Tag Archives: defense policy

Invitations

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Ex-Russian President and current Russian Security Council Deputy Chair Dmitry Medvedev now is making not so veiled threats of nuclear war and of assassination of our President. On the matter of supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles, weapons with an 1,800 mile reach, he said,

that “could end badly for everyone…most of all, for Trump himself,” according to a Google translation of his Russian-language Telegram post.
“It’s been said a hundred times, in a manner understandable even to the star-spangled man, that it’s impossible to distinguish a nuclear Tomahawk missile from a conventional one in flight[.]”

Is Medvedev inviting a nuclear response every time the Russians fire a nuclear capable ballistic missile at Ukraine, every time one (or more) of their nuclear capable bombers launches and flies headlong at Ukraine before launching its nuclear capable cruise missiles, every time one (or more) of its nuclear capable fighter-bomber aircraft invade Baltic State airspace?

Is he threatening the murder of President Donald Trump (R)?

Of course not on the former. The barbarian underboss is simply demonstrating Russian dishonesty. On the latter? Russia does have a history of murdering politicians they don’t like, including murdering them on foreign soil.

Medvedev’s threats, though, are reason enough to double up on the number of Tomahawks originally under discussion, and to authorize their transfer with no strings attached regarding Ukraine’s target lists for them.

Yet Another Reason

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People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s moves to further restrict access to and shipments of rare earths, processed rare earths, and components that use rare earths, an access restriction amounting to virtual cutoff aimed specifically against us, is just one more reason for American businesses to stop doing business with PRC-domiciled companies or inside the PRC. The lede:

With rare-earths export restrictions and a string of actions targeting the US chip industry, Beijing is mounting a full-scale offensive on Washington ahead of an expected meeting between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

This, too:

On Thursday, China announced new restrictions on rare-earth materials, specifically noting that licenses related to certain types of chips will be granted on a case-by-case basis. Also Thursday, Beijing added roughly a dozen organizations to its “unreliable entity list,” including TechInsights, a Canada-based semiconductor technology research firm that had released reports on chip-development efforts by China’s Huawei Technologies.
China went beyond semiconductors. On Thursday, Beijing also said it would require licenses for exports of certain lithium batteries and some equipment and materials used to make them.

Included in those restrictions are limits on exporting any goods that include as few rare earths as 0.1% of the product’s value in their makeup. That amounts to an outright block on anything that even touches rare earths. It’s a direct attack on our economy and our defense industries, and so on our sovereignty.

It’s long past time for American businesses to shift their business arrangements and their supply chains completely away from the PRC. The patriotic nature of the move as well as the move’s economic optimization, along with the urgency of making it, should be obvious even to the most remote, ivory tower cloistered American business manager.

That shift must include stopping all technology transfers to the PRC, whether the transfer is in the form of goods (viz., chips, chip fabrication equipment, computer equipment, technologically oriented consumer goods, software, and so on) or in intellectual property agreements.

For example:

China’s top market regulator said Friday that it had launched an investigation into Qualcomm for suspected violation of the country’s antimonopoly law. The probe is tied to Qualcomm’s acquisition of Autotalks, an Israeli startup, the regulator said.

If Qualcomm were not operating inside the PRC, the PRC’s regulators would have nothing to say regarding the acquisition.

More broadly, if we as a nation did no business in or with the PRC, Xi would have no levers to swing against us. The changeover will be disruptive and expensive, but only in the short term, if American businesses get off the dime (including literally) and make the shifts. After all, how disruptive is it already to not be making the shifts apace? It’ll also be far more expensive for far longer, if not permanently, for American businesses to remain dependent on an enemy nation for critical items.

That dependency, too, is a direct threat to our independence of action as a sovereign nation, ceding as it does critical parts of our national economy and of our defense establishment to that enemy nation.

The Editors Miss Again

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This time, the editors of The Wall Street Journal waxed excited over President Donald Trump’s (R) responses to the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s export blocks controls on rare earths and related materials aimed at the United States.

First things first.

None of this [trade war] is good for the US and global economies.

