Michael Hochberg & Leonard Hochberg
During an interview on Tuesday, March 5, 2024, Brigadier General Amit Sa’ar of the IDF disclosed that he penned a letter intended for Prime Minister Netanyahu just before October 7, 2023, cautioning “that Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah recognized an opportunity to attack Israel … due to internal conflict … as well as the level of readiness of the IDF at the time.” His reflection, which focused on military preparation, domestic politics, and international threats, should be taken as a warning for the United States.
On June 6, 2021, the anniversary of D-Day, the authors of this essay predicted that the major Eurasian autocratic powers—China, Russia, and Iran—would soon launch multiple opportunistic or coordinated attacks. Thus far, three of the four fronts of a new global conflict have emerged.
Given that the upcoming general election will likely provoke political instability, we believe the following warning must now be issued: Eurasian autocracies will see this election and any associated instability as a strategic opening for asymmetric and grey-zone attacks against the United States. At the same time, China will escalate its campaign to reincorporate Taiwan through blockade, invasion, or economic coercion.
How did we get here?
The ongoing conflicts have strained the military and policy resources of the United States and its allies. The perception of these conflicts as disconnected, rather than as parts of one coherent conflict, has produced profound confusion among the American and Western polities. The piling-on by our adversaries has stretched the military and industrial capacity of the United States to the point that allies are running short of key warfighting materiel, such as artillery shells. The resources to fully support our allies are not available. None of the Western Powers have shifted their economy onto a wartime footing.
Several factors precipitated the Western Powers’ fall into this geo-strategic mess. First, military capabilities among many of our NATO allies have been eroded over the past generation. Second, adversaries across Eurasia came to believe that the United States would no longer defend partners and allies, following the debacle in Afghanistan. And finally, in the American corridors of power, foreign policy experts tend to be regional specialists. They believe that a local rout of American influence and armed force has consequences only for neighboring states – the wider picture does not come into focus. In this view, each front of this Eurasian war can be treated as a separate event, with only isolated, regional consequences.
Western Weakness
In the run-up to this presidential election, all signs point to an increasingly polarized electorate, one that believes it has the luxury of engaging in escalating demands and actions vis-à-vis their domestic rivals without suffering deleterious international consequences. The perception of a weaponized judiciary will only lead to further domestic strife. Authoritarian regimes watch the domestic politics of their democratic adversaries very closely for signs of weakness: When the polity is divided and distracted, they perceive an opportunity to strike.
Autocratic powers will act to incite and exploit domestic instability through social media (here, here and here). The rulers of autocratic regimes believe that public discontent, especially violent discontent, is a sign of weakness, and an indication that democracy cannot govern effectively, secure its territory, or defend its national interests overseas. In their calculus, domestic chaos in an adversary state creates an opportunity to seize an advantage by engaging in military adventurism.
Such perceptions may be an error: In Israel, the disagreements over judicial reform were immediately put to one side to focus on destroying Hamas. National security, a dire necessity, trumped domestic disagreement, a political luxury. Political resilience and social solidarity reemerged in the breach.
The United States and our allies are being subjected to relentless information and digital grey-zone warfare intended to polarize the electorate and stymie coherent foreign policy action. Attacks will no doubt ramp up in the run-up to the election. What’s more, the presence of antagonistic diasporas in the United States has roiled domestic electoral politics: Their competing and mutually exclusive demands are leading to incoherent foreign policy. In order to garner electoral support in critical districts, American political parties are increasingly pandering to antagonistic diasporas. Under these circumstances, identifying a bipartisan national interest is exceedingly difficult.
As the British geopolitical thinker, Halford Mackinder, once argued, “Democracy refuses to think strategically unless and until compelled to do so for purposes of defence.” In the absence of a ‘Pearl Harbor’ moment, the United States is unlikely to shift to a war footing, no matter how many of our allies are threatened or attacked.
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