Are These Our Locust Years?

Unprecedented, suicidal attacks on our civilization . . . that may devour us.

The “locust years” was how Winston Churchill described the Thirties, the decade that started with the Great Depression and ended with Germany’s invasion of Poland that sparked the most destructive war in history.

Could we be reprising the follies, delusions, and hubris of those years?

Between the two world wars, the allies who had won the first sank into civilizational exhaustion and moral ennui. The horrors of the Great War turned “never again”––the pledge to never, ever repeat such carnage––into pacifism, socialism, naïve internationalism, communist terror, reckless disarmament, totalitarian police states, and finally appeasement of a feral aggressor. All these ills guaranteed that the slaughter would indeed return––worsened by the holocaust, gulags, millions of refugees and displaced persons, atomic bombs, and the massive destruction of cities in Japan and Germany, an apocalypse wrought by the most civilized and advanced countries in the world.

The West today may seem to be light-years from the Thirties and its lethal dysfunctions, and the monstrous violence that decade bred. Even so, in many respects, our cultural decay, political corruption, and zany stupidities are willfully undermining not just our foundational political institutions, but science itself, not to mention common sense and traditional wisdom. These unprecedented, suicidal attacks on our civilization are breeding the swarms of locusts that may devour us.

First, the threat of large-scale wars is growing, ignored or dismissed by too many of those responsible for defending our lives and interests. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a case study in how to make sure such aggression will happen and perhaps succeed. Like Hitler, Putin had signaled for years his intentions and motives––to rebuild the Russian Empire lost in 1991, along with half the Soviet-era population. Nor was his ruthless willingness to use devastating force against civilians unknown, not after his brutal pacification of Chechnya in 1999-2009. Yet each move in his aggression was met with diplomatic braggadocio, school-marmish scolding, and useless sanctions.

And just as Hitler’s serial aggression and violations of the Versailles Treaty in the Thirties were met with bluster by the Allies and the League of Nations, so too Putin’s territorial grabs in South Ossetia and eastern Ukraine, culminating in the 2014 seizure of Crimea, were met with empty rhetoric and Swiss-cheese sanctions. And once Biden skedaddled from Afghanistan, leaving behind hundreds of our citizens, thousands of our Afghan allies, and billions in weapons–– at the cost of 13 murdered American soldiers––why wouldn’t Putin try conclusions and restart his ambition to swallow Ukraine whole?

Now we are entangled in an expensive war––at least $115 billion and counting––that currently is stalemated, with no feasible way out through negotiation or even withdrawal, considering the enormous moral hazard that a Russian victory would confront us and our Nato allies. And given Russia’s overwhelming advantage in population, and Putin’s traditional Russian penchant for sacrificing wholesale his own citizens, time is on his side.

Meanwhile, China has been busy too, buying access and loyalty throughout the world, including Latin America, our geopolitical backyard, while at home it is building a powerful military that may not be the equal of ours, but is still big enough for Xi to gamble that...

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