Tag Archives: defense policy

An Additional Reason

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors took notice of President Donald Trump’s (R) waiver of the Jones Act, which mandates sea shipments of goods between American ports be done by American-built, -owned, and -crewed ships. The waiver has been a resounding success during the disruptions of the Iran war and Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. From this, the editors suggested that

if the Trump Administration thinks its waiver is helping oil supply during the Hormuz crisis, why not make that success permanent by repealing the Jones Act?

That’s an excellent suggestion, and it’s bolstered by a much more cogent rationale, as well, peripherally touched on by the editors. The purpose of the Jones Act when it was enacted was to stimulate American shipbuilding. It’s only necessary to observe Trump’s lately effort to push a hard acceleration in building dual use cargo ships to both expand our commercial shipping fleet in competition with the People’s Republic of China’s burgeoning commercial fleets and to facilitate the Navy’s ability to move supplies, equipment, and reinforcements around the world into combat areas. In all those years since this law was passed, there has been zero growth in our shipbuilding capability.

It’s past time to rescind the Jones Act.

Removing American Troops from Germany

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President Donald Trump (R) has said that he’s going to withdraw 5,000 American soldiers from Germany and that he’s contemplating withdrawing many more. Those many more include, potentially, troops stationed in Spain and Italy. Progressive-Democrats and too many Republicans are upset over the move, but they’re both premature and too narrow in their focus.

The withdrawal itself is no big deal from a US security perspective. What matters is where Trump puts the troops he’s going to withdraw. It would be a net gain in security for us and for (eastern) Europe were those troops taken out of Germany (and Spain and Italy) redeployed into Poland and the Baltic States. Other useful redeployment locaitons would include Slovakia, Hungary, or (back into) Romania, even Moldova.

On the other hand, pulling them back to the US would be a serious mistake.

That’s the Point of the Escort

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The DC Circuit court has upheld Pentagon press reporter escort restrictions inside the Pentagon while the underlying case works its way through the judicial system.

Judge J Michelle Childs dissented, and in her dissent, she demonstrated her lack of understanding of the problem:

Reporters can hardly verify sources, gather information, or speak candidly with Department personnel with an escort looming over their shoulders.

Nor should those Department personnel be able to speak “candidly.” They’re possessed of too much classified information, and that information is classified for very good reasons. Passing that information to reporters, whether deliberately or accidentally, would do damage to our national security, potentially very severe damage.

Aside from that, we—and she—have no reason to believe the reporters are verifying any sources, since those reporters refuse to identify any of them.

These personnel have no business talking to reporters inside the Pentagon, anyway; they should be referring the reporter to the relevant Public Affairs Officer, who is well-trained in answering reporters’ questions as candidly as classification limits allow, as well as obfuscating and weasel-wording in response to a reporter’s obvious gotcha and trolling questions.

Be Nice if they Can Get It

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The headline and subheadline demonstrate a dangerous misunderstanding.

Iran’s War-Shattered Economy Means It Has an Urgent Reason to Negotiate
Damage done by US and Israeli attacks will take years to repair, putting pressure on Tehran to seek financial relief in talks.

No, it doesn’t. The claim here egregiously wrongly assumes that those in control of Iran, those reigning over the Iranian people, think like we do. Assuredly, they do not. Their view of this war is that they’re not dead yet, so they haven’t lost. They consider themselves winning, and they will consider themselves to have won (and here, they’d be correct by Western standards, too) if the fighting stops with them still in charge (their primary war aim) and in a position to continue pursuing nuclear weapons (their close second war aim).

Full stop.

Yes, it will take years to rebuild the economic and infrastructure damage done them, but the only economic and infrastructure functions that interest them are those necessary to their nuclear weapons development and building program. The rest, that which would ease the lot of the Iranian people, are of no interest to these rulers. That narrow view greatly shortens the timeline for repairing and rebuilding.

There is one parallel with Western values that does obtain here, more or less. The news writer had this in the piece at the first link:

The US blockade of Iranian ports will further strain the country’s budget.

So, too, was our own Revolutionary War a strain on the allied 13 colonies’ budgets. They ran out of money and just freely and willy-nilly printed up paper dollars, with consequent runaway inflation and refusal of so many suppliers, colonial and foreign, to accept that paper. This is the meaning of “not worth a Continental.” The colonies stayed in the fight, though, for eight (more or less, depending on when you mark the beginning and the end of the war itself) long years, ultimately outlasting more than defeating the British. There is one critical difference, though. The colonies and the colonials suffered that as a free people who were in charge of their destinies. Iran’s despotic rulers are the ones in charge of Iran’s their destinies, and they don’t care about their subjects.

Sure, getting financial relief would be welcome to Iran’s despots, but that’s nothing more than a happy side effect for them.

I’ve quoted Rafsanjani before; here he is again:

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.

A European Plan to Hold Open the Strait of Hormuz

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They’re finally getting around to talking about setting something up—after declining to help force it open in the first place. That would be too dangerous for fragile European militaries, they say. Might get poked in the nose. Or as French President Emmanuel Macron so carefully euphemistically put it,

…reopening the strait by force would be “unrealistic[.]”

What’s really interesting, though (as an aside, I do wonder why those nations have military establishments if they’re not intended to fight), is who has been invited to this diplomatic coffee klatch and who has not (of course the US has not, but that’s not the interesting part). They’ve invited the People’s Republic of China and India. But they’ve apparently chosen not to invite the Republic of Korea, Japan, or Australia, each of whom also has a serious interest in the free flow of cargo, oil, and natural gas through the Strait. Of course, they chose not to invite the Republic of China; that would offend the PRC, and Europe is much too fearful of the PRC to do anything that would even remotely hint at that.