Category Archives: defense policy

Basing Options

Posted on by
Reply

It seems the Pentagon is only now beginning to think about where to put the soldiers we’re withdrawing from Afghanistan. (I hope some consideration is starting to be given to the equipment, too, rather than just abandoning it to the Afghanis.)

As some of you might expect, I have a thought.

Maybe work a basing deal with Vietnam (we need one of those for our Navy, too).

Alternatively, or in addition, work a basing deal with India, for its far northeast. The states of Sikkim and Assam come to mind.

Wrong Assumptions

Posted on by
Reply

An anonymous writer for the Associated Press summarized the views of some in the operational (as opposed to the political) side of our Federal government regarding our pending withdrawal from Afghanistan.

An unclassified report released Tuesday by the Director of National Intelligence says the Taliban remain “broadly consistent in its restrictive approach to women’s rights and would roll back much of the past two decades’ progress if the group regained national power.”
It’s the latest US warning of the consequences of the Afghan withdrawal now underway, two decades after an American-led coalition toppled the Taliban. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday that there would possibly be “some really dramatic, bad possible outcomes” for Afghan forces left on their own to counter the Taliban, but also noted, “We frankly don’t know yet.” And CIA Director William Burns told Congress in April that the American ability “to collect and act on threats will diminish.”

That’s bad enough.

The really dangerous aspect of our withdrawal—for our nation and our friends and allies, as well as for Afghanis—is this from our Secretary of State:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has acknowledged that a Taliban takeover of the country is possible after the withdrawal. But he has also maintained that the group does not want to be a pariah and will have to embrace or at least tolerate the rights of women, girls, and minorities if it wants to be viewed as legitimate by the international community.

These are dangerously unfounded premises; Blinken is assuming the men [sic] of the Taliban think like we do. He’s assuming these men care about any pariah status from outsiders. He’s assuming these men care about what the international community thinks of them. He’s assuming these men are outward looking in any way.

Such blithe self-centered attitudes blind us to our enemies’ capabilities, and worse, blind us to their intentions.

The National Intelligence Council’s unclassified report can be seen here.

Dangerous Naivete

Posted on by
Reply

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has it. During a 60 Minutes interview, the man actually said that our nation does not have the luxury of not dealing with China.

That’s a blatantly raised straw man. No one is arguing that we should have no dealings with the People’s Republic of China. The debates are centered on how we should deal with it. Leave aside the fact that a total boycott of trade with the PRC is dealing with it, rather than not dealing with it, a means that no one is touting.

Instead, the debates involve moving our supply chain away from the threat the PRC poses, as illustrated by that nation’s attempt to cut off supplies of rare earth metals to other nations. They involve jawboning businesses to stop doing business with PRC suppliers operating with Uyghur slave labor. They involve how to pressure the PRC to desist from its Uyghur genocide in progress. They involve how to respond to the PRC’s occupation of the South China Sea and the islands within it that are owned by other nations (even if ownership is often disputed among those other nations.

Blinken said this, too, in that interview.

I want to be very clear about something. Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to.

This, especially, is an example of Blinken’s naivete. Our purpose most assuredly must include containing the PRC, holding it back. At least until it’s ready to stop being our enemy, to stop its genocide, to stop its slavery, to leave the South China Sea and respect the ownership of sovereign nations’ territory.

In fine, until the PRC is ready to join the community of civilized nations.

The full interview can be seen here.

Other Implications

Posted on by
2

Automakers are starting to adjust their level of dependence on Just in Time manufacturing, a technique whereby manufacturers vastly reduce inventory holding costs by having the relevant inputs—car parts, for instance—arrive at the factory just before they’re needed. In some of the more extreme cases, that includes arriving on the moving assembly line just before it’s needed for addition to the growing product.

The hyperefficient auto supply chain symbolized by the words “just in time” is undergoing its biggest transformation in more than half a century, accelerated by the troubles car makers have suffered during the pandemic. After sudden swings in demand, freak weather, and a series of accidents, they are reassessing their basic assumption that they could always get the parts they needed when they needed them.
“The just-in-time model is designed for supply chain efficiencies and economies of scale,” said Ashwani Gupta, Nissan Motor Co’s chief operating officer. “The repercussions of an unprecedented crisis like Covid highlight the fragility of our supply-chain model.”

That’s true, and it’s also good that that fragility finally is being taken seriously.

There are two other factors in JIT supply chain fragility beside those largely innocent ones. One is the fact that an enormous amount of trade goods, including raw materials and components for assembly into larger components or finished products, passes through the South China Sea. A large majority of Japan’s inputs and trillions of dollars of value for the US pass through the that Sea. Those shipping lanes are at increasing risk from an increasingly aggressive and acquisitive People’s Republic of China.

The other source is supply chain disruption by union strikes. Strikes generally and supply disruption by strikes are ways in which unions extort concessions out of manufacturers.

Inventory on hand, rather than on trucks or rail cars, helps manufacturers get through those deliberate disruptions.

Walls

Posted on by
Reply

Who’s building them? President Joe Biden (D), within days of being inaugurated, ordered construction of physical walls along our southern border halted.

We have an exploding—and still expanding—crisis on that southern border, one that centers on illegal aliens inundating our facilities (and Mexico’s) and that has a second center involving accompanied children (children; let’s not hide behind the soft-pedaling euphemism “minors;” these unfortunates are as young as eight or nine), many of whom have been abused, repeatedly to the point of being a routine matter, on their way to that border.

Nevertheless:

Biden has refused to visit our southern border, and he won’t even discuss any plan to visit it in his term, much less at any time soon.

Vice President Kamala Harris (D) laughs at the idea of visiting our southern border, even though she’s been charged with responsibility for dealing with that crisis. She’s also more widely traveled domestically than her partner in this administration. She’s been to California to discuss Governor Newsom’s (D) plans for handling the State’s Wuhan Virus situation. She’s been to Chicago for a Chicago-style piece of German chocolate cake. She’s been to Connecticut to push her partner’s spending plan. She’s been to North Carolina to push her partner’s “infrastructure” plan. She’s been to New Hampshire on a 2024 campaign preparatory trip. Now she’s going to Milwaukee on a Progressive-Democrat agenda touting trip.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (D) actually has been to our southern border, but only to visit within the safety of the interior of a CBP/ICE facility; he’s never actually been to the border itself, away from those facilities.

It’s almost as though the Harris/Biden (Biden/Harris?) administration has erected its own wall—the purpose of which is to keep administration officials, including the two top dogs, away from the border.