Category Archives: defense policy

Mistake

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In their piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, the editors wrote about President Donald Trump’s decision to continue sending weapons to Ukraine because [t]hey have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard.

Unfortunately, the editors wrote this near the end of their bit:

What matters is giving Ukraine enough firepower to change Mr Putin’s cost-benefit calculation about continuing the war.

This isn’t just wrong; it’s deeply immoral. Arming Ukraine enough to change the barbarian’s cost-benefit calculation is just a means to keep Ukrainian soldiers in the field fighting, being maimed, and dying and to keep Ukrainian women and children available as targets for the barbarian.

Putin has already made his cost-benefit calculation: he doesn’t care about the cost, even having decided that his soldiers are nothing more than consumables on a par with fuel and ammunition. No amount of continued Ukrainian resistance, no matter how effective and costly (in the editors’ eyes) the war continues to be for Putin, he sees the benefit—conquering and occupying Ukraine, erasing it from the list of sovereign nations—as well worth the expenditure, whatever its size.

It isn’t enough to arm Ukraine enough that it can continue the war. Ukraine must win the war outright. That requires sending it the offensive and defensive weapons systems the UA needs in the numbers and in the timing that the UA needs them. Naysayers in government and Timid Tesses like these editors and their brethren elsewhere in the news media gallery need to get out of the way of that.

A Start

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President Donald Trump (R), after the latest telecon with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which came after the his latest telecon with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who followed that telecon with a large drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s civilian housing and infrastructure, has said defensive weapons shipments to Ukraine will resume.

It’s a start, but it’s insufficient. The best defense is a good offense, and that’s even more true in combat than it is in football. With the barbarian forced to defend, to react to Ukrainian moves—at the least to divert resources away from offense to reaction and defense—the barbarian’s attacks will at the least lessen.

From that, we—the US and Europe’s nominally West-aligned nations—need to send Ukraine offensive weapons, also, in the numbers and at the rates the UA says they need them. If Ukraine can reach inside Russia at depth and strike railroad nodes and naval ports, ammunition and fuel supplies, troop massings, bomber and fighter bases, the barbarian will have a much harder time moving those troops, aircraft, and consumables (keeping in mind the redundancy, in Putin’s mind, of troops and consumables) into positions from which to attack.

That increases Ukraine’s ability to win the barbarian’s war rather than endlessly bleed from defending. UA’s successful attack on a number of bases hosting the barbarian’s strategic bomber fleet does seem to have lessened, at least relatively, the ratio of air-to-surface missiles to drones in subsequent attacks.

Trump and Ukraine

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President Donald Trump (R) says he’s “not happy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin following the latest telecon between the two. Even, I don’t think he’s looking to stop his war. NSS.

Mr Putin added an exclamation point by hitting Kyiv with one of the biggest drone and missile attacks of the war the same night as his conversation with Mr Trump.

Putin has followed prior telecons with Trump with heavy drone and missile attacks against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and residences.

Even so, Trump continues to dither regarding serious responses to Putin’s barbarism.

One possibility is that Trump is giving Putin every diplomatic opportunity to call off his barbaric invasion and war against Ukraine before Trump takes concrete action in Ukraine’s favor: serious sanctions against Russia and those persons, businesses, and nations that do business of any sort with Russia, coupled with unfettered arms deliveries to Ukraine in the amounts and times the UA says they need them.

That time is long past, though; Putin has responded militarily overtly negatively to those opportunities. It’s time to act.

The WSJ editors closed their piece with this:

Mr Putin thinks he can make President Trump look plaintive and weak, and then get away with it as Russia swallows Ukraine. If the Russian is right, much of the US deterrence benefit of the Iran strike will vanish.

That misstates the case. If Putin succeeds, all of our deterrence will disappear. And more: we’ll be actively inviting further moves by our enemies.

An Outline was Passed

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The House-Senate reconciliation bill has been passed. The bill contains a number of beneficial things and a number of suboptimal things, along with a couple of items that are no good at all (vis., a cut in real dollars on defense spending and an increase in deficit spending and so in national debt of highly dubious estimates, both in size and sign).

So now what?

President Donald Trump (R) offered to use his executive authority to limit spending beyond what’s in the Senate version of the bill, which is what the House passed last Thursday.

In the meetings, Russ Vought, Trump’s White House budget chief, also reassured lawmakers that the administration would use its authority to limit spending, according to people familiar with the conversations. Trump and his advisers have argued that Trump has the authority to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress, a contention likely to be tested in court.

