Category Archives: foreign policy

Timid is as Timid Does

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is upset that Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked, again and extensively, Ukraine’s power infrastructure. He said, through his National Security Council’s Spokesperson Adrienne Watson,

This bombardment—part of a series of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure— is a terrible reminder of Vladimir Putin’s efforts to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people and plunge them into darkness[.]

Here is our President yapping like a porch dog from the safety of his NSC porch, along with (to mix metaphors) furiously wagging his finger at the barbarian.

While doing precisely nothing material to help the Ukrainians.

Biden is, for instance, holding up transfer of badly needed air defense systems, including Patriot and Stinger, while only “soon” will F-16s start arriving in Ukrainian inventory. Biden has chosen to do nothing regarding delivery of drone and anti-drone systems to Ukraine, forcing them to use those expensive Patriots they do have on far cheaper inbound drowns and missiles. Biden has chosen to do nothing regarding paying for the transfers he has deigned authorize, the lack of which pay-fors are at the core of Republican objections to further expenditures in favor of Ukraine.

Attrition War

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Seth Cropsey wrote in his Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed that the US and Israel should fight an attrition war against Iran. He then disparaged the view of attrition war held by us and by Israel:

Attrition is a dirty word in American and Israeli strategic circles. In America, it evokes the Western Front’s brutal stalemate from 1914 to 1918, during which millions were sent to their deaths, and tens of thousands wounded and crippled, for no territorial gains. …

He omitted, though, that Israel is already in exactly that type of attrition war, the one inflicted by Hamas over the last decade and more, and an attrition exacerbated by Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s incessant pressure on Israel to agree a ceasefire right damn now, and never mind that that would leave Hamas bloodied but unbowed—and undefeated.

Cropsey, though, wants a broader version of attrition war:

…cumulative effect of pressure applied over time and in many contexts. The North African, Sicilian, and Italian campaigns that preceded the invasion of Normandy are examples. The US has seldom fought wars it can win with a single maneuver campaign, making attrition a coherent strategy.

Those “attritive” campaigns, though, were possible only by a massively superior industrial power engaging a tightly circumscribed industrial power where the engagement flowed from one side being able to replace battlefield losses by far larger margins than could the other. That situation doesn’t obtain today for Israel or—shockingly—even for the US.

Cropsey fleshed out, some, his version of attrition strategy:

Israel and the US need to put Iran’s strengths at risk. …
Iran provides financial backing to its Axis partners, and in Syria and Lebanon to the states themselves. …
Israel and the US have the tools to strike Iranian military capacity in Syria and Lebanon.

Strike. Not destroy. On a limited field in a limited way. Never mind, either, that those kinetic means would not touch Iran’s financial capability.

On the contrary, it’s time to get out of Israel’s way and actually help them to destroy Hamas utterly.

Then, get after Hezbollah, and destroy that terrorist organization utterly.

In parallel with that, it’s time for the US to stop being timid in the Middle East, and destroy the Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq, and in Houthi-occupied Yemen.

Stop responding to Iranian actions, and force Iran to respond to Israel’s and ours, shorn of its proxies.

That’s an attrition war worth supporting and executing.

Progressive-Democrats and Open Borders

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Recall the illegal aliens who stormed our border near El Paso, TX, broke through the concertina wire barrier, and physically assaulted the troops who were there to defend our border, overrunning them and successfully breaking into our nation.

A group of over 100 migrants attempted to enter the US illegally by rushing a border wall Thursday, breaking through razor wire and knocking over guards in the process.

The Biden administration has responded to that break-in:

Despite the commotion, the city of El Paso’s migrant dashboard showed 743 people had been released from custody and into the US on Thursday.

This is Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate telling all illegal aliens to come ahead on in. It doesn’t matter if you assault our border guards on your way in, come ahead on.

This is something to keep in mind come November.

Responding to PRC Hackery

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The British government, as I write Tuesday morning, is set to publicly accuse the Chinese state of hacking Britain’s electoral register.

What’s at least as important, though, is this bit:

What to do in response is a conundrum, especially for smaller Western democracies such as the UK that are trying to balance courting investment from China while calling out its alleged abuses.

That’s a problem that’s straightforwardly enough solved: stop accepting investment from the PRC. Stop doing any business with the PRC or any of the enterprises domiciled in the PRC or any non-domestically domiciled enterprises that are affiliates of PRC domiciled enterprises. All that’s needed—and it is a hard task—is the political will to make the necessary moves.

Then there’s this:

A recent UK government foreign-policy paper described China as “an epoch-defining challenge” to the international order. However, it has held off widespread sanctions against China, fearing an economic backlash. The country relies on China for the imports of components in [a wide range of] products….

Even in the face of that realized enormity of the PRC threat. It’s easy to see, in hindsight, that exposure to economic backlash could have been avoided by not letting themselves become so dependent on an enemy nation for economically critical items in the first place. However, the lesson from that hindsight must not be to do nothing going forward. The correct lesson must be to start taking steps to eliminate that dependency. And then, stop doing any business with or within the PRC or any enterprise affiliated with such.

That goes for the US, too.

On Sunday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang delivered a keynote speech before the top executives of Apple, McKinsey, Qualcomm, and other multinationals at the China Development Forum, a government-sponsored economic and business forum held each March in the Chinese capital.

It’s shameful that American companies continue to toady up to an enemy nation with our own nation under even more determined and widespread cyber attacks by the PRC than the UK. Apple, McKinsey, Qualcomm, et al., aren’t at the forum just to hear Li’s pear-shaped tones, or to get the cachet of a subsequent audience with PRC President Xi Jinping. They’re currently actively doing business in the PRC, and they’re only at the forum and at the Xi audience to learn the parameters for doing further business there.

It would be appropriate in our own situation for the Federal government to take steps to divest itself of any relationship with American companies that do business with or within the PRC or any enterprise affiliated with such.

A Time for Choosing

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Europe’s nations—particularly those not directly bordering on Russia—are finally figuring out that Russia is as much a threat to them as it is to Ukraine.

…the cost of building robust defenses able to withstand a potential US pullback is so great that it threatens Europe’s post-Cold War social model.

And

Achieving the military spending that some politicians and experts say is needed would force European members of NATO to start reversing big post-Cold War increases in social spending.
“You have to rearrange the social contract,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who has warned that Russia will eventually attack NATO countries if it isn’t defeated in Ukraine.

Any US pullback from NATO or from Europe at large is, or should be, less a factor in their choice between social welfare and their self- and mutual defense than the continuing refusal of fully 40% of those NATO members to honor their financial and equipment commitments vis-à-vis NATO.

That refusal is those nations’ own betrayal of their fellow members since their refusal severely weakens the collective alliance.

Separately, but closely related, chatter about a US pullback from NATO or from Europe at large sounds like a Leftist conspiracy theory to me. After all, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s out loud questioning of America’s future in NATO has in fact been the motive force behind getting many more of Europe’s NATO members even to begin to honor their financial and equipment commitments to NATO, after 50 years of “pretty please” had achieved nothing but too many member nations’ overt decisions simply to freeload off American treasure and blood.

European nations’ need is to understand very clearly and forcefully that those nations that choose social spending over national defense will, in the end, have their social contract dictated to them by their conquerors. That immutable principle applies equally forcefully to our nation.