Thousands of Russian mercenaries are fighting against forces comprised of Turkish troops and about 15,000 Syrian mercenaries. Russian combat aircraft, armored vehicles and a lot of Russian money are all involved. In July, Egypt’s parliament authorized troop deployments to Libya in support of the Russians. Egyptian combat aircraft have also reportedly joined in the fight. Turkey’s economy is very weak, so it is seeking oil wealth. Its ships are drilling in waters it claims as do both Greece and Cyprus. That oil dispute is heating up considerably. Turkey’s interest isn’t only Libya’s oil: Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants regional power and the possible conquest of Libya tantalizes him. Russia’s ambitions are almost identical. Mr. Putin has built a relatively weak economy that is highly dependent on oil and gas sales. Taking over Libya’s oil reserves would strengthen Russia’s economy for decades. Russia, having established military bases in Syria, seeks both oil and a strategic extension of power into Africa. Because both Turkey and Russia are our adversaries, the best outcome of the Libya war would be it dragged on indefinitely. The worst result would be a Russian-Turkish peace to share Libya’s resources. The European Union must be very worried because Turkey controls the flow of refugees into the EU. If Russia gains part of that control, Mr. Putin would increase his power over the EU. The EU nations are militarily impotent, which makes their intervention in Libya impossible. If they reach a long-term peace agreement, Russia and Turkey will colonize Libya without interference.

Judging from our comfortable distance, the ongoing war between Russia and Turkey in Libya is a splendid little war for two reasons. First, no Americans are fighting and dying in it. Second, the war in Libya is a colonial war much like those fought by Britain and France in the 19th century. Let’s be blunt: There’s nothing worth fighting for in Libya except its oil and regional power, which both belligerents seek. Libya’s oil reserves of nearly 50 billion barrels are the ninth largest in the world. The country only produces about a half-million barrels a day, and half of that is consumed domestically. A colonizing power such as Russia could increase Libya’s production enormously. In 2003, Libya’s longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi - seeking to avoid the fate of Saddam Hussein - renounced weapons of mass destruction. American and other nations’ inspectors supervised the dismantling of his nascent nuclear program and his longest-range ballistic missiles. Gadhafi was quieted, but France wanted Libya’s oil. In 2011, at France’s urging, NATO undertook a war to overthrow Gadhafi on the basis of his past record of supporting terrorism. Gadhafi was killed by rebels and a factional war erupted. That conflict has been turned into a regional war as well as a war between would-be colonial powers, Turkey and Russia, both of which are directly engaged and are also employing proxies in the fighting. On one side is the “Government of National Accord” supported by Turkey and the U.N. On the other side, Russia, UAE, Syria and Egypt are supporting the “Libyan National Army” led by warlord Khalifa Haftar. Mr. Haftar has forced a temporary cessation of Libya’s oil exports.

"October surprise” from our North Korean friends has been revealed. On Oct. 10, North Korea paraded a “monster” intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM), appearing to have capabilities that can give U.S. homeland missile defenses a run for their money. It’s no surprise that North Korea has been advancing its missile arsenal with the aim of increasing its strategic leverage and prestige. But this revelation should serve as a wake-up call that U.S. defenses are at risk of falling behind Kim Jong-un’s rogue state threat. It should also increase the importance of fielding the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI), intended to reckon with advanced missile capabilities. While much remains unknown about North Korea’s new ICBM, experts believe it is large enough to carry multiple warheads and decoys meant to overwhelm missile-defense systems. The parade also demonstrated a new capability to produce the vehicles that transport missiles to the field for operational use - called transporter-erector launchers - allowing North Korea to potentially launch more missiles in one strike. Today, the United States deploys 44 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California to defend the homeland from this threat. Earlier this year, the former Commander of U.S. Northern Command, Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, assured the U.S. Senate the system can defend against North Korea today. But this may not remain the case. Our interceptors are growing old, and the North Korean threat is clearly progressing. The unveiling of North Korea’s new mammoth missile highlights the importance of moving forward with their replacement program - the NGI.

