Per the title, my favorite all-time docuseries is The Day the Universe Changed with James Burke. It first aired on PBS almost 38 years ago to this day and it still holds up in this light speed 21st Century. The series essentially tells the story of how seemingly small scientific and technological advances forever changed the planet.
We never seem to realize history happens in real time, but that persistently fascinating dynamic is, once again, unfolding before us as we speak.
You might recall that, back in October 2022, The First Ward described how the Russians’ epic 1939 Winter War failure set the stage for 1941’s bloody Operation Barbarossa. My greater theory was that Putin’s ill-advised Ukrainian folly would have similar serious repercussions. After watching the Fin’s heroic resistance against a country many times its size, Adolph Hitler infamously declared, “All we have to do is kick the door in and the whole rotten structure will collapse.” What he failed to comprehend is the Soviet army would defend their country to the last man and woman. But that perceived Russian weakness set the Nazi war machine in motion, and four short years later, 40 million people had perished.
That’s the price for showing an unexpected weakness. And just as it was in 1940, those 2024 dominoes are summarily starting to fall.
With Russia wholly mired in a Ukrainian war of attrition it can’t win, Hamas was inexplicably foolish to attack Israel in October of 2023. Facilely ignoring that their Evil Empire patrons couldn’t spare a single tank, they risked an incomprehensible offensive somehow believing that other Arab nations would rise up and march with them “from the river to the sea.” But it never happened because Egypt has wisely withdrawn from the fray, Lebanon is impotent, Yemen is mired in an endless civil war, and dictatorships like Syria, Jordan, and Iran wisely considered when they paid dearly for their military miscalculations.
For better, or mostly worse, correctly determining the Russians were fully preoccupied with problems of their own, Netanyahu embarked upon a mission to eliminate, or greatly weaken, Hamas with no fear of any meaningful intervention. Though it’s difficult to completely dismantle a fanatically ideological organization, Hamas will never be the driving Gaza force they once were.
Then, in a headlong doomed-to-repeat-it demonstration, despite Hamas’ demise, Iran’s Gaza distraction, and Putin’s failed fascist gambit, Hezbollah pressed an ill-advised rocket offensive against northern Israel. And Israel responded with a series of brilliantly executed counterstrikes that put their adversary on the ropes. The Mossad’s incredible cell phone-pager-walkie talkie attack reduced Hezbollah leadership to resorting to human couriers to communicate.
Without Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, or Russia to prop up the Syrian regime, an 11-day rebel offensive put an end to 50 years of brutal Assad family rule. To be fair, they’re not exactly overnight sensations. This coup comes on the heels of a bloody 13-year Syrian civil war. The conflict had been generally static since both sides signed a 2020 cease fire, but sensing an opening, the rebels struck when Bashir Assads’ enablers could not respond and the Syrian army simply melted away.
Though they’re making all of the appropriate Western overtures, the rebel’s ultimate intentions run somewhere along the lines of the proverbial Gumpian box of chocolates. They’re a bit of a wild card. But regardless of any unpredictable consequence, the traditional Middle Eastern balance of power has materially shifted in positive ways.
Not only is Iran’s quest to become the dominant post-Saddam regional powerbroker doomed, but with Assad fleeing to Moscow, they’re suddenly surrounded by enemies. And the Syrian rebels made it abundantly clear that they will tolerate no further Iranian “meddling.” Worse yet, Iran’s western-leaning populace will not put up with that artificial religious autocracy much longer, particularly when the prospect of Russian military aid has become a pipe dream. The Iranian dissenters are well aware of this, too.
In fact, Putin has been forced to suffer the immense ignominy of accepting foreign aid from former satellite states like Iran and North Korea. Oh! How the mighty have fallen!
That means that Vietnam, another Russia ally and persistent thorn in China’s side, will have to tread a little more lightly. They may want to reconsider throwing slave labor giant Temu out of their country. The Myanmar Junta, which has a tenuous grip on the country, certainly realizes they’re on their own, too. The Castro regime is in real peril without those semi-worthless Russian rubles propping up Cuba’s non-existent economy, and all those Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Eritrean despots are starting to have some serious second thoughts.
With their economy in shambles, the war increasingly being prosecuted on Russian soil, an unpopular new conscription law, and the country regarded as an international pariah, how long does anyone believe Vladimir Putin can last? And this incredible series of global events was set in motion by a fanatical Hamas madman who convinced himself he could reshape the Middle East.
As my mother used to say, “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.”
Considering these massive shifts, the United States and NATO have a once-in-a-century opportunity to usher in an era of greater peace, global cooperation, and planetary freedom. Of course, Czar Trump will fuck all of that up because that’s all he’s ever capable of doing. But that’s beside my current point.
And that point is, this is the day the universe changed, and it is beyond incredible to have a digital front-row seat to history in the making.
