Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Consumer spending hit a brick wall in the US, EU, UK and Australia. Guess what that means…

Is the global consumer starting to capitulate?

On a year over year basis seeing very weak end of the year: pic.twitter.com/EqCD3MvsvI

— Bob Elliott (@BobEUnlimited) February 6, 2023

Not Just EU

Also seeing similar weakness in the UK for the second half of 22 and a worsening momentum in the late year. pic.twitter.com/1CctIETSqW

— Bob Elliott (@BobEUnlimited) February 6, 2023

What About Australia?

The consumer has been critical to making this expansion continue. The signs are that the drags from rising costs and negative real wage growth is starting to weigh on demand. There are limits to the amount of spending that can continue when savings is being drawn down.

— Bob Elliott (@BobEUnlimited) February 6, 2023

“There are limits to the amount of spending that can continue when savings is being drawn down.“

A few months ago I penciled out the excess savings for the US consumer and it looked like summer 23 was when the consumer would start to run into issues. If these pce figures are accurate it looks like consumers may be moving faster than originally guessed. https://t.co/mTh5d2Mdlz

— Bob Elliott (@BobEUnlimited) February 6, 2023

“If these PCE figures are accurate, it looks like consumers may be moving faster than originally guessed.”

Question and Answer of the Day

“If the consumer capitulates, what will drive growth?”

Nothing

Personal Spending Hits a Solid Brick Wall in December Despite Rise in Incomehttps://t.co/h3wvEpnOdd

— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) February 6, 2023

Welcome to the Global Recession!

Welcome to the Global Recession!

December Was Another Retail Sales Disaster, Even Worse With Negative Revisionshttps://t.co/34NC2ptpHD

— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) February 6, 2023

Bob Elliott and I have been in a running debate for a couple of months over jobs and a recession. 

I follow him because he always makes a strong case for his point of view: No Recession. 

Elliott is very data dependent, and cautious. This is the first I have seen him waver.

My “welcome” comment was not intended to be mocking, it’s simply how I feel. 

To be fair, I was early again, but not as early as some. I did not bite on the two consecutive quarters of negative GDP to start the year, but I did pencil in a recession starting in May. 

In October, retail sales forced me to admit my error. But in December, industrial production and retail sales put me back in the recession camp. 

Let’s go over the data.

Signs Say Industrial Production Has Peaked and so a Recession is Imminent

Recession lead times in months based on Fed data.

On January 18, 2023, I commented Signs Say Industrial Production Has Peaked and so a Recession is Imminent

Industrial production decreased 0.7 percent in December and 1.7 percent at an annual rate in the fourth quarter. 

Industrial Production Synopsis

• Industrial production peaked in October

• Manufacturing peaked in April with a double top in September

• Consumer durable goods peaked in April

• Manufacturing durable goods peaked in September

• Motor vehicles and parts peaked in October

Recession lead times vs industrial production tend to be very small, typically 1-2 month. 2001 and 2020 were notable exceptions.

Existing Home Sales Decline for the Eleventh Straight Month

Existing home sales from the National Association of Realtors via St. Louis Fed

It was nearly a clean sweep for existing home sales in 2022, down every month except January.

For details, please see Existing Home Sales Decline for the Eleventh Straight Month

December Was Another Retail Sales Disaster

Retail sales from commerce department, chart by Mish

Month-Over-Month Advances and Declines

• Food Service: -0.9 percent

• Food Stores: +0.0 percent

• Gas Stations: -4.6 Percent

• General Merchandise: -0.8 Percent

• Excluding Motor Vehicles and Gas: -0.7 Percent

• Excluding Motor Vehicles: -1.1 Percent

• Nonstore (Think Amazon): -1.1 Percent

• Motor Vehicles: -1.2 Percent

• Department Stores: -6.6 Percent

For further discussion, please see December Was Another Retail Sales Disaster, Even Worse With Negative Revisions

The BEA agreed with the advance numbers.

Personal Spending Hits a Solid Brick Wall in December Despite Rise in Income

Real Personal Consumption Expenditures from BEA, chart by Mish

On January 27, I noted Personal Spending Hits a Solid Brick Wall in December Despite Rise in Income

Brick Wall

• Consumers literally hit the brick wall then went into reverse in November and December.

• Real PCE fell 0.2 Percent in November and 0.3 percent in December.

