History shows that economic primacy generally underpins military dominance and national power. The unraveling of the American economy over the past three weeks reminds us of that reality, explains Victor David Hanson, in today’s Washington Times.

America’s plummet from economic ascendancy, says Hanson, has turned the nation inward, gutted its reputation, and created opportunity for “predators—such as rogue oil-rich regimes—[that] suddenly sniff new openings.” History informs us of the terrifying consequences of such a massive power vacuum. Hanson continues (emphasis mine),

We’ve seen the connection between American economic crisis and world upheaval before. In the 1930s, the United States and its democratic allies, in the midst of financial collapse, disarmed and largely withdrew from foreign affairs. That isolation allowed totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia to swallow their smaller neighbors and replace the rule of law with that of the jungle. World War ii followed.During the stagflation and economic malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the Iranians stormed our embassy in Tehran, the communists sought to spread influence in Central America and a holocaust raged unchecked in Cambodia.

With this history in mind, we ought not to be surprised to learn that some of the world’s darkest forces have stepped up their activity in recent weeks.

First, Iranian President Ahmadinejad called, again, for the destruction of Israel. While this is nothing new for the Iranian leader, says Hanson, “rarely has he felt brazen enough to blame world financial problems on the Jews in general rather than on just Israelis.” On top of that, he “spouted his Hitlerian hatred” before world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

“Flush with petrodollar cash,” Hanson continues, “a cocky Iran thinks our government will be so sidetracked borrowing money for Wall Street that disheartened taxpayers won’t care to stop Tehran from going nuclear.”

Concurrent with Iran’s fearless diatribe, the resurging Russians, as we noted in this column last week, fox-trotted their way into America’s backyard, not only sending planes and a flotilla of navy ships to participate in war games with Venezuela, but also promising to give Hugo Chavez a billion dollars toward his military program, as well as assistance in the establishment of a nuclear program.

The scent of America’s rotting corpse seems to have drifted as far away as Asia, Hanson notes.

The lunatics running North Korea predictably smelled blood as well. So it announced it was reversing course and reprocessing fuel rods to restart its supposedly dismantled nuclear weapons program.Meanwhile, some shell-shocked American bankers looked to our “friend” China, which holds billions in American government securities, for emergency loans. But the Chinese—basking in their successful hosting of the Olympics, their first foray into outer space, and a massive rearmament—showed no interest in sending cash to reeling Wall Street firms.

Meanwhile in the Islamic theater in recent weeks, terrorist bombers have attacked the American Embassy in Yemen, the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, and maintained and even intensified their efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These are not exaggerations. The increase in rogue activity and hostile and anti-American gestures around the world since America’s financial 9/11 began a few weeks ago is measurable and alarming.

Geopolitics abhors a vacuum, and America’s slide into oblivion is creating a global power vacuum greater than any since the fall of the Roman Empire. We should expect this cycle to intensify: The quicker American influence declines, the quicker foreign powers and forces will work to fill the void.

McCain Takes Off the Gloves

In 30 days, America will elect a new president. And with John McCain’s campaign slipping farther behind Barack Obama in recent polls, the Republican nominee is planning to intensify his attacks against the senator from Illinois. Yesterday in Colorado, McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin criticized Barack Obama for “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

She was referring to the unrepentant Weatherman terrorist William Ayers, a man who has been on friendly terms with Obama for years. In his 2001 book Fugitive Days, Ayers wrote glowingly about his 1972 bombing of the Pentagon: “Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the [expletives] were finally going to get what was coming to them.”

The New York Times asked Ayers if he had any regrets for his violent behavior during the 1970s. “I don’t regret setting bombs,” he replied. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Like his 20-year association with Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s relationship with Ayers is disturbing on many levels. And the McCain campaign believes Americans need to be fully informed before voting. “Before people pull that lever in November, they have a right to know, and we have a duty to tell them, who Barack Obama is—and to shine a light on some of those fairly liberal and sometimes downright troubling relationships that he’s had,” a McCain adviser told Fox News yesterday.

