The politics of chaos — coming crises will define the 2016 race By John Podhoretz
http://nypost.com/2015/09/30/the-politics-of-chaos-coming-crises-will-define-the-2016-race/
So — who had the Russians bombing Syria and the Palestinians voiding all deals with Israel in the pool on Tuesday night before going to bed?
“News,” a coinage of the late Middle Ages, is a shortened version of the phrase “new things.” And these two pieces of news genuinely define the word. They’re events that hadn’t happened before and immediately changed what will happen going forward.
What’s amazing is that they came as a surprise, since both have been foreshadowed for weeks in the case of Russia and a couple of years in the case of the Palestinian Authority. And yet they did.
Presidential candidate Marco Rubio literally predicted the former during the Sept. 16 GOP debate.
“Here’s what you’re going to see in the next few weeks,” Rubio said. “The Russians will begin to fly combat missions in that region, not just targeting ISIS, but in order to prop up Assad.”
As for the latter, Palestinian Authority strongman Mahmoud Abbas has been taking all sorts of unilateral actions that effectively gut the legal obligations placed on the PA by the 1993 Oslo accords. We even knew that Abbas was considering a move to void Oslo — but when he did it on Wednesday, it still had the power to shock.
We should be beyond this now. Surely, if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen. Think of all the events no one saw coming even though there was plenty of evidence they might happen:
The week before the 2012 election was dominated by a freak hurricane that flooded the Northeast and froze the presidential race.
The economy of Greece melted down, threatening not only its own future but that of the common European currency.
China’s economy, the engine of worldwide growth, suddenly slowed down in a manner that took practically every bank and banker and hedge funder and financial analyst aback.
Last summer, 65,000 children from South America suddenly appeared inside America’s southern border.
Also last summer, Russia invaded Ukraine, and for the first time since World War II one European nation seized control of the territory of another.
Here at home, a police shooting and the death of two men in custody led to civic disruptions of a sort unseen in decades.
And, most astonishing, is this:
Imagine going back in time to tell Barack Obama that his failure to strike Syria after its use of chemical weapons crossed his “red line” in 2013 would result in the creation of ISIS and eventually be the motive force behind a massive migration crisis that is likely to alter the destiny of Europe over the next century.
Surely, if he knew now what he didn’t know then, Obama would have bombed Syria back to the Stone Age rather than find himself and the world beset by the multifarious crises he is facing now.
We continue to have conversations about the politics of the near future — the 2016 elections — as though we know what sorts of things will be discussed when people actually go to the polls. We have no idea, but the possibilities are endless:
What if a mild economic downturn causes the state of Illinois or the city of Chicago effectively to go bankrupt?
What if two Supreme Court justices either die or announce their immediate retirement?
What if a catastrophe shuts down one of the two train tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey for an extended period of time, thus creating a commuting and commerce crisis in the world’s banking center?
None of these is likely to happen. But if they don’t, three other things will, and they will be the major discussion points around which we will be choosing our next president.
Oh, and if you think this Syria news marks the high-water news mark for Vladimir Putin and Russia, you better think again.
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