Daily Archives: 19 July 2024

But They are the Same Theater

Posted on by
Reply

A letter writer in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section expressed his concern for NATO’s increasing emphasis on the People’s Republic of China threat in the Pacific, saying in part,

NATO, however, shouldn’t be pushing into Asia or treating Europe and Asia as the same theater.

And

…founding charter: to maintain the peace in the North Atlantic and defend its member states from a Russian attack.

Asia, the Pacific theater, dominated as it is by the enemy nation, the People’s Republic of China, and the European theater that’s formally the DOC of NATO are, in fact the same theater; the two regions are adjacent Areas of Responsibility.

This isn’t a matter of who’s got the intercontinental reach of missiles. It’s the closely intertwined—and dependency creating—trade regimes and economies, as the PRC exports at artificially lowered price its goods into Europe; the PRC engages in active cyber espionage and cyber sabotage activities; the PRC engages in active dis- and misinformation, pushing as it does its state-owned and -run social media facilities like TikTok and ecommerce facilities like TEMU, one of which actively pushes false claims (not information) and both of which actively hoover up individualized personal and business information for the use of the PRC’s intelligence community; the PRC’s PLA moves into the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic Oceans and into the northeastern Mediterranean Sea with its dual use commercial and military seaports and airports; and on and on.

Maintaining the peace in the North Atlantic, thus, requires the PRC threat to that theater be addressed. Furthermore, the PRC’s nakedly open support of Russia in the latter’s equally naked invasion of a sovereign nation makes it imperative that “defending…from a Russian attack” involve addressing the PRC threat. That’s optimally done at the source; hence the need to emphasize the threat to NATO interests and security by including Asia as one of the AORs in the NATO theater of operations.

Distance in the modern world is nonexistent. It’s entirely appropriate that NATO expand its area of regard and learn to do two things at once.

Rethinking

Posted on by
Reply

Holman Jenkins wrote Tuesday about Rethinking Trump and the Ukraine War. His central thesis is the “confusion” in Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s intelligence community and throughout his administration generally about what to do about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how to respond—if at all—to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s surprisingly amateurish attempt to sow further confusion in our domestic politics (and the even more amateurish emphasis on those efforts by Biden’s…advisors…throughout his administration).

But my concern arises prior to any of that; it centers on the underlying misconception of the nature of that war.

That rethinking that Jenkins wants to see needs to begin with a correction to that misconception, and I’m almost as concerned that Jenkins and nearly everyone else who should know better…don’t.

Russia invaded with the purpose of erasing Ukraine the sovereign nation and reducing it to a petty satrap in Vladimir Putin’s empire, and Ukraine is fighting for its existence.

It isn’t the Ukraine war; it’s the Russian war, inflicted on Ukraine. Only with an accurate understanding of that situation can any ideas of what to do about it be developed.