The editors appear to be writing from a fantasy garret office. In what war do they imagine that one side suffers no harm at all? In the real world, wars damage all participants.

Then there’s this from the editors’ swampish imaginations.

Mr Trump started the fun by announcing on social media midday Friday that “some very strange things are happening in China!” He said Beijing has turned “very hostile” and is sending letters to the world announcing tighter controls on the export of “every element of production having to do with” rare-earth minerals.

There’s that fantastical editorial garret world again. This latest round was begun by the PRC’s Xi when he imposed those controls on rare-earths, processed rare earths, and any product from wherever exported that contains rare earth materials comprising 0.1% or more of the product’s value. Trump is merely responding to that attack rather than meekly lying down and forcing us to accept it.

But back up a bit, too, to a time of which the long-term memories of the editors seem broadly deficient. The PRC has been inflicting its trade war on us for years and years. It has been stealing our technologies through espionage and hacking.

It has been forcing technology transfers from private enterprises as a condition of their doing business in the PRC, a condition only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

It has been forcing private enterprises to accept as partners PRC-domiciled companies as a condition of those foreign enterprises doing business in the PRC, a condition only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

It has demanded PRC government-approved back doors into foreign companies’ operating software as a condition of those foreign enterprises doing business in the PRC, a condition only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

It has demanded PRC apparatchiks in foreign companies’ management teams operating PRC-domiciled arms, a requirement only slightly eased over the ensuing years.

The PRC has begun dumping its industrial output on the international market at below production cost pricing nominally to shore up the economic malaise of its own overproduction, but in truth to bankrupt other nations’ domestic industrial producers—including in the US—and so gain market share to the point of other nations’ dependency, especially ours, on PRC output.

Trade wars aren’t easy, as the editors noted in their headline. But trade wars are made the harder when folks who should know better don’t even understand the war actually progress.

Physical Fitness vs Technical Prowess

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That’s the dichotomy—the mutually exclusive brace of choices—that many claim our military faces, and too many folks who should know better think the choice should be made in favor of technical prowess. Here’s former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall:

Modern warfare, particularly against a peer competitor, will be much more about skillfully applying cutting-edge technology and managing complex weapon systems under stress than about physical strength. We need the nation’s best brains as much if not far more than we need people who can do push-ups.

It’s good that Kendall is former SecAF. The two are not at all mutually exclusive criteria; on the contrary, they’re strongly synergistic. Physical fitness helps keep the mind clear—or at least less cloudy—under any sort of stress, especially that of combat.

Then, as the barbarian invasion of Ukraine is demonstrating, physical fitness is every bit as important as tech prowess and the use of (rapidly) evolving tech weapons in a war that is both technological and grindingly physical.

Closer to home, our bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been achievable if the bomber, refueler, and escort pilots were not physically fit. Soft, out of shape personnel could not have stood the rigors of 30 hours straight in the air, or the sequence of tankers refueling the bombers and fighters, or the fighter escorts in the emotional and potentially high g-force escort environment.

Time to Expand

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Against the backdrop of Russian drones and fighter aircraft invading the skies over NATO nations—Poland, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, et al.—Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned NATO that he will respond if NATO allies deepen support for Ukraine.

Rather than meekly backing down as ex-President Joe Biden and the Biden-fronted NATO did at critical moments, it’s time now to explosively expand support for Ukraine, and supply them with the weapons, ammunition, and logistics support the UA needs at the pace the UA says it needs it, and to remove all fetters from weapons use, so the UA has the wherewithal to strike the barbarians wherever he gathers his own munitions, fuels and foodstuffs, soldiers, and to strike the barbarians’ oil and natural gas production facilities, oil refineries, pipeline nodes, and rail computer and rail line nodes so as to cut off the barbarians at the front from any resupply.

The barbarian invasion should have been beaten back 18 or more months ago, but for Western timidity in the face of Putin’s bluster. It’s far from too late, if NATO and the US will act.

But screw [NATO] courage to the sticking place,
And [Ukraine]’ll not fail.