Monthly Archives: February 2017

Part of the Problem with Claims of NATO Obsolescence

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…is the Left’s and Europe’s lack of understanding of the meaning and the import of obsolescence.  This is illustrated by a piece in World Politics Review.

The failure to understand is illustrated with this claim:

[A]lthough Russia’s resurgence as a revanchist and norms-breaking power has conveniently thrust NATO back into the thick of European and American security concerns, Europe actually faces no threats for which the alliance is the most effective instrument. In fact, Europe faces no military territorial threats at all.

Never mind that Russia militarily partitioned and is occupying significant fractions of Georgia and Ukraine, has moved nuclear weapons into its enclave in Kaliningrad, as mounted cyber attacks on each of the Baltic States and its subsequent redeployments of military units closer to the borders with Poland and those same Baltics.

The failure is further illustrated with this:

…Russia’s resurgence, and Moscow’s clear willingness to use military force to further its political objectives, do not represent an existential threat to Europe….

How illogical is that?  How head-in-the-sand?  If Moscow is willing to use military force to further its political objectives, on what planet is that not an existential threat to the nations of Europe?

Then there’s this:

[L]ike his attacks against China for currency manipulation, Trump’s criticisms of the disproportionate cost borne by the US for European defense are slightly outdated. Although the trend has been reversed since the Ukraine crisis, the past decade actually saw a steady drawdown of American forces stationed in Europe under the George W Bush and Obama administrations, which left the US military presence on the continent at historic lows.

This is just disingenuous.  We still bear a disproportionate cost for the defense of Europe: we still spend more than the 2% of our GDP on defense that the NATO treaty requires every treaty member to commit to defense.  Most of the NATO nations—notably including rich and prosperous Germany—still commit less than the 2% they promised to commit when they joined NATO.

Even this bit is disingenuous:

The metric Trump uses to measure proportionate contributions to the NATO—total defense expenditures, which puts the U.S. at roughly 75 percent of alliance spending—is also misleading, since the vast majority of America’s defense budget is not devoted to European defense. If you look at contributions to the alliance’s permanent budget, for instance, the U.S. pays 22 percent, compared to 14 percent for Germany and 12 percent for France. But Germany’s GDP is roughly one-fifth of America’s, and its population is one-fourth; France’s GDP is roughly one-seventh of America’s, and its population is one-fifth.

The US has permanent global commitments, and NATO does not.  NATO has traveled all the way to the Balkans and made trips as far as Afghanistan, but these are temporary sojourns, and so the relative costs for Europe are quite trivial and irrelevant to the question of proportionate contributions to European defense.

Beyond that, there’s very little in the piece that addresses the question of NATO obsolescence.  Beyond this bit of vapidity, that is:

NATO is no longer as necessary as it once was. But there are many reasons why both sides of the Atlantic should want to maintain it.

NATO is obsolete because it’s designed to resist a Soviet-style massive ground and air invasion backed by the threat of nuclear weapons employment.  It’s not at all prepared to resist, much less defeat, today’s threat: terrorist attack, whether isolated incidents or well-coordinate, broad spectrum attacks; military attacks in small bites, like today’s Russia inflicted on Georgia and Ukraine while Europe watched with its collective thumb in its collective mouth; the new combined arms attack represented by military assault accompanied by cyber assault and infiltration by little green men, Russia’s hybrid war; economic threats like withholding Russian sales of oil and natural gas to western Europe.

This isn’t a time to bleat about Europe is too spending comparably with the US or to pretend confusion over President Donald Trump’s remarks vs those of his Vice President and his Cabinet Secretaries; this is a time for NATO’s European nations to get serious about their commitment, and it’s a time to revamp NATO—with those increased monies—to deal with today’s and tomorrow’s threats, not simply to rest on yesterday’s laurels.

Domestic Protectionism

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Illinois State Congressman Michael Zalewski (D), after consulting heavily with General Motors, wants car makers to be able to operate self-driving taxis—which, of course, those same car makers would make.

However.

His bill, introduced February 8, would limit access to the business to companies that make their own vehicles. That means GM would be eligible, but not tech companies like Uber Technologies Inc that are developing their own self-driving cars and don’t make their own vehicles.

Nor would Google be allowed in.  Or Lyft, were they to want to get into the business.  Or an IBM, should it want to build a Watsonmobile.  Or….

After falling behind in self-driving cars, GM has unleashed its powerful lobbying team to cultivate relationships with statehouses. The largest US vehicle maker by sales has a long history of backing legislation to preserve its interests, including a bill in Indiana last year that would stop electric-vehicle maker Tesla Inc from operating its own stores there.

What a surprise.

Of course, GM is denying ulterior motives, but this is just internal protectionism—anti-competitive and monopolistic.  Rather than competition pushing car companies to produce better cars, including self-driving ones, the fearful ones like GM are pushing to squelch competition.

It’s no wonder that a bare nine years ago GM was facing bankruptcy up close and personal.

A Sense of Self-Importance

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That’s the sense of the European Union as it desperately seeks validation from the US for its existence—as if, as The Wall Street Journal put it, an American Administration is responsible for the EU’s fate.  Here’s European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker:

I do think the United States needs a strong, united European Union on all possible issues.

We’d certainly benefit from a united front on the continent on matters relating, for instance, to Russia.  But this doesn’t need an EU; it simply needs a common understanding by the continental nations of the threat posed by Russia.

Such a united front, also, isn’t likely in the form of an EU, as fractured and divided as that institution is on matters of border sanctity, immigration, national debts and who’s responsible for their repayment, taxing régimes, trade with nations outside the EU’s nominal boundaries, membership and desirability of membership, and on and on.

The EU’s overblown sense of its own importance is a sign of its entirely justified insecurity.

Immigration—Whose Rights?

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Here’s Mexican Secretary of Economy, Ildefonso Guajardo, on the question of whether NAFTA should be renegotiated:

Logically, there wouldn’t be incentives to continue collaborating on the issues most important to national security in North America, such as the issue of migration[.]

And this:

[T]he Trump administration’s effort to step up deportations have already prompted an aggressive campaign by some Mexican officials, governors and public figures to fight the policy by jamming up US immigration courts.

That particular bit of business has been noted earlier.

Because foreign individuals or those who are part of a flow of migrants have their own right to enter another country, or to be in another country, just because they want to or are on the move?

This is, in many respects, the obverse of my piece yesterday: does a foreign national retain his home country’s rights when he’s inside the US (for instance, Mexico has made it illegal to prevent a Mexican citizen from leaving Mexico)?  Does a foreign national have an intrinsic right to be in our country, independently of our wishes, even our law?

Note to Self: Delete notes to self before publishing a piece.

The Left Gives the Game Away

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Again.  Buried at the bottom of a Wall Street Journal piece on the auto industry’s effort to get the Obama administration’s last-minute (almost literally) attempt to make permanent fuel standards (also last minute because the underlying research wasn’t even going to be complete until 2018) is this rationale from Roland Hwang, at the National Resources Defense Council’s Director, Energy & Transportation Program, as paraphrased by the WSJ.

relaxing standards could hurt Americans depending on clean-car technology jobs.

Because EPA regulations are all about creating jobs and not about mitigating pollution.