By Wes Pedersen
As a kid, I had nightmares. The bogeyman was going to get me. My older sister made sure I got the message.
These days I am having what can best be described as anytime frightmares.
Many are motivated by the certain knowledge that the bogeyman will be a sneaky, conniving politician who, with his evil colleagues, is going to do me in tomorrow. Often by simply not doing anything, as in Congress.
In these scenarios, the knight riding to my rescue is rarely the president of the United States of America. He is too busy trying to catch up with his Cabinet on all the things he has meant to do over the past three years.
Other frightmares are born of headlines of disasters and pending disasters here and abroad.
So here I am, brooding over questions that sometimes just scare the hell out of me when I think I know, or have found, the answer.
Questions like:
Iran. Should we not stop pushing Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear weapons plant and do the job ourselves?
We are in Iran’s sights now. Iranian leaders of varied ilk have all but promised our annihilation once the plant is opened. Anyone who thinks it is Israel’s fight should understand that we are Iran’s principal target.
Iran has threatened a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz. It has threatened to cut off oil supplies to countries supporting sanctions against it for its insistence on pursuing a deadly atomic policy.
It has taken its dispute with Israel to New Delhi, Tbilisi and Bangkok via terrorist bombings aimed at Israeli diplomats.
It has indicated a willingness to target a variety of installations in the U.S. via car bombs and the like while it waits to get the most deadly weapon of all in its unstable hands.
Iran’s eagerness to kill large numbers of innocents, even to start a new war, is testimony to our need to consider a first strike to defang this increasingly dangerous Middle East renegade nation.
North Korea. With a not long out of puberty heir to Dear Leader status now strutting to the beat of a stern military hierarchy, North Korea is trouble waiting to happen.
The young Dear Leader, Kim Il Eun, is hailed by North Korea’s propaganda machine as a military expert, having directed tests of missiles capable of packing atomic weaponry.
If he is eager to prove his mettle, sending a nuclear-laden missile across the Pacific to the U.S. would do it. The world would then have the war it has been expecting for decades.
The budget. We are not going to tame this monster with mortal cuts to federal and state programs that make life survivable for most Americans. Obama’s $3.8T spending plan, and any plan conceived by the GOP, is unsustainable in an election year, and the president has indicated as much by approving a delay in debt reduction.
At some point, and it cannot be far away, the debt ceiling will have to be abolished. We must eventually do the unthinkable to prevent the nation from sinking into oblivion.
China. China’s next president, Xi Jinping, is on a brief charm offensive the China Daily says is to promote public diplomacy. He comes as a guest invited by President Obama via Joe Biden.
He’s pushing economic ties with the backing of U.S. Chamber President Tom Donohue, who wants China to invest more in America.
We are already China’s greatest debtor, and Chinese investors are buying up Midwestern farmland with what must be great glee.
China is backing its version of public diplomacy with boasts of military power enhanced on every front. Its policies remain dictated at the core by Mao’s conviction that all “political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.” It is waging a quiet, but vicious, cyber war against us, targeting U.S. federal, military and corporate targets.
China’s deplorable record of continuing violations of human rights is at direct odds with public diplomacy.
China is no pussycat. It is playing us from every angle. It scares me. And that’s from someone who conceived and edited the book on China, The China Model, long ago.
Cyberwar. Some day we’re going to wake up and find our companies and our federal offices, our hospitals, our schools, invaded and looted by hackers based overseas and linked to anti-American governments.
Top government officials, from President Obama on, say this is the threat that concerns them most of all. Ordinary citizens, businesses and the media are not taking it seriously.
Tell your members of Congress and your media contacts they need to really focus on this threat.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C.
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