Defending Lady Liberty: Can democracies no longer win wars?

Washington under the Biden-Harris administration is radically redefining America’s global role in safeguarding democracy. We defend liberty, but only to the extent that it is just barely surviving.

Lady Liberty is increasingly unwilling to fight to win. As evidenced in Ukraine and the Middle East, Washington does not want our allies to achieve victory; it is enough for them to survive to defend another day.

That has been the consistent self-defeating message coming from the White House since President Biden took office. Now, that same messaging is being echoed by Vice President Kamala Harris as she is rapidly becoming the de facto president, and her campaign largely takes control of U.S. national security and foreign policy.

We have witnessed this losing strategy play out in Ukraine — and now tragically in the Middle East. It is also the modus operandi in waiting for Taipei should Chinese ruler Xi Jinping opt to militarily retake the island of Taiwan.

Winning, in effect, has a new and dangerously watered-down meaning in the Biden-Harris administration, which negligently calls for not winning, but “proportionate responses,” “demonstrating restraint” and “defending as long as it takes.” This is a sure-fire way to ensure that democracy dies.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are all playing to win. They are not defending, but on the offensive.

Moscow is waging war in Ukraine and is deploying paramilitary forces such as the Wagner Group to take Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against the U.S. and its allies to the Sahel in Africa and elsewhere.

Beijing is waging an economic campaign against the West and rapidly building up its military forces.

Pyongyang continues to play nuclear blackmail and harass South Korea and Japan.

Iran is waging an asymmetrical war against Israel and Western interests across the Middle East and the Red Sea through its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq.

The U.S. won World War I, World War II and the Cold War. But today, Washington is unwilling to win World War III.

World War III, as we have previously noted in these pages, does not look or feel like Hollywood said it would. No Doomsday scenarios. No day after radioactive scenarios to survive. Rather, it is a global war that we are losing — a death, if you will, of a thousand cuts.

Washington needs to find its bipartisan 1776 mojo again and start putting new wins on the board. Opportunities abound.

Ukraine and Israel are the obvious examples. Others, equally as important, exist as well — including one in our own hemisphere.

Consider Venezuela. For 25-years, it has been gripped by the totalitarian regimes of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.

Last Sunday, Maduro was caught red-handed falsely declaring that he had won the latest presidential election with 51 percent of the votes. Same-day Venezuelan exit polls strongly indicate that his opposition won 73.2 percent of the vote.

The White House’s response? Essentially, “thoughts and prayers.” It released an uninspiring, plain vanilla statement declaring that “The United States stands on the side of the democratic aspirations of the Venezuela people, including supporting their right to express their views freely and without reprisal.”

Harris was just as weak. The co-president first argued on X that “the will of the Venezuelan people must be respected.” Then she essentially conceded that the White House would continue working with Maduro. “We will continue to work toward a more democratic, prosperous, and secure future for the people of Venezuela,” she said. Really?

Why wasn’t there an Oval Office speech by Harris or Biden calling on Maduro to resign? Why wasn’t there a dual announcement that the U.S. recognizes Edmundo González Urrutia as the winner and that the U.S. will be severely sanctioning Venezuelan oil exports and trade?

Instead, it was essentially crickets. Oil, inflation fears and a refusal to go with wins are all conspiring in Washington to keep Maduro in power. Effectively, U.S. November politics is killing democracy in Venezuela.

It really does beg the question whether Western democracies are capable of winning wars anymore – or if our four-year election cycles and frequent changes of national security and foreign policies are enabling enemies whose goals against us are decades in the making and decades long in their implementation.

This cannot stand. The U.S. and its allies must get back into the business of winning wars again. Defending is no longer enough. Arguably, it never was and never will be.

We need only look to Ukraine and Israel for a refresher course. Both countries are determined to win to defend democracy against Putin’s growing Axis of Evil.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is begging the Biden-Harris administration to let him take the fight to Russia as deep as necessary. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu and his war cabinet are valiantly doing the same to defend western democracy by waging war against Iran, Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah.

Ukraine is making Crimea untenable for Russia. It has effectively stalemated Putin’s military forces in the Donbas and his navy from the Black Sea. All of that is what winning looks like.

Now, Ukraine only needs to be decisively empowered to win by the White House – and for Biden and Harris to stop making them play for a tie that ultimately will lead to Kyiv’s long-term defeat and imperil all of Europe.

Likewise, Biden and Harris need to stop playing games with Israel. In the course of its war against Iran and its proxies, Israel has decimated Hamas, including notably killing Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, and taken its fight to Beirut, Tehran and Yemen. Israel is fighting to win.

Taiwan and our Indo-Pacific allies need to be hearing the same kind of winning messaging. And Beijing needs to understand that victory in Taipei is our only option going forward. If they want to fight, we will win World War III and save Western liberal democracy by decisively defeating its enemies.

Washington needs to wake up, and fast. Democracy is not dying in the U.S. It is dying all around us globally, as we refuse to fight and win to ensure its survival.

Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.