Tag Archives: defense policy

A Thought on Nationhood

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Germany has one, and it centers on immigrants assimilating into German culture rather than holding themselves apart while taking advantage of the German benefits that drew the immigrants in the first place.  It’s articulated by Joachim Gauck, President of Germany from 2012-2017.  He told Bild

“I find it unacceptable that people who have been living in Germany for decades cannot hold a conversation in German, do not attend parent-teacher conferences or keep their children from going to classes or sports.”

He said people should not shy away from standing up for German values out of fear of being seen as a racist or xenophobe and that there should be “something like binding rules for living together and not several societies alongside one another.”

Absolutely.  A nation’s culture, its ability to rule itself, its very existence are at risk when immigrants as large groups don’t assimilate, and the receiving nation allows that to occur.  The nation ceases to be; it devolves into a collection of disparate groupings who happen to occupy a geographic area.

Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Deal

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“Senior European officials” are sad because the deal might be in jeopardy.  They even wrote a letter to President Donald Trump, worrying that

their efforts to save the Iranian nuclear accord by maintaining major trade and investment with Tehran are buckling in the face of planned US sanctions.

My heart bleeds.  These worthies shouldn’t be trying to trade with a terrorist-supporting nation bent on getting nuclear weapons.  Especially since Iran will use those weapons to fulfill its long-standing commitment to destroy Israel, and it will sell such weapons to its terrorist clients for them to use…on Europe as well as on us.

Another Facebook Fail

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Chinese firms Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL were among numerous handset makers that were given access to Facebook data in what the US company said was “a controlled operation.”

The social media giant’s vice president of mobile partnerships, Francisco Varela, confirmed a report in The New York Times Tuesday that Facebook had given Chinese device makers deep access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent.

A “controlled operation.”  Meaning the accesses were deliberately granted, consents were deliberately not requested in advance.  Which raises the question: were any consents actively withheld and those denials ignored by Facebook?

Huawei already has been identified as a threat to our national security.  Lenovo is headquartered in Beijing, Oppo (Electronics Corporation) is headquartered in Dongguang near the south coast of the People’s Republic of China, and TCL is headquartered in Huizhou, just down the road a piece from Dongguang.  These three are each under the influence, if not the control, of the PRC government.  Facebook knew these things at the time they engaged in their “controlled operation.”

Here’s Varela again, this time in his best What, me worry? impression:

…we wanted to make clear that all the information from these integrations with Huawei was stored on the device, not on Huawei servers[.]

Well, that settles it, then.  Huawei has no way at all to copy data “stored on [its] device” to its servers.  Nope.  Can’t be done.

Sure.

A New US-RoK Alliance?

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That’s what Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution wants.  He thinks a continued, but greatly reduced alliance would be a useful tradeoff for northern Korea’s elimination of its nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons development program along with a reduction in its conventional military forces.  Aside from the utter naivete of the suggestion that northern Korea would reduce its conventional capability along with giving up its nuclear capability—or especially in light of that cessation—one comment at the end of his piece really illustrates the naivete of his idea.

The heavy Army brigade now in Korea might be transformed into a light brigade, better suited for peacekeeping missions.

Peacekeeping missions are wholly incapable of keeping the peace unless they’re fully capable of fighting.  Unfortunately, peacekeeping missions are incapable of fighting a serious enemy (and police forces are better suited for dealing with unserious enemies—criminals).  A light brigade on that peninsula would not be a peacekeeper, it would be a target.

Thirty Days

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That’s when NATO’s newly expanding rapid response force would be ready to act when called upon.

The alliance is planning to establish a pool of around 30,000 soldiers who could be operational within 30 days. They would be armed with several hundred fighter jets and ships, according to high ranking NATO diplomats cited by the paper [Welt am Sonntag]. The new troops would be in addition to the already established NATO Response Force (NRF), which has around 20,000 soldiers.

This would be risible if it weren’t so incompetent.  It took 36 days for Germany to overrun Poland with numerically inferior forces at the start of last century’s WWII.  It took Germany 46 days to overrun France with numerically and technologically inferior forces at the start of that war.

Russian forces may remain numerically inferior, but they’re not technologically inferior.  Beyond that, 21st century forces are much faster and strike with much greater precision and with much greater power.

A “rapid” response force that can’t be ready for 30 days likely won’t find a fight to enter.  Such a response time harks back to WWI and prior wars where mobilization occurred first and took several weeks to complete.  Today’s force-on-force war will begin with a limited mobilization at most and a running start.  And I’ve elided the likely parallel cyber attack that will be fought to the detriment of communications, even impacting the target’s sensor systems’ ability to say that an attack is underway.  That cyber attack will shorten further the response time available.

A nation or a bloc that forms a “rapid” response force that can’t be ready for 30 days isn’t taking the matter seriously.