VDH:
Here is a sampling of some recent news abroad:
A Russian guard attacked a U.S. diplomatic official at the door to the American Embassy in Moscow, even as NATO leaders met to galvanize against the next act of Russian aggression.
The Islamic State continued its global terrorist rampage with horrific attacks in Baghdad and Istanbul.
Iran rebuffed United Nations warnings and defiantly boasted that it will continue testing ballistic missiles. German intelligence believes that Iran, empowered by the release of $100 billion in impounded cash, is violating its recent American-led nonproliferation deal in an effort to import nuclear bomb-making technology.
North Korea conducted a test (unsuccessful, apparently) of a submarine-based guided missile.
There are various ways of interpreting these ominous events.
They could represent just more empty chest-thumping by our enemies.
Or, because this is an election year in the U.S., enemies are posturing in order to advance their agendas, as they often do in times of uncertainty about who will be the next president.
Or, Obama is perceived as an exceptionally lame lame-duck president who is hoping to wind down his tenure in passivity, without a major incident abroad that might imperil his presidential legacy.
Or, after the explosive rise of ISIS, the disaster in Benghazi, the failed reset with Russia, the unchecked Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, the concessions in the Iran deal, the veritable implosion of the Middle East, and the president’s counterproductive sermonizing about Brexit, enemies sense that the U.S. is directionless. These enemies may be unsure whether America still wishes to — or even can — exercise its traditional leadership of the free world and remain the custodian of the post-war international order.
But perhaps there is yet another catalyst prompting such events.
The United States appears to be entering another era of dangerous internal instability similar to the one it endured in the 1960s-1970s.
After the attacks by radical Islamists in San Bernardino and Orlando, Americans did not rally together as they had after 9/11. Instead, almost immediately, the country was torn further apart. About half the nation saw the terrorist killings as a reason for stricter gun control rather than a reason to fear the continuing spread of radical Islamic terrorism. The other half worried that political correctness and the president’s refusal to even mention radical Islamic terrorism are eroding the ability to deter it.
America’s enemies draw their own conclusions.
After the Orlando attack, al-Qaeda urged lone-wolf terrorists in the U.S. to focus exclusively on white targets. The organization’s leaders apparently worry that if terrorists again hit minority communities, it will prompt a bickering America to blame itself rather than give full credit to the attackers.