Category Archives: defense policy

The Utility of Sanctions on Russia

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The Biden-Harris administration is prepared—or so it says—to impose additional, broad-reaching, and heavy sanctions on Russia, if the latter follows through on its impending invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made efforts to sanction-proof his nation’s economy:

padding the country’s foreign reserves, buying gold, and pivoting some exports to China.

On the other hand, Biden-Harris threatens those additional sanctions:

Senior administration officials said the US could ban the export to Russia of various products that use microelectronics based on US equipment, software or technology, similar to the US pressure campaign on Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. US officials have previously said that measures under consideration also include cutting off Russian banks’ access to the dollar and possible sanctions on Russian energy exports.

Leave aside the question of whether Putin’s moves would work against these new sanctions. Leave aside, also, the delayed effects that even unopposed economic sanctions have before they start to bite and that Putin already will have conquered and occupied Ukraine before those effects begin.

There are problems for Biden-Harris and for Putin regarding the new and improved sanctions.

For Biden-Harris, the problems will center on the porous nature of the sanctions’ imposition. People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping will enthusiastically move to bypass the sanctions and increase PRC trade with Russia.

Worse will be Europe’s…imperfect…compliance with the sanctions. Germany, in particular, will ignore the sanctions, however secretive it tries to be about it. Germany has moved itself into far too great energy dependency on Russia and will trade for Russian oil and gas quite freely. Additionally, French President Emmanuel Macron has shown himself entirely willing to compromise with Putin on the matter of Ukrainian relationship with Russia and with western Europe and on Russia’s relationship with the European Union. Also, France’s own need for Russian energy, while not as great as Germany’s, is quite significant. Together, these two economies are strong enough to create large holes in the sanctions.

The problem for Putin centers on that PRC move to ignore the sanctions. Putin already has made a critical resource exploitation deal with Xi that allows the PRC to move citizens into central and western Siberia to develop the oil, gas, timber, and metals resources there. That’s a move that tacitly allows the PRC to colonize Siberia, which mainland Chinese governments for centuries have considered Russia to have stolen.

Beyond that, Russia and the PRC have the combined (if heavily weighted to one side) economic power and overall resource self-sufficiency to be independent of the West’s economic regime. However, whether or not they combine efforts that closely, the closer economic ties that Putin will need—and get—from the PRC, pushed by those added Biden-Harris sanctions, will emphasize the relative economic sizes of Russia and the PRC: a GDP of $4.3 trillion in purchasing power parity vs $29.4 trillion. Putin will be running the very serious risk of reducing Russia to the equivalent of satrap of the PRC.

Yap, Yap, Yap

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President Joe Biden (D) keeps threatening sanctions if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine. Putin keeps being unimpressed.

American President Joe Biden continues to threaten economic sanctions and trade restrictions on Russia if it further invades Ukraine, while Russian President Vladimir Putin appears undeterred by the warnings.

On the one hand, a porch dog is yapping.

On the other hand, with some apologies to Merle Haggard, Putin is continuing.

Big wheel’s rollin’; Big wheel’s rollin’, movin’ on

Or, with apologies to Tina Turner:

So we’re going to take the beginning of this song
And do it easy
Then we’re going to do the finish…rough

Because no one, least of all Putin (or PRC President Xi Jinping, who’s enjoying the performances), takes Biden-Harris seriously. Ex-President Barack Obama made our nation a laughingstock. Biden-Harris is just, plain dangerous.

Germany as Mediator?

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A Deutche Welle article cites German luminaries as thinking Germany can mediate the “dispute” between Russia and Ukraine.

For instance, here’s Christoph Heusgen, Under-Secretary for Foreign and Security Policy in the German Chancellery from 2005 to 2017 and upcoming Munich Security Conference Chairman:

Germany overall has assumed a more active role in world politics, and people are asking for this. There are lots of expectations that we play an important role, and we do this. You know, I mentioned the Ukraine crisis. We do this when you look at the Balkans where we are very active.

Reiner Schwalb, ex-military attaché for Germany in Moscow, though, gave the game away (as did Heusgen in the above).

Berlin is a point of contact between Europe and America from the American perspective. Despite our history, the German-Russian relationship has a certain stability. There is a great economic exchange, with cultural exchange and scientific exchange, and repeated attempts by Germany to cooperate more intensively with Russia.

“From the American perspective” is a cynically offered irrelevancy. What’s central are two aspects of the German-Russian relationship. One is this “great economic exchange.” That’s an exchange that’s based on and strengthened by Germany’s dependence—voluntarily entered into by the German government—on Russia for its energy.

