We’re nine weeks from the midterm election, and we’re starting to see a lot of anxiety, frustration on the part of the Republicans. They fear the historical precedent will be the same in November, that the in-party loses seats in the House and Senate, and maybe both of them, and the Left is very triumphant.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
And we’re getting a picture that I think is inaccurate. But one way to test whether that suggestion is accurate or inaccurate is just take a deep breath and look at the world, let’s say, at the beginning of the Biden administration compared to now.
Let’s just start with Canada. Canada is very angry. We’re in a trade dispute. Is Canada now making a serious effort? Does it promise that it will meet its NATO commitments? It hasn’t yet, or it barely has, but it’s making progress. It better do it. Is it trying to address, in a haphazard fashion, the idea that it can just dump product, or it can have these high tariffs and run $50 billion to $80 billion tariffs with impunity, as Mexico did? No.
Our relationship with Canada is changing for the better for us. It’s changing for the better for Mexico. Do they like it? No. Why don’t they like it? Because they had a pretty good deal at our expense.
Is the border closed? Yes. Is illegal immigration plaguing us at 10,000 a day? No.
How about Venezuela? Is it importing terrorism and narcotics to North America? No. We just signed a deal that will essentially allow the United States, for 100 years, to have access to 65 billion barrels of high-sulfur, thick, but very valuable Venezuelan oil. They get $19, no matter what, without spending a dime, off every barrel that the oil companies try to extract.
And if you do the math, the cost in Venezuela is not Saudi Arabia, not the United States. It’s not light sweet crude. It’s not easy. It’s a politically difficult place. It’s a geographically and climate-challenged place, and it will cost those oil companies anywhere from $30 to $40 to $50. And if oil goes below $65, it’s going to be hard to see how they make a profit.
It’s good for Venezuela. That’s why they agreed to it.
But more importantly, all of South America and all of the Caribbean and all of Central America is unrecognizable from five years ago when Joe Biden entered office. There is no problem now with the Panama Canal. Cuba is on the ropes. There’s only five governments in Latin America that are anti-American. The vast majority are capitalist, democratic, pro-American.
Go to the Middle East. One of the biggest problems we’ve had the last 50 years in the Middle East, one of the biggest, the biggest, is Iran. But not just Iran, its proxies: the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah. There was no Lebanon. It was kidnapped by Hezbollah.
You heard the Lebanese prime minister the other day. He said, for the first chance, there’s real opportunity in Lebanon. Why? Because Hezbollah has been defanged by Israel, but more importantly, it has no money. Why? Because we have the strictest sanctions, embargoes, that we’ve ever seen on Iran.
And as Iran, as we hear, is winning the war, they’re just about kaput. They’re strangled. We talked about an Anaconda program. Their military has been degraded by about 90%, but more importantly, they have no oil. No oil is getting in. They even have gas lines in their own country. Their currency is worthless. They’re the pariah of the world.
I heard not long ago a prominent political scientist say everybody was rooting for Iran and not for us. They may have said that, but they’re going to be delighted to see that country implode, which it will.
It’s not that the war is going bad or going good. It’s that the war is irrelevant. In other words, our life goes on and Iran’s doesn’t, and time is on our side. Maybe it’s going to be six weeks. Maybe it’s going to be six months. But it cannot survive the economic sanctions that are now in place.
And the entire Middle East is starting to wake up and see that there’s a really good chance to go to a normal regional atmosphere without that pernicious, toxic government.
The Strait of Hormuz is going to be irrelevant in two or three years. Pipelines are already in progress that will bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
And when you look at the oil situation in the world, everybody says, “Well, China has got the largest storage capacity of oil and it’s full.” Yes, but it’s finite. They’re not producing it. They’re storing it.
And in fact, they’re helping us out in an indirect way because the price of oil has not gone up because China is not on the market now, because it can’t get its hands on Venezuelan and Iranian oil.
But when Iran is out of the question, oil prices will not just drop, I think they’ll crash. And who’s going to control most of the oil in the world? The United States, because it’s got this good deal with Venezuela, and it’s already the largest producer of natural gas.
If you look at Russia, Russia’s a shadow of its former self. If you look at NATO, it’s rearming in a way that no one had thought would ever be possible.
You add it all up, and the EU model, if you look at the EU model of open borders, low fertility, 1.3%, radical green ideology trumping the use of fossil fuels, disarmament, it’s been thoroughly repudiated.
You’re going to see governments not just in Italy and Eastern Europe, but you’re going to see soon in France and probably in the U.K., governments that are going to look a lot more like the conservative government of the United States than they do their past liberal traditions.
In other words, the socialist model has failed all over the world, and it’s starting to implode. And it’s not gaining ground in the United States. It’s a last gasp of a frustrated urban elite and partly due to radical immigration.
Add it all up, and the United States is in a preeminent position. And the world today has nothing in common with the world just five years ago. That could be very bad.
But when you look systematically in a disinterested, rational fashion, and you look at the power of China vis-à-vis the United States, you look at Russia vis-à-vis the United States, you look at Latin America vis-à-vis the United States, you look at the Middle East vis-à-vis the United States, you look at Europe vis-à-vis the United States, you come up with either two conclusions, and they’re not incompatible.
Number one, the United States is much stronger and in a much better position than those countries and regions I just mentioned.
And number two, whether they like us or not, they’re moving toward the United States, not because they want to necessarily, but because our system is producing spectacular growth economically, militarily, socially, culturally, and more importantly, in the technologies to come in the future: AI, software, space exploration, satellites, bioengineering. We’re preeminent.
So do not listen before these midterms that we’re in crisis, the loss of war. We’re in a world that is completely unrecognizable to the one five years ago. And the fact that we haven’t been able to appreciate it is largely because we’re right in the middle of the storm. We’re in the eye of the hurricane.
But the storm is passing, and it’s going to be very advantageous for the United States in the next decade.
