Writing ForeignPolicy.com Analysis—Decades in Advance

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Writing ForeignPolicy.com Analysis—Decades in Advance

Did the Plain Truth and the Trumpet scoop one of the world’s most respected analysis websites?

Robert Kagan’s recent Foreign Policy feature “Backing Into World War III is everything you could want from an article predicting world affairs. Kagan is a knowledgeable American historian who has advised both Democratic and Republican governments. He can discern important trends, determine real threats, provide historical context, and signal where these events could lead. There is only one problem: Kagan’s article is a little late. The Trumpet has actually been writing this article for decades.

Kagan began his piece by describing the “two significant trend lines” visible in the world today (emphasis added):

One is the increasing ambition and activism of the two great revisionist powers, Russia and China. The other is the declining confidence, capacity, and will of the democratic world, and especially of the United States, to maintain the dominant position it has held in the international system since 1945. As those two lines move closer, as the declining will and capacity of the United States and its allies to maintain the present world order meet the increasing desire and capacity of the revisionist powers to change it, we will reach the moment at which the existing order collapses and the world descends into a phase of brutal anarchy, as it has three times in the past two centuries. The cost of that descent, in lives and treasure, in lost freedoms and lost hope, will be staggering.

America’s Broken Will

The opening paragraph of “Backing Into World War iii” expounds on two trends that the Trumpet and its predecessor, the Plain Truth, have followed for decades: the declining will of America and the rise of two eastern tyrants.

When Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote “America’s Broken Will” in September 2015, he was only repeating what he had been forecasting for 25 years.

The Plain Truth published “Why America Has Won Its Last War” in its November-December 1983 issue. The article quoted Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy (originally published in 1967), saying, “The United States, even still possessing unmatched power, is afraid—fears—to use it, just as God said.” The February 1978 Plain Truth pointed out: “The days are over when the military might of the United States is used to accomplish what America perceives as correct and proper. …  America’s influence and prestige is on the rapid decline. The pride of our power has been broken.”

Consistently, and for decades, Mr. Armstrong and then Mr. Flurry insisted that America, which possesses the most dominant military in world history, would lose the will to use it.

Kings of the East

The second trend is what Kagan calls the rise of two eastern “revisionist powers”—or in Trumpet terminology, the kings of the east. Mr. Armstrong forecast this as far back as the 1930s. At times, these nations were outright hostile against each other. Yet, as we wrote in He Was Right, Herbert W. Armstrong continued to consistently publish and broadcast that:

[A]fter the ussr collapsed, a giant Asian superpower, with Russia and China at the helm, would rise up and dramatically affect the course of history. This power bloc—a conglomerate of peoples that comprise one third of the world’s population—would begin cooperating economically and militarily and eventually form a gargantuan Asian superpower of a size and scope the world has never seen.

Kagan went on to describe what he believes are the causes for these trends: American withdrawal. “Even Putin has pushed only against open doors, as in Syria, where the United States responded passively to his probes,” he wrote. “[T]he administration practically invited Russian intervention through Washington’s passivity … thus reinforcing the growing impression of an America in retreat across the Middle East (an impression initially created by the unnecessary and unwise withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq).” Read what the Trumpet has had to say about Iraq (“When America Leaves Iraq …”) and Syria (“How the Syrian Crisis Will End”), and see if we didn’t beat Foreign Policy to the punch.

Discussing Russia’s moves in Eastern Europe, Kagan wrote, “It has invaded two neighboring states—Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 …. [G]iven the intensity with which the United States and its allies would have responded to such actions during the four decades of the Cold War, their relative lack of a response must have sent quite a signal to the Kremlin ….” That is some substantive analysis. But in our opinion, a little late.

If you had read Mr. Flurry’s article “The Ukraine Crisis Was Prophesied!,” you would have received that prescient analysis before Russia invaded. The same month that Russia annexed Crimea, Mr. Flurry told readers of the March Trumpet:

On Nov. 13, 2013, we filmed an episode of the Key of David television program that I developed around Ezekiel 38:1-2 ….In that episode, which was broadcast on November 24, I showed that this is an end-time prophecy and stressed my belief that this prophesied Eastern leader—which God inspired Ezekiel to write about 2,500 years ago—is in power today. I said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was almost certainly going to be the “prince of Rosh” that this and other biblical passages say will rise up in this end time, revive Russian power, and “trouble” Europe ….Then, in the days after that episode was filmed, events took place in Russia and Europe that strengthened that explanation. The events showed that these prophecies are marching rapidly toward complete fulfillment!

Russia took another 27,000 square kilometers of land, and it still hasn’t given it back.

Kagan concluded by pointing to the 1930s; a precedent commonly cited by analysts, including those at the Trumpet.

“The collapse of the British dominated world order … a powerful, unified Germany … and the rise of Japanese power in East Asia” all led to great powers pursing their ambitions, Kagan wrote. “The result was an unprecedented global calamity and death on an epic scale.” The United States has led world order in the 70 years since. “It would be more than a shame,” Kagan lamented, “if Americans were to destroy what they created—and not because it was no longer possible to sustain, but simply because they chose to stop trying.”

The Trumpet agrees with Foreign Policy and believes that “more than a shame” is about to happen in a way even Mr. Kagan cannot fathom. So if you want insightful analysis of world events put in their historical context, you could subscribe to Foreign Policy. I hear it’s not cheap. But if you want that analysis well before the events actually happen, you will be better off to subscribe, for free, to the Trumpet instead.