That’s nice, even if the courts uphold the specific actions (or most of them) Trump might take. At best though, these would be temporary measures, easily undone by a subsequent President.

Now what, then, are the 12 appropriations bills that the current crop of House Republicans have been promising to pass individually and on time for a couple of Congresses. The outline reconciliation bill represents ceilings on spending and tax rates, not floors, even though the Progressive-Democrats will howl that the levels are floors and so spending and tax rates still should go up.

The 12 appropriations bills are

  • Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Defense appropriations bill
  • Homeland Security appropriations bill
  • State Department and Foreign Operations appropriations bill
  • Interior and Environment appropriations bill
  • Legislative Branch appropriations bill
  • Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Energy and Water Development appropriations bill
  • Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies appropriations bill
  • Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill

These are where real spending and tax rate reductions (not formally part of appropriations, but easily enough included by amendment) can—and must this time—occur. Military construction needs to be focused on facilities for housing our soldiers and on bases—new or modified—for housing more of our weapons systems and for our new weapons systems as they come on line. The VA needs no spending increases, it even could stand spending cuts. I’ve argued for its elimination altogether, and this would be a good time to do that.

State, with its more focused foreign aid spending and more tightly controlled embassies and consulates, can absorb reduced spending. After that, all of the appropriations bills, save Defense and Homeland Security, should get 10% cuts in spending across the board. Defense needs, badly, a 10% increase in real terms, and Homeland Security, given the success of the Trump administration—so far—in resecuring our borders, needs a 5% (vice Defense’s 10%) increase.

With all of that, Congress—the House especially—would have some choices to make, any of which would be to the benefit of our nation: statutorily require the vast bulk of the resulting budget surplus go specifically to Treasury to pay down our national debt, further reduce individual and corporate income tax rates and make permanent the existing temporary tax reductions, or some combination of the two.

Congressmen in both houses need now to focus the energy they spent arguing over spending and tax rate maneuvers in the runup to passing the reconciliation bill on achieving real cuts in spending and tax rates via the appropriations bills. And they need to quit dithering about it this time. Pass the bills individually and on time—no more omnibus bills, no more continuing resolutions. Achievement of this would make arguing over the debt ceiling irrelevant by making the debt ceiling itself irrelevant.

Trump could exercise his executive authority in real, proven terms: announce that he’ll veto any omnibus bills and any continuing resolution, even if it means Congress shuts down the Federal government with its failure to perform. And then do so if Congress actually does fail and cause a shutdown.

Misplaced Optimism

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The news writers over at The Wall Street Journal wrote this in all seriousness about the aftermath of the Israeli airstrikes on Iran; followed by the US’ MOP and cruise missile deliveries to Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan; followed by a cease-fire between Iran and Israel:

The attack [by US B-2s and cruise missiles] made the US and the region safer, but did the diplomacy? The answer depends on how Mr Trump plays it from here.

No, it does not. The “answer” depends entirely on Iran’s Ayatollah and his mullah cronies in the Iranian government. Those persons still hate Israel and Jews in general, and they still hate the US. They still adhere to a prior Iranian President’s statement as those current Iranian government persons now resume their efforts to put together nuclear bombs with which to destroy Israel and pass on to later-reviving terrorist proxies for their use. Rafsanjani’s statement—brag, really, and threat—about which I’ve written before, l repeat here:

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.

On top of that, this war is not over because those Iranian government persons have not accepted defeat, and never will, much like Rome in an earlier period:

The Romans expected a war to end in total victory or their own annihilation…. This attitude prevented the Romans from losing the [Punic] war and ultimately allowed them to win it.

Iran, or at least the current crop of Iranian government persons, have not yet been annihilated. All that’s happened is that those persons have agreed to a cease-fire of uncertain durability and duration, during which they will rest their forces, refit them, rearm them, and then resume, possibly using alternative means, their murderous assaults on Israel, Europe, and the US.

It’s unfortunate that so many in the news writing business seriously think the Iranian government personnel think like Westerners do, have the same moral imperatives Westerners do, have the same value sets and respect for human life Westerners do.

These Iranian government persons are not interested in victory, per se. They’re interested in the destruction of Israel, and they do not care at all about the cost in lives to the Iranian people or to the lives of Muslims generally.

What Trump does, or does not do, diplomatically is wholly irrelevant.