Category Archives: defense policy

This is Foolish

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President Donald Trump (R) has decided to impose an additional 10% tariff on several European countries, starting next month, in an effort to get them to push Denmark into selling Greenland to us.

Greenland is important to us from both a national security and an economic perspective, but this is the wrong way to go about satisfying those two imperatives.

We don’t want to own Greenland. Begin with the fact that we don’t want to incur the bill for the $1 billion annually in subsidies that Denmark currently pays Greenland because the Greenland economy is so deficient.

Set aside that unnecessary expense. It’s cheaper and win-win all around for us to cut deals with Denmark (and Greenland, to the extent the island’s autonomous territory status within Denmark gives it a seat at the negotiations) to greatly expand our basing rights in Greenland and to expand our access to and development/exploitation of Greenland’s oil, natural gas, coal, and rare earth resources, of each of which Greenland has a wealth. Maybe even get exclusive rights to access and develop/exploit the rare earths.

The win: we get what we need strategically and economically without bringing in a population unenthusiastic about joining us and without our having to absorb those $1 billion annually.

The other win: Denmark gets an infusion of money from the royalties involved in those resource developments, and Greenland gets a large expansion of its economy from its cut of those royalties; the large jobs expansion from construction, drilling, mining, and all the supporting and ancillary businesses that will appear; and it will see a broad diversification of its economy away from the fishing industry that is virtually is sole current economic activity.

Open Borders and Racism Still are Progressive-Democratic Party Planks

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If there were any question about whether the Progressive-Democratic Party was walking away from its open borders position, there shouldn’t be anymore.

It was probably no surprise that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar [D, MN]…announced the Congressional Progressive Caucus has “adopted an official position” to defund Immigration & Customs Enforcement.

Mainstream Progressive-Democrats are too far Left to voice any opposition to this lawlessness. In fact, one of the more mainstream Progressive-Democrats, Seth Moulton (MA), has introduced a bill that would, at bottom, sharply reduce funding for ICE, thereby greatly reducing its and our nation’s ability to maintain our national borders short of moving DoD military personnel to the border—over which, of course, Party members would raise a loud hue and cry, too. As cited from the Associated Press,

[Moulton] introduced a bill on Wednesday that would—without adult supervision in Congress—gut the $75 billion funding increase ICE received in President Donald Trump’s [R] Big Beautiful Bill and dump the money into propping up…Obamacare….

Congressman Dave Min (D, CA) wants more. He’s

back[ing] impeaching Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and has called the work of enforcing immigration laws “illegal” and “unconstitutional.” He’s got the backing of Omar and her Squad pals at the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.
Min [also]…has called a House committee investigation into Minnesota’s massive fraud scandal “partisan and racist.”

This is Party, not only wanting to abolish our borders and calling enforcing our laws somehow unconstitutional, but also projecting its own intrinsic racist bigotry into the argument. There is, after all, very little more insidiously racist than injecting that bigotry into a discussion where there is no racism.

Maybe this will Prod

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Maybe it’ll prod us both. The People’s Republic of China has cut off export of rare earths and the magnets made from them to Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s recent commentary about Japan’s strengthening resolve to assist the Republic of China in the event of a PRC invasion.

China has begun choking off exports of rare earths and rare-earth magnets to Japan, a potential blow to Japanese companies that use them to produce components for global chip makers, car companies and defense firms.

It really is getting time, and urgently so, for Japan to pull all of its supply chains out of the PRC. Doing so would eliminate nearly all of the PRC’s economic leverage over Japan short of going to war over the sea lines of communication on which Japan depends.

The PRC’s move also should be a serious prod for us to get off the dime and move all of our supply chains out of the PRC. It’s time we proofed ourselves against PRC economic pressure, along with Japan. Nearly half of our economy’s imports flow through portions of those same SLOCs to our west coast.

Time to Respond…

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…more forcefully and farther than what the People’s Republic of China has done.

China said it banned the export to Japan of goods with potential military uses, intensifying Beijing’s retaliation against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi over remarks she made about Taiwan.
The export ban takes effect immediately, China’s Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday.

