This week, with almost no fanfare in the American media, Communist China and Russia announced that, in July, they will re-up their 2001 pact entitled "The Russian-Chinese Treaty of Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation."  To those with an eye to history (so forget Millennials and Gen X), this came with a strong chill down the spine.

In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a somewhat similar treaty, known to history as the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact or the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.  Within a month, those two enlightened states celebrated the treaty by viciously attacking and dismembering Poland.  Hitler was then somewhat flummoxed when the British and French decided that enough was enough and declared war on Germany.  And the rest, as they say, was history.  Over 70 million died in the next six years.

That 1939 non-aggression treaty gave Hitler the free hand he needed to wage war on the West.  Although it later proved to be a contract between a viper and a scorpion (for Hitler reneged on the pact, leading to the deaths of more than 20 million Russians), it nonetheless was the final piece that had to fall into place to bring about world war.

While the Russians and Chinese are merely re-signing their existing pact, we are seeing this action following a "softening up" of the West by a pandemic that has gutted economies and helped to force from office Trump, China's only real political opponent on the world stage.  He has been replaced by a president of faltering moral, physical, and mental abilities and one, moreover, whose own family likely has compromising arrangements with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

These are incredibly bad times not just to be Taiwanese, but I would also add to be South Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indian, or Australian.  They may well be bad times to be American.

If an invasion of Taiwan is imminent, there are two possible scenarios that scare me to my core.  The first is that the Biden (Harris? Obama?) administration stands by, does nothing, and sacrifices the freedom of millions of Chinese, as well as ceding control of the South China Sea (and the aforementioned countries) to the CCP.

The second scenario is that, as the British and French did in 1939/1940, the United States, to everyone's surprise, stands up for a fight.  Recall that the last time this happened, the French faced utter defeat at Nazi hands, and the British would have, too, except for America's entry into the war.  There can be no such savior coming to America's aid in 2021.

What makes the second scenario especially scary is that, from 2008 to 2016, the U.S. military under Obama/Biden was "transformed" into a politically correct institution.  The last time I recall anything like that in history was again in the 1930s, when Stalin purged his own military.  That led to the Nazi war machine slicing through the Russians in 1940 like the proverbial hot knife through butter.  Those events are brilliantly chronicled in Constantine Pleshakov's book, Stalin's Folly.

One can only wonder if Obama/Biden's leftist follies will similarly kneecap the U.S. military of 2021.  Four years of Trump could do only so much.  When Tucker Carlson raised this issue, he was met with a firestorm of condemnation, making me think that, possibly, he'd touched a raw nerve.

I deeply fear that we are shortly to find out what's become of our military thanks to social justice transformations.  All Americans should share that fear.  Transgenderism, allegedly systemic racism, and man-made climate change — three topics that cause uncontrolled laughter in Beijing — may soon no longer command center stage in America.

Image: Putin and Xi Jinping.  YouTube screen grab.