Category Archives: defense policy

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.

Ultimatums

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has them, so far centered on his buildup opposite Russia’s border with Ukraine.

“Further movement of NATO eastward is unacceptable,” Mr Putin told a press conference on Thursday.

This is the Kaiser presuming to order Poincaré/Viviani and Asquith not to respond to his buildup opposite the French border.

And this:

Mr Putin warned that Russia’s actions would depend not only “on the course of the negotiations, but on the unconditional provision of Russia’s security, today and in the future,” he said.

Like he’s honoring Ukraine’s security, as he’s already committed to do via his agreements under the Budapest Memoranda? He’s in no position to complain, at least in no moral position.

The Russian Anschluss:

[Putin insists] the future of the breakaway eastern region, called the Donbas, should be determined by residents there and he described the Kremlin’s role as being “mediators in creating the best conditions for determining the future of the people who live there.”
More than a million residents of the Donbas region have Russian passports, according to senior Russian officials.

The question is whether Biden-Harris, Macron, Johnson, and Scholz will have the moral and political courage that even those two sets of feckless predecessors had. In making their decisions to run and hide or to stop Putin and force him back out of Ukraine (and Georgia), these worthies need to consider that the farther Putin expands his borders, the farther he’ll demand the West retreat, for the unconditional provision of Russia’s security, today and in the future.

Update: Putin is withdrawing some 10,000 soldiers of the 175,000 that he’s mobilized on the Russian border with Ukraine. There are some reasons for this. One is that he’s making a show of this to cover the fact that he’s simply rotating troops in and out of the field to keep them fresh.

Another is that he’s giving up something small in the expectation of–and added pressure to–get something major for his going first with this “concession.”

Another is that Biden-Harris already has surrendered something, and he’s making a token gesture preparatory to forcing a major surrender regarding Ukraine, having thus built  momentum in Biden-Harris toward yielding and gotten him deeper into that mindset.

Updated Update: Other Russian troop movements include these:

Satellite photos revealed that Russia this month has moved infantry vehicles, tanks, artillery, and more into Crimea, according to reports. Additionally, a military unit has arrived near a Russian town that is situated nine miles from the border with Ukraine.

Cowardice

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This time, by Intel’s Chairman Omar Ishrak and CEO Pat Gelsinger. This management team, a short time ago, sent out a letter to Intel suppliers asking them to avoid sourcing from the [People’s Republic of China’s] region of Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has conducted a campaign of forcible assimilation against religious minorities.

Intel called on its business partners to steer clear of the remote northwestern region of China, noting that “multiple governments have imposed restrictions on products sourced from the Xinjiang region. Therefore, Intel is required to ensure our supply chain does not use any labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region.”

After a hue and cry on PRC social media, though, Ishrak and Gelsinger cringed and ducked under their separate desks, and had the company issue a carefully unsigned corporate statement expressing “Intel’s” regret over having offended the PRC.

…its letter was written only to comply with US law and didn’t represent Intel’s stance on Xinjiang.

Please don’t hurt us, please. We didn’t mean it. And this plea:

We deeply apologize for the confusion caused to our respected Chinese customers, partners, and the public[.]

There’s this, too, illustrating the artificial nature of the conundrum:

Multinational companies have been caught in the middle as Western governments have pressured companies to disentangle their supply chains from Xinjiang.

No, they’re not caught in any middle. They just need to find the moral courage to shift their supply sources and their markets out of the PRC. They have the economic wherewithal, even if the transition processes will be near-term expensive. An earlier First Lady identified the position to take: “Just say no.” Even that infamous shoe-maker, Nike, has the right words, if not the integrity to honor them: “Just do it.”

Never mind that it’s PRC President Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party cronies who should be apologizing for their ongoing atrocities against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

This is disgusting cowardice, and it should be unacceptable for American company managers to put lucre from the PRC above morality.

Seth Moulton’s Symbolism

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Congressman Seth Moulton (D, MA) had some thoughts on “saving Ukraine” in his Sunday WSJ op-ed. He began by announcing that our options are limited.

At this point, US options are limited. President Biden has already said he won’t send more troops.

Then he listed some things we could do, anyway, to show our support for Ukraine.

  • First, dramatically increase the speed of weapons procurement for Ukraine, and do so publicly. Washington must clearly articulate to the world how the weapons we provide will force Mr. Putin to incur substantial losses of Russian troops right away, not merely over time.
  • Second, organize effective sanctions. They must be targeted, powerful and widely agreed on in advance by NATO. … Mr Putin needs to know that he’ll have trouble buying a soda five minutes after he invades….
  • Third, clearly communicate the grave consequences of invading—not only to Mr. Putin, but to the Russian people.

All of those steps are necessary, but even in their aggregate, they’re insufficient. They’re especially so individually. We could—if the Progressive-Democratic Party, in control of Congress and the State and Defense Departments, were willing to stop slow-walking the supplies. But even if they were, it still would take weeks, at best, to get the weapons delivered in sufficient quantities, deployed, and the soldiers trained on them. Putin is ready to jump in days.

Effective sanctions? Certainly there is plenty of room to toughen them up, but consider: even if Putin were finding it hard to by a soda five minutes after invading—he’d still have Ukraine. There’s a real big so what factor in play here.

Clearly communicate the costs of invading…. On what basis does Moulton think either Putin or the Russian people would take anything Biden-Harris, or Blinken, or Austin—or Milley—have to say seriously? They’ve been weak and their words less than weak tea for the last eleven months.

No.

Also necessary is making concrete those suggestions. Biden-Harris must correct his assurance to Putin that he won’t resist Putin’s coming invasion of Ukraine (or of the Baltics, if Putin’s moves opposite Ukraine prove to be misdirection).

Biden-Harris must redeploy American troops (beginning from out of Germany, which disdains NATO, anyway, and so won’t miss them beyond the GIs’ spending on the German economy) into southern and northern Poland—opposite Ukraine and Kaliningrad—and into Lithuania.

Biden-Harris must move naval forces into US air strike range of Kaliningrad.

Biden-Harris must begin joint air training and CAP exercises with Ukrainian and Lithuanian air forces in those nations’ airspaces.

Absent these, the Progressive-Democrat’s suggestions are nothing but symbolism.