Category Archives: defense policy

Why Not?

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Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (D) doesn’t want the US to decouple our trade or our trade relationship with the People’s Republic of China. It’s sufficient, she claims in all seriousness to safeguard [our] technology to ensure [our] economic competitiveness.

It’s important that we get the bilateral economic relationship right, not just by protecting but also by actively promoting our economic interests in trade. We are not seeking the decoupling from China.

Why not? There’s a broader concern here, that Raimondo and the Biden administration at large, carefully ignore than merely protecting our technology and technology advantages. That larger concern is our independence of action on the world stage in “competition” with a nation with the avowed goal of overtaking and supplanting the US in the world—of conquering us, whether overtly or functionally.

That goal, that threat is given concrete, measurable effect by the PRC’s

  • flooding the US with fentanyl and flooding Mexico with the components of fentanyl so that nation can flood US with fentanyl
  • our dependence on PRC for Critical Items in our supply chain
    • rare earths, which the PRC already has used in an attempt to extort Japan
    • lithium
    • cobalt
    • intermediate components in assembly of computer chips, computers, cell phones
  • overt threats against friends and allies, , Republic of China, Japan and Republic of Korea (East China Sea), nations rimming South China Sea
  • 2017 National Intelligence Law that makes every PRC company a spy for the PRC government and for the CCP
  • support for the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine

Trade with the PRC funds their military development against that goal of replacing us.

The PRC is an enemy nation, and we should be doing nothing at all to support its economy, its economic adventurism around the world, its intelligence-gathering efforts, its own technological development, its military expansion and expansionism.

That requires decoupling altogether.

Stop Guessing

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In a Wall Street Journal piece centered on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s supposed goals for his invasion of Ukraine and his associated “red lines,” Laurence Norman and Stephen Fidler opened with this:

President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been punctuated by frequent Russian threats to escalate the war. Many have been later dialed down or ignored, leaving the US and its allies guessing what the Russian leader’s real red lines are.

They added this:

Russia’s repeated ultimatums and U-turns, along with its ever-shifting war aims, have reinforced the belief among Western government officials that Mr Putin is being forced to improvise in a war that has slipped out of his control.

All of that, though, is both a product of Putin’s smoke screening as he prosecutes his barbaric assault and of “Western government officials” overthinking the situation.

I say, stop guessing. Just fully support—diplomatically, economically, and with arms and ammunition—Ukraine in its defense against the barbarian’s invasion. Help Ukraine decisively defeat the barbarian’s invasion and drive him fully out of Ukraine.

Ful stop.

A Plan for the Winter

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Mark Kimmitt (USA Brig Gen, ret) has one for the Ukrainian military that centers on resting and refitting for a major spring offensive. The thought has some merit, but I disagree.

Rather than using the winter to refit for a spring offensive, the Ukrainian army should use refitting-in-progress to mount a winter offensive along one or two fronts.

A drive through Melitopol’ to the Azov Sea coast would be one useful front; a drive to liberate Severodonetsk and though Kramatorsk would be another.

It’s true enough that the Ukrainian forces are tired and their equipage is degrading, but the situation is far worse for the barbarian hordes in Ukraine, and the disparity is greatly magnified by the winter conditions. This is no time to pause and let the barbarians rest and refit and get their balance back.

Harden defensive positions along the current frontlines….

No. Let the barbarians do that. But before they can, the Ukrainians should attack, not letting the barbarians disengage, and go through them like….

Of course this also puts a large premium on Kimmett’s other suggestions:

  • [West should] continue to resupply crucial equipment and ammunition, Himars rockets, and air-defense assets
  • West should beef up its support for Ukraine’s deep-fires campaign against supply depots, logistical routes, command centers, and second-echelon support units well beyond Russian [Kimmetts’ term] frontlines

And his diplomatic and economic suggestions, as well, which center on Europe holding the line against the barbarian’s assault on European energy and on tightening economic sanctions against barbarian Russia.

Negotiations with Russia

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Boris Johnson, in his Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed, is on the right track regarding the idea of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin an end to the barbarian’s invasion. Negotiations now would be both fruitless and pointless, Johnson writes, because they would require Ukraine to surrender Ukrainian territory and they would idiotically rely on the barbarian’s trustworthiness in keeping any agreement. Negotiations now would be ill-timed, as well: the time for negotiating can only be after the barbarian has been driven entirely from Ukrainian territory and Ukraine having won, totally and decisively, the war the barbarian began.

Johnson had this, too, though:

If Mr Putin were to use a weapon of mass destruction [one of the barbarian chieftain’s many threats], he would be tendering Russia’s resignation from the club of civilized nations….

With this characterization, Johnson is being…generous. Russia hasn’t been a civilized nation, at the least, since the mass starvation the Russians—the people as well as the government—inflicted on Ukrainians and on the Stockholm Syndrome-afflicted Belarussians during the kulak collectivization atrocities of the 1930s. The barbarian has demonstrated—in rivers of blood—the continuing depths of its depravity with the atrocities inflicted by the products of Russian society on Ukrainians in the present barbarian war. Atrocities Johnson describes so genteelly:

captives tortured, women raped, schools and kindergartens deliberately targeted.

He omitted the hospitals deliberately targeted, the vast lines of refugees from besieged cities that the barbarian had agreed to allow to evacuate—and then targeted for mass murder once they were so conveniently lined up on the agreed roads leading away from the city.

Those finally arrived at post-victory negotiations? [A] peaceful, orderly and lasting relationship, and friendship, between Ukraine and Russia, as Johnson so naively described them?

Keep in mind two things as you contemplate such a negotiation. The “soldiers” inflicting those atrocities today—the rapes, the tortures, the child butcheries, the attacks on hospitals, the attacks on infrastructure necessary for civilian survival during the coming winter—are the products of Russian society. Most of these armed thugs may well be from the lower tiers of that society, but who taught them to be the way they are? The rest of that society, who either condone the atrocities or actively order them, all the way up to the chieftain sitting on his throne in the Kremlin.

The other thing is the impossibility of Ukrainian friendship with a polity—barbaric or civilized—that is bent on the utter destruction of Ukraine.

No. The only outcome for the present situation is the utter, decisive defeat of the barbarian, with his being driven entirely from Ukrainian territory. The only possibility for any future relationship between Ukraine and Russia is Ukrainian eternal vigilance against the next wave of barbarians from the east. For that wave will surely come.

Red Lines

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President Joe Biden (D) is meeting today with People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting occurring in Indonesia. Supposedly, on the Biden-Xi agenda will be Biden’s desire to exchange red lines with Xi—each to learn the other’s.

I’m skeptical of the utility of such an exchange.

The problems with Biden and Xi exchanging red lines are two: Biden will respect Xi’s and Xi will not respect Biden’s, and Biden will not enforce his while Xi will enforce his forcefully in the unlikely possibility Biden does stray.

And one more: what would Biden do if his red lines conflict with Xi’s. It’s clear what Xi would do.

Update: In the realization, Biden was too timid even to mention the idea of red lines. All he had were some bland words of concern regarding “Taiwan” and the Taiwan Strait. Not a syllable about the PRC’s seizure and occupation of the South China Sea and the PRC’s seizure, occupation, and militarization of so many South China Sea islands that are owned by other nations rimming that Sea (even if that ownership often is disputed among those nations). Not a minim about the PRC’s aggressive behavior in the East China Sea and the associated threats the PRC makes toward Japan.