The Four Horsemen of a Looming Apocalypse

Our Four Major Threats: China, Iran, Russia, ISIS-They could all be confronted. But by the Obama administration?

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

 

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12 thoughts on “The Four Horsemen of a Looming Apocalypse”

  1. I’d argue that Obama’s blunders on the world stage have paid some dividends.

    NATO is being re-energized. With the US finally becoming the cute, fuzzy cuddlebug Europeans always said they wanted, they now have to look to their own defense rather than assuming they were safe under US protection, even as they carped and complained about that very protection.

    The US allies in the Pacific are actually looking to form an alliance of their own. US dominance in the region meant that South Korea had the luxury of continuing to hate Japan over WW2. Now they’re talking.

    Same thing in the mideast. If the US were still a power-player in the Gulf, the Arab states there could feel completely comfortable in keeping the status quo RE Israel. Now they have to assess what cooperation with Israel means for Islamic “charities” that funnel terror support to the Palestinians and their generally rampant anti-Israel propaganda when their state-run media are speaking in arabic.

    1. Jim in Lady Lake

      Kevin learned a lot by being left “Home Alone” too … but in both cases the result could be quite disastrous. Lack of US Leadership is a net negative opening up far too many bad scenarios.

  2. The only strategy that the Obama Administration has shown that they are willing to follow through is appeasement. If Neville Chamberlain had a son who was half Kenyan he would look like Obama…

  3. From the NYT today: “Mr. Obama is essentially betting that once sanctions have been lifted, Iran’s leaders will have no choice but to use much of the new money to better the lives of their long-suffering citizens. He has told his aides that he expects relatively little to be spent to finance terrorism or the emerging corps of Iranian cyberwarriors, a group now as elite as Iran’s nuclear scientists.”

    …no choice but to use much of the new money to better the lives of their long-suffering citizens…because that’s what theocratic dictators do???

  4. Doctor French

    Personaly i think that the current administration talk with Iran is the close to treason.

    Pauvre Amérique; trahie par ses élites

  5. 20 supposed patriots, and some traitors running as patriots—– 2016 commander-in-chief election. Americans voting for the security of the USA-Europe-Asia. Hillary or Sanders riding a horn-less Unicorn, verses Putin mounting the Chinese dragon? Raise the white-flag. Rico-suave Jeb, grinding the hips singing– “an act of love.” Raise the second white-flag.

  6. I disagree. There are no Four Horseman. The greatest threat to the US is herself. With a national debt that is unsustainable, a citizenry more concerned with Comic-Con or the latest gizmos and gadgets, and a generation now in elementary schools that can’t even write a complete sentence, let alone a complete paragraph, and will inherit this castastrophe, we are our own greatest enemy. When it comes to Putin, whether you like him or not, he did bring back Russia from a complete collapse to a player in the world stage again. Never forget that Yeltsin allowed the West to literally gang rape the country, allowing the rise of oligarchs who made millions literally overnight, and deplete the country of its resources. The West only wanted a Russia as a vassal state, more like a Romania than an equal. The humiliation of its citizenry, which sank to the level of bartering to survive on a daily basis, was what gave rise to a man like Putin. They are a proud people, and they deserve some kind of respect. As for our leaders in this country, they remind me of words spoken by the great George Washington, in his Farewell Address, in forewarning us about political parties, “…in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” And those are who we have to offer to the world.

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  8. One thinks how some of the earliest political leaders of this country were extremely deep thinking individuals armed with wisdoms that too many of our most educated political leaders neither possess nor seem to desire even during those rare and fleeting moments when they are temporarily disengaged from their acting and talking in self blinkered states of giddy buffoonery. The fatal flaw in Obama’s and his cohorts’ thinking is that human nature is changeable. Headlines and other news reports give lie to that every day. Unity of culture and language strengthens the country, diversity does not. Diversity is tribal and tribes are prone to squabble and are eventually ruled by ruthless power well understood by all four of Dr. Hanson’s horsemen.

  9. You know I’d have to say that after reading about the opposing lineup those guys look like they know what they’re doing. I’m not too sure the adversary is fielding a high caliber team to at the least play the game at their level since we do more reacting rather than dictating events.

    With each move the ‘four’ test their adversary and it maneuvers. Thing is I’m wondering if our opponents now view those ‘maneuvers’ as strategic ‘retreats’ on the world stage. With each pitty-patty ‘maneuver’ the perceived position steadily weakens. There’s an adage that one should never turn his back on his enemies during battle. I sure hope no shades of a 21st Czechoslovakia will arise as we look out to the horizon on this conflict. We have to make sure some horses just don’t get the chance to race at all.

  10. oldfolksathome

    ISIS/ISEL “ISIL” includes “The Levant”. That includes Israel, Lebanon,+,+ OR = all land bordering the Eastern end of the Mediterranean ocean. President Obama uses “ISIL” in his speeches. Is he telling us something?

  11. Apocalyptic probabilities are disconcerting to hear, especially when they are so clearly likely and seemingly unavoidable…especially as they emerge from our own foolishness. That is a foolishness derived overwhelmingly of abandoning an understanding of Natural Law and a contemptuous abandonment of Christian morality, by which human nature was at least constrained and contained in large part, in favor of an unbridled relativism that inevitably becomes expresses as totalitarian tyranny.
    It’s not as if there were not Jeremiahs enough, there lacked only ears to hear and wisdom to assess. It was bad enough when French excesses led to Thermidor. That was limited to one country. Hitlerian excesses still did not threaten the entire world, and enough virtue remained to defeat him
    Now where is it one would hide from the enemies of civilization if its leaders shrink from fighting against the neo-barbarism?

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