Category Archives: defense policy

On Aid to Ukraine

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Even in Reluctant Germany, the government’s loyal opposition and a number of incumbent officials are calling for Germany to get out of the way and send tanks to Ukraine so that nation can further, and more rapidly, exploit their current battlefield gains and continue driving the barbarian back out.

But. But, but, but.

“We are simply not going to be the first to send Western-made tanks…” a senior German government official said.

I’m reminded of two lines. One is by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as he channels Sallah: Russians. Very dangerous. You go first.

The other might be by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sort of channeling Conan: Crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and listen to the lamentation of the women. Except that Zelenskyy is quite a bit more gentile than that, and he’d eschew the lamentation part. That’s what the barbarian from the east does. Zelenskyy, instead, would listen to the cheers of the women.

Russia is Not a State Sponsor of Terror

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Or at least President Joe Biden (D) is too timid to say so out loud, or officially, which would bring a round of additional sanctions against Russia.

Biden, asked by a reporter on Monday if he would blacklist Russia as a terrorist state, said simply, “no,” after months of non-committal answers from senior officials.

Biden expanded on that the next day, through his Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre:

She said the designation would hamper aid delivery to parts of war-ravaged Ukraine or prevent aid groups and companies from taking part in a deal brokered by the United Nations and Türkiye to ship badly needed grain from Ukraine’s blockaded ports.
“It would also undercut our unprecedented multilateral [coalition] that has been so effective to holding Putin accountable and could also undermine our ability to support Ukraine” in negotiations, she told reporters.

In other words, Biden is afraid of what Putin might do in response to such a designation. Or worse, Biden is afraid of his own imaginings of what Putin might do.

“Putin Will Adapt”

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In Holman Jenkins’ opinion piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal concerning Russian President Vladimir Putin’s energy war against Europe (as a secondary front in his war against Ukraine), he offered this regarding Europe’s stick-to-it-iveness vs Putin’s:

Mr Putin will quickly adapt once it’s proven to him Europe’s governing parties can’t knuckle under to Russian blackmail and retain their democratic viability.

If Europe doesn’t surrender in the face of Putin’s energy war, it will be the Russian people who feel the resulting economic, and other, pain.

Jenkins is incredibly naive to think Putin cares about that. He’ll persist until he is militarily driven out of Ukraine. And he’ll persist elsewhere for as long as he’s in power. The situation is all about Putin and his angst over the “greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century” and his obsession with redressing that.

Europe needs to defeat Putin in his energy war, not only to save themselves (and Ukraine) in the near term, but also to greatly mitigate the costs of Putin’s aggressively pushed obsession in the longer term.

Logistics Matters…

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…far beyond the process of getting soldiers and consumables to a battlefield and to the battlers.

In the aftermath of Germany’s—and much of Europe’s—considered decision to make themselves dependent on Russian natural gas and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s equally considered decision to limit and cut off natural gas supplies to Europe to try to coerce behaviors acceptable to Putin, Germany, et al., are (re)discovering the need for better logistics and logistical execution.  The lessons are available to the US, too, if the government is willing to learn.

Europe’s energy crisis has unleashed a global battle over natural-gas tankers….

And [emphasis added]

European countries ramped up their purchases of liquefied natural gas from the US, Qatar, and other sources this year as Russia cut supplies to the continent. They are competing with peers in South Korea and Japan—where gas demand has surged during a heat wave—for a finite amount of supply ferried by a limited number of vessels.

LNG-capable tankers are long-lead items that take specialized equipment to keep the natural gas cooled and under pressure. They’re also expensive, hence the interest in only limited inventories of such ships—they’re expensive even simply to have, if they’re just sitting around in port unused.

It’s not just the complexity of the ships, though, that contribute to the present long-lead times.

Shipmakers in South Korea, the world’s biggest producer of LNG tankers, don’t have free capacity for new orders until 2027[.]

However, the wonders of Europe have known for some time that they needed more LNG tankers.

LNG and the tankers that carry the fuel were in high demand even before the conflict, as extreme weather curtailed hydropower, and many economies sought to ditch coal to reduce carbon emissions.

The complexity of these logistics is further illustrated by this little fillip: the price of steel is rapidly rising, an accelerated increase driven by demand from a broad reach of needs in addition to simply making boats.

The lessons for the US?

The need for more natural gas (and oil) production, more flexible production, better and expanded distribution grids to refiners, and in the present context, expansion of port facilities able to convert natural gas to liquid natural gas and then to transfer that LNG to LNG-capable tankers.

And maybe build some of our own LNG tankers. And get rid of the Jones Act.

Equilibrium

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Laura Secor had a Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview with Henry Kissinger, and a number of letter writers in the WSJ‘s Letters commented on Kissinger’s espousal of a need for some sort of equilibrium among the world’s powers as the means of world stability (redundancy deliberate).

Kissinger operates from a false premise—the need for international equilibrium.

An equilibrium that balances American enemies—Russia, the People’s Republic of China, Iran, even northern Korea—with American national security is dangerously detrimental to American national security.

We—to use Khruschev’s phrasing—buried the Soviet Union, and we did it entirely peacefully by being superior to it in every meaningful way, and exploiting those superiorities aggressively in the economic sphere in the end game. We would have won that contest much sooner had we been more aggressive much earlier, but in those earlier years we were stuck with the likes of Kissinger and former President Jimmy Carter (D).

We have only to return to that aggressiveness in order to continue securing our safety and weal. And to achieve the only equilibrium that’s even remotely safe for us.