Watch out, guys, Tom Basil has an idea. He believes it makes him tall enough that he can stand shoulder to shoulder with Ronald Reagan. He thus invoked the late President’s memory and borrowed his moniker that went like this: “We win, they lose”.
Ronald Reagan had
no better idea how an economy works than did the boys in the Kremlin. He
thought that money grew on a Hollywood tree; they thought it grew inside the
nozzle of an ICBM. What Reagan knew was that according to his advisers, America
was doing well, and could do even better in the short run if he were to embark
on a spending spree, flooding the economy with cash that would be routed
through the purchase of military hardware.
When Reagan tried the
trick, the effect was what he hoped for, but only in the short run. It was not
until later that the Reagan boom was followed by the recession which cost Bush the
father a second term in office. However, because America withstood the blow, it
convinced the boys in the Kremlin that the nozzle of a Russian ICBM was the
place where money will not grow the economy, but will vanish without leaving on
the kitchen tables of the nation, the loaf of bread and pound of butter that
were promised to give the Russian people a promised life of plenty.
Having digested
that lesson, the boys in the Kremlin did the honorable thing, and admitted that
their economic system had failed to outshine the American. They dismantled the
Soviet Union, and like good sports, extended their arm to the Americans, shaking
hands with them and asking for help to rebuild the Russian Federation on a more
sound economic basis.
Ronald Reagan won
because he knew who was the foe he pushed against, and what the contest between
them boiled down to. He was also handed a strategy that fit the existing
conditions at the time. Everything fell into place as hoped for, and the
resolution of a conflict that had brought the world to the brink of catastrophe
several times in half a century, ended not with a bang but the whisper of a
dying empire that lived in weakness but died a noble death.
So, here comes Tom
Basil, suggesting that now was the “Time to welcome back America’s military and
foreign policy hawks,” which happens to be the title of the article he wrote
and gave it the subtitle: “Reagan’s ‘we win, they lose’ attitude needs to make
a comeback.” The article was published on January 14, 2022 in The Washington
Times.
To gauge the
validity of Tom Basil’s argument, we need to know the differences that may have
existed between the situation during the Regan era and the modern era. So, the
first question we ask is this: What did the Soviet Union want then, and what
does Russia want now? The answer is that the Soviet Union was betrayed once by its
ally, Hitler that turned against it. And was betrayed a second time by its
ally, an America that listened to Churchill and launched the Cold War by
encircling the Soviet Union with military bases.
The Soviet response
was that military power having defeated Hitler, military power will defeat
America’s Cold War Initiatives. The reality that escaped the Soviets, however,
was that the tools and weapons used in a Hot War are different from those used
in a Cold War. Thus, while the Soviets built a mighty arsenal to prepare for
the hot war that never came, its economy deteriorated to the point where the
Union collapsed.
Today, what Russia
wants is more fundamental than what the Soviet Union wanted after the Second
World War. Today, Russia wants to prevent America from erecting and launching
an even more ferocious Cold War against Russia, which it is doing by encircling
Russia with military bases in the NATO Nations of the past, in addition to the
Warsaw Pact nations that left the Soviet orbit and joined NATO when the Soviet
Union collapsed.
But what is it that
tells the Russian President Vladimir Putin he is doing the right thing,
opposing America by resorting to the failed policy of building up Russia’s
military? The answer to that question goes like this: Enter stage right what is
essentially a left-handed China.
As it happens, the
fire that is raging in the heart of Russia is the betrayal by the West.
Coincidentally, the fire that is raging in the heart of China is the century of
humiliation at the hands of the West. At first, China adopted the left-leaning
political and economic Soviet system. When the latter collapsed, the remnant that
is Russia started experimenting with a system modeled after the Western
Capitalist system. It is not yet mature but it already promises better results
than before. As to China, it has adopted an entirely new system that propelled
it from the rank of a gutter nation to that of a first class superpower.
Facing America, the
one and the same foe that will not let up on its quest to dominate the world by
crushing every nascent power that can challenge it, China and Russia openly
declared their marriage to the idea of opposing America and whomever will ally
with it, and will battle against them till they are buried once and for all in
the landfill of forgotten history.
Russia and China
promised to use diplomacy with America and its allies in the hope of making
them understand the futility of what they are trying to accomplish. But they
will, at the same time, continue building a new economic system for the world;
one that will render America’s deteriorating anachronistic economic monopolies,
null and void for good.
But should America
make the mistake of opposing them when they use force to secure their
legitimate interests, they will not hesitate to respond by opening the gates of
hell to their widest so as to do unto the new Nazis what was done to the dead
and buried old Nazis.