“So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I’m sure I could lead off this piece with a dozen quotes from various luminary thinkers through the ages about the wisdom of striking your enemies at moments of great weakness, confusion, or disarray. But I won’t, because I think the concept is sort of obvious, even to those who are not great thinkers.

Boxers and fighters know it. Corporate raiders know it. Lawyers and politicians know it, too. You could even say capitalizing on vulnerability is in the collective DNA of nature. Whenever possible, predators tend to seek prey of the old, sick, weak, and stupid variety — rather than specimens in the prime of life, at the peak of their strength and courage.

Point being, the U.S. is increasingly showing weakness, division, confusion, and vulnerability to the world. And no, this did not start all of a sudden with Joe Biden’s election. I would argue that it’s been escalating under the last few administrations, to one degree or another. But to my eyes, it’s increasing exponentially under the “leadership” of America’s first invertebrate president…

And I think this could tempt our enemies and adversaries — China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, ISIS, whomever — to test us (and our allies) more and more over the course of Biden’s tenure, on multiple fronts, including militarily.

This is not hard to imagine when you zoom out and look at things from 30,000 feet

Aside from the questionable condition and readiness of certain parts of America’s military, or some of our more anemic foreign policy moves of the recent past…

I’m just as concerned with how a number of other things we’re doing (or allowing to be done) domestically could invite increasing challenges from abroad, or perhaps even violent attack one day. I’m talking about things like:

LAX BORDER SECURITY — Between all the mixed messaging, catch-and-release policies, surreptitious transportation of illegals into the interior (many of them infected with SARS-CoV-2, mind you), and the cessation of border-wall construction, the U.S. has seen an absolute explosion of illegal immigration since Biden’s election.

Case in point: May’s total of over 180,000 apprehensions hadn’t been seen in a single month since April of 2000, the year that set the current annual record for illegal immigrants (1.68 million). So far in 2021, we’re on pace to see as many as 1.86 million illegals on the year, a new record. And an increasing number of them are coming in from places other than central America, including Haiti and Africa.

REJECTION OF POLICE — Reversing a 40-year trend that saw spending for law enforcement more than triple, at least 20 major U.S. cities have now reduced or re-directed funds away from their police forces. Some of them have pledged to cut cop funding by as much as 50%. All told, more than $840 million has evaporated from police coffers in the last year and a half or so.

This had contributed to an unprecedented wave of retirement among cops, creating record vacancies on police forces across the nation. Baltimore alone needs at least 259 more officers on the street, and is begging Washington for federal agents to help with enforcement. The Philadelphia force has 268 vacancies, and is expecting more in the near future. There are many other American PD’s in similarly dire straits, too.

ACCEPTANCE OF CRIME — From abiding lawless “autonomous zones” to giving rioters free rein to destroy property and granting criminals tacit permission to swipe merchandise off store shelves without penalty, the force of law in America is being eroded by the day.

Yet even as crime increases, many kinds of criminal prosecutions are declining across the country. In fact, a movement is afoot in multiple U.S. cities to stop trying entire classes of criminality. Baltimore, as just one example, is no longer prosecuting low-level drug possession, prostitution, or traffic misdemeanors.

And did you see what happened in St. Louis recently? A judge was compelled to let an accused murderer go free because the prosecution failed to show up for trial. The same week, two other murder cases were also dismissed because of unprepared or absent prosecutors. Disgraceful.

PUNISHING U.S. INDUSTRIES — Biden nixed the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would’ve been a tremendous boon for American energy independence, but removed long-standing U.S. sanctions on the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which increases Europe’s energy dependence and undermines our credibility in the region. Biden has made moves against the domestic coal and oil industries as well…

He’s also aggressively pushing mass-adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), despite America’s overall reluctance to fully embrace them, and the fact that China leads the global EV battery market. The precarious domestic steel and aluminum industries are vulnerable, too, as Biden weighs lifting the Trump-era tariffs that helped bring them back from the brink.

TOLERATING SOFT AGGRESSION — Biden’s response to repeated Russia-based hacking has been notably impotent. Instead of an iron-fisted ultimatum (or an actual counter-hack), he presented Putin with a list of 16 domestic infrastructure targets declared “off limits” to attack. The implication being that everything else is fair game.

The coronavirus pandemic could quite rightly be classified as an act of foreign aggression, too. Mounting evidence suggests that it was developed in a Chinese lab, and whether its release was accidental or intentional, China clearly encouraged its spread around the world, effectively weaponizing it.

Then there’s the PRC’s repeated threatening actions against Hong Kong and Taiwan (and in the South China Sea), Russian actions against Ukraine, North Korean missile tests, etc. All this tallies up to an awful lot of soft aggression against the U.S. and its allies, most of it unanswered in any meaningful way.

All of these things, and more (like declining standards for U.S. troops) project an image of decreasing strength

They suggest an inability to secure and lead our own nation (much less the world) competently, and an unwillingness to do the hard, but necessary thing. This softer image does not make us safer, it makes us more vulnerable.

I don’t see any of it getting better under the increasingly feeble-minded and tone-deaf Joe Biden, either — a man with a lifelong reputation for poll-watching, China-favoring, family-first, flip-flopping “leadership.” This is not just my opinion. You can look this stuff up. Shanghai Joe’s been among China’s top advocates in Washington for nearly his entire tenure in U.S. government. He’s also on record being on both sides of about just every major issue…

And don’t get me started on his family’s cozy and colorful (main color: dollar green) relationship with China and other powerful foreign entities. My read on this is that Biden can be bought, one way or another — and that he has been, many times over.

Bottom line: In my view, the policies of President Biden and his party are waving red flags in front of some very powerful bulls. And if China, Russia, or anyone else has a mind to attack us, I think they’d be very tempted to do it under his watch.

My great hope (yours, too, I’m betting) is that we get through Biden’s tenure without full-on war — and back to a more independent, self-sufficient America with some steel in its spine, both domestically and globally.

But the way things are going, the hope of such a thing may be all we end up having.

Strongly Yours,

Jim Amrhein
Freedoms Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder