Twenty-five years ago, America won a global cold war without firing a shot.  We are today in the middle of another cold war, with nasty enemies and more ill-wishers.  Thousands of brave Americans have died in distant lands to make us safe in this longest war in our nation’s history.  We owe it to them and to our future to win this war, and to win it with as little blood spent and blood shed as possible.

We are in a cold war, really.  We could win any hot war easily.  Our armed forces – our all-volunteer armed forces, as the president of Afghanistan noted in his recent trip to Washington –believe in America.  They have the best equipment in the world, and they are battle-tested veterans.

But we are in a cold war, not a hot war.

America can win this sort of cold war.  President Reagan, added by good men like Herb Meyer, and allied with good leaders like Lady Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, decided to win our last cold war, and with remarkable speed.  In ways that amazed even very bright men like Charles Krauthammer, we utterly unraveled a vast and snarling evil empire without firing a shot.

The thugs in Tehran, the sadists of ISIS, the neo-Russian Empire, the madmen of Pyongyang, and the oligarchs of Red China all have the same fond wish: humiliate and then break that land whose beacon is the Statute of Liberty.  What we lack, and what we have lacked since Reagan left office, is a leader cheerfully and utterly committed to Reagan’s famous quip when asked about his strategy in the Cold War: “How about this?  We win.  They lose.”

Our sock puppet president (he is simply a vessel for the old leftist establish) and his hapless high school helpers have no plan to win this cold war.  They seem to wish to lose it.  Indeed, they seem to think America ought to lose this war.  When we have a real president again, he ought to have a plan for our nation and our friends to win the war, and to win with as little actual fighting as possible.  Here are the keys to that victory. 

First, we must define our cause as good and our enemies as evil.  Reagan’s “Evil Empire” is the idea.  Every president since Reagan has failed us in this purpose.  George H. Bush had a chance in 1989 when Chinese students built their own Statute of Liberty.  Obama had a chance twenty years later when the oppressed Iranian people sought to cast off their shackles.  We must not just define evil, but bring through every means we have the message of hope to these captive peoples.

Second, use the vast economic power, instead of brute violence, against our enemies.  Rather than punish our energy-producing companies, we ought to subsidize energy production and export.  Europe today depends on Russia for energy.  How much better if those nations depended on us instead?  Why not dry up the coffers of Tehran by producing oil so cheap in price that the mullahs cannot give their oil away?  Our vast oil production, more than anything else, helped us defeat Hitler.  It can give us victory today as well.

Third, use favorable constellations of leaders in other lands.  Reagan had Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, but he also used strong leaders in Germany, Canada, and Japan.  There are today in Britain, Canada, and Australia such leaders.  Merkel is an experienced conservative leader in Germany.  Beyond that, in Poland and Ukraine and throughout Europe we have friends waiting for us to lead. 

We had a glimpse recently of other allies we could use.  The president of Afghanistan thanks Americans for their sacrifices for his nation.  The president of Egypt attacks radical Islam.  The king of Jordan fights ISIS rhetorically and in battle.  The “problem” of a politically strong Netanyahu in Israel is, of course, an asset for any American president who truly wishes to establish a lasting peace in the Middle East.

Ironically, our sock puppet president, whose flacks endlessly pretend that his critics want war, is himself leading us closer and closer to being forced to fight a very hot war for our survival.

Our enemies are not strong.  Our leaders, today, are weak.  We are in a new cold war, and we can win it when we choose to fight it.