300 - The Perils of Our Planet: Unleashed by Putin, Hamas, and Other Murderous Desperadoes

            Putin's aggressive invasion of Ukraine two-and-a-half years ago plunged the then mostly stable and well-behaved free world into a paroxysm of military defensive strategizing just as Ukrainian partisans brilliantly repelled Russian tanks and troops as they headed blithely toward Kyiv. Outraged by Putin's underhand disdain for world order norms and his criminal determination to dissolve Ukraine's sovereign right to exist, I began writing this Substack Newsletter in 2022. A number of you support its continuation financially, for which deep thanks. Others of you read it for free, which is fine. Now, more than 300,000 words later, it makes sense to weigh where we are, and for me to try to prognosticate regarding what lies ahead.

            After 299 posts, the world is certainly much more imperiled than when I started writing to oppose and comment upon Putin's despicable invasion. In some senses, Putin's invasion and the Hamas attack have also encouraged the rise, globally, of more and more lawlessness. Not since the end of the Cold War, and possibly not since the end of World War II, has world affairs been so out of control. We were all able to focus, before Putin, on how to uplift the world's poor, and how to help to develop and nation-build in the less-privileged parts of the planet. We were able, thanks to the initiatives from the likes of the Gates Foundation and the Carter Center to strategize on how to eradicate disease and disability - how to help to make life better for those peoples and nations hitherto disadvantaged.  But now we are forced as individuals and as NATO nations to keep evil from overrunning good. We must protect essential human rights from their displacement by dictators.  I never expected Putin's invasion -- 300 columns later -- to result in a world very much on fire, with publics despaired, and exhausted.

            The fire erupted in Ukraine. And then Hamas managed to assist Putin by raiding Israeli kibbutzes and settlers across the long largely peaceful border with the Gaza Strip. More recently, Sudan, where the official army bombed Khartoum again Saturday, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have become calamitous places, with literally millions of innocent civilians at risk. They contain the world's two most pressing and deadly humanitarian crises, the result of a senseless internecine war and of marauding gangs. (I have written often about both places in this Newsletter.)  Ethiopia has civil wars, too, and in neighboring Somalia, across the Sahel, and well across northern Nigeria, Islamist insurgents raise havoc and kill and maim civilians.  This is not to ignore, additionally, the persecution and harsh repressive tactics of electoral autocracies against their own citizens in such pretend democracies as Cambodia, Egypt, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. The world is an increasingly dangerous place, especially if free expression and free assembly is to what you aspire.

            As I have tried at length since 2022 to chronicle, the denial to Ukraine by the U. S. of long guns and air cover has greatly complicated Ukraine's ability to strike forcibly back at the invaders.  Ukraine's stirring battlefield successes in 2022 and 2023 have, except for the thrust on the ground into the Kursk region of Russia, not been duplicated in 2024.  Moreover, Ukraine just last week was forced to retreat from a key position in the Donetsk region in the country's east.  Losing Vuhledar means that Pokrovsk could soon fall as well. Ukrainians would then have a very difficult time preventing the Russians from surging forward across the plains that lead to Dinipro, their third largest city.

            As this column has indicated over and over, President Biden has been too cautious, too heedful of Putin's blackmailing nuclear threats. Ukrainians hence battle without the long-range artillery they need and the ability to prevent Russian advances from the air.  Biden has an election to win for Kamala Harris, hence his reluctance to risk combat which would provoke Putin unnecessarily.

            Many American and British military advisors assert that Biden fears without reason, and is succumbing to Putin's nuclear fakes. They remind us that Russia has not strongly reacted as yet to the Ukrainian hold of 500 square miles of its territory. It has continued to rein destruction from the air on Ukrainian cities, their civilians, and their now riddled electrical infrastructure.  Ukraine has managed to attack Russian fuel depots and naval bases in Russia, but with so many more men on the ground and aircraft in the sky, Putin's assault has too many numerical advantages.

            At this very difficult autumn moment, when the weather is turning more frigid and Ukraine military and civilian morale is becoming greatly taxed, the freedom of Ukraine, of Europe, and of the free world is perilously endangered. Biden should give up waiting until after November's U.S. presidential election. Ukraine -- and by extension our own beacon of bright light in defensive of a rule of law world order -- is too much danger.

            Admittedly, the battle to contain Putin's ambitions and prosecute a just and noble war has been greatly compromised by the outrage perpetrated by Hamas just across the borders of the Gaza Strip. Its killing of 1,200 innocent Israelis gave Putin running room. The U.S., its allies, and the entire world had its attention diverted from Putin's depredations to Israel's justified response, its firepower-intense attempt to extirpate Hamas and eliminate Hamas' leaders, and a campaign on the ground and in the air that has greatly weakened Hamas as a fighting force but has also killed 20,000 or more non-combatants.  And Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's boss, is still uncaptured along with about nearly 100 Israeli hostages.

            An all-out war may be about to break out between Iran and Israel, subsequent to Israel's very successful bombing and assassination of Hezbollah's leadership in Lebanon and Iran's missile attack last week on Israel. The war in southern Lebanon and the bombing of Beirut continues today, and an Israeli return strike on Iran itself is expected. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has regained much of the initiative that was lost to Sinwar and mostly forfeited by so much killing in Gaza, and few hostage recoveries.

            But neither the Israeli successes in Lebanon nor Israeli attacks on the Occupied Palestinian West Bank can lift the sense of dread that so permeates our beings, whether in North America, Southeast Asia, or Africa. If our new president is Kamala Harris, she can help to restore the world's sense of purpose and righteousness. Her opponent so victimizes and threatens Democrats (endangering their lives), and so vilifies peoples of darker complexion (like Haitians, whom he plans to deport), that the perils of the planet are compounded.  That is why, consciously or not, Trump is so much Putin's partner, so much an enabler of the likes of Hamas, marauding Sudanese armies, and vicious warlords in the Congo. The world would be much more peaceful if ego consumed despots and wannabe despots were permanently sidelined.  One of them, at least, needs his lying mouth taped tightly shut. After all, inciting violence or being a true threat to public safety is not protected speech under the first amendment.