If the McCain campaign concentrates on highlighting Obama’s troubling relationships over the next four weeks, we will be closely examining how this strategy impacts race relations in the United States. As my father wrote back in July, “This presidential election is different than any other. It is revealing a lot of racism in America. But here is the hidden danger: It is also inflaming more racism as it continues.”

With some mainstream media outlets already saying that racial misgivings might cost Obama the election, a McCain victory in November could possibly light the fuse of a racial time bomb.

Missing Ingredient: “Common” Sense

Over at Townhall.com, John Hawkins laments “The Death of Common Sense in America.” “By that,” he explains,

I mean that large portions of our country, including many of our representatives in Congress, have lost sight of conclusions so skull splittingly obvious that fifty years ago, Americans of both political parties would have agreed upon them almost unanimously.Just to name a few examples, when you borrow money, it does eventually have to be paid back. You shouldn’t buy a house you can’t afford. Nobody owes you a living. It’s not justice when the rulings of judges depend on ideology and personal preferences, not the Constitution. … Families are the building block of our society and the government should be extremely careful when it passes legislation that could negatively impact the family structure. People come before animals. You reap what you sow. … People who do a bad job shouldn’t be rewarded for it. When you deliberately lie, your credibility should suffer for it. You don’t have a “right” to other people’s property. You are the person primarily responsible for taking care of yourself.Truisms of this sort shouldn’t have much to do with politics or ideological leanings. They’re the sort of thing most people should learn from their parents, in church, or in elementary school. They’re that basic, that simple. Yet, you can point to people at every level of American society, including most significantly, large portions of Congress, that act as if these rules don’t apply.

Incidentally, you can find virtually all of those “rules” of common sense in the pages of the Bible.

Hawkins then shows the specific ways in which these truisms are routinely violated: consistent federal deficits, people who won’t work and expect the government to take care of them, people who feel it would be unfair to suffer the consequences of their mistakes, the idea that it’s the government’s responsibility to provide unlimited benefits regardless of whether it actually has the money to do so, and so on. He concludes:

[T]he lifestyle Americans are living today is absolutely unsustainable economically, culturally, and socially over the long-haul. … [W]e can be sure that there is rather sharp correction coming to this country because history doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

There’s another principle you’ll find in the Bible.

Why Isn’t Everybody Seeing This?

Also at Townhall today, Ken Connor mulls some of the lessons we should take from America’s financial meltdown. In essence, he advocates a return to basic morality:

Virtue may be its own reward, but there are other rewards that flow from it as well. Virtue in the marketplace should be encouraged and applauded, not mocked and ridiculed.Honesty, accountability, and transparency are essential to the survival of free markets. Unless those virtues undergird the markets, they will collapse under the weight of greed, avarice, and deceit.Men are not angels (as James Madison rightly observed). Therefore, government has an obligation to ensure honesty, transparency, and accountability in the marketplace. Reasonable regulations in pursuit of such virtues should be welcomed by reasonable people from all quarters of the market.Material misrepresentations about one’s products or services or financial condition constitute fraud and should not be tolerated. Perpetrators of fraud should be prosecuted by government. …The financial world needs to return to honesty, transparency, and accountability in its dealings. Unrestrained greed, ambition, and immediate gratification will only lead to more crises like the current sub-prime mess. Our government must live up to its responsibility to hold criminals accountable for their crimes, and we need to relearn the responsible thrift of our forebears who learned this same lesson after the Great Depression. That calamity taught them the importance of saving and the danger of living on credit. If we do not learn that same lesson now, we will learn it the hard way in the future.

Talk about common sense. Why is this not the banner conclusion drawn by every analyst of the situation? As we brought out in a recent column, breaking God’s law—e.g. the Ten Commandments that forbid stealing, lying and coveting—will always break us.

