A Year That Will Live in Infamy * WorldNetDaily * by Seth Cropsey, Real Clear Wire

By the evening of December 7^eIn 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt understood that the world crisis had taken a new, decisive turn. The United States had been attacked. It must be war. But despite Roosevelt’s apparent rhetorical shock, he added the famous “shame” phrase to emphasize American victimhood opposite Japan – the Pearl Harbor attacks fit within the constellation of American strategy. Washington policymakers, from the president down, understood that the United States would be at war for the next two years, and possibly for the next six months, depending on Japanese and German action. In fact, the fall of France had made the United States realize that strategic patience was not viable. America had to act and wage war against the revisionist coalition or risk a permanent, potentially fatal reversal of the Eurasian balance.

A year after Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel, it is clear that the United States remains shocked and surprised. The Biden administration has shown no sign of understanding strategic realities. Washington is facing a global crisis as intense as that of the late 1930s and early 1940s. The goal must be victory, because without it the American Republic is unlikely to survive. Instead, the American policymaking class has embraced a paradigm of de-escalation and war avoidance that guarantees a longer, bloodier fight, both in this decade and the next.

The Hamas attack on October 7^e was a particularly brutal, but highly predictable step in the Eurasian axis’ attempt to destroy the US-led strategic system. Russia, Iran and China all suffer from the limitations of American power. They all object to the perceived injustice of sovereignty, the denial of their ambition toward their neighbors, and the perceived humiliation of their inability to transform the political environment around them at will. These regimes may subscribe to radically different ideologies and distrust and ultimately despise each other, but this shared hatred makes them a coherent challenge to American power.

Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine heralded a new, open phase of contestation. Previously, the Eurasian Axis had kept its ambitions hidden. Russia had first denied invading Ukraine in 2014, Iran rarely attacked Israel or the United States directly, and China resorted to indirect quasi-civilian pressure rather than overt military coercion. Russian tanks rolling across the Ukrainian border eliminated this fiction and replaced it with the raw exercise of power. Moscow’s armies were stymied in their initial ambitions. Nevertheless, they exacted a terrible price from Ukraine: tens of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands maimed, cities bulldozed, women raped and men tortured. This war is existential for Russia. The victory confirms Moscow’s status as the capital of a major Eurasian power. The defeat confirms the 1991 assessment that Russia is little more than a multi-ethnic, resource-rich kleptocracy, in other words a normal dysfunctional country, and not a world-historical empire. However, US policy has consistently sought to limit this war, ever afraid of provoking an excessive Russian escalation, even as Russia carries out sabotage in the West, supports the other members of the Axis powers, and prepares its economy and society for endless wars of conquest and wars. destruction. Containing Ukraine, providing enough support to survive but not to win, simply creates immediate contestation both before and after Ukrainian capacity reaches its breaking point.

Iran’s attack on October 7^e – because Hamas is a member of the Iranian Axis of Resistance, and not an independent actor sui generis – has opened a new front in the world crisis. Iran tried to allow Hamas to break into the West Bank, triggering an intifada against Israel. With the IDF allegedly overstretched, Hezbollah would have attacked from the north, a situation that could only be avoided by rapid Israeli mobilization and strong defense against Hamas’s initial incursion. Since then, Iran has hoped to bind Israel in a ring of conflict. Hamas has kidnapped more than 240 hostages, putting Israel’s strategic imperative to eliminate the threat from Gaza in opposition to the political imperative to reclaim Israel, and lest we forget American citizens. It then activated its proxy network across the Middle East, attacking US bases in the Levant, harassing international shipping in the Bab-el-Mandeb and threatening Israel from Lebanon. Over the past year, Israel has been involved in a delicate strategic balancing act, trying to deter Hezbollah in the north while pressuring Hamas in Gaza. But all the while, international pressure on Israel has increased, as Iran uses the Islamist-left partnership to challenge the Jewish state’s fundamental right to national security.

Initially, the Biden administration’s response appeared robust. It deployed a US aircraft carrier group to deter further Iranian intervention and gave Israel full-throated rhetorical support. This position disappeared in late 2023. Since December last year, the US has accused Israel of obstructing ceasefire negotiations – let alone that a ceasefire on Hamas and Iran’s terms would amount to Israeli capitulation. It has curbed any Israeli attempt to impose costs on Iran in Lebanon. It has accused Israel of reckless escalation of any strategically creative offensive action. It has lifted sanctions on Iran and threatened to impose them on Israel. Most egregiously, it has pushed for a fantastic two-state solution, ignoring the reality that the structure of Palestinian sovereignty that the US sponsored through the Oslo Accords, and the subsequent decline of Palestinian political authority into mafia-style corruption autocracy, guarantees a takeover by Hamas. of the West Bank if a state of Palestine is created today.

It is almost as if senior US policymakers see Iran as a reasonable player drawn into a crisis beyond its control, and Israel as a bloodthirsty tyrannical regime. It doesn’t matter that the former country executes citizens for homosexuality and beats women to death for refusing to wear the hijab, while the latter holds regular elections and typically democratic domestic political debate.

At this point, Israel has eliminated the threat of Hamas, while Ukraine has fought Russia to a bloody standstill. Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah – destroying communications, beheading leadership and neutralizing enemy offensive capabilities – is working despite the Biden administration’s opposition. There is still time for the US to strategically recover.

In the Middle East, the US could provide Israel with much-needed diplomatic cover for operations in Gaza by refusing to engage in nonsensical ceasefire talks and placing the blame for the conflict on Iran. It could sanction Iran as it did in the late 2010s, undermining Iran’s economic strength and reducing its ability to act abroad. It could actually respond to Iranian attacks on US bases, showing that there are costs to Iranian adventurism. It could use its naval forces in and around the Red Sea to destroy the Houthi military capacity rather than defend itself against Houthi missiles. And it could prepare and enable Israeli operations in Lebanon and, eventually, against Iran’s nuclear program.

In Europe, the US could abandon a crappy policy of escalation management and instead lift restrictions on Ukrainian targets. It could provide much-needed weapons to the Ukrainian military while investing in a defense industrial renaissance in the US and Europe. It could integrate Ukraine into a broader European security system that can deter and, if necessary, defeat future Russian aggression, while demonstrating to Europeans that Washington remains committed to Europe’s strategic future.

All this is possible with a little common sense and political will.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor may have shocked Franklin Roosevelt. But it didn’t surprise him. He had spent the past five years slowly, carefully preparing the US to enter a protracted Eurasian war, a war that would end only with the destruction of the Axis powers. In the 24 months leading up to December 7^eBy 1941, the Roosevelt administration had put the American economy on a war footing, expanded support for Britain, and refined its strategies for combating a Eurasian conflict.

The difference today is that the US has not taken similar steps. The longer it waits, the greater the risk that it will experience another day of infamy. America’s enemies are gathering and will inevitably attack the country directly. Every day wasted after this year of shame will have to be repaid with more blood.

Seth Cropsey is president of the Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is the author of Mayday and Seablindness.

This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.

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