Our greatest economic and military threats are: #1 Communist China led by all powerful leader for life Xi
Jinping and #2 military threat is Russia, led by absolute ruler for life, Putin. Churchill said, “Power
corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. World War II was caused by Germany with absolute
ruler Hitler and Japan with absolute ruler The Emperor who, unfortunately, delegated his power to his
Generals and Admirals.
Some of our elected leaders in Congress and in the Whitehouse secretly believe the Communist China
economic system and government system are superior to our free competitive market, economic and
democratic government system. The reality is our competitive free market economy and democratic
government are inherently stronger and the China communist economic system and absolute power
government are weaker.
In our competitive free market economy, economic decision-making power is widely dispersed to many
entrepreneurs and business managers in each industry. They constantly evaluate their customer needs
and respond to fill those needs. If they are not responsive and efficient, they fail and are replaced by
others who do. Competition is a tough, brutal task master.
Our democratic government is inherently messy and chaotic, but that makes it stronger, not weaker.
Churchill said, “Democratic government is the worst kind, except all the others”. Our democratic
government disperses decision making authority widely to state, county and city leaders. The people can
observe their performance closely and replace those that don’t perform well with others that do. For
example: after 9-11, I had friends who were in a panic because the FBI and 21 intelligence agencies had
failed miserably, and they felt vulnerable to follow on terrorist attacks. I did not. I knew our safety and
security responsibility rested mostly with state law enforcement staff and county sheriff departments
and city police departments. I had confidence they would protect us, and they did.
In communist China, all economic decisions are made by absolute ruler, Xi Jinping. He does not accept
advice from others. No single ruler can understand the needs of a complex, large economy and meet
those needs. The old communist USSR collapsed in the late 1980’s because the centrally planned
communist economy could never produce the good quality housing, food, clothing and medical care its
people wanted. On television, they saw how much better the people in competitive free market
countries lived and rebelled. Gorbachev had the choice of using the army to suppress the rebellion by
killing millions of people or to allow them to leave peacefully. To his credit, he let them go. The Russia
economy is now similar to China. Putin makes all economic decisions, and the country still can’t produce
the good quality housing, clothes and food its people want. The Ukraine war has revealed how
incompetent the Russian army is.
The China communist party, government and military are riddled by corruption and graft. For the last 40
years, leaders have sold key jobs to the highest bidder with no regard to capability and leaders become
wealthy by doing so. That means most leadership jobs are held by incompetent people and the best
have been passed over and are disgruntled and angry and these will be the leaders when the people
rebel. The China army has not fought a war since the Korean War and have no combat experience.
Armies learn to fight in real combat, not in training. We have the most experienced combat army in the
world. Our army fought in jungle conditions in Vietnam, plains and desert in Iraq and rugged mountains
in Afghanistan.
~Ralph Coker