs."
That's a far cry from "We're gonna hit Moscow."
Putin only had to believe Trump 5%. He didn't believe Biden or Harris at all. He ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine less than one week later. The fighting continues more than 30 months later, despite Russia devoting virtually all of its land and air combat forces to the war effort, and considerable material and financial support from the West to Ukraine.
Why?
Recommended: World War III Update: The Saudis Put Iran on Notice
Again, it goes to the fecklessness of this administration. Having failed to deter Russia, it then failed to provide the necessary support to Ukraine to keep the war as short and contained as possible. From slow-rolling absolutely needed weapons like tanks and missiles to placing limits on where they can be targeted by Kyiv.
"The Biden Administration forcing Ukraine to build its own deep strike weapons is going to be seen in future histories to have been a horrible strategic blunder," military analyst Trent Telenko posted last June. "A blunder that will cause worldwide deep strike missiles proliferation past the Missile Technology Control Regime."
By trying to make the Russo-Ukraine War "safe" (!!!), Biden-Harris is making the world more dangerous. "They're not real good at thinking through second-order effects," Glenn Reynolds dryly noted.
Russia remains likely to win this stupidly long and bloody war — despite one massive strategic/operational error after another by the Russian military.
And Another Thing: Trump has been coy about what he'd do as president about Ukraine, and I believe that's by design. You can't bring the other guy — in this case, Putin — to the peace talks by constantly demonizing him. But you can't bring him to the peace table so long as he believes that war will get him more of what he wants. So my reasoned guess is that a Trump 47 Ukraine policy would offer more muscular and less restrictive aid to Kyiv (for which he will not receive credit) while extending genuine diplomatic efforts to Moscow (for which he will be excoriated).
With all the chaos unleashed these last three years, you might think that foreign policy would be a bigger issue in the presidential campaign. But so far — and with no indication that any change is in the offing — the State Steno Pool seems content to ask Trump the occasional GOTCHA! question about Ukraine and leave it at that.
Others have been far less incurious than the Western news industry.
Looking at their newly fat bank accounts and Biden-Harris fecklessness in Europe, Iran could not help but think that Biden-Harris had given it the green light to unleash Hell on Israel and wherever else its terror cells could reach.
Xi Jinping has also been watching. He sees the sad state of our Navy — the result of one bipartisan failure after another going back more than 20 years. He sees that Biden and Harris have been tested repeatedly and been found wanting every time. Four years of Harris-Walz might be more than enough for Xi to decide that the time is right to take Taiwan, pacify the Philippines, and neutralize Japan — effectively booting the U.S. out of the western Pacific and cutting us off from some of our most vital trade.
A scythe would then cut from Ukraine through the Middle East and Africa and all the way across to the Pacific Ocean — a Third World War in every respect. Except, perhaps for nukes, one hopes, but hope is not a plan.
Biden-Harris never had a plan, aside from rejecting Trump's best policies and bringing back Obama's worst. They've taken us halfway down the road to the Third World War, and we have less than two months to change paths.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member