Category Archives: foreign policy

A Misleading Statistic

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In a Wall Street Journal article touting our nation’s ability to produce WWI bombers at a high rate, the subheadline read

At its peak, a Ford factory produced one B-24 bomber an hour during World War II.

The article went on to brag about that production rate in the context of a 2018 Boeing contract to produce two new Air Force Ones by 2024, with Boeing’s schedule now claiming delivery by 2029.

The B-24 production rate, though, is badly misleading. That’s how often a B-24 rolled off the production line. The real question, the serious question in this context of producing a single airplane, or just two of them, is this one: how long did any particular aircraft spend on that B-24 production line from first part being assembled to final article coming off the line?

It’s true enough that a modern Air Force One is a more complex machine than a mid-20th century bomber, but the modern airplane shouldn’t be taking 11 years, or more, to construct, especially one being built on a basic airframe that’s already been long in production.

Boeing has wasted far too much time pretending to work on a new Air Force One, and that contract needs to be canceled and a new contract let with an aircraft manufacturer that will take the task seriously. However, using misleading statistics like the one above reduces the credibility of any discussion of Boeing’s failure to perform.

The Truce of the Barbarian

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Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a cease fire truce for the three days covering its victory in WWII celebration, and then he increased his attacks on Ukraine. Then he offered low level talks between his underlings and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s subordinates, supposedly for this Thursday in Turkey, basing his offer on renewal of the same talks he pretended to engage in 2022 in Turkey to address his claimed underlying cause of his invasion of Ukraine: ending Ukraine’s continued existence as a fully independent and sovereign nation and exposing it, in that newly and drastically weakened state, to renewed invasion and final conquering and occupation.

Zelenskyy responded,

demanding that Russia start a cease-fire on Monday [yesterday], and saying he would be waiting for Putin “personally” in Turkey on Thursday.
“There is no point in prolonging the killings,” Zelensky wrote on social media. Later in his nightly address, the Ukrainian leader reiterated his intention to go to Istanbul for talks. “And I hope that this time, Putin won’t be looking for excuses as to why he ‘can’t’ make it,” he said.

If Putin is a no-show in Istanbul Thursday, Europe and the US—this means President Donald Trump (R)—need to stop slow-walking weapons, ammunition, and logistical support for Ukraine, and start delivering them in the numbers and at the pace the Ukrainians have said they need in order to succeed in defending themselves against the barbarian’s threat to their existence.

It isn’t possible to negotiate with a barbaric entity who only understand conquer and enslave. His truces, his commitments, cannot be trusted. Ever.

In the end, the only way to achieve Trump’s—and Zelenskyy’s—goal of “ending the killing” is to destroy the barbarian invasion and drive the barbarians out of Ukraine.

Still too many Leakers

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Here’s the lede and second paragraph:

The US is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, according to two people familiar with the effort.
Several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a “collection emphasis message” to intelligence-agency heads last week. They were directed to learn more about Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes on American resource extraction on the island.

This was a classified message.

There is no excuse for blatting about to other nations our national security efforts, efforts that must by their nature be secretive. These are two persons who must be tracked down, fired for cause, and investigated for the potentially criminal nature of their “leaks” and for their mishandling of classified document(s).

Tariffs and Economic Disaster

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There has been, so far, no economic disaster. In fact, Gerald Baker, in his Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed, put his finger on the longer term outcome of tariffs insofar as they lead to a decrease in the globalization of trade. Here’s his penultimate paragraph:

What difference does it make? An important one: If we see deglobalization not as a catastrophic act of self-harm but as a choice—even a rational one—we can position ourselves better to deal with its consequences. We know the costs of throwing sand in the gears of frictionless trade, but there are opportunities too: more-secure supply chains, a chance to nurture high-end domestic manufacturing and reduce our financial dependency on the rest of the world, and new attention to reducing the vast economic inequalities in the U.S. that globalization, with its incalculable rewards for the most advantaged, has exacerbated.

That’s on the right track. Also needed, though, is [ahem] some necessary parallel actions:

requirement that the “protected” industry companies use the large majority (60%-75%, say, just to have a starting point for discussion) of the increased revenues accruing from the increased sales at their immediately pre-tariff prices to achieve the following:

 

    • increase market share via their largely unchanged price
    • increase spending on innovation
    • increase spending on capital plant maintenance, improvement, and expansion
    • increase spending on line worker wages
    • increase spending on line worker hiring

And one more fillip: a hard expiration date of the protectionist tariff, in the range of 5-10 years, that cannot be extended except by Congressionally enacted statute.

Occupying Gaza

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Israel has developed a plan to do this as a necessary step to finally destroying Hamas. Israel had done that some decades ago, but it was an incomplete occupation, and so it ultimately was a failure. One of the reasons for the failure  was that Israel intended only on controlling Gaza with no intent to destroy Hamas, hence it was an incomplete occupation.

The current plan has that as the goal and purpose of the planned occupation. I think the plan could work and not even be very long-term, if a couple of additional factors are included (and I have no idea whether they are or are not).

The IDF would need to completely isolate Gaza along its borders and seacoast to keep the terrorists from escaping out the sides and back. If they can do that, then occupying successively seized territory, whether contiguously seized or in separate chunks as the tactics and real-time situation require, then the Israel wouldn’t need to maintain the occupation of all of Gaza for any longer than it would take to satisfy themselves that all the arms and supply caches have been seized, the tunnels plugged, and Hamas functionally exterminated rather than leaked away.

The other factor is the formation of an Abraham Accord collection of Arab states plus Egypt that would emplace a governance function in Gaza. At that point, Israel could withdraw from the strip.