CAPT David L O “Bulldog” Hayward (Retd)
Defense Analyst, Management Consultant and Author
Founder: China Research Team Australia (2003)

Our world waits in dire trepidation. Will a worst case scenario eventuate any time soon? Will mankind survive potential Armageddon? [ i.e. In the New Testament, place where the kings of the earth under demonic leadership will wage war on the forces of God at the end of history?]  Again Nostradamus has talked of the existential danger when the Bear and Dragon get together.

China and Russia and their respective evil surrogate States have now morphed into an ideological hardcore Leninist/Marxist Communist entity. An authoritarian monolithic structure bent on obtaining global hegemony. A military juggernaut the world has never seen before: to surpass all previous Empires seen in political history.

Can America and China (and Russia) escape Thucydides’s Trap? [Graham Allison: Destined For War, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York; 2017]. Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State, states “Thucydides’s Trap identifies a cardinal challenge to world order: the impact of a rising power on a ruling power. I read the book with great interest. I can only hope that the U.S.-China relationship becomes the fifth case to resolve itself peacefully, rather than the thirteenth to result in war”.

By contrast, Senior Colonel Professor Liu Mingfu, China National Defense University argues “not only for a Chinese defense force equal to the American military, but makes an appeal for Americans to give up our domineering “hegemony”. [Liu Mingfu, The China Dream – Great Power Thinking & Strategic Posture in the Post American Era, English translation, CN Times Books, Inc., New York, 2015].

Affronted by this all conquering mechanism, the West has recoiled in abject fear, appeasement and panic. Almost paranoiac and stunned – impotent and unable to do much to push back… Our politicians are scurrying around aimlessly seeking ‘deus ex machina ‘piecemeal solutions. They threaten useless, ineffective, would-be economic sanctions. FONOP in China’s Near Seas. They have desperately formed last ditch new alliances constituting an urgent rearguard action: for example AUKUS and QUAD, a regenerated Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Likewise they have solidified the longer established ANZAC, ASEAN,  the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) of the EU and are examining United Nations (UN) reform, et.al  According to the Brookings Institute, America is retooling its alliances to meet the China challenge…

Are we witnessing the birth pangs of WWIII? President Joe Biden has publically indicated on TV media he is reluctant to send U.S. troops in volume into Ukraine for fear of invoking a global conflict. Biden has cautiously undertaken token measures, by deploying elements of the 82^nd Airborne Division and a Army Stryker squadron into Eastern Europe. To quote:

“WASHINGTON — The United States will move approximately 3,000 service members to Romania, Poland and Germany in response to Russia’s continuing build-up of forces on its western border with Ukraine and in Belarus, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said today during a news conference.” [By Jim Garamone, DOD News, February 4, 2022, Internet Source]

Many of these measures are last minute response to the Communist ideological onslaught confronting our free world. Will western leaders be wrong footed by the Kremlin?

Vladimir Putin frequently denies Russia will invade Ukraine, but is this deliberate deception to fool the West? Putin has backed himself into a corner by assembling 100,000 plus elite Russian troops in Belarus and on the eastern and southern borders of Ukraine. Putin cannot afford to lose face. Nor will he stop once he has taken Ukraine, thus taking example from Hitler in 1939.

A recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC, highlights the policies behind Russia’s Westpolitik (or Western Policy) and the European Union, dated July 8, 2021. [Internet Source].

The cogent analysis includes the objectives, motives, and strategies of Russia’s policy of re-imperialization in the so called “in between states” of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as the successes, limits, and failures of this policy; and examines the consequences of this policy for Russia’s relationship with the European Union and for the European Union itself.

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and constant media exposure alludes to the brutal facts confronting us all. The fog of imminent war is in the air. This can be interpreted as: ‘a resurgent iron curtain is dropping down upon Eastern Europe’. A new reality: this time mankind is really in trouble. We are at an anxious moment in developing world history.

Do we abandon Taiwan and Ukraine to their respective Chinese and Russian fates? Who is next? Perhaps for instance:  the Baltic States, Finland, Poland, Myanmar, Cambodia, South Korea, Bhutan, Nepal and Vietnam. These vulnerable smaller nations are juxtaposed on the political periphery of the all embracing Sino-Russian continental landmass, gobbling up all in its path…

Many fragile, impotent, leaderless, western governments, are about to tumble, very few strong statesmen are emerging, an unfortunate return to Trump mania seems imminent on the horizon, other governments will collapse through induced and relentless, stealthy political warfare [Clive Hamilton: Silent Invasion, Hardie Grant Books, Australia: 2018], ASIO constantly issues warnings in the media, and ASIS in many other free world countries; sophisticated Sino-Russian clandestine strategies are pervading many of our democratic institutions and more… We have been under constant siege since the 1930s. Xi Jinping’s more recent Secret Directive: Document Number Nine, more properly referred to as the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere: translated into Simplified Chinese as the expression: 关于当前意识形态领域情况的通报; deliberately opposes our traditional western beliefs; namely seven dangerous Western values, allegedly including media freedom and judicial independence.

Again, will our ‘Odysseus-like Lotus eaters’ wake up from their debilitating stupor? [Peter Hartcher: Red Zone – China’s Challenge and Australia’s Future; Introduction, Schwartz Books Pty Ltd: 2021].

So must we finally bring out the ‘Slaughterbots’? See the YouTube video titled: “Sci-Fi Short Film “Slaughterbots” presented by DUST”, (Facebook, 14 Oct., 2020). Can we let the carnage and genocide commence in retribution (say) of the 50,000 civilians about to be slaughtered in Ukraine should a Russian full scale invasion eventuate soonest… We are surely lost. There is no tomorrow for our beleaguered planet. The end is nigh… This then is the potential prelude to WWIII.

Our planet is already in its death throes as a consequence of overpopulation, food and water shortages including famine, mass refugee migration, climate change, global propensity for local kinetic warfare, terrorism and overall the continuing hypersonic, manoeuvrable ballistic missile arms race. These factors are a recipe for disaster, let alone the current escalating crisis.

We are still constructing luxury passenger liners, as a means of escape, yet oblivious to the maelstrom of events about to hit us. We should be building new warships to match those of the 300 warships among China’s maritime assets. Perceived as the largest navy and mercantile marine in the world. [Andrew Erickson, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI].

This predictive, all important blog will go unrecognised. There will be no viral response. Very few are listening or indeed paying attention to this sad message. Although broadcast/shared among over 21,000 Linkedin “Followers”, many personal contacts on Google, and universally on the Internet; by endlessly trying to eradicate evil for ever; my message will be lost in cyberspace… A forlorn barking dog lost in the wilderness.