Category Archives: defense policy

Iran’s Nuclear Weapons

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With the pseudo-negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program going the way they are, President Joe Biden, of the Biden-Harris Presidency, is rapidly coming to the first of two moments of truth.

The first is whether Biden-Harris will fold in the talks—he is, after all, consigned by the Ayatollah to the kiddie table where he’s to be seen and not heard by the adults in the room—and give Khamenei everything he wants just so Biden-Harris can come home claiming a deal, however disastrous.

That, though, is a moment of lesser truth. The greater truth moment will come after. As Dubowitz and Kroenig put it in their op-ed at the link,

A nuclear-armed Iran would cause further proliferation as regional powers like Saudi Arabia build their own bombs.

But that’s a lesser truth, also, for all that it’s a greater one than the first. Dubowitz and Kroenig also have this:

It might take a year or two to fashion a functioning nuclear warhead that is deliverable on a missile, but once the clerical regime has enough weapons-grade material, the game is over.

The nuclear warhead doesn’t have to be delivered via missile, though. There are a variety of ways to…truck…such device into Israel.

In the event, too, Iran is likely to wait until it has four or five nuclear warheads, since that is what it will take—and all it will take—to destroy Israel as a polity and as a people. And Iran will strike the moment that fourth or fifth weapon becomes operational.

Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former President of Iran and then-Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, on World Al-Qods Day in 2001, as cited by the Middle East Media Research Institute:

If one day, he [Rafsanjani] said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel’s possession [meaning nuclear weapons]—on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

And here is the greatest moment of truth for Biden-Harris. Will he, can he, make

the fateful choice between allowing the clerical regime to become a nuclear-weapons power and using military force to stop it.

Will he make the military strike that Dubowitz and Kroenig suggest will be necessary to prevent Iran’s getting nuclear weapons?

Sadly, Biden-Harris doesn’t have it in him to make the strike. The most we can hope for, and it’s a very thin reed given his and his Progressive-Democratic Party’s open hostility toward Israel, is that Biden-Harris will stay out of the way and let Israel and Saudi Arabia (the latter very sub rosa) conduct the strike.

Brinkmanship

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ME Sarotte thinks Putin has bought into the concept of a 30-year-old betrayal of a commitment by a past US President to a past Russian President to not expand NATO east to include nations that used to be under Soviet domination. Sarotte says that’s the basis for Putin’s current brinkmanship; he’s merely trying to redress that betrayal, as NATO has, indeed, accepted erstwhile Soviet-dominated (even occupied) nations into NATO.

I think it’s hard to take seriously Sarotte’s view. More likely, it seems to me, is that Putin merely is putting that out as a public rationale. The most likely case for his seeming brinkmanship is that Putin doesn’t see his behavior as brinkmanship at all. On the contrary, he’s convinced—rightly or wrongly—that Biden-Harris will fold in the moment of truth.

Widening Gyre of Hostages

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In response to Lithuania’s effrontery in contradicting the People’s Republic of China by letting the Republic of China open a “representative office” in the capital city of Vilnius, the PRC not only is banning import into the PRC of Lithuanian products, it’s banning import of all products that contain Lithuanian components. As The Wall Street Journal dryly put it,

The effects are rippling across Europe.

And already Germany is intimating its desire for surrender, which should come as no surprise from a nation already openly obsequious before Russia:

The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has warned Vilnius that German subsidiaries are at risk.

The widening gyre may well spread across the pond.

In the US, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which would bar goods made with forced labor in Xinjiang region from entering America, passed the House last month. If it becomes law, US companies should brace themselves.

It’s an open question whether the Progressive-Democrat running the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), and the President, Biden-Harris, will permit the bill to become law, or whether one of the other will join Germany as hostage and bar the law.

Elisabeth Braw concluded this in her op-ed at the link:

China’s punishment of Lithuania is a wake-up call for companies and countries alike.

Indeed.

It’s time for Europe and the US to stop doing business with the PRC altogether.

The transition will be deucedly expensive, but Europe and the US will be orders of magnitude better off not being as dependent on the PRC as the PRC’s actions are demonstrating us both to be.

That cost, and the reduction in our economic and political freedom of action, which the PRC will continue to inflict will only get far worse, the longer we delay in carrying out that transition.

In the meantime, it would do us and Lithuania, and all other nations wishing to reduce their dependency on the PRC, a world of good for us to increase our trade with Lithuania.

More Threats

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Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, ahead of the upcoming Geneva “talks” regarding Russia and Ukraine, has instructed President Joe Biden (D) that he, Biden, must answer for the Russian’s demands vis-à-vis Ukraine and Europe, and do so promptly.

We need to figure out quite rapidly whether there is a basis to work on some of those issues. Our military will be there, and then we will see whether there is any basis to continue on a diplomatic track.

And

I cannot exclude negative effects on some arms-control arrangements we maintain with the US, and a big question would be put on the advisability to continue the strategic security dialogue[.]

And, paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal,

Mr Ryabkov said that if diplomatic efforts fail, the Russian president would look into options prepared by his military experts.

The WSJ headlined its article Russia’s Demands on Ukraine Must Be Addressed Urgently, Russian Official Says.

In one respect, Ryabkov is right. It’s growing ever more urgent that the US, and NATO, answer the Russian’s demands. It’s absolutely imperative that the US, and NATO, send defensive and offensive weapons to Ukraine and train those soldiers to use them. It’s growing ever more urgent that the US, and NATO, begin air defense and ground force joint exercises in Ukraine. It’s growing ever more urgent that the US redeploy its forces not involved in joint training, particularly those currently in Germany, into southeastern and northwestern Poland and to move naval forces into the Baltic Sea to within striking range of Kaliningrad.

It’s critical to apply, now, economic sanctions against Russian officials, from Vladimir Putin, through his cronies in the Kremlin, down through his cronies in the Duma, and economic sanctions against the state of Russia.

Waiting until Russia invades will be too late.

Military’s Attack on Religious Freedom

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The US military is flatly refusing even to seriously consider members’ requests for religious accommodation requests regarding excusals from getting vaccinated against the Wuhan Virus. Members who apply are getting boiler plate denials of their requests. Every single one of them; no request has been granted to date.

The Chief of Staff for the USAF, for instance, is insisting that

vaccination is the least restrictive means of furthering the military’s compelling governmental interest.

The business is on appeal through the USAF (and Navy and Army) internal appeals processes; I strongly suspect members will wind up in Federal courts after the DoD appeals processes rubber stamp the service chiefs’ decisions to deny.

In that event, I suggest that all courts hearing such cases should order the Secretary of the Air Force to provide the facts and logic that support the claim of least restrictive means. No Federal court should accept the bald, unsubstantiated statement as in any way dispositive.

There’s another action Federal courts should take: should require the service chiefs to provide the specific reasons for denying the RAR for each case in which an RAR was denied.

One Federal court, since I first wrote this post, has taken some action.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor has issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Navy from enforcing its Must Have Vaccine move. He wrote, in part,

There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment. There is no military exclusion from our Constitution.

And

There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment. There is no military exclusion from our Constitution.

The judge’s ruling can be read here.