Category Archives: defense policy

An Independent Greenland’s Budget

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Amid President-elect Donald Trump’s (R) rhetoric regarding buying Greenland from Denmark, there is concern in Greenland about that, but maybe not so much. Greenland already is a largely self-governing island within the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenland already has been pushing for independence, and the Danish government, along with its monarch, is open to considering that, given sufficient interest in independence on the part of Greenlanders.

Greenlanders strongly want independence, they don’t want to be part of the US, but they are highly interested in a closer relationship with us than is politically possible as long as they’re part of the Kingdom—another factor underlying their push for outright independence.

One concern about independence is that with independence, the annual $600 million in transfers from Denmark to Greenland, roughly half the current Greenlandic budget, would stop. What to do about that?

Greenland is rich in a broad variety of natural resources, from oil and natural gas to rare earth minerals to graphite to uranium to precious stones, and on and on. These resources remain largely untapped. The fishing waters around Greenland and in what would become an independent Greenland’s Exclusive Economic Zone also are rich.

Extraction royalties from mining those land based natural resources would easily fill the budget gap, and more. Alaska has been paying dividends to its citizens for nearly 50 years just from oil and natural gas extraction. Texas charges a severance tax—its extraction royalty—on natural gas, oil, and condensate (a byproduct of natural gas production with its own commercial value) production. That tax covers a significant fraction of Texas’ annual budget. With proper (Greenlandic) management the fisheries (and undersea minerals) in Greenland’s EEZ would become another source of national revenue.

Greenland’s budget would more than make up for the loss of Denmark transfers with its own extraction royalties and exploitation fees—which needn’t be all that high to put the nation’s budget well into the black. A trade arrangement with the US that addressed all, or even most, of that would be highly beneficial to both nations.

Beyond that, the US is highly concerned about Russia’s and People’s Republic of China’s moves in the region and in the polar seas and so is interested in expanding existing bases and adding more. Basing rights could come with fees for Greenland, also.

A freely negotiated trade and basing arrangement with an independent Greenland would be a winning arrangement all around. That also would be more revenue positive for us than taking on Greenland as a territory, or even a protectorate.

But It’ll Help

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Jason Riley says banning TikTok won’t solve data security problems.

TikTok is hardly the only social-media platform that offers heaping platefuls of misinformation and political propaganda. It isn’t even the only app owned by a Chinese company that gathers extensive data on American users. WeChat, the messaging app developed by the Chinese tech firm Tencent, is another. ….
Another problem with banning TikTok might be that it will do little if anything to address data-security concerns. Foreign and domestic tech companies capture mountains of user information, which enable them to target advertising. TikTok is far from the worst offender. A 2022 Consumer Reports study noted that Google and Meta collect much more data than TikTok.

Congratulations to Riley: he’s successfully identified how widespread and hoary in age that failure is.

Riley also is too narrowly focused. No one move will, by itself, solve data security problems. That, though, does not at all mean that no one move should be made; it just puts a premium on taking additional steps, ideally in concert with each other, but at least take them.

In the end, too, our government wouldn’t be banning TikTok: the PRC government, through TikTok‘s owner ByteDance, would be the one banning TikTok in the US. The PRC’s choice is clear: allow TikTok to continue operating in the US by selling it to a non-PRC-domiciled business or, by refusing, ban the app.

Nor are there any real free-speech concerns with a ban of TikTok. There are a plethora of other messaging and marketing venues. No one’s speech would be limited in any way; only a single tool, well used by an enemy nation for espionage against us, would be limited.

Riley concluded with this:

The reality is that nothing TikTok does is unique to TikTok, and China doesn’t need the app to access our data. If Congress wants to do something about digital privacy, it will have to do better than this.

Absolutely. But doing better requires, of necessity, first starting to do something.

“Mistake”

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The Pentagon has finally got around to recognizing the dual nature of businesses domiciled in the People’s Republic of China, and it has listed a number of companies as being dual military and commercial companies. Among them are Cosco Shipping; CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology), which is trying to ram a new CATL battery factory down the throats of a Michigan community whose residents adamantly don’t want it; and WeChat owner Tencent Holdings. I think WeChat ought to be on that list, too, but that’s for another time.

CATL and Tencent in particular are bellyaching about their listing.

Tencent said its inclusion “is clearly a mistake. We are not a military company or supplier. Unlike sanctions or export controls, this listing has no impact on our business. We will nonetheless work with the Department of Defense to address any misunderstanding.”

And

CATL has never engaged in any military-related business or activities….

CATL also says it’ll sue if they can’t have its way.

The claims are…silly…given the already dual nature of all businesses domiciled in the PRC as intelligence gathering and commercial operations under the PRC’s 2017 National Intelligence Law. The whole point of that law is to put PRC companies at the behest of the nation’s intelligence community for espionage and, by extension, at the behest of the nation’s People’s Liberation Army for use of their products and development of related products as guided by that espionage.

Why Indeed

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Elizabeth Braw, of the Atlantic Council, in her Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed, wondered why the People’s Republic of China would want to undermine global shipping.

Undermining the global maritime order seems an odd strategy for a country that owes its rapid economic rise to the oceans.

It’s not an odd strategy at all. The PRC has observed the economic, political, and military power that has accrued to the United States since WWII by our nation’s control of the seas and protection of global shipping. The aggressively acquisitive PRC (South China Sea; East China Sea; naval bases around the world, including Atlantic Ocean coastal Africa and Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean coastal South America) is now sailing a formidable combat navy and a very large dual use merchant marine fleet. The PRC also has publicly stated its goal of supplanting the US as the global hegemon.

The PRC, with that globally capable navy and merchant marine, now believes it can achieve that.

The straight and simply stated answer to Braw’s question is that the PRC doesn’t want to undermine global shipping at all. It wants to be the power that controls it, with all of that economic, political, and military power redounding to it and with the parallel result of a reduction of the US by the same magnitude.

Sometimes political science isn’t rocket science.

Since Mexico Won’t

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Supporters of Republican President-elect Donald Trump are making noises about military strikes against the drug cartels in Mexico. Newly elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is downplaying the matter while she makes noises about her government taking the cartels seriously.

Sheinbaum has rushed to show her administration isn’t soft on drugs and migrants. Her government has gone after fentanyl smugglers in Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel, seizing 1.3 tons of the drug in a record bust. She has sent her security minister to Sinaloa to oversee the efforts to take back control of a state where organized crime dominates the political establishment and two factions are in a turf war.
Mexico is in talks to set up a unit of elite security officers who would be vetted and trained by US law-enforcement officials for operations against criminals in Mexico, according to Mexican officials.

The fentanyl bust seems like a large number, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the total fentanyl output of Mexico’s drug cartels, an output that includes both their own production and their transshipment of fentanyl through Mexico to the US. The talks regarding the elite unit appear to be just chit-chat for show, given how progress in setting up the unit is close to nil.

There’s no reason to believe that Sheinbaum is any more serious about the fentanyl flows than was her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who functionally aided the cartels with his hugs instead of jails policy.

The facts remain that the cartels are poisoning us, and so far the Mexican government is allowing that. The Mexican government has even allowed various of the cartels to take over and operate many of Mexico’s cities, and the cartels own and operate the state of Sinaloa. That’s the central government functionally abetting the cartels.

As noted above, Sheinbaum is making noises about returning Sinaloa to government control, but nothing is happening so far. Meanwhile, the fentanyl continues to flow. If all Sheinbaum has is noise, or if she really does try and does not succeed, it may be necessary for the US to take down the cartels ourselves. American lives depend on it.