Any person who has caught 30 minutes of world news recently will easily spot the odd man out in the following group: Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, James Jones, Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi.

Who is James Jones?

Mr. Jones is a retired four-star general, and currently America’s national security adviser. He was also the Obama administration’s last-minute choice to jet to Poland earlier this week and stand alongside the aforementioned presidents and prime ministers in Tuesday’s 70th-anniversary commemoration of the start of World War ii.

The absence of Barack Obama—or his vice president, or even America’s secretary of state—from Tuesday’s important memorial service did not go unnoticed. “The lack of understanding of European history and sensitivities was not lost on the Polish chattering classes,” wrote Helle Dale in the Washington Times. “They have been in a justifiable uproar over this mother of all snubs, feeling a mixture of humiliation and neglect.” This snub is extremely telling.

America’s wispy presence amid a gathering of giants on an occasion of tremendous historic significance at a time when Europe and Russia are undergoing massive and alarming political change is symptomatic of a vitiated, terribly misguided foreign policy.

“If the United States does not send a senior administration figure to Westerplatte it will be a shameful embarrassment,” observed Theodore Bromund last week, “highlighted by the fact that the two leading statesman there will be representing Germany and Russia” (emphasis mine throughout). The heads of state of Poland’s World War ii enemies managed to make it Tuesday, but its staunchest and longest-standing ally could barely muster a presence.

Few nations were more affected by World War ii than Poland. Nearly a quarter of a million soldiers were killed, along with upward of 2.3 million Polish civilians, and 3 million Jews. That was during the war, which was merely the opening chapter in Poland’s saga of trial and tribulation. After the war ended in 1945 and normalcy began to return to Britain, France and America, the Poles, freed from Hitler’s jackboot, found themselves trapped under the tanks of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. It was more than 40 years before the shackles of communism were removed, and Poland was born as an independent state, whereupon it quickly became one of America’s most fervent allies in Europe.

And President Obama couldn’t spare a day for the Poles.

It was an indicator of the moral bankruptcy of American foreign policy. But that’s not all it was.

Russia is currently undergoing its greatest transformation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989. Under strongman Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin is cutting itself a new role as a global leader in energy, the regional hegemon in Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe, and the predominant counter-force to what it perceives to be American global hegemony.

Meanwhile, Europe is in the midst of its greatest transformation since World War ii. Germany, most notably, is more unified and influential than it has been since the Second World War, and is restoring itself to what it believes is its rightful position as the king and decision-maker of Europe. “For the first time since the end of World War ii,” Stratfor wrote earlier this year, “Germany has an independent foreign policy befitting an internally unified economic superpower” (June 26).

Berlin and Moscow perceived America’s snub of Poland as a sign that Washington lacks the interest to be a determining factor in their reemergence as dominant powers!

The United States is pivotal to Poland’s existence as an independent state. Geographically, Warsaw exists at the intersection point of Russian and German ambitions for territorial expansion. “Russian and German domination are familiar themes for Central Europe [including Poland],” Stratfor observed. “Since both Germany and Russia historically have had interests in the region, states often looked to outside protectors with no immediate designs for the territory” (July 17). Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has been the primary guarantor of the independence of Central European states.

Today, the message seeping from the White House is that America plans to leave the Poles and Central Europeans to fend for themselves against the rising Russians and Germans.

“Poland is under pressure at the moment—fearing abandonment by the United States,” noted Stratfor this week, “while Russia is resurging and commanding influence in Central Europe, and the relationship between Berlin and Moscow is growing closer” (September 1). Will Poland (and Central Europe) find itself a point of negotiation between Moscow and Berlin—as it was in the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact—as they attempt to strike some sort of geographic equilibrium between what are ultimately conflicting ambitions?

Whatever happens, America appears to be leaving Poland stranded on what Stratfor termed “Europe’s superhighway of conquest” (August 14).

It is also worth considering America’s dithering and reported abandonment of its long-planned ballistic missile defense (bmd) shield in Poland. This shield would put U.S. troops on Polish soil. It calls for the construction of 10 missile interceptors, and would be, most significantly, a confidence-building gesture toward Warsaw and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. In essence, the bmd program is a measure of the strength and commitment of U.S. foreign policy, and especially America’s willingness to invest time and resources into amplifying its voice in European affairs, confronting Russian ambitions on its periphery, and checking Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The abandonment of the bmd program in Poland, Nile Gardiner wrote in the Telegraph over the weekend,

would represent a huge turnaround in American strategic thinking on a global missile defense system, and a massive betrayal of two key U.S. allies in Eastern and Central Europe. Such a move would significantly weaken America’s ability to combat the growing threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program, and would hand a major propaganda victory to the Russians.

“This is a terrible decision that reduces nato’s security, encourages Iran to proceed full speed ahead with its nuclear program, kowtows to Russian pressure, and stabs our Polish and Czech allies in the back, after they made the difficult decision to support us,” opined Theodore Bromund.

Together, Washington’s pathetic presence at Tuesday’s ceremony in Poland and its seemingly imminent abandonment of its bmd shield in Poland are just another sign of America’s handicapped, inept foreign policy. If we consider this sign along with the countless others—including Washington’s diabolical attempt to destroy its own intelligence infrastructure, or its constant bootlicking of radical Islam, or its unwillingness to defend the Jewish state—it becomes apparent that the United States is careening toward becoming an irrelevant power.

We are not surprised.

Daniel 11:40-44 could be considered the keynote prophecy of the Trumpet. And as Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains in The King of the South, this is an end-time prophecy about the clash of three distinct power blocs. Verse 40 discusses the first clash, which occurs when the king of the north (a German-led European empire) invades the Middle East and destroys the king of the south (led by Iran). This clash marks the beginning of World War iii.

The second major clash is mentioned in verse 44, when the king of the north, after clashing with the king of the south, is forced to turn and confront the “tidings out of the east,” which, as the Bible explains elsewhere, is the army of a great Asian bloc, led primarily by Russia and China.

Mr. Flurry spoke about this prophecy to students at Herbert W. Armstrong college this week, saying, “The most important part of this prophecy is what it doesn’t say.” Read the entire prophecy. The United States is not mentioned once. Why?

Because America at this time does not exist as a major political or military force in the world.

This spectacular prophecy is a forecast about the downfall of America as a superpower as much as it is the rise and collision of the king of the north, the king of the south and the kings of the East. And just think: We witnessed the partial fruition of this prophecy in the events that unfolded this week in little old Gdansk, Poland.

Now that is inspiring!