:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/DNE4ESJ44GFEJE7E4SD3JFNSGU.jpg "The danger of defending democracies with \"the theory of the house of cards\" 1")
The idea of preserving the “house of cards”, also known as the domino effect, comes from the Cold War era and indicated that if a country fell under the orbit of Soviet communism and Washington allowed if this happened, inexorably and by spillage, communism would spread to neighboring countries, which in a short time would take control of vast regions.
This is how he described the danger in which various areas of the planet would become a house of cards that could collapse and generate the fall of Western freedoms into the hands of communism; Hence, it is also known as the “domino effect” which was proclaimed in his day by President Truman, who was a pioneer in promoting US military operations overseas, thus generating the strategy according to which the United States should fight all the wars it has fought. necessary to neutralize the expansion of Soviet communism to prevent it from reaching areas close to its territory. It was also Truman who supported American actions to provide economic and military aid to countries whose governments were threatened to prevent communism from gaining control of their democratic institutions.
Years later, President Eisenhower focused on the threat of communist expansion in the region known as Indochina, the American president denounced before the international community that the “house of cards” effect could there occur.
Already located in our time, more than 20 years after the fall of communism. In March 2022, during his State of the Union address, President Joe Biden spoke of the danger of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that:in the battle between democracies and autocracies; The former must remain strong and the world must support them within security parameters that preserve peace. In this way, the president revived the idea of ”democracies against autocracies” and hinted that this would be the guiding principle of his administration’s foreign policy.
As part of the speech, Biden was convinced of the revival of behaviors typical of the Cold War era. The President ratified the need for containment and control policies to deal with movements generated by Russia, China and the Islamic Republic of Iran as potential threats to international stability.
This containment policy that Biden was referring to was the same one that supported the old strategy of the United States against the former Soviet Union during the Cold War era. At this point, it is important to point out that the presidency of Donald Trump, who preceded Joe Biden, had a different, broader and more modern approach to foreign policy, as evidenced by the Abraham Accords struck by Trump and which would be unthinkable today. with the Biden administration. Thus, Americans believed that revisiting the approach to old strategic aspects made sense under the Trump administration and the country did not get involved in wars or low-intensity armed conflicts that it could not manage. However, things have changed and currently Biden’s strategic thinking is different, with what usually happens with many Western political leaders whose propensity to apply past paradigms seems to make them more comfortable even if their success in applying them has not been proven. This has been the constant in the planning of the “classical specialists” of strategic security who are inclined to apply old theories which lead them to lose sight of the vision of new challenges which require new approaches.
The Trump administration has a very good understanding of foreign policy issues and has provided a modernized vision of the challenges ahead. Currently, the Biden administration is not acting in the same way and there is a certain tendency to revive old theories from the Cold War years. It is therefore not surprising that the idea of the “house of cards” is making a comeback in strategic analysis, all the more so in the face of Russia’s current war in Ukraine and Moscow’s behavior in its relations with countries that have controversies with the United States. .
Given the Biden administration’s stance on these topics, and while it may come as a surprise, it should be understood as a reckless approach to new challenges. The Cold War “house of cards” theory has only pushed American counterintelligence and national security into certain gray areas of vulnerability with the danger that entails. Insist in the misma idea en éste presente convulsionado por la guerra entre Moscú y Kiev, la ríspida relación de China con Taiwan y el fracaso por reflotar el Acuerdo Nuclear con Irán, podría ser más peligroso aún y no ofrece garantías de resolución de los conflictsos en course.
Preventing the house of cards from collapsing is the strategy of the Biden administration, the president’s men are working on this theory at the highest levels of the national security apparatus in Washington. This approach underpins the current foreign policy orientation which does not exclude war and in fact objectively participates in it with economic, logistical, intelligence and weapons systems support to Ukraine.
Truman’s brainchild in his time was to prevent the first house of cards card from falling in Korea. Thus, the United States waged a war under this strategy and paid a high price in lives (nearly forty thousand Americans died). However, the best example of such a strategy to defend “the fall of the house of cards” was used during the Vietnam War and its cost was also high in lost lives, even exceeding the figures in Korea.
After Soviet communism, another enemy appeared and it was the war against jihadist terrorism which opened a new front against parastatal organizations and actors to preserve “the house of cards”. However, after more than twenty years, thousands of lives lost and millions of dollars spent, Jihadist terrorism has spread and continues to be active despite the fight against it and has spread to different regions of the planet.
This scenario clearly shows that administrations – for the most part – Democrats have a pending modern approach to avoiding the mistakes of the past that have plagued military operations and wars won on the battlefield (such as Iraq or the intervention in Afghanistan) but was decided to lose later. in the Oval Room with erroneous measurements that show these outstanding issues.
We must not forget the experiences of the past, the Korean War ended in a stalemate with the two Koreas divided, the Vietnam War was not a political victory, although the former Soviet Union was defeated later. The same goes for the confrontation against jihadist terrorism whose radical ideology that sustains it could not be neutralized. In other words, the end times theory didn’t fully work, although it’s true that “the house of cards didn’t completely fall” either.
However, the Biden administration maintains as the only political variable that democracies are at war with autocracies around the world and believes that in these conflicts the advancement of one of the competing actors must be considered at the expense of the other. , which ultimately fixes a zero-sum equation.
Since the end of the Second World War (1939-1945). Known conflict management strategies to “contain” them and the “collapse of the house of cards” theory have emerged as a remedy for the ills of the international community. However, as the Cold War demonstrated, academic theories applied to rapidly changing scenarios on the ground have produced very costly results that can be measured in thousands of lives wasted and millions of dollars spent. This shows that, for the most part, in international political relations, these strategies have not yielded results and testifies to the repeated errors of political leadership which propose inappropriate ideas and solutions. Therefore, old strategies raise questions and demand modern solutions to new problems.
The current international conflicts against terrorism and autocracies can hardly be resolved with recipes from the past. The new scenarios require concrete responses regarding the Taiwan crisis, the ongoing war in Ukraine and the fight against radical jihadism in different parts of the world.
Inconclusive wars have generated serious humanitarian problems and have not contributed to drawing up security maps or to defending democracies and freedoms, whether in the confrontation with the communism of their time, with current totalitarianisms or with the jihadist terror. The international community has the solutions, it is enough to see their application in a definitive way. However, it is clear that the resolution of new conflicts will not be achieved through the application of old academic theories or the defense and security strategies of the past.
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