Category Archives: defense policy

Stepping Up

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Great Britain is sending Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has said that the missiles are now going into or are in the country itself, although it’s unclear how many are being sent or whether there are more in the pipeline.

The export version of the cruise missile (which I ass-u-me is the version being sent) has a range of 155 miles, cruises at 100 feet above ground, and carries a 1,000lb warhead.

Wallace also said that We simply will not stand back while Russia kills civilians. The missiles will allow Russian launch sites to come under attack, and they will facilitate deeper interdiction of the barbarian’s supply lines, fuel and ammunition depots, and troop staging areas.

Now the question remains, especially in light of Wallace’s overt refusal to simply abide while the barbarian commits his atrocities: Where in the world is Joe Biden?

The US Navy under this Commander-in-Chief

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Iran has seized another oil tanker, this on in the Strait of Hormuz, less than a week after the pirates seized another oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, just outside the Strait.

A dozen small Iranian naval boats swarmed the 360-yard-long Niovi after it left Dubai en route to the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah early Wednesday morning, the navy said. The Iranian boats forced the [Panama-flagged] Niovi to reverse course and head toward Iran’s coast.
The seizure came six days after Iranian forces in the Gulf of Oman used a helicopter and boats to seize the Advantage Sweet, a Greek-owned, Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker bound for Texas.

There’s this, too, for background:

The US Navy said Iran has “harassed, attacked, or interfered” with 15 commercial ships over the past two years.

And all along, the Biden-hobbled Navy stood by and carefully watched.

Apparently President Joe Biden (D) does not agree with former President Thomas Jefferson that pirates must be dealt with…firmly.

Sustainability

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In commenting on the strongly negative impact that the Environmental, Social, and Governance mentality is having on European and European Union investment in national and EU defense, Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe Secretary General Jan Pie offered this warning:

European banks and investors have picked up the signal that Europe would be about to say defense is not a sustainable activity.

In one respect, that signal is correct. A defense establishment that is not adequately sized, armed, and trained will be unsustainable, as nations possessing such an inadequacy will be overwhelmed and conquered by nations that believe the best defense is a good offense, or that merely have better sized, armed, and trained military establishments.

Funding PRC Research

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Senator and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Ranking Member Roger Marshall (R, KS) and his staff have released their Muddy Waters report concerning the origin of the Wuhan Virus—which he concludes happened via two likely leaks from the PRC’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab not equipped to do virus research at the depth to which it was handling the Wuhan Virus. One of the conclusions of his report is that the US government was funding gain-of-function research in that lab.

I have a couple of thoughts.

Marshall said about the PRC research,

That’s why we’ve been calling for a halt in all viral gain-of-function research until we get the guardrails around it.

I disagree with that. We should do viral gain-of-function research on a variety of viruses, but we should do it in our labs, where we have absolute control over the research and its findings as well as the quality and ability of the labs in which the research is done. We should be doing the research for a couple of reasons: one is that our enemies—vis., the PRC—are doing it, and we need to understand the altered viruses and how to counter them when those enemy nations use them against us. The other reason is that these viruses do cross-over from animals to humans sometimes, and whether they do this naturally—which is quite rare—or altered viruses accidentally leak from a lab, we need to understand them and how to counter them.

My other thought concerns this remark by Marshall, regarding American funding for PRC virus research:

If we’re funding it, then they need to conform to our rules, and we need American boots on the ground[.]

Certainly. However, aside from the fact that the PRC won’t agree to American presence in their labs in any useful way, we shouldn’t be funding PRC research on viruses at all. We shouldn’t be funding PRC research on any biological research. We shouldn’t be funding any PRC research, of any kind, at all.

“Hurting Relations”

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The People’s Republic of China greatly reduced its export of addicting drugs for the criminal trade into the United States after former President Donald Trump (R) pressured PRC President Xi Jinping to do so. Under Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden, Xi has resumed and vastly increased his nation’s addicting drug export, particularly of fentanyl and of fentanyl precursors into Mexico for transshipment and Fentanyl manufacture and shipment into our nation.

The fact that Xi so greatly increased his export of this drug and of its precursors, targeting us, is a clear illustration of Xi’s attack on us without going kinetic. He’s already supported, just in the two years of the Biden administration, the export into our nation enough fentanyl to completely exterminate us, were it not for the Biden-undermanned CBP.

Now Wang Wenbin, the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information Department Deputy Director, speaking for the PRC’s Foreign Affairs Department and in turn for Xi, objects to even the slight umbrage Biden is beginning to show.

The Treasury Department said Friday that the sanctions against Wuhan Shuokang Biological Technology Co, Ltd, Suzhou Xiaoli Pharmatech Co, Ltd, Yao Huatao, Wu Yaqin, Wu Yonghao, and Wang Hongfei are “part of a whole-of-government effort to counter the global threat posed by the trafficking of illicit drugs into the United States that is causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans annually, as well as countless more non-fatal overdoses.”

Here’s Wang:

China, in the spirit of humanitarianism, has been trying to help the US as best it can….

And

…US [move] to impose sanctions “seriously undermines” bilateral cooperation between the two countries over drug control….

How humanitarian of the PRC to sedate us before killing us.

What sort of cooperation, what sort of relationship of any sort, can we have with an enemy nation that already is at war with us, economically and via poisoning as many of us as it can with its drug war? We are not undermining relations; the PRC already has been doing so, for years.