As the US tries to stay on top, we may lose out

HAVING hitched our wagon, so to speak, to Uncle Sam’s caravan just when it is losing traction in the world, we may — like Ukraine — lose big and, God forbid, get crushed.

It has been clear for over a decade that the United States, though still the most powerful nation in the world, is not as dominant as before. In the 2008 US financial crisis, no less than then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited and implored Beijing not to sell huge chunks of its $1 trillion in US Treasury bills and other dollar holdings. China obliged.

By 2013, China was acknowledged as the largest trading partner of nearly all countries. The following year, Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, with Western nations failing to intervene despite pledging to secure Ukrainian territory.

Today, even its leading think tanks acknowledge America’s loss of the sole superpower supremacy it enjoyed after the communist Soviet Union, its global rival for over four decades, collapsed in 1991 and the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expanded to the very borders of Russia.

RAND Corp., funded by the US military, published last July “How to Reverse the Erosion of US and Allied Military Power and Influence.” The study concluded that “US defense strategy and posture are insolvent” since America and its allies “no longer have a virtual monopoly on the technologies and capabilities that made them so dominant” (https:// www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2555-1.html).

Six months before, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), another top Washington institute, warned that in a Taiwan conflict, the US would run out of long-range precision munitions, a staple of warfare today, in less than a week with no production capacity to quickly replenish the ordnance (http://tinyurl.com/35pha97t). However, another CSIS report said it was unrealistic to expect Russia to “ever” run out of missiles.

Peace out of war?

Ironically, and perhaps providentially, America’s recent decline in clout resulted precisely from its drive to stay on top.

The Ukraine wars in 2014 and 2022 erupted over, among other issues, the country’s plan to join NATO. That could bring nuclear-capable forces within minutes by missile to the Russian government and military centers with no chance of retaliation.

When Moscow tried to install atomic projectiles on Cuba in 1962 after Washington did it in Italy and Turkey, the US warned of nuclear war and sanctioned the island for the next 62 years and counting. Moscow has now twice invaded also to prevent unacceptable threats next door. (Beijing, too, has turned hostile since the Philippines opened nine bases to nuclear-capable US aircraft and vessels in February 2023.)

Ukraine’s planned NATO entry culminates decades of alliance expansion despite the West’s pledge not to do so. Objections came not just from Moscow but also from Western diplomats warning of Russian

fears. Even George Kennan, architect of Washington’s Cold War strategy to contain Soviet communism, opposed NATO expansion.

Heaven, too, may have wanted the West to fulfill its promises to then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for NATO not to absorb former Soviet allies and even to invite Russia to join. That could have established lasting peace in Europe.

But expanding NATO established US power in Moscow’s former fiefdom. Thus, the Western alliance, which includes three nuclear powers and two nations that thrice invaded Russia, reached nearer and nearer, even to the Baltic states bordering the country near its secondlargest city, St. Petersburg.

Ukraine was the last straw for Russia, which twice invaded to demonstrate it would not allow the world’s most powerful alliance right next door. Weeks after the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion, Kyiv and Moscow forged a peace deal for Ukraine’s neutrality and full Russian withdrawal.

That seemed to answer Pope Francis’ plea for peace when he and

thousands of Catholic bishops worldwide consecrated the world, naming Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as she instructed at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, to obtain world peace.

But in April 2022, Washington and London nixed the peace accord and pushed Kyiv to keep fighting with NATO arms and aid, seemingly scuttling the peace Francis sought from heaven.

In fact, NATO expending massive armaments and monies on continued fighting may have served the cause of eventual peace.

If the war had ended, Ukraine and NATO would have preserved and probably expanded their forces, while Russia might not have mobilized 300,000 reserve troops and ramped up weapons production and procurement. That could have set the stage for renewed hostilities, probably with NATO in the fray.

As it happened, however, Ukraine was devastated, and its forces decimated, while NATO arms were depleted, even as Russia’s military is now overwhelmingly combat-ready. Further forcing the West to avoid war is the Israel-Hamas conflict.

With the utter failure of America’s scheme to weaken and collapse Russia, at incalculable cost to Ukraine, Europe cannot but be wary of war initiatives from Washington. Further adding to European disenchantment with the US is leading presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent remark about not defending allies who do not spend the targeted 2 percent of national economic output.

European nations are now pondering how to secure themselves without relying on America. That means not just boosting their own defenses but also forging agreements with Russia to preserve peace.

So, did Pope Francis’ consecration bring peace? For now, yes. But as in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse in 1991, world powers must choose lasting peace among different poles of power, not military and geopolitical supremacy under one hegemon.

Thankfully, most of Asia is resisting Washington’s prodding to join its armed bloc, as Europe did, and that helps keep most of the region peaceful.

But with America moving to weaponize the Philippines against China, just as it armed Ukraine against Russia, the escalating military buildup on both sides of the South and East China Seas cannot but raise the grave risk of devastating war.

Let us pray that Asia’s only Christian nation does not suffer Ukraine’s fate — decimated and devastated in the bloody rivalry for global supremacy.

So help us God.