Being nice can cause a war

Among former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s many illuminating “rules” is his trenchant observation that “weakness is provocative.”
Indeed, the accelerating instability we see worldwide is, in no small measure, a product of the weakness being communicated at every turn by Barack Obama’s administration. Worse yet, the steps the President is taking to weaken America further will make it vastly more difficult to contend with the aggression he has invited.

phIn a characteristically brilliant op-ed article in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, Harvard professor Niall Ferguson warned that the United States was engaged in the defense and foreign policy equivalent of the Federal Reserve’s bid to begin weaning the economy off of its massive purchases of U.S. T-bills that is known as the “taper” that has roiled world markets and currencies. As Prof. Ferguson puts it: “We are witnessing [a fundamental shift] in the national security strategy of the U.S. – and, like the Fed’s tapering, this one also means big repercussions for the world.”

Consider but a few of examples of such repercussions:

  •   China has declared much of the East and South China Seas to be its territorial waters.  …
  •  The Iranian mullahs now know that the U.S. and the rest of the so-called “international community” will not be able to prevent the realization of their decades-old nuclear ambitions.

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