Monthly Archives: August 2014

A New Defense Alliance

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This thought was triggered by a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General, and General Philip M Breedlove, SACEUR and Commander US European Command, concerning “A NATO for a Dangerous World.”

Given European NATO members’ long-standing disdain for national defense, for providing their treaty-obligated share of men and equipment for NATO defense, for providing their treaty-obligated GDP share of funding for NATO defense, it’s time to walk away from NATO and form a new mutual defense alliance with selected nations of eastern Europe.

As Rasmussen and Breedlove themselves note, NATO (and the underlying EU) aren’t facing the current threats (the US isn’t either, but the US can control that), and they’re failing the spirit of their defense obligations, if not exactly the letter of them. Yet Rasmussen and Breedlove themselves underestimate the problem.

Now, an unprecedented period of peace has been challenged by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

And against Georgia, its nuclear threats against Poland over a missile defense capability, its economic war against Europe (vis., Russia’s winter cutoff of natural gas to Ukraine a couple years ago, which caused gas shortages—as Russia knew it would—in Europe). We have, in fact, a new cold war with Russia. (And one with the People’s Republic of China, and a shooting war that we don’t recognize with terrorists—ISIS, for example. The latter two, though, aren’t directly relevant to this article; I’m writing about an alliance to deal with Russia in the face of NATO’s evident failure.)

R&B do recognize parts of the problem, and they understand some of what needs to be done.

  • fundamental mission remains the same: to defend the territory, populations, and shared values of all…members
  • the presence of NATO forces in Eastern Europe for as long as necessary; upgraded intelligence gathering and sharing; updated defense plans; and an expanded training schedule with more exercises, of more types, in more places, more often
  • able to deploy even more quickly and deploy at the first sign of trouble
  • also need to pre-position equipment and supplies, so that they can travel light but strike hard if needed

All of these are needed, but NATO already has demonstrated that it’s politically unequal to the task, and its leadership is emotionally unequal to it. This is especially the case with those last two bullets. The recognition and decision to act are more political matters than military, and NATO and EU leadership have demonstrated repeatedly their reluctance to decide quickly and their reluctance to act quickly once decided.

No, I propose the following. The US should walk away from NATO. The EU’s NATO member nations have been free riders on our treasure long enough. Instead, we should form a mutual defense alliance with selected nations of eastern Europe, nations whose peoples and leaderships remember what it was like to live under Russian dominance. This alliance should have as its core mission the four bullets above, only it’ll be on their home territory, instead of western Europe magnanimously moving to “defend” eastern Europe, so long as that serves the interests of western European nations.

The eastern European nations I propose to be approached for membership in this Free Europe Treaty Organization include these, running generally north to south:

  • Norway
  • Sweden
  • Finland
  • Estonia
  • Latvia
  • Lithuania
  • Poland
  • Czech Republic
  • Slovakia (and maybe we can help them adjust their politics and economics. If not, we’ll need to rethink their membership)
  • Ukraine (even—especially—rump Ukraine if that’s all that’s left after the West’s shameful abandonment of them to the tender mercies of Russia)
  • Romania
  • Bulgaria
  • Georgia (especially Georgia)

Also, contra R&B, Russia’s hybrid war tactics involving “snap exercises, secret commandos, and smuggled missiles” should be added to our new alliance’s kit; they work, as Russia is demonstrating.

Other nations can be looked at as interest and suitability develops.

These nations will provide to such an alliance considerable interest and capability; nearly all have significant per centages of their populations who know firsthand what Russian dominated life was like. Western Europe has lost the memories of the Russian (Soviet) threat, and they have lost the associated motivation.

Unfortunately, aside from the pie in the sky aspect of the thought, this alliance also must await a more reliable, trustworthy American President.

