It’s a dangerous world we are living in. The Russo-Ukrainian War continues in its second year. Iran continues its nuclear program while making threats against Israel and the west. China is working hard to overtake the U.S. as the world’s premier superpower and freely admits its designs on Taiwan.

Meanwhile it flies balloons over much of our defense establishment with impunity and then we find out that NORAD our supposedly vaunted radar system that can spot ballistic missile attacks has a hard time seeing slow moving balloons and low flying cruise missiles.

The President Joe Biden administration has made the United States appear weaker on the world stage. Our withdrawal from Afghanistan under cover of darkness in August signaled to the world, rightly or wrongly, that we are a weak and timorous ally that cannot be trusted and has sent a message to our enemies that we lack the will to act decisively in a crises.

Biden is given credit for strengthening NATO but that happened only because Putin’s Russia attacked the Ukraine and finally caught Europe’s attention. Also, Europeans were happy to see Biden elected in 2020 because unlike President Donald Trump he did not criticize them for not doing their fair share in defending the west. However, according to a recent study by the European Council on Foreign Relations, European nations don’t think Biden is in a position to help the U.S. to make a comeback as the preeminent world power.

Reviewing the current U.S. military situation, stories abound that our armed forces are more intent on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training than they are in training for war at a time when war seems to inch nearer and nearer with each day. I found an online ad for Army Diversity Training that was mostly gobbledygook. A great American once said that the role of armed forces is to destroy the enemy and break things. When we make our armed forces primarily instruments of social change we are asking for trouble.

On the oceans, many defense experts tell us that China is focused on outbuilding the U.S. Navy and warn us that the side with the most ships usually wins. While that may have been true at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 it is less so now. While having many ships may allow you to operate over a larger area of ocean, in naval warfare experience and training counts heavily and there the U.S. has an edge.

Also the U.S. has 11-attack carrier groups able to project power with 100 years’ experience in operating carriers while China has three in commission but has had problems training carrier pilots. Still the U.S needs to develop a ship building program to ensure that, unlike in the recent past, a ship design can fulfill the mission it is designed for.

In 2022 the U.S. military did not meet its recruitment goals. Sources give different reasons for this problem that range from recruits who cannot meet physical standards or have a record of arrests, to changing attitudes towards military service in the United States. Others say that the dismissal of members of the military for their refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine was a factor with others saying the problem lay with a full employment economy.

Military Times, a publications with a readership made up of active and retired military suggested to its readers last year that they could help end the recruiting shortage by talking to their children and others about the benefits of military service. According to Military Times reader responses were surprising with many stating that they would do no such thing because the military they knew no longer exists since the institution of DEI training.

Critics of the Department of Defense’s recruitment programs say it never digs deep enough to determine the real reasons why recruitment goals are not being met. The military needs to get its act together and determine those reasons and develop a plan to overcome them. We live in a dangerous world and there may not be a lot of time to fix those problems.

Today we will be in any major conflict from the beginning. We have to be prepared now.

Further, in the long term we must get our fiscal house in order and ensure that our educational system is producing young people capable of meeting the technological challenges of the future in both war and peace.

Finally, there must never again exist a situation where there are questions regarding our top leadership’s connections or that of family members to a potential enemy. Those questions are perhaps unwarranted but they are being asked.

Remember, it’s a dangerous world.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com