It’s time for Japan, and the US in support of Japan, to answer the PRC’s escalation with a much sharper escalation of their, and our, own.

Japan—Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and the Diet—must state unequivocally that it will support the Republic of China in the event of a PRC invasion attempt. Japan also must make concrete moves toward developing its own nuclear weapons. The nation, given its geographic location, doesn’t need anything more esoteric than intermediate range missiles along with a small constellation of surveillance satellites. Japan also must begin taking overt defensive measures regarding its islands in the East China Sea.

Economically, Japan must begin serious and rapid disengagement of its business activities with and within the PRC.

The US must announce that we will support the RoC in the event of a PRC invasion attempt, and we must step up arms deliveries to both the RoC and to Japan. We need also to be much more forceful in defending the international waters and sea lanes of commerce in the South China Sea as well as moving to restrict the PLAN’s and PLAAF’s movements in that region.

The US must also get serious about severing our economic ties with the PRC.

There must be no petty tit-for-tat responses, and there must be no non-response. The question is whether Japan’s government men and women, and ours, have the stomach for facing down the men and women of the PRC government.

Cutting off doing business with and within the PRC will be expensive and disruptive, but it won’t be nearly as much so as acceding to PRC demands—which will only increase were Japan or us to back down repeatedly and further.

With Good Reason

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The lede lays it out, if misleadingly so.

The Western alliance between the US and its European partners has been a pillar of the global order since the end of World War II. Bonded by a common belief in freedom and democracy, it prevented major global conflict, defeated Communism, and presided over a surge in global prosperity.

More like sharing common rhetoric, not common belief, regarding freedom and democracy. Europe’s NATO members have, since shortly after the alliance’s formation, free-loaded off American treasure and promise of blood while themselves living phat and short-changing their own obligations to the alliance. Decades of “pretty please” had no effect on that. It’s only been since Trump I’s threats to leave the alliance if those members didn’t step up to their own responsibilities that those nations started to improve, or at least give less short-shift to the alliance.

The subheadline continues the misleading aspect.

As relations between Europe and the US become increasingly strained, once unshakeable allies abroad are wondering whether the rift can be repaired.

Once unshakeable? As recently as the end of the 19th century, the US and UK were at loggerheads over a number of national-level problems. In the late 20th century, key NATO member France kicked our military forces out as that nation withdrew itself from the military aspect of the alliance, only recently rejoining.

Today, the European Union is busily attacking American multinational enterprises over the EU’s effort at censorship, its inability to compete with American goods and services sold through those enterprises, its demand for ever higher taxes in the face of lower taxes in the US. In that latter regard, the EU also is busy with its determined fratricide as it attacks Ireland over its even lower tax regime.

There’s never been anything unshakeable in our relationship with Europe, nor is there any reason to take the continent seriously, whether economically, militarily, or politically.

Even now, with European NATO members beginning to recognize that they need to act in measurable, concrete support for Ukraine in its existential struggle against the barbarian from the east, they’re still looking to us for the first move on weapons and other support, to us on “peace” initiatives vis-à-vis this war. They’re still too timid to act entirely on their own, with only a few exceptions in the form of the nations bordering Russia. Brussels is even too timorous to allow the Russian funds frozen by the EU at the start of sanctioning Russia shortly after it invaded Ukraine to be used as collateral for loans to Ukraine. Belgium is more interested in whether its funds in Russia might be seized by Putin than it is in supporting Ukraine.

Even now, fully a third of NATO’s member nations continue to welch on their own financial and equipage commitments to NATO as an alliance. With that welching, they betray their own fellow alliance members by keeping themselves wholly unable to come to the aid of their fellows should any of them be attacked.

NATO, which embodies most of Europe and so stands for Europe in so many critical ways, is steadfastly rendering itself useless and by extension is rendering Europe to irrelevance.

Why, indeed, should we take Europe seriously for anything other than their weakness being a threat to our own security given the bloodily acquisitive nature of the eastern barbarian?