Tag Archives: defense policy

They Could Just Get Off Their Collective Behinds

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The nations of Europe are concerned about any peace deal regarding the barbarian’s invasion of Ukraine leaving Ukraine and those European nations vulnerable to later attacks on either.

The leaders of the UK, France, and Germany met in British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Downing Street residence with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday, their latest effort to influence negotiations as the US pushes for a swift agreement to end the war.

Zelenskyy’s concern should be Europe’s as well:

“Russia is insisting we give up land, we don’t want to give anything away.” Zelensky added that he couldn’t cede land legally or morally.
“This is what we are fighting for[.]”

If Europe wants the Influence in US-Led Peace Talks on War in Ukraine that the headline mentions, the best and fastest way to achieve that influence is to bypass the US proposals and simply to start transferring to Ukraine the equipment, logistics, and financial support that the UA and the Ukrainian government personnel say they need, in the amounts they need them, and on the schedule they say they need them. Stop waiting on the US to make the first move. Stop worrying about what the US might think of them for seeing to Ukraine’s and to their own interests first.

After all, the only reliable peace with the barbarian that’s achievable is a defeat of the barbarian that includes his being driven entirely out of Ukraine.

It’s true enough that European military equipment isn’t as good as American. It is, though, a generation or two better than what the Russians are putting into the field. That difference is heavily magnified when put into the hands of Ukrainian fighters, who themselves are better and more determined then the barbarians they’re facing, especially as they are fighting for their nation’s—and their wives’ and children’s and mothers’ and sisters’—survival.

On the other hand, it would fit snugly the premise of some that Europe’s nations don’t give a fig about Ukraine—viz., their reluctance to act without US approval or first move—only concerning themselves with their own security. The nations’ concerns about their own safety are valid in themselves. They know the solution, and it’s the same as for Ukraine.

On Whose Side Are They?

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Via Deputy SecState Christopher Landau:The data are for the Biden administration years of 2022-2024. As Landau pointed out, the money sent to Russia is in blue; the money sent to Ukraine is in orange. This is how much the nations of Europe really care about Ukraine and their own security. The money transfers to the barbarian invader pales the paltry financial and equipment support those nations have been offering Ukraine. Only the UK was sending more aid to Ukraine than to Russia; that has been colored by the UK’s access to North Sea oil and natural gas.

This, despite the hooraw over the US’ apparently fading support for Ukraine.

As usual, right click on the image and select Open Link in New Tab to enlarge the image.

H/t @ralflongwalker

Actually, Some of Us Do

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Greg Ip, writing in The Wall Street Journal, has an extensive article delineating how the People’s Republic of China is growing economically at the direct expense of the rest of the world.

Far from missing the opportunities of an international free market process whereby everyone gains, the PRC is doing this deliberately. Its overtly stated goal is to economically dominate (not effectively compete with) us. Its unstated but longer term goal is to economically dominate the rest of the world.

And with economic domination comes political domination.

Ip’s subheadline, though, isn’t entirely accurate:

No one knows how to cope with Beijing’s “beggar thy neighbor” economic model

Some of us do know how. The PRC is an enemy nation. This is amply demonstrated by the PRC’s control and use as national security-threatening weapons of such Critical Items as rare earths, both ore and processed, and of the basic components of medicines. The PRC’s enmity toward us is corroborated by their “graduate students'” efforts to smuggle into our nation, via university labs, fungi that if loosed would severely damage if not wipe out, much of our food plant agriculture.

We should be doing no economic business with the at all; the cease and desist will eliminate the PRC’s economic weapons. It will be extremely expensive and disruptive for us to pull our supply chains entirely out of the PRC and to stop selling anything at all to the PRC or its companies and buying anything from them, but it will only grow more expensive as we delay moving. But those expenses will pale compared to the cost of having our economy and our politics controlled by the PRC.

A Thought on the National Security Strategy Doc

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The Wall Street Journal‘s news writers had some, and so I have one.

The document underscores how radically the Trump administration is reshaping traditional American foreign policy, and it is likely to deepen divisions in the trans-Atlantic alliance, which has largely kept the peace in Europe since World War II and promoted Western values across the world.

Who has kept the peace? Only one member of the alliance.

It’s possible this doc is of a piece with Trump I’s statements that European NATO nations have been welching on their own commitments to NATO for too long, and maybe the alliance isn’t worth our trouble, blood, or treasure anymore, especially since it’s been us who’ve kept the peace all these years. It was us who flew the Berlin Airlift, it was us all along who was ready to risk nuclear war’s destruction across our homeland to defend Europe against potential Russia-led attacks.

Trump I’s threats were followed, if fitfully, by many of those nations finally stepping up and honoring their fiscal and equipage commitments. Still, though, one-third of those nations continue to welch on their commitments.

There’s this, too:

The strategy says the EU—an institution that the US helped establish decades ago—and other transnational organizations “undermine political liberty and sovereignty.”

What the WSJ is ignoring here is that we helped establish the EU as an economic union, which was the EU founders’ goal, also. Since then, the operators of the EU have been trying to transmogrify the economic union into its own national entity—and that attacks the member nations’ individual sovereignty. This is the mother of all mission creeps.

Maybe the NSS document is another prod, after too many decades of pretty please.

Or maybe not. But it’s interesting that the WSJ chooses to ignore any interpretation that differs from its own.

Japan is Learning the Reasons

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Reasons for ceasing doing business with and within the People’s Republic of China, that is. In response to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks that a PRC attack on the Republic of China (Takaichi referred to “Taiwan”) would trigger a Japanese defensive response,

China has unearthed its old playbook of informal coercive moves. Unlike clear-cut export controls, these disguised measures are harder to manage and pose escalatory risks. Governments and companies must grapple with how to respond.
Since Nov. 14, China has issued a series of escalating restrictions: cautioning tourists and students against travel to Japan; postponing the release of at least two Japanese films; and reinstating a blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports.

The WSJ‘s op-ed authors, Victor Ferguson and Audrye Wong, Hitotsubashi University Assistant Professor of International Relations and USC Assistant Professor of Political Science, respectively, claimed

It is hard for governments and companies to respond to such disguised measures effectively and cohesively.

It’s only hard politically. It’s completely straightforward as a practical and economic matter. It’s time for the Japanese to suck up and grunt through the unavoidably disruptive period of disruption and discontinue doing business with PRC-domiciled companies, with the PRC government, and business of any sort inside the PRC.