Category Archives: defense policy

The Strait and Victory

Posted on by
Reply

There is a two week cease fire more or less in progress in the US-Iran portion of the US/Israeli war against Iran, one that is subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has not done so.

On Wednesday [after the cease fire nominally went into effect], Iran told mediators that it would limit the number of ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz to around a dozen a day and charge tolls. The Iranian navy also told ships anchored nearby that they still needed Iran’s permission to cross the strait. “If any vessel tries to transit without permission, [it] will be destroyed,” according to a recording reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The White House is insisting that what the Iranian personnel say in public is radically different from what they’re saying in private. Either way, though, those are just words. Actions matter, and so far those actions include a lack of tanker and cargo ship movement through the strait beyond a few that have paid as much as $2 million in protection money to the Iranians. That’s not a COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING.

Meanwhile, Iran is attempting after the fact to alter the terms of the cease fire to include Lebanon and Israel’s campaign against the Iranian terrorist surrogate Hezbollah. That that’s a separate matter is unimportant to Iran as its personnel, once again, welch on an agreement, tap things along, and stall, stall, stall.

That Iran’s military capacity has been devastated is true enough.

…strikes destroyed roughly 80% of Iran’s air defenses, more than 1,500 targets, as well as more than 450 ballistic missile storage facilities and 800 one-way attack drone storage facilities. The operation has also decimated Iran’s defense industrial base, Caine said, including shattering more than 80% of its missile factories.

But those numbers are just the modern body count, and they’re just as meaningless without context. How do those losses compare with what Iran started with? How many of those missiles, rockets, drones, and launch systems does it have left? How many of those small boats? How much of its industrial base is left?

The current situation seems similar to that of the Rome-Carthage wars, particularly the second one. From Adrian Goldsworthy’s The Fall of Carthage:

Despite their appalling losses, the string of humiliating defeats, the defections of some Italian allies, and the continuing malevolent presence of Hannibal’s army in Italy, the Romans simply refused to come to terms with the Carthaginians…. They were then able to beat the enemy on every other front and force the undefeated Hannibal to evacuate Italy…. The Carthaginians expected a war to end in a negotiated peace. The Romans expected a war to end in total victory or their own annihilation, something which no contemporary state had the resources to achieve.

We’re not dead yet, say the Iranian negotiators, so we haven’t lost.

It’s time for them to die.

Bah—Who Needs National Defense?

Posted on by
1

A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section was unhappy with the spending proposal for and attendant priority given to defense spending. He didn’t seem to see any need for spending there.

I read with some alarm the enthusiastic commentary in your editorial regarding the proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget….
… Diverting expenditures to military weapons and away from social needs—housing, food and medical care—isn’t sensible nor is it possible, given current domestic needs.

What isn’t sensible is not funding our ability to defend ourselves in a world of many powerful enemy nations, at least one of which has sworn to surpass and dominate us.

Any free nation needs to be able to defend itself, or it won’t be free for long, and all the social needs—housing, food, and medical care—it gets, such as they might be, will be dictated by that nation’s conqueror. National defense must be that nation’s government’s first priority.

I decline to live under a People’s Republic of China tyranny. Or to see my nation simply destroyed by a nuclear armed Iran that has no other goal aside from visiting the same extermination on Israel.

Any Excuse To Not Participate

Posted on by
Reply

On the matter of reopening the Strait of Hormuz, we get this from Europe’s government men and women:

Naval escorts for tankers through such a narrow waterway in a war zone would be nearly impossible, say allied officials and military experts. Reopening the strait would more likely come after a cease-fire and through international pressure on Iran, they say.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron made the claim explicit:

“It would take forever and would expose all those crossing the strait to risks” of Iranian attack[.]

Never mind the far greater risks to Europe’s (and Asia’s) economies from letting Iran keep the Strait closed while the chattering classes of politicians yap and arf with Iran’s surviving mullahs.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper:

Iran is trying to hold the global economy hostage in the Strait of Hormuz[.]

NSS. But, international pressure? Who will feel that the most? The short answer is Europe and Asia. Iran has already named its terms: pay us a toll and stop supporting the US in any way, and your ships may pass. Tribute by any name….

Stalin’s question regarding the Pope has relevance today, rephrased by me: how many ships do Europe’s navies have? Embarrassingly for those nations’ governing men and women, the answer is virtually none. Farzin Nadimi, Washington Institute Senior Fellow, on the matter of dealing with Iran’s small fast attack boats blocking the Strait:

Such vessels can largely be deterred by the US dominant air power, but “European powers will not be able, and probably not willing, to replace that capability[.]”

This sort of…shortfall…both in physical capability and mental toughness is the result of those governments’ conscious decisions, through generations of governments, to not bother with their own defense establishments and instead to freeload off rely on American defenses, blood, and treasure.

Now they’re hiding from that simple fact and bleating that military action won’t open the Strait. Which of course is true enough absent American participation. Those nations don’t have any military establishment worthy of the name, much less one capable of the task of reopening and holding open the Strait so the oil and natural gas they need far more than we do can flow freely and without humiliating tribute paid Iran.

On Trump’s Budget Proposal

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump (R) has submitted his budget proposal for the next year to Congress, and on its surface, it does little to address the current large budget deficit and its attendant borrowing on top of the current national debt. It does, though, seriously plus up defense spending, with its request for $1.5 trillion for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

There are a couple of ways to think about that. One is to deal with the threat to our economy, and so to our national security, of that burgeoning debt resulting from the continuing large deficit by raising taxes (as Progressive-Democratic Party politicians demand to do, especially on those Americans of whom they so vociferously disapprove) or by cutting spending (as budget hawks in the Republican Party demand to do).

Raising taxes, though, hurts all of us, not just those Evil Rich. Taking money away from the folks who make it and put it to gainful use reduces private economy investment and innovation—things us citizens do far better than even the most well-meaning government ever can—and that drop negatively impacts business competitiveness, expansion, and jobs, each of which hurts all Americans who are not part of the Evil Rich cohort.

Cutting government spending, on the other hand, always is a very good way to help our economy since it takes government competition for resources and more direct inputs to production out of the competition among businesses for those same factors, which puts downward pressure on prices that both businesses and consumers face. The cuts do, though, reallocate lots of jobs away from politicians’ districts and toward more efficient locations for the work, with efficiency defined by the businesses themselves rather than government politicians.

The other way to think about the budget with its deficit and attendant borrowing is articulated quite clearly by Trump:

We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.

Indeed. We can’t protect our economy and its health, much less reduce deficits and borrowings, if we can’t defend our nation and instead have our futures dictated to us by our enemies—as the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping has committed himself to doing.

The answer writes itself, as anyone to the right of the Progressive-Democratic Party can see: plus up our defense spending, cut Federal spending everywhere else, and either cut taxes further or at least leave them alone.

When is a Strategic Strength a Strategic Vulnerability?

Posted on by
Reply

The lede laid out the misconception:

The oil states of the Persian Gulf have made great strides to diversify their economies in recent years, but they have also created a new vulnerability: more strategic targets for Iran to hit.

More targets to hit? Sure. But attacking them dilutes and dissipates any ability to attack a choke point in any economy, to seriously degrade or to destroy a Critical Item in an economy. Indeed, by diversifying, an economy’s single or a couple of Critical Items are eliminated, and what replaces them are a larger number of Important Components to that economy.

But that number protects the economy as a whole, and so strengthens the targeted nation: it will suffer economic losses, but it has become much harder to shut down.

When is a strategic strength a strategic vulnerability? Not this time.