In September 2022, Admiral Charles Richard at the Association’s Air and Space Conference said, “All of us in this room are back in the business of contemplating a direct armed conflict with a nuclear-capable peer…this is no longer theoretical ” he quipped.
Admiral Charles Richard is the 11th commander of STRATCOM. Since 1982 Richard has very carefully navigated his way through the Navy’s bureaucracy to settle in the chair of a long lineage of Dr. Strangeloves.
Unfortunately, Richard’s vision has two challenges. One, the United States government is now a decrepit oligarchy that is beset by civil strife and economic collapse. Secondly, due to the abandonment of the dollar as the World Reserve Currency, The United States will be hard-pressed to find funding for grand defense spending.
We can never forget, large-scale wars can not be won without a combined arms element. In reality, we may not even have the social unity or the combined arms resources to defend North America let alone prevail in a (two-front) peer-to-peer conflict.
Let us enter the “Madman Theory”
Niccolò Machiavelli once argued, ” that (sometimes) it was wise to project madness”.
Madmen are all we have in America today.
During the Nixon years, when the American position was collapsing in Southeast Asia in 1973. Nixon was irrational and taking heavy cocktails of medications.
During this time he was heavily bombing Cambodia and practically bombed North Vietnam into the ground. Russian and Chinese shipping were hit in Haiphong Harbor during that time.
Risking a nuclear confrontation.
Moving forward to the Biden and Trump years in 2023. The latest crisis revolves around the US Dollar and the US military collapsing globally. As a consequence, the minor powers are rushing in to fill the void left by the American collapse. This is causing a geopolitical military imbalance that is destabilizing the nuclear triad.
This new threat of a general war has spawned new leaders simulating madness. For instance, Joe Biden ―In Machiavellian― fashion, seems to be swinging from the irrational to the rational. One moment he seems coherent and decisive. (And) the next, he is walking into walls and speaking as if he is suffering heavily from dementia.
Moving forward to 2024, assuming (If by some miracle) we are all still here and in one piece. Donald Trump will most likely clear the field and become president. To say that Trump is incoherent and unpredictable is an understatement. During his campaign for the presidency, he claimed he wanted peaceful coexistence with Russia…
…Honestly, that hooked me immediately.
(But)― then, four months later, Trump ordered both the Ross and Porter to launch 59 Tomahawks in Russian-controlled airspace over Syria.
(Flatout) risking a nuclear conflict.
Compared to the current Madmen in Biden and Trump, Obama seems tame in comparison.
Obama was simply a token figure to mollify the potential for civil strife and he represented the least radical demands of the civil rights movement. At the same time, he projected a synthetic sympathy to mollify the urban and rural poor. Obama helped transition the American people through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nothing more.
I would like to think there is some method to the madness. For now, we are firmly in the realm of the―Madmen.
―Chris