Our unique and very serious crisis in political leadership. It has become glaringly obvious to key nations around the world that America has incompetent leadership without great promise of improvement in the next election. It appears that after nearly 250 years American democracy has reached the point where it is unable to choose reliable leaders. It was a mistake for the Republican Party to follow the lead of the Democratic Party (following recommendations of the McGovern Fraser commission) in choosing its presidential nominees by popular vote only and giving up the power of the national party apparatus to influence the choice of the nominee.
The threat from China especially over Taiwan, and China’s build-up of missiles, naval forces and nuclear, both tactical and strategic, and their effort to achieve world dominance in technology and control of critical minerals and military power. The importance of Ukraine prevailing against Russia for both protection of NATO and as a warning to China of the grave risk of invading Taiwan. The failure to rebuild that part of our defense/industrial complex needed to furnish the type weapons judged most effective in deterring China and Russia, particularly tactical nuclear, missile, naval, space, cyber and communications networks. The way to avoid potential tactical use of nuclear weapons is to have a clear superiority in those weapons systems.
The threat from unsustainable growth in entitlements and irresponsible discretionary federal spending leading to growth in the national debt that threatens loss of trust in America’s currency and an unprecedented financial crisis.
The Federal Reserve’s mismanagement of the money supply in an attempt to accommodate irresponsible fiscal policy has allowed us to get into an increasingly dangerous debt situation.
The aggressive growth of the administrative state without effective checks and balances.
Continued federal interference with and takeover of proper state government roles through a combination of constitutionally questionable regulations and subsidies with strings attached that give the federal government ever more control over state government activities.
China’s aggressive investments in all the key technologies, both military and industrial, and in the most advanced and dangerous weapons systems. China has openly stated it intends to become the dominant world power and to do it by becoming the world leader in all areas of key technologies, including AI, the most advanced chips, and military weapons.
The current administration’s economically destructive and fiscally wasteful approach to address climate change may be more dangerous than climate change itself. It would fail any cost benefit analysis by a tremendously wide margin and is obviously ideologically driven.
The shortcut/major threats section would focus on these main threats, and others that arise, and articles chosen with this in mind.