It secures the identity and commitment of fathers for the sake of their children, and it entails mutual obligations to the community. Even without children, marriage is a societal good, as the two sexes form a unique bond and provide social stability. The term “marriage” for thousands of years has referred only and specifically to joining people of the opposite sex in a permanent union. Until very recently, staging a bride-less wedding or one without a groom would have been the height of absurdity, not a “civil right.” That changed in 2015 when five U.S. Supreme Court justices created the heretofore unknown “constitutional right” to same-sex marriage in their Obergefell ruling. Since then, a majority of Americans supposedly has gone along with the radical transformation of marriage, according to surveys. But this doesn’t mean they’re happy with it or agree with it. Because of the aggressively enforced PC culture, few people want to admit to having traditionalist viewpoints. Robert A.J. Gagnon of Houston Baptist University notes the unanimity of the Old and New Testaments regarding the complementarities of the sexes: “Indeed, every narrative, law, proverb, exhortation, poetry, and metaphor in the pages of Scripture that has anything to do with sexual relations presupposes a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations and marriage.” Marriage can rapidly turn a boy into a man, as he first commits to protecting and supporting his wife, and then his children and grandchildren. Likewise, a solid marriage affords women the security in which they can thrive while maturing and giving unselfishly to their husbands, children and communities.

Valentine’s Day is named after a Christian saint who was most probably martyred on Feb. 14, 269 A.D. for marrying Christian couples in defiance of a Roman government edict, and for assisting persecuted Christians. Today, as with many traditions in Western culture that had a Christian origin, Valentine’s Day has broadened into a secular festivity, boosted by major marketing of all things romantic, such as cards, flowers, chocolates and jewelry. Its ties to marriage itself are still strong, epitomized by the happy endings in Hallmark romance movies. Without marriage, nothing works. It’s the key to stability, peace, wealth and progress. We tamper with it at our great peril. The welfare state’s shattering of marriage-based families in the inner cities and the chaos that followed is perhaps the most glaring evidence of marriage’s importance. Marriage-based family life is the organizing principle behind all civilized cultures. It brings the sexes together in a unique legal, social, economic and spiritual union. Because it’s indispensable, societies have accorded it various protections and privileges not granted to other types of unions. No other relationship transforms young men and women into more productive, less selfish and more mature people as husbands and wives, and fathers and mothers. No other relationship affords children the best economic, emotional, and psychological environment. At the core of marriage are the manifold and complementary differences between the sexes - between masculinity and femininity. Marriage-based kinship is essential to stability and continuity. A man is far more apt to sacrifice to help a son-in-law than some unrelated man who lives with his daughter. Kinship imparts family names, heritage and property.

Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro said “We have the right to build socialism and we will build - a new democratic, humanist, Christian socialism of the 21st century,” as Breitbart reported. Christianity and socialism cannot coexist and bring freedom to the individual. Moreover, it’s not even based on Bible truths. Jesus, the central figure of Christianity, never taught that the way to best serve and show love was to first, empower government to take over the means of private production; second, demand government redistribute the fruits of labor to those deemed in greatest need; and third, to cede all semblance of individualism ― talents, desires, efforts, creations ― to the greater good, to the collective, for government to take and use as willed. He wanted a personal relationship with believers ― not a collective, cooperative sharing of ideas and efforts with believers and their Big Government bureaucrats. He wanted his followers to feed the poor out of love for Him and for the Golden Rule and not for his followers to simply stand back and cry for the government to feed the poor. Through the decades, movements to proclaim the inherent socialism of Christianity have come and gone. Some were outright socialists; some were mischaracterized and miscast as socialists. Socialism is not freedom. No matter what Bible passage it’s wrapped in, socialism does not, will not, cannot bring freedom to the individual. Christian socialism is nothing new. It’s an old lie dressed in new clothes, paraded before a new generation. Christian socialism, in the end, is nothing but a catch phrase for tyranny.

It was early 1972 when the White House announced that President Richard Nixon would fly to Beijing that February for the first ever meeting between a U.S. president and Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese Communist dictator who is estimated to have been responsible for the killing of 20 million or more of his own citizens. Conservatives and others were outraged because Mao was seen, not inaccurately, as just as morally reprehensible as Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. It was the height of the Cold War between the West and the Communist world in general and the very hot war in Vietnam, where Americans were being killed by the thousands by weapons supplied by the Soviet Union and Communist China. Mr. Nixon had been viewed by friend and foe alike as the quintessential cold warrior and the news that he would meet with Mao came as a shock to just about everyone. Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his foreign policy guru, justified the trip by arguing that we could no longer ignore an adversary the size of Communist China. They believed an opening to China might indeed head off a future confrontation but were just as convinced that given the cracks in the Communist world at the time, sidling up to Mao would allow them to exploit the emerging problems between China and the Kremlin. Though the president’s allies may have understood what Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were really up to, most found the very idea that a president of the United States would meet with as ruthless a dictator and enemy as Mao repugnant; this was a man who had the blood of millions on his hands, ran one of the most totalitarian regimes in the world and was a sworn enemy of the United States who had bragged that he had no fear of a nuclear confrontation with America because he believed the survivors who would climb out of the rubble would be Communists.