Connor expresses the hope that morality and ethics will make a comeback. For America, it’s too little, too late. But the lesson we have written will go down in the history books and be studied as a cautionary tale by future generations—once a true economic revolution takes place built on God’s laws.

Russia Scuffles With Ukraine

Last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of aiding Georgia by providing weapons and military personnel during Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August. The Washington Times wrote, “The timing of Russia’s statements underlined Moscow’s drive to increase its leverage in the neighboring former Soviet republic of Ukraine.”

Russia and Ukraine have also been sparring over Sevastopol, a sea port in the Black Sea shared by both countries. Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has been funding projects within the city to make it “unmistakably clear that the Ukrainians should not expect a Russian withdrawal.” Emphasizing the importance of the port to Russia, he said, “If we lose Sevastopol, we lose the entire Caucasus.”

National chairman of the “Russian bloc” Andrew Svistunov said the mood in Sevastopol was “unfortunately” similar to that of the Abkhazians and South Ossetians before war erupted. He said the city should expect a “hot autumn” though he believes war is unnecessary—in favor instead of Ukrainians returning to the Russian fold peacefully. “Why risk another historic tragedy when the real issue is that we all belong to one single nation?” he asked.

Ukraine is divided over the nato membership bid backed by their pro-Western leader Viktor Yushchenko. According to the Washington Times, “Russia’s use of force in Georgia has heightened nervousness among many Ukrainians about their larger neighbor, whose leaders are vehemently opposing Mr. Yushchenko’s efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO. The Kremlin has warned NATO against granting membership to Ukraine or Georgia.” According to Spiegel, the Crimea’s ethnic Russians “see themselves about to embark on a new form of defensive action: against the political leadership in Ukraine, which is seeking to join the nato alliance.”

But Miroslav Mamchak, chairman of the “Ukraine Soceity” and general manager of a military radio station, said “Ukraine desperately needs to become part of nato. Or re-obtain nuclear weapons. There is only one thing Russians understand: the language of power.”

In August, editor in chief Gerald Flurry said he didn’t believe Russia would ever allow the Ukraine to become a part of nato. After the attack on Georgia, Mr. Flurry asked, “Will a crisis occur over Ukraine? That area is the breadbasket of Russia, and surely it is willing to wage war over that as well.”

EU Bailout Plan May Not Include Britain

European leaders met in Paris yesterday to discuss their own bailout package in response to the global credit crisis. “Sharply criticizing what they said were the American roots of what has become a global credit crisis,” the New York Times wrote yesterday, “Europe’s leaders insisted it was time for the European Union to act decisively.”

Besides their continued rebuke for the American system of economics, the other significant development from these meetings is that Europe’s decisive action, whatever that may be, most likely will not include Britain. Notice this comment from Friday’s Washington Post:

Christopher Allsopp, a senior economics research fellow at Oxford University and former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, said any European rescue fund would be unlikely to include Britain, which continues to use its own currency, the pound. “It would be more of a eurozone thing,” he said, referring to the 15 countries that use the common currency, the euro.

The Continent, we have reported previously, sees Britain not as an innocent victim of a global crisis, but rather as part of the problem.

The separation between Britain and the EU is growing by the day. Soon, there will be a complete break.

Elsewhere on the Web

California, the world’s sixth-largest economy, is teetering on the brink of financial ruin. In the next few weeks, the Golden State may run out of cash needed to pay for even the most basic services. We have written before about the curses that have pounded California. For more, go here and here.

Germany’s interior minister has warned that an economic depression could turn many of his own people to extremism. “We learned from the worldwide economic crisis of the 1920s (1930s) that an economic crisis can result in an incredible threat for all of society,” said Wolfgang Schäuble in an interview with Der Spiegel. “The consequences of that depression was Adolf Hitler and, indirectly, World War ii and Auschwitz.” Schäuble indicated that a similar scenario could happen again if the current economic crisis is not properly managed.