Great piece here David. Logical and accurate in almost all of your analysis. While it impossible to please everyone, I believe the Ukraine situation to be an existential threat to our closest Allies in Europe and therefore to the free world. Biden has horribly bungled just about every decision he (or whoever is actually making these decisions) has made. It’s difficult to apply logic to an unrestrained madman (madmen in Putin and Xi) who possesses nuclear weapons and is hell-bent on achieving his illogical goals. No level of ‘negotiation’ could have dissuaded Hitler from invading Europe back in 1936. It’s widely known that if the allies attacked Hitler’s forces to repel his aggression in the Rhineland in 1936, he would have been easily defeated and suffered major setbacks in his planning (Hitler admitted to this himself in his diary). Despite Hitler showing the world exactly who he was and what his plans were, the hapless Chamberlain and Halifax continued to beg for meetings…and subsequently declared that they had saved the world from another World War with the signing of the Munich Agreement of 1938 (after Hitler had already taken the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia). The only thing the failed Munich Agreement achieved was to allow Hitler to retrench to continue his attack on Europe. The Munich Agreement failed in just 6 months time and is widely understood by historians to be a “failed act of appeasement” and has become a phrase that demonstrates the futility of the appeasement of madmen running totalitarian states. Putin and Xi’s ‘limitless partnership’ represents the Gathering Storm that will surely take our world into WW III…whether we appease or not.

Trotsky’s famous quote is in play today: “You might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

I’ve spent the last three days in Normandy with our senior military leadership. I’ve had discussion after discussion around Russia and China. Not one of our senior military leaders wants war. They refer to the situation we find ourselves in as the most difficult, dangerous, and dire situation they have ever seen in their lifetime. Not one of these leaders wants a single American life to be lost…but make no mistake about it, they all know this war is coming. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are all working together. Xi and Putin have publicly declared their partnership and subsequently ratified it. Putin will continue his aggression and I expect it to be somewhat simultaneous with Xi’s attacks of the Second Thomas Shoal in the Philippines before he attacks Taiwan. We must PLAY TO WIN…and not to simply stay in the game. Those that came before us fought and died for our freedom. We must do everything we can to protect that freedom from totalitarian madmen. The entire free world is at stake.

Appeasing madmen…ceding Putin’s advances with ‘peace’ agreements…is not the path we should follow. We must make very difficult decisions today, Or more difficult decisions will be made for us in the future. @DavidSacks