That idea, however, increasingly appears to be falling by the wayside, as more and more nations gravitate to the conclusion that the Chinese government isn’t simply seeking a seat at the international table, but wants to overturn it altogether. The global coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this perception dramatically. China responded to the outbreak of the health crisis this spring with a massive disinformation campaign designed to obscure the origin of the virus and its own culpability in its spread. At the same time, Beijing revived its concept of a “health silk road,” using it to peddle personal protective equipment and associated goods to countries struggling with the pandemic. Neither strategy, however, appears to have had the success that Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders were hoping for. The aggressive, confrontational diplomatic style increasingly adopted by Chinese officials has ruffled more than a few foreign feathers, while the PRC’s health policy offensive has been viewed with deep suspicion by officials abroad who have concluded that the Chinese government is simultaneously playing the role of arsonist and firefighter - providing remedies to a pandemic of its own making. The new Pew findings are a resounding confirmation of these trends. “A median of 78%” of publics surveyed, the study notes, have little to no confidence that Mr. Xi and his government will “do the right thing regarding world affairs.” “This lack of confidence … is at historic highs in every country for which trend data is available except Japan and Spain,” and in most “has grown by double digits since last year,” it details. That effectively debunks the notion that Beijing enjoys the upper hand in its unfolding “great power competition” with the West.

There’s simply no denying it any longer: Beijing has an image problem. Half a year into the coronavirus pandemic, traditional views of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a constructive global actor have plummeted precipitously around the world, while suspicions about China’s strategic intentions are on the rise. That’s the main finding of a new poll just released by the prestigious Pew Research Center. The study, which surveyed global attitudes about China in 14 separate nations between June and August of this year, paints a picture of an international environment that is increasingly opposed to Chinese government policies and hostile to Beijing’s global overtures. In Australia, unfavorable views of China have risen by double digits since last year, and are now shared by a staggering 81% of the population. That is perhaps understandable, given the extent to which China has expanded its political and economic footprint there in recent years. Yet, Australia’s attitudes are far from unique. The study notes that in the United Kingdom, where China’s national tech giant, Huawei, had previously made major inroads, “around three-quarters now see the country in a negative light.” Roughly the same percentage of the public in the United States (73%), South Korea (75%), France (70%), Germany (71%), the Netherlands (73%) and Canada (73%) are now deeply suspicious of - or express negative views about - the PRC. The reversal is nothing short of stunning. For the better part of the past two decades, the prevailing view among policymakers in Washington and assorted European capitals was that it was possible to transform the Chinese Communist Party into a “responsible stakeholder” through sustained economic and political engagement.

Last year, Beijing also signed a memorandum of understanding on BRI with Italy. A new report by Giovanna De Maio, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, notes that doing so marked “a break in the ranks of the G-7, raising important concerns from Washington that Italy would become an entry point for Chinese influence in Europe.” She adds that Chinese foreign direct investment in Italy is actually “significantly lower than in other major European economies such as German and France, which have not endorsed the BRI but have secured important trade and investment deals with Beijing.” One final point: Imperialism is not always accompanied by colonialism. But Ms. Dezenski observes that from 2004 to 2014, a million “undocumented Chinese may have come to Africa.” These overseas Chinese communities, she writes, “often develop into independent states-within-the-state and function according to their own rules and mores. Underground banks, which transfer massive amounts of untaxed cash back to China as remittances, are common.” More than 60 countries have signed BRI agreements with China. The reports cited above - along with other evidence of corruption, debt traps, tax avoidance, exploitation of natural resources, and Chinese political manipulation - have stoked what was already a fierce debate over China policy. Imperialism, according to Lenin, involves “the division of the world.” It should now be obvious that China’s Communist rulers intend to divide the world to their economic and political benefit, and the detriment of pretty much everyone else. BRI is a means to that end. Americans are just beginning to consider how to address the enormous challenge that poses.