The Biden administration has approved a sale of $360 million worth of drones, missiles and other military equipment to the Republic of China.
So far, so good.
There remains a Critical Item, though: when is the actual delivery. American governments—not just the Biden administration, this time—have a venerable history of slow-walking actual delivery to the RoC.
We have a floating pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip which was intended to greatly increase the amount and pace of humanitarian aid to Gazan civilians during the ongoing Hamas war against Israel. It took weeks to get the components sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and then along the length of the Mediterranean Sea to that Gazan coast. Those weeks included delays enroute (and at the start) caused by equipment failure, both in some of the components and in the ships transporting the components.
Once assembled and in more-or-less operation, the volume of traffic was much lower than expected, and under heavy Med seas (heavy for the Med, the seas weren’t the raging high waves of the Atlantic), the pier broke apart with a section being pushed across the remaining gap between the end of the pier and the actual shore (a gap that exists by design) up onto the shore. A ship sent to catch the pier section before it grounded also wound up grounded in the shallow waters near the shore. It took some weeks to repair the damage and reopen the pier.
Now, in anticipation of further heavy seas, this pier has been preemptively dismantled.
This is the level of capability we have in our military to conduct post-forced landing resupply while our troops remain engaged, either still on/near the beach or farther inland? I hope not. I hope this floating pier is not typical of our ability conduct over-the-beach resupply, especially while under fire, but I’m not sanguine about it.
Third party Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, Jr, now is promising to cut our national defense spending by 50% if he’s elected.
I will push for [a] 50% reduction in military expenditures in my first four years in office, with more cuts to come thereafter. A way to keep the dollar strong is to keep the country strong. We can do that by redirecting our bloated military budget toward infrastructure, education, and health, and building our economy and building small business.
Kennedy insists, instead, that the United States should
project strength through moral leadership and strong economics.
What would this Kennedy have us do, though, when our arming-up enemies—Russia, People’s Republic of China, Iran, among others—come with actual guns and bullets and destruction and killing. Does he expect our remaining armed forces to defend our nation by throwing copies of Aristotle’s Nicomachean or Eudemian Ethics at them? Or perhaps Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations? Maybe Summa Theologiae, the compendium of St Thomas Acquinas’ writings? All nine volumes—there’s some heavy artillery. Or something both older and more current, the Christian Bible, which contains—rapid fire, now—Judaism’s Torah.
How strong does Kennedy think our economy would be when moralizing in the face of bullets fails to persuade?
Does he really think our infrastructure, education, and health really will matter when they’re controlled by our conquerors? That our economy and small businesses will be for our benefit when they’re controlled by our conquerors? That our dollar will matter when the currency in effect is that of our conquerors?
Kennedy badly misunderstands the parable of the mouse and the owl: the mouse thinks the owl’s ways are wrong, while the owl thinks the mouse is lunch.
So read The Wall Street Journal‘s headline. The article went into it:
Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Iran-backed Houthi rebels have lobbed missiles, drones, and other weapons at commercial vessels and warships nearly every day. Although most of the weapons have been shot down, at least 77 cargo ships have been hit, and one British-owned ship carrying 20,000 tons of fertilizer aboard was sunk.
Though largely ineffective, the Houthi attacks have been able to disrupt shipping and keep the US and its allies tied down, frustrating the Navy’s decades-old mission of keeping open the region’s critical sea lanes.
And this:
Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, said in congressional testimony last month that the US-led effort has been insufficient to deter the militant group’s targeting of ships and that the threat will “remain active for some time.”
Yes, it has, but while the article’s news writers mentioned the cause, they don’t seem to understand that they have. They centered the article on the frustrations of the Navy’s continuing inability to reopen those shipping lanes.
The root cause:
The Biden administration has limited its military response to the Houthi attacks, hoping to avoid being drawn into a wider Middle East conflict. But that has meant the flotilla of US and allied warships has spent weeks and even months patrolling the Red Sea on alert—and the attacks have kept coming.
It’s as simple and straightforward as this: Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is too timid to take serious action. He’s more interested in appeasement of the Houthis’ boss, Iran, and in a failed Vietnam-esque “measured response” tit-for-tat procedure.
What’s actually needed is a concerted effort to destroy Houthi bases, whether or not they’re launching facilities and whether or not any launching facilities are “preparing to launch.” What’s further needed is active interception or sinking, if interception isn’t feasible, of Iranian shipping bringing arms and ammunition—not limited to ballistic or cruise missiles or drones—to the Houthis. What’s further needed is recognition of the central role Saudi Arabia plays in Middle East security, along with (if not alongside) Israel and the US, and from that recognition active support of the Saudis in their attempts to restore legitimate government in Yemen and destruction of the Houthis.
None of that will happen, though, while Biden is in office, at the continued expense of shipping disruption, cost of lives lost by allowing the Houthis to continue their operations, and unpredictable (in detail, anyway) ripple effects of that continued timidity.
The Biden administration is looking to offer a “security alliance” to Saudi Arabia that would commit the US to “help defend” it in return for Saudi normalization of relations with Israel. Israel’s end in this deal centers on a quick end to the Hamas-inflicted war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s commitment to a credible path to a two-state solution with the Palestinians. It’s well enough known that Israel’s current government, and more than a few predecessor governments, don’t like the idea of a Palestinian state on Israel’s border.
I have an idea on the matter, because in my awesomeness (and hubris) of course I do.
I’ve written before about what to do about governing the Gaza Strip once Hamas is destroyed (assuming that’s the outcome of Hamas’ war (which Israel is trying to achieve as quickly as possible despite the roadblocks the Biden administration keeps throwing up)). A Palestinian state next door to Israel might become more palatable to Israel (I obviously don’t speak for them) if more nations than just Israel had some skin in that outcome.
Thus: the defense/two-state commitment might become a serious thing for Israeli consideration if Saudi Arabia, the Abraham Accord nations other than Israel, and Egypt were as deeply involved in that pathway to a Palestinian state as Biden and those other nations want Israel to be.
Let Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Abraham Accord nations, less Israel, be the governing body of a nascent Palestinian state until there is a strong consensus among Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Abraham Accord nations, less Israel, that the Palestinian state is ready for self rule, and Israel agrees with that consensus.
Of course, I’m eliding the reliability of any Biden agreement with a nation that Progressive-Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden promised to treat like a pariah, but we’re already dealing in hopes and dreams; what’s one more in the mix?