Category Archives: politics

“In two-war scenario, could US forces prevail against powerful enemies?”

Posted on by
1

That’s a question Just the News‘ Susan Katz Keating asked in her recent article.

One of the “Pentagon war-planners” she interviewed had this to say about our military’s considerations of that sort of question.

We hold modeling scenarios about this on a regular basis. We work out the likelihood of what would happen in a multi-front war. In the scenarios, we do well.

Frankly, I’d have to see the scenarios before I could think this believable.

I wonder if any of their scenarios include cyber attacks on our national energy and water infrastructure and our financial centers, coupled with EMP strikes against our fleet afloat and against our land force command units and bases, coupled with attacks against our orbiting GPS and com assets, coupled with “kinetic” attacks on those sea and land—and air—forces and against our homeland.

I’d then like to see them run a scenario where we’re attacked in that broad spectrum way by two geographically separated enemies at least roughly simultaneously.

I note with dismay the emphasis (elsewhere in the article) on “major conflict” with little apparent consideration of “total war.” The war gamers also seem to limit their perception of our enemies’ goals to their desiring victory in limited war—a badly outmoded concept. Are they considering that our enemies don’t think like we do, have different value sets than we do?

The gamers simply seem oblivious to the likelihood that our enemies have different views of what constitutes victory than we do, that their war goals aren’t merely to force us to give them something, but rather to conquer us and occupy us. Or to destroy us altogether as a society, much less a polity; not considering that we have anything of value to give them but our deaths.

Regarding Russia and the People’s Republic of China in particular, another of Keating’s interviewees had this:

The two prospective opponents “conveniently pose very different military problems, allowing the United States to allocate some of its assets to one, and the rest to the other,” Farley wrote in an essay exploring whether the US could survive concurrent wars.

A conveniently posed scenario, with convenient assumptions built in.

All of that comes against the backdrop of our last several administrations eroding—deliberately or through disinterest or plain incompetence—our military capability:

The US previously approached multi-war scenarios with a doctrine to “defeat; defeat; deny” up to three enemies. Under that approach, US forces would defeat two opponents and block a third. Now, according to the Pentagon war-planner source, the aim is to “defeat; deny.”

What was that about one is none, two is one, three is backup? Now we’re down to one and a hope.

Progressive-Democrats’ Newspeak Dictionary

Posted on by
Reply

“Infrastructure” entry. Here’s a brief list of what the Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party claim is infrastructure and what they want to spend $1.25-$1.5 trillions of your tax dollars on.

  • climate action
  • climate justice
  • affordable housing
  • green housing
  • police accountability
  • Supreme Court expansion
  • paid leave
  • child care
  • caregiving

Infrastructure is turtles, all the way down.

Que Bill the Cat.

Here’s the standard, Merriam-Webster online dictionary, definition:

1: the system of public works of a country, state, or region
2: the underlying foundation or basic framework (as of a system or organization)

And the standard, American Heritage online dictionary, definition:

1. An underlying base or foundation especially for an organization or system.
2. The basic facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society, such as transportation and communications systems, water and power lines, and public institutions including schools, post offices, and prisons.

I decline to surrender the dictionary to the extremists of the Left or to their Party.

A Long-Standing Error

Posted on by
Reply

President Joe Biden (D) seems to have identified a long-standing error regarding our nation’s response to espionage.

President Biden’s decision…to punish Russia for the SolarWinds hack broke with years of US foreign policy that has tolerated cyber espionage as an acceptable form of 21st century spycraft[.]

Espionage is espionage, spycraft is spycraft; the tools used are irrelevant to these simple facts.

Congressman Jim Langevin (D, RI) is continuing the misapprehension, though.

The SolarWinds incident that the administration today attributed to the SVR has had all the trappings of traditional espionage that, while unfortunate, has not historically been outside the bounds of responsible state behavior…. Mr Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken should “explain the contours of their new policy,” Mr Langevin said.

Not so much. While the SVR’s activity was, perhaps, not outside the bounds, neither was Biden’s response on this occasion a “new policy” so much as it may be the beginning of a correction of an erroneous policy. Most nations jail domestic spies and expel foreign spies (often jailing them domestically before expelling them at the ends of their sentences).

Biden is on track to getting this one right, for all that he needs to do more.

Internal Tariffs

Posted on by
Reply

Mercantilist tariffs (as opposed to tariffs as foreign policy tools) are purely protectionist, designed to punish competitors for competing. They’re not only aimed at foreign competition, either, as Europe’s auto industry is demonstrating [emphasis added].

Auto makers in Europe eager to boost sales of their electric vehicles have a new strategy: demanding higher taxes on conventional vehicles that burn gas and diesel fuel.
The top executives at several car and truck makers are calling on European governments to introduce the new taxes on carbon-dioxide emissions from gasoline- and diesel-powered cars and trucks as a way to help their EVs better compete.

And there’s this bit of disingenuosity [emphasis added]:

Taxing emissions from polluting vehicles, he [Volkswagen AG Chairman of the Board of Management and VW Group CEO Herbert Diess] and other executives say, would help ensure electric vehicles remain attractive for buyers after the expiration of subsidies that are now sustaining sales.

But don’t you dare think about taxing the EVs’ pollution from mining the materials needed for the batteries, the pollution from manufacturing those batteries, or the pollution from disposing of those batteries when they’re spent.

Once again, if a company’s product is unable to compete in a free market without subsidies for their own products or artificial burdens—those internal protectionist tariffs—laid on competing products, the company’s product is not viable and not ready for market.

Full stop.

Sanctioning Russia

Posted on by
Reply

Maybe. President Joe Biden (D) is acting like he’s taking action that would seem to respond to Russia’s SolarWinds hack and interference with the 2020 Presidential election. His potential action includes

  • expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats, includ[ing] representatives of Russian intelligence services
  • sanctions against “dozens” of people and companies
  • target[ing] Moscow’s ability to borrow money by prohibiting US financial institutions from buying Russian bonds directly from Russian institutions.

The sanctions will take effect on 14 June.

It turns out, on inspection that this move isn’t all that. Expelling some low-level diplomatic functionaries isn’t a very strong move. Neither is the action against Russian bonds very strong: that “sanction” explicitly allows US institutions to buy Russian bonds from resellers and elsewhere in the secondary markets. Rather than being a strong move, it just adds a trivial layer of bureaucracy.

And there’s the delay of a month-and-a-half before taking effect. It won’t take those diplomats six weeks to pack up and leave. It won’t take six weeks for business entities to adjust their relationships with the “dozens.” It won’t take six weeks for US institutions to adjust their buying procedures to focus on the secondary markets.

None of that even has to begin earlier than those six weeks.

However.

The Biden administration will have six weeks of distractions from the threat posed by the People’s Republic of China and from the Biden administration’s begging of Iran to let the US back into the nuclear weapons development deal.

The Biden administration will have six weeks in which to let its finger-wagging at the Russians die down, followed by quietly dropping the sanction threat.