West Will Trump Autocracies in WW III

Some ask “Has World War III already begun?” We all agree a modern “axis of [unlikely] autocracies led by Russia, China, Iran & North Korea is challenging the woke democratic world order.” BUT now it’s led by an AWAKEN USA.

That’s the bad news reality suggested in a recent WSJ op ed by Yaroslav Trofimov. He wrote by way of explanation: “As Syrian rebels approached Damascus last [week], Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s main Arab ally, as a minor episode in a planet-wide struggle. The West, Lavrov said [at a conference in Qatar] clings to America’s decaying hegemony but is inexorably losing ground to the ‘free world’ – his Orwellian term for the axis” of the above-listed autocracies. Bottom line, Lavrov opined, “With /Russia’s war on Ukraine nearly three years old, the Middle East ablaze on multiple fronts & tensions building up in East Asia, conflicts once thought to be disconnected have merged into what could be the opening shots of a third world war.”

The good news, which Trofimov seemed to discount because of how divided the West’s democracies seem, is that history always repeats itself. For one thing, those autocracies he fears may be unified by raw greed, but are again hopelessly divided themselves in terms of culture, ideology & economics. And, while the West is certainly divided AS ALWAYS BECAUSE OF ITS FAITH IN DEMOCRACY, in times of crisis it ALWAYS UNIFIES FOR THE COMMON GOOD OF MANKIND ITSELF. Nor should the autocrats take solace in a “weakened” America as the author worries, for, again, history shows its economic resilience, technological might & agricultural prowess is mostly unmatched thanks to something called “capitalism.” Then, too, its greatest (and smartest) leaders have always emerged during war, from Washington to Lincoln to FDR & now to TRUMP. One BIG caveat: Let's just hope WW III never turns into a NUCLEAR or BIOLOGICAL one.

Davd Soul