Category Archives: foreign policy

Limited Incursions

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The US intelligence community is beginning to wake up to the possibility of Vladimir Putin having Russia engage in a limited incursion into NATO territory in an attempt to relieve Western pressure on him regarding his invasion of Ukraine. (That invasion, keep in mind, he was explicitly permitted to carry out by ex-President Joe Biden, so long as Putin kept it to a small one.)

The likelihood of the most extreme scenario—a limited land incursion—is low, but gets higher as time goes on, according to the reports.

It’s a threat that needs to be taken seriously and to be prepared for.

Putin’s military doesn’t need to be up to snuff to embark on a limited invasion of NATO territory. His military just has to be better than the forces he’d face, and depleted as his military is, they are, strongly so. Likely he couldn’t run all the way to Dunkirk, but he could run all the way to the Baltic Sea. Nobody in Europe, individually or in the aggregate as an alliance presently has the wherewithal to defeat a Russian invasion.

The authors suggested a grey area type of invasion/incursion, and doing so, they missed the larger picture.

The possible threats range from a cyberattack on a NATO country….

Do the authors mean like the cyberattacks Putin has been running all along against the Baltic States for some years?

They posed this bit of ignorance as if it were a serious deterrent:

Such a move [armed invasion] has always been considered extremely unlikely because it would trigger NATO’s Article 5, which commits members to collective defense.

This is a chimera, at best. There’s nothing in Article 5 that requires an armed response by NATO members. The nations’ Foreign Ministers shaking their fingers very firmly at Putin, or Prime Ministers and Presidents issuing strongly worded statements objecting to the invasion, would satisfy the Article.

This Needs to be Rejected

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There is an “agreement” regarding the Strait of Hormuz that’s nearing completion. The trouble is, though, is that it’s between Iran and Oman, and it grants “oversight” of the Strait to…Oman and Iran. The arrangement would set up an inbound lane near Iran and an outbound lane near Oman.

While the deal would exclude charging ships tolls or fees, Iran might not be prevented from collecting voluntary payments to cover costs like security and search and rescue….

Oh, yeah….

This arrangement must be scotched from the start.

Neither Oman nor Iran can be allowed any sort of oversight, no matter how seemingly benign, of an international water like the Strait of Hormuz. The international water needs no oversight, only protection from nations trying to seize control of it.

Hold Who Accountable, Again?

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Over the last month, or so, there has been a spate of cyber attacks against our nation’s infrastructure, culminating in a series of attacks a variety of water distribution networks causing shutdowns of several cities’ water supply, primarily in Minnesota, but spread also across seven States.

It’s not like these attacks came out of the blue, though. Ever since Colonial Pipeline, the executive management teams of utilities—of all private enterprises, come to that—have been on clear notice that well that cyber attacks were a thing; they would occur; and by the success of that attack, they were encouraged by Colonial’s—at then-President Joe Biden’s (D) pressure in his own abject meekness in front of Russia—weak-kneed payment of the demanded ransomware, matched by Biden’s surrender to Russia regarding Nord Stream 2.

And yet, these latest attacks occurred and successfully shut down those physical networks.

The failure of these management teams is reprehensible, given their apparent cavalier attitude—criminally negligent attitude, in my opinion—toward cyber security and securing their networks against cyber intrusion, cyber vandalism, cyber-instigated shutdown. This lack of effort by those managers should result in stern sanction, including jail, against them.

Their decision to not bother with any serious security measures is a failure of their fiduciary duty toward their shareholders. More than that, their failure, especially in the water distribution cases, puts their customers who depend on them for water at serious risk. Above even that, their negligence represents a threat to our nation’s security. The one is criminal, if proven, and the others are unpatriotic and especially unacceptable.

And yet, to date, no one is being looked at for sanction or even civil liability.

Victory vs Diplomacy

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The headline laid out the…dilemma.

Trump Pivots Back to Diplomacy as Iran Victory Eludes Him

This is a false dichotomy, and it’s leading to exceedingly higher costs in weapons expenditures, dollars, destruction, and casualties.

Per Clausewitz, war is merely the continuation of policy by other means. What gets left unsaid is that policy—diplomacy—is merely the continuation of war by other means. What gets missed as a result of missing the unsaid is that war and diplomacy can occur simultaneously. That’s especially true when politicians, particularly President Donald Trump (R), recognizes that war and diplomacy are the same thing operating through different tool sets.

That’s where Trump is going wrong in the conflict with Iran, and it’s where politicians of both parties have been wrong all along. Victory is not eluding the US or Trump, but it’s being delayed by Trump’s either/or procedure in this conflict with Iran. He needs to do both, simultaneously, and with our own maximum effort all across the kinetic and cyber spectrum. Likely, too, he’ll need to do both until Iran is completely disarmed with no remaining physical ability to act kinetically at all. That’s what will produce the maximum pressure on the terrorists reigning over Iran.

Still Just Love Taps

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In response to Iran’s “surprise” attacks on US forces in Jordan, the US answered with a powerful response.

US forces carried out a “heavy wave” of strikes, attacking dozens of targets, including military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites, and maritime capabilities, said US Central Command after the strikes were completed. “The strikes aimed to further diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces, commercial shipping, and neighboring Gulf countries,” the command said.

And President Donald Trump (R):

We are going to be hitting them very hard because it’s our turn.

This is nothing but a few wholly inadequate love taps, though, to use Trump’s on phrase. His dislike for the killing and destruction war causes is well known, but here he’s letting it cloud his judgment.

The only way to diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces is to destroy those threats’ physical capability to act on their enmity. If we know where those targets, those command centers, missile and drone facilities,… are, we need to hit and destroy all of them, in rapid sequence if not simultaneously, not just bang some of them in onesies and twosies strikes. The terrorists must be completely disarmed, as many of their—now IRGC—leadership killed as we can reach, and the surviving leadership blinded by eliminating their command centers, surveillance facilities, military radar systems.

Worse from Trump’s perspective (were he to get better advice from his civilian advisors), the tit-for-tat that is this turn-taking foolishness only runs up, for the mid- and long-term, the casualty count and the physical destruction.

It’s time to be serious. Hit Iran with continuous waves of strikes strong enough actually to be worthy of being called “heavy.” Diplomacy can easily and straightforwardly be carried out while these strikes are ongoing rather than during pauses, which are strongly beneficial to the terrorists: safe passage to a meeting site can easily be granted and enforced for Iranian decision makers’ travel.