The gravest error of Western politicians and their corporate oligarchs is failing to recognise that we are already at war. Stuck in the dark ages of conventional thinking, ignorant of the grand strategy of nations, they remain rusted on to the belief that war only begins when the shooting starts.

For a generation, the virtuous in the West have disregarded the grubby truth that their ideals rely on the only currency that matters in a multi-polar world – power. Until the power of deterrence is restored, Australia and its partners will continue experiencing what Churchill described as a ‘cataract of violent surprises’, along with the relentless penetration and degradation of our culture, education, economy, trade, and media structures. If our enemies are cunning, they will not trigger a big conventional world war for while we lack the resolve for a strategy of deterrence, they willingly make sacrifices for a strategy of exhaustion. Our opponents understand our Schwerpunkt, or centre of gravity, and make no distinction between  military and civilian spheres.

No doubt this position will be trashed by a mainstream cabal, but the evidence is all around us; from cyber-attacks to trade embargoes on high-value commodities, the climate hysteria to make us dependent on China for renewable energy resources, the mainstreaming of terrorists like Hamas, and the use of refugees. The undermining of the West continues to evolve.

We are led to believe that big pieces of military hardware and deals like Aukus will save us while our opponents flood our collective discourse with active measures that they use to shape our perceptions, beliefs, emotions, and actions, to disorientate and disrupt Western societies and fuel internal division. Their goals are political and psychological. According to KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, in his 1984 interview Warning to America, not until the jackboot of the state crushes our goolies will we realise what is happening although Covid gave us a glimpse. Our opponents also know that despite a weak political class, when faced with an external physical threat, ordinary Australians are fearless.

The Cold war (1947 – 1991) between the USSR and the West involved over fifty hot conflicts around the world. From the savannahs of Africa to the jungles of Vietnam, and the mountains of Afghanistan both sides fought proxy wars. The proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is another example of how we are already at war. The West, including Australia, has been supplying Ukraine with weapons, missiles, fighting vehicles, tanks, and billions of dollars in funding to fight Putin but let’s not kid ourselves. You cannot provide bread to one side and remain aloof to the grubby nature of war. Even when we embark on a real shooting war such as this one, we fail. Our failure is not only the failure to deter but the failure to deliver the ways and means to win. If the West had any power of deterrence, this war would have never started.

The projection of deterrence is as important at home as it is abroad. So, it’s difficult to take a country seriously when it allows itself to be invaded. The wave of humans and fentanyl flooding the US is something out of world war Z, an utter security failure. The same is true in Britain. If you want to destabilise the US from within and spread the seeds for long-term decay and decline, you exploit this gap making carrier battle groups irrelevant. This is the weakest point of the US. There is zero deterrence. Just imagine if Australia had land borders.

In describing US involvement in the Vietnam war, former US secretary of state, the late Henry Kissinger said, ‘We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process, we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war – the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.’ Does this feel familiar?

The West is suffering from what the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides described as the three greatest mistakes – lack of intelligence, lack of resolution, and lack of responsibility. Even if there are those within the echelons of Western leadership who recognise this predicament, they either lack the resolve or the influence to rectify these errors.

We have lost the power of deterrence resulting in the weakest strategic position since the start of the second world war. We are scared by Russian President Putin’s threats at one end of the spectrum and paralysed by hand-wringing timidity in response to the Houthis at the other. Australia and its allies in the US and Europe can’t even act without prejudice against terrorists. When power and security determine the ability to survive on our terms in a highly uncertain multi-polar world, it is better to be feared than loved. Yet terrorists operating out of a failed state in one of the poorest locations on Earth demonstrate how the weak can make the strong suffer at the hands of a Western political class that prefers smooth-talking platitudes to the real execution of power.

Now our most important strategic partners like Saudi Arabia, India, and the UAE are hedging their bets and forging strong partnerships with Russia, China, and Iran. These people respect the argument of power, not strongly worded press releases.

Even our use of soft power is grating. As former US treasury secretary Larry Summers put it recently, ‘Somebody from a developing country said to me, “What we get from China is an airport. What we get from the United States is a lecture.”’ One thing lost on many who support Ukraine is that it is not fighting for climate, gender, or virtue.

What Western leaders need to understand about the Peloponnesian wars is that Athens didn’t lose to Sparta for lack of power but because  its political system committed suicide, and those who arrogantly cajoled its leaders underestimated its adversaries.Before his death, Athenian leader Pericles exclaimed he was more afraid of Athen’s own mistakes than of her enemy’s designs.

Our opponents apply a strategy of exhaustion laced with wickedness targeting the hubris of the virtuous. If we don’t counter it effectively, we risk being at the losing end of an age-old quest for power.