• Real PCE Goods were negative 0.9 percent in both months.

• Real PCE Services rose 0.2 percent in November and was flat in December.

Data Consistent With Recession

Please see Alice Debates the Mad Hatter and the Red Queen on Timing the Recession

If for some reason you believe fourth-quarter GDP was robust, please see 4th Quarter 2022 GDP Is Much Weaker Than Headline Numbers, Recession Is Not Off.

Data is consistent with a recession starting in November or December.

When is the last time housing was down for a full year, industrial production down two months, and real spending down two months and the the economy was not in recession?

Factor in a decline in consumer spending in the EU, UK, and Australia and where are US exports headed? 

And with consumer spending falling off the cliff, how long will jobs stay strong? Strong enough to prevent a recession that history suggests has already started?

In Wonderland, jobs will save the day, assuming you believe the December Jobs data, but I don’t.

*  *  *

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The Russia-Ukraine war highlighted how geopolitical risk can up-end supply chains and weaponize trade. More precisely, the war led to trade sanctions, a food crisis, and energy shortages.

In this graphic from The Hinrich Foundation, the third in a five-part series on the sustainability of trade, Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross explores how geopolitical risk differs by economy. It pulls data from the 2022 Sustainable Trade Index, which The Hinrich Foundation produced in collaboration with the IMD World Competitiveness Center.

Breaking Down Geopolitical Risk

Geopolitical risk has a strong correlation with GDP per capita, meaning that developing economies typically have less stability.

The following table shows how geopolitical risk breaks down for select economies that are covered in the 2022 Sustainable Trade Index. A lower number indicates less stability, while a higher number indicates more stability.

Source: World Bank, based on the latest available data from 2020. Values measure perceptions of political instability and violence, which are a proxy and precursor to geopolitical risk.

New Zealand has the highest level of stability, likely supported by the fact that it is a small nation with no direct neighbors. The country has taken steps to repair relationships with Indigenous peoples, through land and monetary settlements, though challenges remain. 

The U.S. has moderate stability. It has been impacted by increasing political polarization that has led to people having lower trust in institutions and more negative views of people from the opposing party. As the world’s largest economy, the U.S. also faces geopolitical risk such as escalating tariffs in the U.S.-China trade war. 

Want more insights into trade sustainability?

Download the 2022 Sustainable Trade Index for free.

Russia has one of the lowest levels of stability. The country’s invasion of Ukraine has led to war along with economic roadblocks that restrict normal trade activity. For instance, sanctions against Russia and blocked Ukrainian ports led to a food shortage. The two countries supply a third of the world’s wheat and 75% of the sunflower oil supply. 

The Impact of Geopolitical Uncertainty on Trade

Geopolitical risk can lead to civil unrest and war. It also has economic consequences including trade disruptions. As a result of the Russia-Ukraine war, the World Bank estimates that “world trade will drop by 1%, lowering global GDP by 0.7% and GDP of low-income economies by 1%.” A separate study found that Pakistan’s history of political instability has negatively affected trade in the country.

Of course, geopolitical risk is just one component of an economy’s trade sustainability. The Sustainable Trade Index uses a number of other metrics to measure economies’ ability to trade in a way that balances economic growth, societal development, and environmental protection. To learn more, visit the STI landing page where you can download the report for free.

Authored by John Mac Ghlionn via The Epoch Times,

Once an idea reserved for the pages of dystopian sci-fi novels, brain hacking is already here. The elites in Davos appear to be interested in harnessing this technology to further their questionable agenda…

At a recent World Economic Forum (WEF) presentation, those in attendance were told that attempts to decode the human brain was already well underway. As Tim Hinchcliffe, a man who has been sounding the alarm on the WEF’s plans for years, noted, the presentation came five years after historian Yuval Noah Harari told those in Davos that human beings were entirely hackable. We are, in a nutshell, walking, breathing, living algorithms, according to the academic. Harari’s vision, at the time, was a thing of feverish fantasy. Now, though, this fantasy is fast becoming a reality.

At the WEF Annual Meeting 2023, The Atlantic’s CEO Nicholas Thompson chaired a session called “Ready for Brain Transparency?” The session opened with an Orwellian-inspired video showing a scenario in which employees’ brainwaves were monitored and decoded. Besides using the information gathered to evaluate employee performance, brainwaves were decoded to assess whether or not any individuals had participated in criminal activity.

Following the video, Duke University’s Nita Farahany, an expert on both the ethical and legal implications of emerging technologies, explained to the audience that methods of decoding brainwaves already exist. Certain technologies, she said, already allow powerful organizations and governments to “pick up and decode faces that you’re seeing in your mind—simple shapes, numbers, your PIN number to your bank account.”

A file photo of an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap used to study brain activity. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

“Artificial intelligence,” she continued, “has enabled advances in decoding brain activity in ways we never before thought possible.” All those thoughts and feelings bubbling around inside, added Farahany, are just pieces of data, adding that this data can be decoded using artificial intelligence (AI). Contrary to popular belief, devices used to decode this “data” needn’t be as invasive as Elon Musk’s neural implants. According to Farahany, devices used are more like Fitbits for the human brain. “We’re not talking about implanted devices of the future; I’m talking about wearable devices that are like Fitbits for your brain,” she concluded in a rather chirpy tone.

On the same day Farahany was giving her presentation, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was also in Davos. Like Farahany, Stoltenberg probably knows his fair share about brain hacking. In 2021, NATO chaired a forum exploring the “‘weaponization of brain sciences” and exploiting the “‘vulnerabilities of the human brain.” As reported by Project Censored, an organization dedicated to the promotion of investigative journalism, greater media literacy, and critical thinking, the forum was created to explore “more sophisticated forms of social engineering and control.” This explains why, in the two years since the forum, NATO has added a sixth level to its five operational domains (air, land, sea, space, and cyber): the cognitive domain.

In a NATO-approved piece, experts from Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College London discuss the many ways in which the human mind should be considered a battlefield. Cognitive warfare, they noted, involves much more than changing what people think; it also involves changing people’s behaviors. “Waged successfully,” reads the piece, cognitive warfare “shapes and influences individual and group beliefs and behaviours to favour an aggressor’s tactical or strategic objectives.” The aggressors “could conceivably subdue a society without resorting to outright force or coercion.” NATO’s purpose, it’s important to remember, is to keep us safe. That purpose appears to be changing.

From the origin of the coronavirus to claims of Russian collusion, this is the golden age of information warfare. But the golden age, with its focus on media control, is currently evolving. As the academics Tzu-Chieh Hung and Tzu-Wei Hung explained in an article last year, cognitive warfare extends from focusing solely on media control to explicit brain control. Cognitive warfare seeks to weaponize “neurological resources” as well as “mass communication techniques.” Whereas information warfare focuses almost entirely on the input of information, cognitive warfare focuses on both the input and the output (that is, our behaviors).

One needn’t be a card-carrying QAnon member to read the above and feel a profound sense of dismay. Talks of hacking the brain are straight out of communist China. As I write this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is already using cognitive warfare to subdue the enemy. In the not-so-distant future, the unelected globalists in Davos and Brussels, home to NATO’s headquarters, could use the very same technology to subdue us.

The French nationwide strike over proposed pension reform (Macron is seeking to raise the retirement age from 62 to, gasp, 64; the French say “non”) which we profiled last week, interrupted on Tuesday the shipment of fuels from refineries and a fuel depot of TotalEnergies, the French supermajor told Reuters.

Workers and employees in various sectors, including the energy sector, civil servants, and teachers, have been staging strikes for weeks to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age.  

Workers at the oil refineries at Donges and Feyzin, operated by TotalEnergies, are on strike today, a representative of the Force Ouvriere trade union told Reuters. Workers at the fuel depot Flandres have also joined the massive industrial action in France, the official added.  

As Oilprice notes, this is not the first time that fuel deliveries have been disrupted by strikes this year. 

Two weeks ago, the strike in France halted wholesale fuel deliveries from three refineries operated by TotalEnergies on the first day of a series of planned nationwide strikes in many sectors. The Donges, Normandy, and Feyzin refineries of TotalEnergies stopped the wholesale supply of gasoline and diesel, while the refinery at Feyzin had to reduce processing rates to a minimum on January 19.

TotalEnergies and the French unit of ExxonMobil hold most of the refining capacity in France. The strikes against Macron’s unpopular pension reform are expected to continue.

The most recent wave of strikes comes three months after refinery workers went on strike for weeks in September and October amid a pay row. Strikes at refineries in France in the autumn of 2022 left more than 60% of the country’s refining capacity offline while gas stations in and around Paris and in the northern part of the country began to run out of fuel.

The strikes against the planned pension reform also come just as the EU banned imports of petroleum products from Russia as of February 5.

Authored by Scott Ritter,

Tank warfare has evolved. The large force-on-force armored battles that were the hallmark of much of WWII, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, which served as the foundation of operational doctrine for both NATO and the Soviet Union (and which was implemented in full by the United States during Operation Desert Storm in 1991), has run its course.

Like most military technological innovations, the ability to make a modern main battle tank survivable has been outstripped by the fielding of defensive systems designed to overcome such defenses. If a modern military force attempted to launch a large-scale tank-dominated attack against a well-equipped peer-level opponent armed with modern anti-tank missiles, the result would be a decisive defeat for the attacking party marked by the smoking hulks of burned-out tanks.

Don’t get me wrong: tanks still have a vital role to play on the modern battlefield. Their status as a mobile bunker is invaluable in the kind of meat-grinder conflicts of attrition that have come to define the current stage of large-scale ground combat. Speed and armor still contribute to survivability, and the main gun of a tank remains one of the deadliest weapons on the modern battlefield.

But the modern tank performs best as part of a combined arms team, supported by infantry (mounted and unmounted) and copious amounts of supporting arms (artillery and close air support.) As part of such a team, especially one that is well-trained in the art of close combat, the tank remains an essential weapon of war. However, if operated in isolation, a tank is simply an expensive mobile coffin.

Much has been made about the recent decision made by NATO and allied nations to provide Western main battle tanks to Ukraine. The politics of this decision is its own separate topic. This article will address the operational practicalities of this decision, namely has the military capability of Ukraine been enhanced through the provision of these new weapons systems.

To answer this question, one needs to examine three basic issues: training, logistical sustainability, and operational employment.

Training

It takes 22 weeks to train a basic American M1 Abrams crewmember. That training just gives the soldier the very basic skill set to be functional. Actual operational expertise is only achieved through months, if not years, of additional training in not just the system itself, but employing it as part of a similarly trained combine arms team. Simply put, even a Ukrainian tank crew experienced in the operation of Soviet-era T-72 or T-64 tanks will not be able to immediately transition to a Western-style main battle tank.

T-72B3M main battle tanks from the 1st Guards Tank Regiment at Red Square

First and foremost, the crew size of a Soviet-era tank is three, reflecting the reality that the Soviet tanks make use of an automatic loading mechanism. Western tanks have four crew members because the loading of the main tank gun is done manually. Adapting to these dynamics takes time, and requires extensive training.

Training is expensive. NATO is currently providing Ukraine with three types of Western main battle tank: the British Challenger 2, the German Leopard 2, and the American M1A2. There is no unified training course—each tank requires its own unique training prospectus that is not directly transferable to another system.

The decentralized training processes created by such a diverse approach promotes inefficiencies and generates discrepancies in outcome—one crew will not be like another, which in combat, where units are supposed to be interchangeable to promote predictable outcomes if all other circumstances remain the same, is usually fatal.

Moreover, these problems will only be enhanced by the emphasis that will be placed on rapid outcomes. The reality is whatever training programs that are developed and delivered by the nations providing the tanks will be insufficient to the task, resulting in poorly trained crews taking extremely complicated weapons systems into the most dangerous environment in the world for a tank—the teeth of a Russian Army designed and equipped to kill these very same tanks.

Logistical Sustainability

Tanks are among the most technically challenging weapons systems on a modern battlefield. They are constantly breaking down, especially if not properly maintained. For the M1 Abrams, for every hour a tank is in the field, there are three hours of maintenance time required. This problem only becomes magnified in combat.

Normally an armor unit is equipped with highly specialized organic maintenance crews that can repair most of the minor issues that can sideline a tank. Given the training requirements to produce this level of high-quality mechanic, it is unlikely Ukraine will be provided with this kind of maintenance support.

A Ukrainian artilleryman throws an empty 155MM shell tube as Ukrainian soldiers fire a M777 howitzer towards Russian positions on the frontline of eastern Ukraine, on November 23, 2022.

This means that the tanks that are being provided to Ukraine will need to be returned to NATO nations for any significant repairs of equipment that is damaged through simple usage or actual combat. In short, it is highly likely that a Western main battle tank in Ukrainian hands will break down at some point during its operational use by Ukraine, meaning that the total number of tanks available to Ukraine will be far less than the number of tanks provided.

