Trading with the Enemy

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A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Sunday Letters section put it succinctly regarding free global trade:

I support free global trade except with countries that cheat and steal and use slave labor.

He wrote that in the context of his decrial of the People’s Republic of China as attempting to rule all of Asia and the global economy.

The PRC’s goal is broader than that; PRC President Xi Jinping has said in so many words that his goal for the PRC is to supplant the US as the world’s sole superpower, which would give the PRC the political, economic, and military power to control our own national actions.

From that, I would add to the letter-writer’s criteria for free global trade: no trade, free or otherwise (beyond, perhaps, non-critical commodity goods), with enemy nations. That would include Russia, Iran, and northern Korea, as well as the PRC.

An aside (but not too far over): it’s common to decry northern Korea’s use of slave labor, but I submit that that is something of a misnomer. Using slave labor implies that other laborers aren’t slaves, holding their jobs—or not—voluntarily. In northern Korea, though, all of the unfortunates resident there—every single one of them—are slaves of the thugs that rule over that gang territory.

Why Is He Hesitating?

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Two Presidential candidate debates have been agreed between former Republican President Donald Trump and current Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden: one each on CNN, ABC, and a putative VP candidate debate on Fox.

However, while Trump has agreed to do four debates–

I have accepted a fourth Presidential Debate against Crooked Joe Biden, this time with NBC & Telemundo….

–he says, in essence, the more the merrier, Biden is refusing. Jen O’Malley Dillon, formerly Biden’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff and currently his Presidential campaign chair, had this:

President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms. No more games. No more chaos, no more debate about debates.

Why is Biden so reluctant to accept any more debates, especially in front of an Hispanic audience? Does he care so little about them? Is he simply writing them off? Or is Dillon or other of his advisors concerned about his ability to hold it together through more debates?

After all, there is the 2020 track record of debates during which Trump’s behavior often was erratic, and Biden has bragged about having beaten Trump in those debates. Why pass on the opportunity to beat him more times this year?

Update: Corrected to reflect that there are only two debates, so far, between Trump and Biden.

If That Were True….

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There are moves afoot, mostly Republican-originated, to amend State constitutions and to otherwise pass legislation that would explicitly allow only US citizens to vote in US elections. A House Administration Committee on American Confidence in Elections: Preventing Noncitizen Voting and Other Foreign Interference explicitly addressed that question at the national level. Progressive-Democratic Party politicians opposed, loudly, the effort. Congressman Joe Morelle (D, NY) was especially vociferous.

This hearing is about preemptively covering Donald Trump’s lies. The hearing isn’t about law and order. It’s about laying the foundation for the next big lie. It’s about saying that illegal voting is the cause of an election defeat.

Congressman Terri Sewell (D, AL) added to the cacophony, insisting that no non-citizens were voting in US elections anyway.

To the extent Sewell is right, then while the proposed explicit blocks on non-citizen voting wouldn’t change much, neither would they do any harm, and they could be useful in preventing some future illegal voting problems.

Regarding the larger matter, Morelle’s objection, it would seem especially useful for Progressive-Democrats to enthusiastically get behind the efforts and speed them along. Surely eliminating a major basis for objecting to election outcomes, for claiming election thefts, and the like would be good for the Progressive-Democratic Party and the perception of legitimacy for those Party politicians who do get elected.

Why Should It Take So Long?

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Ukraine has asked NATO leadership to have member nations, including the US, send military trainers to Ukraine to help train 150,000 new recruits into the Ukrainian armed forces. The US is exceedingly reluctant.

So far the United States has said no, but General Charles Q Brown Jr, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that a NATO deployment of trainers appeared inevitable. “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said.

To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes from another venue: over time, Ukrainians are all enslaved.

Worse,

For now, he [Brown] said, an effort inside Ukraine would put “a bunch of NATO trainers at risk” and would most likely mean deciding whether to use precious air defenses to protect the trainers instead of critical Ukrainian infrastructure near the battlefield.

Imagine that—soldiers in a war zone might be in harm’s way. But we’ll only protect selected ones. Brown also is ignoring the simple fact that critical Ukrainian infrastructure extends throughout Ukraine. And so does the battlefield, as the barbarian’s targeting by missiles, rockets, drones, even glide bombs, all launched from the Biden-created Sanctuary Russia, make clear.

Is this another example of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden cynically slow-walking aid to Ukraine? Or is this Biden and his too-woke military advisors being deeply chicken…t?

Who’s the One Favoring Russia?

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Former President Donald Trump (R) has been repeatedly and over the long term caviled for his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him brilliant, an effective leader, more. Even as he was extolling the skills (not the virtues, as the intrinsically mendacious press wants you to believe), though, Trump was busily arming Ukraine with lethal weapons after the prior administration, that of Progressive-Democrat President Barack Obama had withheld lethal weapons, telling the Ukrainians they should be happy to make do with blankets and MREs.

A subset of the Trump-delivered lethal weapons, antitank Javelins, proved decisive in the Ukrainian defeat of the barbarian’s original onslaught out of Belorussia toward Kyiv and out of Russia into Kharkiv and Donetsk Oblasts, ultimately pushing the barbarian back out of Ukraine’s Kyiv Oblast altogether and most of Kharkiv Oblast.

Now we have Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden. He insists that no weapon the US transfers are permitted to be used against Russian territory. As The Wall Street Journal put it in its Thursday editorial,

President Biden’s strategy, even after a cash infusion from Congress, looks like a plan for Ukraine to lose as slowly as possible.

After all, the outcome of Biden’s limits (I haven’t approached Biden’s cynical slow-walking the delivery of those weapons he will permit be transferred to Ukraine) is succinctly described by the WSJ‘s editors.

The President has precluded Ukraine from using American weapons to hit sovereign Russian territory. The practical effect of this is to offer the Russian military a safe haven. The Russians can build up troops, supplies and weapons near Ukraine. Mr. Putin can then deploy scarce defensive systems elsewhere, confident anything inside Russia is safe, courtesy of Mr Biden’s preconditions.

Even as Biden excoriates Putin, trying to show his own bona fides, he has actively created the invader barbarian as a sanctuary nation within which no attacks will be permitted.

Who was the one willing to confront the barbarian, and took concrete steps to do so, and who is the one actively protecting the barbarian, and taking concrete steps to further that protection?