Animals can sense weakness

Theodore Roosevelt is said to have said: “If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”

There's an abundance of wildlife video showing hyenas taking down lions. The hyenas attack the lion's testicles first. This causes the lion to sit down and then it's all over.

Animals can sense weakness;1 whether it's the hyenas circling the lion, the vultures patiently observing the injured elephant, or nations observing a lack of purpose in a once formidable opponent.

Thursday, 26 August 2021: An Islamic State bomb ripped through crowds outside the gates of Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai International Airport. Twenty-nine C-17 Globemasters and five C-130 Hercules fled the scene laden with evacuees. It was a humiliating end to a twenty year campaign by the United States costing $2.313-trillion,

Just two months before, US president Jo Biden had said “There’s going to be no circumstance when you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan.”

It turned out, that was exactly what happened. The US scrambled to evacuate staff and top officials from its embassy in Afghanistan Sunday as Taliban fighters entered the city.

Since then, the animals sense weakness in their prey.

Monday, 20 February 2022: Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine in defiance of international law.

What did Joe Biden do? He promptly threw his hands in the air and said the US and Nato would not commit troops to fighting side-by-side with Ukraine.

Here's a sample of what has happened since.

Tuesday, 8 March 2022: After issuing sanctions against oil from Russia, Biden called the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to try to persuade them to pump more oil. Those leaders would not take Biden's call.

Thursday, 10 March 2022: China arbitrarily closed off part of the South China Sea, saying they were hunting for a crashed aircraft. Both Taiwan and Vietnam lay claim to the area and both are under the patronage of the US.

Friday, 11 March 2022: India said it had accidentally fired a missile into Pakistan because of "technical malfunction". Pakistan is under the patronage of the US.

Saturday, 12 March 2022: A drone that flew all the way from the Ukrainian war zone crashed overnight on the outskirts of Croatia's capital, Zagreb, triggering a loud blast and damaging parked cars. A Nato official said Nato’s “integrated air and missile defense tracked the flight path of an object which subsequently crashed in Zagreb.”

Sunday, 13 March 2022: A barrage of missiles from Iran hit the vicinity of a new US consulate under construction in northern Iraq. Iraq is under the patronage of the US.

My view is that in every single one of these incidents, what is being tested is the resolve of the US Commander-in-Chief to show decisiveness in the face of provocation.

• 1. In some cases, they can actually smell weakness as a 2018 Duke University study found. https://today.duke.edu/2018/06/lemurs-can-smell-weakness-each-other