Tag Archives: defense policy

NATO vs Russia

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The Brookings Institution posited some potential Russian moves in response to recent NATO and US military and political moves.  Brookings also noted the timidity of the current NATO moves:

One idea under discussion is the deployment of a battalion from NATO member states such as the United States, Britain, and Germany in each of the Baltic States and Poland.  That will hardly suffice to defend the Baltics.  A 2015 RAND study suggested the need for seven brigades—including three heavy armored brigades—to have a chance of stopping a major Russian offensive.

But.

[S]uch a force would appear overly provocative to Moscow, posing a potent ground offensive capability less than 400 kilometers from Russia’s second city of St Petersburg.

Unfortunately, what the NATO politicians don’t recognize (or choose not to) is that it’s necessary to be provocative in order to deter.  If Russia sees no danger from its illegal seizure and annexation of Crimea, and support for armed separatism in eastern Ukraine [and buildup of its own forces in eastern Ukraine], or from its nuclear threats against Poland and its cyber warfare conducted against those Baltic States, then Russia will simply continue those threats, those invasions, those occupations.

I aim to be provocative (with not too many apologies to Malcolm Reynolds).  Here’s more provocation: we need to move the flotilla in the Baltic Sea, the one that’s been a repeated target of Russian fighter-bomber buzzings, close on Kaliningrad.  And when the Russians send fighter-bombers to buzz the flotilla again, the flotilla—every single ship of it—should blanket the Russian aircraft with ECM so as to cut it off utterly from its Russian base.  And the flotilla—every single ship of it—should illuminate the Russian aircraft with targeting radar.

It’s time to stop fearing angrifying our enemy and thereby letting it get away—literally—with murder.  It’s time to get provocative.

Ballistic Missile Defense—Who Needs It?

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No one, according to George Friedman in Geopolitical Futures.  The US has installed and brought on line a ballistic missile defense system site in Romania, but Friedman evidently misunderstands the purpose and the need.

The system is designed to block one or a few (the precise number is likely unknown) missiles targeted toward a large area.  This would be ineffective against Russia, should it wish to launch a nuclear strike against Europe, because the system would be easily saturated by a relatively small number of missiles….

Maybe yes, maybe no.  Russia has already threatened Poland with nuclear attack, and it has already attacked the Baltics with cyber weapons—a useful prelude to a nuclear strike.  It wouldn’t take many missiles to destroy those nations, and even fewer to crush them into surrender.  A BMD system enormously complicates such an attack.

The problem with this is that it is unclear why a country with relatively few missiles would launch a strike at all, and totally unclear why their target would be Europe.

This is his biggest misunderstanding.  He can’t posit a rational reason for a country launching a nuclear strike against a nuclear power, therefor there cannot be a rational reason.  But he’s mistakenly applying his logic system—a typically Western logic system—to an enemy nuclear capable nation that doesn’t subscribe to our rules of logic.

It is always posited that the current enemy doesn’t value human life as we do.  Thus, Iran and North Korea might launch attacks.  Kim Jong Un is clearly enjoying playing God too much to spoil that.  In Iran, the sheer corruption is comforting.  People who love accumulating money are rarely suicidal. The madman theory doesn’t work.

Actually, Iran’s leadership does value human life—they just value the end game differently than we do: the path to Heaven is through martyrdom in this life, and what greater martyrdom than to die for Allah?  Iran’s sheer corruption is at a level below the mullahs.  The mullahs are the ones who will make the decision to strike, not any of those alleged corrupt persons.

Baby Kim does like playing God.  What better way to do that than to visit god-like death and destruction on his enemies?  It may be that he hasn’t yet because he hasn’t yet reliable enough delivery means.

A nuclear attack would be terrible, and however unlikely, it is a threat that must be negated.  …  [However] Ballistic missile defense addresses an apocalypse for which even great novelists could not imagine a convincing origin.  …  The money spent on BMD should have been spent on far more probable threats.

Because gun-free zones are so useful in defending against those with guns.  And there’s that need, again, for a specifically Western rationale for a nuclear attack.

His madman theory is a straw man, offered out of lack of understanding of the new reality.  Friedman may be willing to bet millions of lives on his version of rationality.  I’m glad of the BMD installation; we need to spend the bucks to install more such sites around the world.

An Arms Race

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And we should welcome it.

Russia is creating three new divisions to counter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s planned expansion along its eastern flank, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday, in a move that comes amid rising tensions in the region.

Moscow has threatened it will respond to NATO plans to boost its troops’ presence along its border with Russia.  Western officials said last week the alliance will send four battalions—about 4,000 troops—to Poland and the ex-Soviet Baltic countries.

These three divisions are being created, in part, by adding men and equipment, and they’re being created, in part, by reassigning men and equipment from existing units.  It’s the latter that’s instructive.

