Category Archives: defense policy

To Abuse a Metaphor….

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Iran has had its inability to defend itself against direct Israeli attacks, and Hamas and Hezbollah, although still fighting, have been severely damaged. The Biden-Harris administration wants a “proportional” response by Israel to Iran’s latest assault, a murderous-intended, ballistic missile attack all across the geography of Israel. They’re not alone. Michael Knights, Washington Institute for Near East Policy senior fellow:

Israeli retaliations always tend to match the reduction in its civilian morale, done as a reassurance that the Israeli qualitative edge is still there and that Israel can hit its enemies back harder than they can hit it. Now, in this case, these Iranian strikes didn’t seem to have hit very hard.

Proportionality: Iran keeps attacking Israel, directly now, through its terrorist clients north and south of Israel also. Our Progressive-Democrat administration’s version of proportionality is to just trade tit-for-tat strikes that do nothing to put an end to Iran’s repeated strikes, and as they continue, the likelihood grows that one strike will get through and severely damage or destroy Israel.

True proportionality would have Israel strike hard enough to prevent Iran from being able to strike again for a good, long time—generations, ideally. Dina Esfandiary, International Crisis Group‘s Middle East and North Africa senior adviser:

It [Iran] really is stuck between a rock and a hard place[.]

It’s time to slam the rock down hard on the hard place and severely damage, if not cripple, Iran. That’s the only way to prevent Iran from continuing its murderous attacks.

Adding Pressure

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In a Monday editorial, the Wall Street Journal‘s editors suggest that, with Israel’s damaging Hezbollah and the associated weakening of Iran, now is the time for us (and the West) to add to the pressure on Iran. But these worthies are as timid as Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden (and Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential nominee Kamala Harris by her complete silence).

The editors suggest striking the Houthis, despite their having cowed Biden into tolerating their closing off serious commerce through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (he’s only letting our Navy play whack-a-missile (the editors’ term)), just don’t strike now:

The next time the Houthis attack, the US can unleash the same sustained havoc on them that Israel has on Hezbollah. The Houthis and their Iranian suppliers would no longer have the escalation advantage.

Why wait? Strike now. Cut out the tit-for-tat silliness that’s fit only for the grade school playground; in the real world that just costs lives and treasure.

Further, don’t engage in dumbass and wholly immoral escalation games—immoral because all escalation management only drags things out, running up the friendly casualty count even worse that childish tit-for-tat—get after all the Houthis’ sites, destroy them, and sink the Iranian and Iranian proxy shipping that’s moving arms to Houthi hands. And: seal off the Arabian Sea and the Arabian Gulf from all Iranian shipping of any sort, military or commercial, outbound or inbound.

But don’t count on Biden or Harris to support this. They’re too busy with their moral equivalence sewage of demanding cease-fires right damn now, which they know will only benefit the terrorists.

And now, as I write on 1 October, directly pursuant to Biden-Harris’ timidity in the face of Hamas and Hezbollah and the terrorists’ active sponsor and armorer, Iran, Iran has launched a long-duration ballistic missile attack intended to blanket all of Israel. It’s an attack, with a view to destroying Israel, that never would have occurred had the Biden-Harris administration openly stood beside Israel instead of supporting the terrorists with the administration’s shameful moral equivalence demand for diplomacy and cease-fires.

And my own, not humble, advice for the Israeli government. Don’t let your success in these two Iranian attacks go to your head. Keep in mind the possibility that Iran is sandbagging you with these two attacks, holding back their truly capable Order of Battle against the nearby day they have nuclear weapons and launch their serious attack. Which will come out of the blue, not in any face-saving response to some action of your own.

There’s Always an Excuse not to Bother

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It’s not just the European governments that stand in the way of those nations’ efforts to rearm and to supply arms to Ukraine in the face of Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and the barbarian’s designs on the rest of Europe. True enough, those governments have bureaucratic red tape that stands in the way, along with politicians disinterested in getting that red tape out of the way.

Months after the acquisition of the [ammunition-producing] factory, a majority in the Danish parliament demanded that the government open the process to bidders, rather than settling for the presumed favorite for the job….