The other aspect is that “repeated attempts by Germany to cooperate more intensively with Russia” business. Cooperate with Russia, especially with Russia holding—and having already demonstrated that it does—the whip hand on German energy.

Regarding Heusgen, his “look at the Balkans where we are very active” brag. Germany also has been very active in the Baltics vis-à-vis Ukraine—barring Estonia from transferring badly needed arms to Ukraine if those arms originated in Germany.

Germany as mediator—a risible concept.

Much of His Policy Still Unknown

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Aaron Kliegman, in his Saturday piece for Just the News, expressed considerable dismay over President Joe Biden’s (D) foreign policy vis-à-vis northern Korea: much of that policy is still unknown, he wrote.

I think the situation is much worse, and much broader than that.

Biden-Harris’ foreign policy as a whole is still unknown. It’s unknown because Biden-Harris has none; he’s operating with a James Joyce-ian stream of conscious, but without Joyce’s level of awareness.

This lack of policy, this streaming reaction muddle, is demonstrated by the mess Biden-Harris made of our withdrawal from Afghanistan; the mess he’s making of our relationship with the Republic of China; the mess he’s making of our relationship—political and economic—with the People’s Republic of China; the mess he’s making of our relationship with Russia, including our growing oil and gas dependency on it; the mess he’s making of the present Ukraine crisis.

Stream of reaction—it just doesn’t work in the real world, except for the nation initiating the action.

Concerns Regarding Ukraine

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James Carafano has some. I have some thoughts regarding a couple of his concerns.

The administration needs a clear strategy for how to look like a real global leader….

Key to looking like a “real global leader,” prior to having a strategy, is to act like one. Stop reacting to what the enemy does, and seize the initiative. Make the enemy react to us. Neither the President Joe Biden (D) half of the Biden-Harris presidency nor the Vice President Kamala Harris (D) half know how to do any of that. Or, as Biden has demonstrated too many times, he’s too timid to. Biden-Harris’ methodology is to completely cede control of the crisis to the one who created the crisis.

Even now, the US can’t muster the full support of NATO allies for bolstering Ukraine’s self-defense. Biden’s good buddies, such as the Germans, have been embarrassingly recalcitrant.

Global leaders—any leaders—don’t wait to take action until they have gained universal consensus. That’s just more reaction, here to the actions of potential allies, rather than initiative-taking. Leaders act as soon as the efforts at coalition building have identified the recalcitrant. Delay beyond that only feeds the enemy. In some circumstances, the pace of events requires leaders to lead, to seize the initiative and act with no delay or hesitation, whether or not any sort of coalition has yet been built.

For instance: Germany has long made plain that they’ve abandoned NATO in all but formal exit—Germany doesn’t even trouble to maintain a viable military for its own defense, much less to support its supposed NATO allies and co-members. They’ve made particularly clear vis-à-vis Ukraine that they’re in the Russian camp, forcing UK arms shipments into Ukraine to go around German airspace and blocking Estonia from transferring arms—arms that Estonia would desperately need in the event of a Biden-Harris-permitted “incursion”—to Ukraine if those arms came from Germany.

There’s this, too, regarding how deeply into the Russian purse Germany has gone:

One German admiral made headlines arguing Germany make nice with Putin and worry about Beijing. (He then immediately resigned.)

That German Admiral was Navy chief Kay-Achim Schönbach, speaking in India at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, and he didn’t say anything that his government hadn’t already approved. He resigned afterward? A knight sacrifice, as any chess player—like Russian President Vladimir Putin, perhaps—would recognize.

A leader would recognize that it’s past time to move without Germany. Waiting on it only strengthens Putin’s control of the schedule and his position concerning Ukraine.

And this:

He [Putin] has never, however, triggered World War III. He’s likely smart enough to figure out how to wring something he wants out of this crisis without setting the world alight.

Putin is very likely to get everything out of this crisis without setting the world alight. He’s smart enough to have already figured out that that Biden-Harris won’t fight back in any meaningful way. All the latter has on offer are inchoate threats of heavy economic sanctions, accompanied by furious Biden-Harris finger wagging, after Putin has gone into Ukraine and seized the nation. See above re reacting.

But, yes, Carafano’s leading concern is spot on. People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping will be the larger winner if—when—Putin conquers and occupies Ukraine. Biden-Harris losing Ukraine will hand the Republic of China to Xi on a cheap pewter platter.