With the Russian economy in shambles—among other shortfalls, it needs oil priced above $100, remember, the ruble still is in the tank, and inflation remains high and growing—it can ill-afford the expansion on which it’s embarking.  In addition to these “new” divisions, Russia is spending its money on modernizing its military, developing and deploying nuclear weapons near the Baltics and Poland (since before it began creating these three divisions), supporting its occupation forces in Georgia and Ukraine, and on and on.  Although Russia certainly can sustain its buildup for a time, it can’t go on indefinitely.

We should welcome this arms race.  We should accelerate our technological developments and production.  We should answer those three divisions with further deployments into eastern Europe, with an expansion of our Baltic fleet (which we should move deeper into the eastern reaches of the Baltic Sea), and with arms transfers and sales to Ukraine and Georgia.  Every buildup by Russia should be answered with a bigger, more technologically capable one by us.

The Soviet Union couldn’t sustain its arms race; neither can Russia.  It will take an administration different from the current one or its potential Progressive-Democratic successor to engage, though.

ICE Leadership and the Law

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The Obama administration took fire at a House hearing Thursday for releasing back into society thousands of illegal immigrants who had committed crimes on U.S. soil – including those behind more than 200 murders.
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According to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2015 “freed 19,723 criminal aliens, who had a total of 64,197 convictions among them.”

This included “8,234 violent convictions and 208 homicide convictions.”

And yet

[ICE Director Sarah] Saldana maintained she follows the law and the illegal immigrants who were released were freed only after “careful analysis.”

“I’m guessing the families here would disagree with your careful analysis,” [Senator Jason Chaffetz (R, UT)] said.

Saldana responded, “We are humans and we do fall short sometimes.”

And that makes everything all right for those murdered and for those surviving families.  Typical Progressive morality.  American citizens are just eggs for the omelet.

Encryption and Safety

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Senators Richard Burr (R, NC) and Dianne Feinstein (C, CA), in their op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, demonstrated their lack of understanding of the relationship between security and safety.  Their piece’s title, Encryption Without Tears, illustrates their basic misunderstanding of the inherent tension between the two, here encryption and safety.

In an increasingly digital world, strong encryption of devices is needed to prevent criminal misuse of data.  But technological innovation must not mean placing individuals or companies above the law.

Neither can technological backdoors be allowed to place government above the law.

Over the past year the two of us have explored the challenges associated with criminal and terrorist use of encrypted communications.

But they’ve apparently spent not a red sou on exploring the challenges of a private citizens or private enterprises need for and use of encryption to protect themselves from criminal, and terrorist, and yes government misbehaviors.

Then they cited a couple of examples to illustrate their thesis; I’ll cite one of those below, because it so clearly illustrate the opposite and some interlinkage of the Left’s position on American safety (and disappointingly, Burr’s lack of thought).

…the Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack last year in Garland, Texas.  FBI Director Jim Comey said the attackers “exchanged 109 messages with an overseas terrorist” the morning of the shooting, but the FBI cannot access those messages to determine the exact role of Islamic State in the shooting and how to help prevent future attacks.

There’s no doubt that being able to read those messages would have been very useful.  However, Burr and Feinstein carefully neglect to mention that the Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack was stopped in its tracks and the terrorists killed on the spot by armed American citizens who were alert, on the scene, and unafraid to act.  The San Bernardino attack, for which Comey went to court to try to force Apple to break its own security algorithms (under the false claim that Apple’s efforts were absolutely necessary, mind you—until the FBI broke the algorithms with other means), occurred in a by-government-mandate gun-free zone, which ensured that only the terrorists had guns.  We’re left to speculate on how far the casualty list would have been reduced had the victim population been allowed to be armed themselves.  As the Left likes to say, though, “If it saves only one life….”

Yet Burr and Feinstein are “circulating” a draft bill:

The draft proposal requires a person or a company—when served with a court order—to provide law enforcement with information (in readable form) or appropriate technical assistance that is responsive to the judicial request.  This will enable law enforcement to conduct investigations using the communications involved in criminal and terrorist activities.

Our draft bill wouldn’t impose a one-size-fits-all solution on all covered entities….

The judicial request.  Carefully vague.  It may be the case, though, that their bill wouldn’t impose a one-size-fits-all solution.  No, it’ll just require an ex post back door to be created, one that’s usable for future “situations,” too, and the aggregation of which will allow government snooping.

It’s just this sort of Government arrogance, or even merely disingenuousness, against which we have such extensive protections against overreaching government men.  The government isn’t even pretending to act in good faith on this matter, as Comey’s behavior in that Apple case demonstrates.

Private encryption, with no backdoors, and an armed population.  That permits an optimum mix of security and safety and encryption with a minimum of tears.  Backdoors on Government demand permits the least mix of security and safety, broken encryption guaranteed to generate tears.