Category Archives: defense policy

Russia Threatens

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday warned Romania and Poland they could find themselves in the sights of Russian rockets because they are hosting elements of a US missile shield that Moscow considers a threat to its security.

Never mind that this is a blatantly bogus beef and a naked threat.  The defensive missile shield cannot, by its very nature, be a threat to any naiotn other than one that’s planning an offensive attack.  Sort of like Russia already has done to Georgia and Ukraine at gunpoint, and to the Baltic States—each of the three—with cyber attacks.

Putin is beginning to act on his threats, too, thereby confirming the need for a missile shield.

Russia conducted a successful flight test of a developmental anti-satellite missile on Wednesday that is capable of destroying satellites in orbit, American defense officials said.

And

The launch marks another major milestone for Moscow’s efforts to develop weapons capable of destroying US navigation, communications, and intelligence satellites, a key strategic advantage.

This was a direct ascent missile firing, too.  A direct ascent shot means the missile did not have to orbit and then close with the target satellite; it could go from launch straight to satellite attack and impact.  This sort of attack takes hours off the launch to destruct time.

But, of course, this represents no threat to us.  Mm, mm.

Wait Times, Schmait Times

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A disabled veteran needing to see a VA doctor—or a non-disabled vet who’s “merely” sick, come to that—should blow off his wait times—too often weeks or months—just as he does his half-hour or hour wait times at Disney parks.  That is, if the disabled vet can partake of a Disney park at all.  Or so said Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald:

When you got to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line?  Or what’s important?  What’s important is, what’s your satisfaction with the experience?  And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure.

Indeed, as McDonald would have it, this unimportant wait time shouldn’t even be measured from when the veteran expresses his need by calling for an appointment.  No, not at all.  The proper measure is a “preferred date,” a measure of the VA’s convenience, rather than the veteran’s need.

Never mind, either, that not only is wait time a part of McDonald’s satisfaction with the experience.  For veterans needing to see their doctors, wait time too often is a Critical Item.

This is beyond disgusting or despicable.  The VA’s corporate culture of indifference isn’t going to change.  McDonald should be terminated, promptly and for cause.  And then the VA disbanded.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

National Security and Economic Relations with the PRC

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The Fiscal Times had a thought.

There is an emerging danger that rivalry for strategic influence in the western Pacific will damage trade and investment relations.

As if this is a bad thing.  “rivalry for strategic influence in the Western Pacific” is a euphemism for the PRC’s seizure and occupation of the South China Sea and the islands in it, and the PRC’s terraforming of many of those islands and subsequent construction of military bases on them.

The only reason for the grab and the military build up is to intimidate the other nations rimming the Sea, nations who are, variously, our trading partners, our friends, and potentially our allies—and friends.  The PRC’s goal is to drive us out of the Sea, which can only damage our trade and investment relations with the region as a whole.

Our economic relations with the PRC do not need to come at the expense of any of that.

NATO vs Russia

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The Brookings Institution posited some potential Russian moves in response to recent NATO and US military and political moves.  Brookings also noted the timidity of the current NATO moves:

One idea under discussion is the deployment of a battalion from NATO member states such as the United States, Britain, and Germany in each of the Baltic States and Poland.  That will hardly suffice to defend the Baltics.  A 2015 RAND study suggested the need for seven brigades—including three heavy armored brigades—to have a chance of stopping a major Russian offensive.

But.

[S]uch a force would appear overly provocative to Moscow, posing a potent ground offensive capability less than 400 kilometers from Russia’s second city of St Petersburg.

Unfortunately, what the NATO politicians don’t recognize (or choose not to) is that it’s necessary to be provocative in order to deter.  If Russia sees no danger from its illegal seizure and annexation of Crimea, and support for armed separatism in eastern Ukraine [and buildup of its own forces in eastern Ukraine], or from its nuclear threats against Poland and its cyber warfare conducted against those Baltic States, then Russia will simply continue those threats, those invasions, those occupations.

I aim to be provocative (with not too many apologies to Malcolm Reynolds).  Here’s more provocation: we need to move the flotilla in the Baltic Sea, the one that’s been a repeated target of Russian fighter-bomber buzzings, close on Kaliningrad.  And when the Russians send fighter-bombers to buzz the flotilla again, the flotilla—every single ship of it—should blanket the Russian aircraft with ECM so as to cut it off utterly from its Russian base.  And the flotilla—every single ship of it—should illuminate the Russian aircraft with targeting radar.

It’s time to stop fearing angrifying our enemy and thereby letting it get away—literally—with murder.  It’s time to get provocative.

Ballistic Missile Defense—Who Needs It?

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No one, according to George Friedman in Geopolitical Futures.  The US has installed and brought on line a ballistic missile defense system site in Romania, but Friedman evidently misunderstands the purpose and the need.

The system is designed to block one or a few (the precise number is likely unknown) missiles targeted toward a large area.  This would be ineffective against Russia, should it wish to launch a nuclear strike against Europe, because the system would be easily saturated by a relatively small number of missiles….

Maybe yes, maybe no.  Russia has already threatened Poland with nuclear attack, and it has already attacked the Baltics with cyber weapons—a useful prelude to a nuclear strike.  It wouldn’t take many missiles to destroy those nations, and even fewer to crush them into surrender.  A BMD system enormously complicates such an attack.

The problem with this is that it is unclear why a country with relatively few missiles would launch a strike at all, and totally unclear why their target would be Europe.

This is his biggest misunderstanding.  He can’t posit a rational reason for a country launching a nuclear strike against a nuclear power, therefor there cannot be a rational reason.  But he’s mistakenly applying his logic system—a typically Western logic system—to an enemy nuclear capable nation that doesn’t subscribe to our rules of logic.

It is always posited that the current enemy doesn’t value human life as we do.  Thus, Iran and North Korea might launch attacks.  Kim Jong Un is clearly enjoying playing God too much to spoil that.  In Iran, the sheer corruption is comforting.  People who love accumulating money are rarely suicidal. The madman theory doesn’t work.

Actually, Iran’s leadership does value human life—they just value the end game differently than we do: the path to Heaven is through martyrdom in this life, and what greater martyrdom than to die for Allah?  Iran’s sheer corruption is at a level below the mullahs.  The mullahs are the ones who will make the decision to strike, not any of those alleged corrupt persons.

Baby Kim does like playing God.  What better way to do that than to visit god-like death and destruction on his enemies?  It may be that he hasn’t yet because he hasn’t yet reliable enough delivery means.

A nuclear attack would be terrible, and however unlikely, it is a threat that must be negated.  …  [However] Ballistic missile defense addresses an apocalypse for which even great novelists could not imagine a convincing origin.  …  The money spent on BMD should have been spent on far more probable threats.

Because gun-free zones are so useful in defending against those with guns.  And there’s that need, again, for a specifically Western rationale for a nuclear attack.

His madman theory is a straw man, offered out of lack of understanding of the new reality.  Friedman may be willing to bet millions of lives on his version of rationality.  I’m glad of the BMD installation; we need to spend the bucks to install more such sites around the world.