Operational Employment

Ukraine’s commander in chief of the Armed Forces, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, told The Economist last month that he needed 300 tanks, 500 infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 artillery pieces, if he were going to have any chance of defeating [Russia].

Following the January 20 meeting of the Ramstein Contact Group, and subsequent follow-on discussions about the provision of tanks, NATO and its allied partners have agreed to provide less than 50% of the number of tanks requested, less than 50% of the number of infantry fighting vehicles requested, and less than 20% of the artillery requested.

Moreover, the timetable for delivery of this equipment is staggered incoherently over a period that stretches out for many months, and in some cases extends into the next year. Not only does this complicate training and logistical sustainability issues that are already unfavorably inclined for Ukraine, but it makes any meaningful effort to integrate this material into a cohesive operational employment plan all but impossible. In short, Ukraine will be compelled to commit the equipment provided—especially the tanks—into combat in piecemeal fashion.

The truth about tanks is that NATO and its allied nations are making Ukraine weaker, not stronger, by providing them with military systems that are overly complicated to operate, extraordinarily difficult to maintain, and impossible to survive unless employed in a cogent manner while supported by extensive combined arms partners.

The decision to provide Ukraine with Western main battle tanks is, literally, a suicide pact, something those who claim they are looking out for the best interests of Ukraine should consider before it is too late.

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Chinese state-owned television aired footage of a high-altitude balloon dropping hypersonic weapons in 2018.

The stunning footage displays a high-altitude balloon, not dissimilar from the one that traversed over the United States last week, carrying three hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) into high altitude and dropping them for testing.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on the weapons test in September 2018. The footage has since been deleted from Chinese media, but photographs and short clips can still be found online.

In one post from 2018, a Twitter user shared footage from Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, which shows the balloon lifting the three HGVs from the ground.

Screenshots from this Douyin short video. pic.twitter.com/XvhnzMhhY7

— dafeng cao (@dafengcao) September 21, 2018

The black one i.e. D18-2/S using different material featuring cantilever wing is rare in hypersonic configuration design. pic.twitter.com/m6vRJ6Jyub

— dafeng cao (@dafengcao) September 22, 2018

HGVs are generally launched by rockets in a similar manner to traditional missiles. Upon reaching orbit, however, HGVs detach from the rocket and fly through the atmosphere using their own momentum.

Such weapons are much faster than other missiles while they are in low orbit, but become much slower upon hitting the dense air of the atmosphere as they have no jets to power them. The three HGVs dropped by the balloon in the footage appear to have been designed to test this phenomenon.

The balloon-dropped HGVs were part of an effort to develop precision warheads for hypersonic weapons, which would give the Chinese military an “unstoppable nuclear-capable weapon,” according to the South China Morning Post.

Read more here…

Authored by Francis P. Sempa via RealClear Wire,

The United States and its NATO allies are slowly drifting into a war against Russia. The Biden administration and some of our NATO allies, while feigning caution and prudence, have gradually increased their involvement in Ukraine’s war effort. Some Western strategists talk of defeating Russia and forcing Vladimir Putin from power, even trying him as a war criminal. Victory, they say, is just around the corner as along as we continue to arm Ukraine.

I’m reminded of a memorable scene in the movie Nicholas and Alexandra. Russia’s generals and politicians are confidently planning the mobilization of millions of troops against Germany on a huge table-size map. Against the advice of elder statesman Count Sergei Witte (brilliantly played by Sir Laurence Olivier), Tsar Nicholas II orders a general mobilization. Witte, old and gray, slumps in his chair and softly repeats the word “madness.”

Witte had convinced the Tsar in 1905 to negotiate an end to the Russo-Japanese War that was driving Russia to revolution. If Russia mobilized in late July 1914, Germany, France and England would mobilize, too. “Nobody will be able to stop,” warned Witte. And when Witte senses that the Tsar and his generals are not listening to him, he prophetically warns: “None of you will be here when this war ends. Everything we fought for will be lost. Everything we love will be broken […] Tradition, virtue, restraint—they all go […] And the world will be full of fanatics and trivial fools.”