Too often, though, it’s those nations’ private businesses that would be important, if not critical, to the rearmament effort, local governments, and the populations themselves.

…some banks won’t lend to defense contractors, making life particularly tough for small companies in the industry’s supply chain.

And

In the German city of Troisdorf, Diehl Defence said it has struggled to get permission to expand a factory in the city center to boost production of detonators and other parts for the Iris T missile-defense system, which has formed a crucial part of Ukraine’s air defenses since the war began.
Troisdorf’s mayor, Alexander Biber, said the community was in constructive talks with Diehl, but asked whether a city center is better suited for homes or businesses than for factories producing explosives.

And

A leading European tank maker, KNDS, was planning to expand a Munich testing range, but had to pause following local complaints, including one from a man who said the work interfered with his meditation, according to a person familiar with the matter. Other residents were concerned that noise from the testing site would affect housing prices.

These are anecdotal, but they illustrate the trends.

This lack of interest in defending themselves, much less help a nation under a barbarian invasion, just further demonstrates the uselessness of NATO and the importance of standing up a replacement mutual defense arrangement involving the Three Seas Initiative, the UK, and the US.

No One Is Answering the Question

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Or even asking it. During the ongoing Israeli effort to push Hezbollah into stopping its attacks on Israeli citizens, that nation continues to be pressured by folks in the West, most especially our own…administration…to agree a cease fire, as though this would cure everything, or at least stop things for some period of time.

This pressure, though wholly ignores (I don’t agree that these oh-so-smart folks are missing it) the environment and the broader context in which the fight is occurring—a fight, mind you, whose current round the terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon began ‘way last October and continue to prosecute against Israel. That environment, that context, is the terrorists’ Prime Directive to destroy Israel and exterminate the Jews in that nation.

Thus, the question, which is so obvious, it (I repeat) cannot be being missed; it’s being carefully, cynically ignored: how does any nation—here, Israel—have a cease fire, or any sort of negotiation at all, with an enemy whose avowed goal is the destruction of that nation? Especially when that enemy says it has no concerns for its own damage or how many of its own civilians die in the process?

Only a Partial Solution

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The editors of The Wall Street Journal correctly recognize the dangerous (and fatal to our nation if it’s not corrected) weaponization of commercial hardware and software. The solution they propose, though, is badly incomplete.

…we should first recognize that the Chinese Communist Party isn’t interested in cooperating on AI risks and safety.

Absolutely, and in so many other areas, as well. But….

Second, we need to wield the free-world technology stack more effectively. … America has the tools to build a software-defined manufacturing ecosystem, where we can find and fix bottlenecks. A digital twin of the entire defense supply chain would allow us to analyze, allocate, and accelerate production from the factory floor to the front line.

And

Third, a revitalized American technological industrial base should catalyze an interoperable free-world technological industrial base. To outcompete China, we must make it easy for allies and geopolitical swing states to adopt, contribute to, and innovate on top of our software.

I’ll leave aside, here, the risks to our own national security of exposing our technology and software even to friends and allies, much less to those uncertain swing states, only to have secrets and advantages further exposed to our enemies by leaks. Instead, I’ll emphasize that the finest software in the world is useless without the hardware to run it, and the farthest advanced technology does no good for us at all if it sits exclusively in one or two prototype models or in the horribly expensive few production models.

First after recognizing the inimical nature of the PRC, and Russia, and Iran, and northern Korea must be revitalizing our industrial base—that factory floor—so we can build the hardware—the weapons and weapons systems—which will house that wondrous technology and on which will run the bleeding edge (and proven, mind you) software in the vast numbers we’ll need, and our friends and allies will need, when our enemies attack.

After all, that next war will be fought with the forces in place. The speed of war has reached the point that there will be scant time, if any, for reinforcements to reach the theater (if they can survive the trip at all), and no time at all to produce, even from a thoroughly revived industrial base, combat loss replacements.

Rebuilding our industrial base will itself be terribly expensive, but what would be the cost of having our foreign, even domestic, policies controlled by our enemies after we lose the next war they start?