Category Archives: defense policy

Energy Security

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There’s energy security and there’s energy.

The US could suffer a coast-to-coast blackout if saboteurs knocked out just nine of the country’s 55,000 electric-transmission substations on a scorching summer day[.]

This FERC study also pointed out that it’s not a fixed nine substations; there are various combinations of the nine that can achieve this.  Furthermore, if a transformer manufacturing plant is added to the mix of targets, a memo written by FERC staff for then-FERC Director Jon Wellinghoff warned

Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer[.]

This vulnerability has been known to FERC and others in the Federal government for quite some time, but FERC’s response has been limited to two actions: one has been to order the various utilities to “Handle it, handle it.”

The other has been to cover its own behind by calling out the press that exposed FERC’s failure:

Today’s publication by The Wall Street Journal of sensitive information about the grid undermines the careful work done by professionals who dedicate their careers to providing the American people with a reliable and secure grid.  …  Nonetheless, the publication of other sensitive information is highly irresponsible.  While there may be value in a general discussion of the steps we take to keep the grid safe, the publication of sensitive material about the grid crosses the line from transparency to irresponsibility, and gives those who would do us harm a roadmap to achieve malicious designs.  The American people deserve better.

You read that right.  FERC is busily denigrating those who’ve publicized this vulnerability failure.  What they should be doing is correcting this…weakness.  And explaining how they allowed this weakness to exist 13 years after terrorists attacked so devastatingly.  Or resigning their positions in the disgrace they’ve earned.

The American people do, indeed, deserve better.

Gutting our Defense Capacity

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First, President Obama moves to gut our Federal defense establishment, including among other moves reducing the size of our Army to 1940 levels.

Now he wants to gut our state militias, in particular the States’ Army National Guards, also—and reduce thereby their ability to deal with internal matters ranging from disorder to disaster recovery.  And, oh by the way, severely restrict the States’ ability to reinforce that drastically curtailed Federal defense capacity.

Hmm….

What Does Russia Do for Us?

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Or, more to the point, what’s the value of Russia’s good opinion of us?  After all, it’s this perceived need that’s among the barriers to providing meaningful aid to Ukraine in the face of the present Russian invasion of that country.

Max Boot, at Commentary, suggests that one aspect of the pseudo-thinking going on inside President Barack Obama’s head and that of his State Department Secretary is this:

Russia…remains an important power that Washington hesitates to antagonize because of a general feeling that we need Russian help to deal with Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and other important issues….

What help?  How has Russia “helped” us in any way there, or anywhere else?  In Iran, the Russians are actively helping build nuclear reactors and actively blocking attempts to slow, much less stop, the Iranian drive to acquire nuclear weapons.  In Syria, the Russians are actively propping up Bashar al-Assad and sending him both arms to replace combat losses and SAMs with which to oppose the Israeli air force.  In Afghanistan, the Russians routinely interfere with (though they’ve not actually blocked, yet) our access to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, from which a major portion of our Afghan-based troop resupply flows.

Those “other important issues?”  Russia has replaced us in Egypt.  Russian is propping up a failed Venezuelan government that is antagonistic to us.  Russian is back to sending naval units, including electronic surveillance assets, to Cuba.  And now they’ve invaded Ukraine, with a view of anschluss and partition.  And so on.

Since Russia isn’t helping us anyway, what “help” will we lose if we support, materially, the nascent Ukrainian government?

Aside from the morality of the situation (the strong should protect the weak), and the improvement to our credibility, it’s in our national interest to actively support the new Ukrainian government, to facilitate their—and the bulk of their people’s—move to closer ties with Western Europe and the West generally.

It’s in our interest to do this regardless of what the Russians might think of us as a result.  Or even because of that.

Defense Cut “Drivers”

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Here are a couple of types of spending increases that will appear in upcoming Federal budgets:

[A] CBO report finds that mandatory spending, which includes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, is projected to rise $85 billion, or 4%….

And

Interest on the debt is worse.  It is projected to increase 14% per year, almost quadrupling in dollar terms between 2014 and 2024.

DoD Secretary Chuck Hagel’s proposed budget cuts Defense spending by $75 billion over the next two years.

The “mandatory” spending problem could be cured over those same two years, with a proper reform package.

From $416 billion in interest payments in 2013, that 14% increase for 2014 comes to $58 billion; for 2015, the first year of President Barack Obama’s budget proposal (which includes that “mandatory” spending and Hagel’s cuts in the Defense budget), that interest payment increase comes to $65 billion.

Our debt debacle, with its required interest payments, will take considerably longer than two years to redress, and that puts a premium on getting started now on the necessary spending cuts.  This is made even more difficult, though, by the enormous size of our debt coupled with the national survival need to preserve our military capacity.

But the Democrats won’t allow entitlement reform in any direction except expansion—and more spending.  And they refuse to take our debt seriously, demanding ever more (non-defense) spending, and not just for the “mandatory” stuff.  Go figure.

More Accommodation for our Enemies

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President Barack Obama decries keeping the pressure on Iran during “negotiations” over their nuclear weapons program while bragging that pressure is what got them to talk (more).

Now he’s accommodating the Taliban by cutting back on pressure on them during Pakistani “negotiations” over their future in Pakistan.

The Obama administration has sharply curtailed drone strikes in Pakistan after a request from the government there for restraint as it pursues peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, according to US officials.

“That’s what they asked for, and we didn’t tell them no,” one US official said.

YGTBSM.

This is national security, community organizer style.