Press Mindset

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This is from an AP article, but I suggest it’s typical of the press generally. The AP is reporting on a case involving the drunk driver-involved deaths of two children and the immediately subsequent shooting death of the drunk driver. The father of the two children is accused of

killing a drunk driver in a fit of rage after his two sons were fatally struck in 2012 on a rural road in Southeast Texas.

His defense attorney says [the father] is a good man, a grieving father, and not a murderer. At the same time, his defense hasn’t publicly suggested who else might be responsible for [the drunk driver]’s shooting death.

Notice that last. According to the press, the father must, if not outright prove his innocence, at least offer plausible alternatives.

No. The press’…misunderstanding…notwithstanding, no such defense obligation exists. It’s on the prosecution—the government—to prove any defendant’s guilt; no police work, no investigative work at all, is required of the defense. Full stop.

Unproductive

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The Wall Street Journal opened its Friday commentary on President Barack Obama’s handling of Russia vis-à-vis Ukraine thusly:

President Petro Poroshenko said Friday his military destroyed armored vehicles entering Ukraine from Russia, and a Russian invasion could happen any day. So what warning is President Obama delivering to Vladimir Putin? “He could invade,” Mr Obama told the New York Times. “And if he does, that will set us on a course not to a new Cold War, but trying to find our way back to a cooperative functioning relationship with Russia during the remainder of my term will be much more difficult.”

Carefully, not a word–anywhere in the piece’s description of Obama’s Russian policy–about Ukraine’s strait from that invasion: that might “provoke” the Russians. Obama’s foreign policy generally, much less his handling of Ukraine’s crisis, just doesn’t get any more vapid than that. Or inoperative. Or unprolific. Or sterile. Or unfruitful. Or useless.

And we still have two more years of this guy.

The EU May Finally Be Waking Up

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The European Union may finally be recognizing something [emphasis added], and they’ve made what seems initially to be a viable offer.

The European Union offered Friday to take charge of Gaza’s border crossings and work to prevent illegal arms flows, insisting on a durable truce and saying a return to the status quo for the region “is not an option.”

In a statement, they said they could also work to prevent arms smuggling and launch a training program for Palestinian Authority police and customs officers to be deployed in Gaza. They said terrorist groups in Gaza must disarm, and an overall peace deal remains the main objective.

But they’re not all the way there.

The EU ministers offered to reactivate and potentially extend its monitoring of Rafah and other border crossings—if given a mandate by the UN Security Council, and if it helps living conditions improve in Gaza.

No UN mandate is needed, and a mandate from a UN that openly supports the terrorists (UNRWA warehousing PA rockets, allowing tunnels to be dug under their buildings, Ban’s statements in open support of the Hamas faction of the PA) is untrustworthy.

Democrats and Tax…Inversions

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Walgreen Co looked hard at doing one of these—buying an overseas company and then reincorporating in that overseas jurisdiction to lower its US tax bill, a bill flowing from a world-leading 35% tax rate. Indeed, Barclay’s had estimated that Walgreen would save $797 million a year in taxes if it carried through. They were brow-beaten out of the move, though, by the Federal government.

Now, Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and his Senate cronies are looking at getting in the way of inversions generally.

The proposal…would restrict the practice of earnings stripping, where US companies borrow money from overseas parents and deduct the interest expense on US taxes.

Other proposals look at blocking outright such inversions.

This is an area where the supposedly low-tax Republican Party isn’t helping. House Republicans don’t want a (short-term) measure to interfere with inversions, but for the wrong reason: it would make U.S. companies vulnerable to a foreign takeover.

This is the Republicans’ own error. They shouldn’t be cracking down on inversions at all; they should be looking to make them economically useless by lowering corporate tax rates, instead. If we had competitive or better business tax rates (Ireland’s, for instance, is 12.5%), foreign companies would be looking to come here with their jobs, their business, their innovation, instead of our companies looking to go there.

Of course Senate Democrats (and their House colleagues) aren’t moving to lower business tax rates as a means of reducing the rate of inversion, either, as tax reductions are inconceivable to Democrats.