Historians still debate the causes and origins of World War I. George Kennan traced the origins of what an earlier generation called the “Great War” to the end of German Chancellor Bismarck’s European order and the “fateful alliance” between Russia and France. Robert Massie pointed to Germany’s naval challenge to Great Britain. Still others, such as German historian Fritz Fischer, blamed Germany’s hegemonic ambitions. More recently, British historian Christopher Clark argued that Europe’s statesmen “sleepwalked” into the war.

This topic has assumed relevance today as the United States and NATO get closer and closer to co-belligerent status with Ukraine. Newsweek reports that 12 NATO countries, including the United States and Germany, have agreed to supply more tanks to Ukraine. The Biden administration will send 31 M1 Abrams tanks, while Germany is sending 14 of its Leopard 2 tanks. Ukraine’s ambassador to France said that Western countries have agreed to supply Ukraine with 321 tanks. Russia called this latest move a “blatant provocation” and more evidence of “direct involvement” in the war by Western powers.

Despite the seriousness of these decisions, some Western observers are acting like Russia’s generals in the lead-up to World War I. The Guardian columnist Martin Kettle claims that the new tanks will give Ukraine “a military advantage” that could transform the war to Ukraine’s favor. The new weapons, he asserts, have the potential to “put Kyiv in a position to dictate ceasefire and peace terms to Moscow.” The Economist opines that sending Ukraine tanks and long-range missiles will enable it to “withstand the next Russian offensive and to take back the territory that is theirs.” American war hawk Max Boot is confident that the supply of tanks will enable Ukraine to mount a “successful offensive” and to take back its territory. Boot asserts that the tanks along with long-range rockets and advanced fighter planes supplied by the West will “determine the course of the war.” Jeffrey Cimmino and Shelby Magid of the Atlantic Council urge NATO to speed-up production and delivery of even more weapons systems to help Ukraine defeat Russia and integrate Ukraine in Western institutions.

Which leads me to ask: Where are the American Count Witte’s? There don’t seem to be any in the Biden administration. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are all in for co-belligerency in order to preserve the “rules-based international order.” It was Kennan who warned in 1997 that NATO expansion would revive the worst aspects of Russian nationalist and imperialist traditions. That same year, in an open letter to then-President Bill Clinton, a large group of elder statesmen, including Paul Nitze, Fred Ikle, Robert Bowie, Arthur Hartman, Gordon Humphrey, Stansfield Turner, Edward Luttwak, Richard Pipes, and Sam Nunn, voiced opposition to NATO expansion. Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock agreed with this sentiment and has urged the U.S. to press for a ceasefire in the war. International relations scholar John Mearsheimer has provided Witte-like warnings about the risks of catastrophic escalation in the Ukraine war. The American Conservative’s Douglas Macgregor and the CATO Institute’s Doug Bandow have written eloquently about the dangers of escalation and the need to avoid greater U.S. and Western involvement in the war.

But these modern-day Witte’s are all outsiders. They are not even on the fringes of power like elder-statesman Witte was in 1914. And Witte failed. Are there any Democratic Party elder statesmen who will rise to this challenge? If not, it may soon be too late.

Bismarck, who waged brief wars to unify Germany between 1864 and 1871, and worked thereafter to establish a structure of peace in Europe, lamented that some damn fool thing in the Balkans would ignite the next big war. And once his steady hand was removed from the scene in 1890, the structure of European peace gradually but inexorably fell apart. The result was the cataclysmic First World War that set into motion the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia and the spread of communism, the rise of Hitler in Germany, the Second World War and the Cold War. That sequence of events made the 20^th century history’s bloodiest.

Afghanistan and Iraq should have taught us that wars sometimes generate their own momentum. The prognostications of the proponents of war usually fall apart once the fighting starts. Clausewitz called it “friction.” Edward Luttwak calls it the “paradoxical logic of strategy.” The statesmen of Europe who sent their countries to war in the summer of 1914 thought the fighting would be over by Christmas. Four years later, both sides had used poison gas, more than 10 million were dead, three empires collapsed, and as Count Witte predicted, tradition, virtue and restraint went away. The United States and its NATO allies are risking a wider European war involving nuclear powers for Ukraine to take back two eastern provinces and the Crimea.  

John Quincy Adams, our greatest Secretary of State, once said America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” Sentiment and emotion on behalf of the Ukrainian people are no substitutes for hardheaded geopolitics. 

Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month.