Tag Archives: defense policy

A Foreign Policy Fallout

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Tuesday that the biggest military contract in Australia’s history, a $40 billion tender to build 12 submarines, will go to a French naval contractor.  That’s a defeat for Japan’s bid, and with it a lost opportunity to deepen cooperation among the leading Pacific democracies facing China’s rising military.

For all of Turnbull’s rationalizations, this was a major factor in rejecting the Japanese offer:

The most significant influence may have been China, Australia’s largest trading partner, which openly campaigned against Japan’s bid. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned his Australian counterpart in February to remember World War II….

Yeah.  The PRC disapproved, and Australia, with the strength of its American ally demonstrated by our response to the PRC’s occupation of the South China Sea, knuckled under.  Don’t think Japan, in the face of our response to the PRC’s occupation attempts in the East China Sea, isn’t watching this very carefully, and not only for the implications to its shipbuilding industry.

Divide and conquer works.  Especially when the two being divided from each other have been abandoned by a United States become timorous in the face of PRC behaviors.

Russian Intimidation

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Russia’s ambassador to NATO accused the US Wednesday of trying to intimidate Moscow by sailing a Navy destroyer in the Baltic Sea, and vowed Russia would respond to future incidents with “all necessary measures.”

Is Russia establishing a nine-dash boundary?  After all, Russian MFWIC Vladimir Putin has been watching President Barack Obama’s (D) remarkably timid response to the PRC’s boundary-setting in the South China Sea.

The Situation in Ukraine

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This is a YouTube video showing the front lines in Ukraine over the last two years.  The title translates as Two Years ATO [Anti-terrorist Operation] in Two Minutes; the text in the lower right names the months as they pass.

The description below the video translates, roughly, as

TSN.ua [a Ukrainian news agency] assembled in one video map all hostilities in the Donbass, distributed in Ukrainian media in the last two years.  The first of them began to appear on the network in June 2014 and since July [has been] updated almost daily.  After reviewing a two-minute infographic, you can see how over time the front line changed, and in that period as long as ATO occurred relative lull.

Notice how the front, after some time, stabilized in the north, and then then in the west: by October (ЖОВТЕНЬ) 2014.  What might the Ukrainians have been able to accomplish against this Russian invasion had they been permitted by the Obama administration and/or the Europeans to have actual weapons with which to defend themselves?

More Veterans Administration…Misbehavior

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Department of Veterans Affairs investigators conducted spot checks at 10 veterans benefits offices around the country and came to a disturbing conclusion: the VA has been systemically shredding documents related to veterans’ claims—some potentially affecting their benefits.

The VA Office of Inspector General conducted the surprise audit at 10 regional offices on July 20, 2015, after an investigation into inappropriate shredding in Los Angeles found that staff there was destroying veterans’ mail related to claims….

And

Of 155 claims-related documents [in the to-be-shredded bins], 69 were found to have been incorrectly placed in shred bins at six of the regional offices: Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Reno[.]

For the math challenged senior VA employees, that’s a 44% rate.  That rate is not consistent with mere carelessness.

This is part of a venerable history of misbehaviors that is just too widespread and too long-lasting to be accidental.  Especially against the backdrop of VA management’s refusal to terminate, for cause or for any reason, those at any level who are misbehaving.

It might seem nice that it’s the VA’s own IG facility is the one that’s finding these failures to perform, but maybe that IG is doing so secure in the knowledge that there will be no consequences to the findings.  The VA’s IG, after all, works directly for the VA’s Secretary.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Continuing Veterans Administration Failure

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Kyndra Rotunda, ex-Army JAG and currently Professor of Military & International Law and Executive Director of the Military and Veterans Law Institute at Chapman University, had some comments in her Wall Street Journal op-ed [emphasis in original].

When Congress enacted the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 in the wake of revelations about bureaucratic dysfunction at the Veterans Affairs Department, the plan was to reduce wait times at VA hospitals, give veterans access to outside health care and allow the VA to quickly terminate problem employees.

How is the VA doing? For starters, government statistics show that hospital wait times are 50% longer than two years ago.

And

The law allows the firing of top-level VA officials with less notice and fewer appellate rights than government employees enjoy. The fired VA worker must appeal within seven days of the discipline; administrative judges must hear and decide the case within 21 days, or the department’s discipline stands; judges cannot mitigate penalties; and decisions are final.
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Over the past month alone, judges at the Merit Systems Protection Board, which hears appeals by federal employees, sided with three VA officials who challenged their disciplining. The MSPB reinstated all three.

Time to get out the axe.

But then Rotunda strayed.

[W]hat’s the harm in allowing judges to mitigate penalties?

In response to which, I ask, “What’s the harm in requiring these administrative judges simply to uphold or set aside the penalty?”  Either the person did the deed, or he did not.  The penalty is not for a third party to decide; the employer—even this wholly mendacious VA of an employer—is the one to determine whether the person’s services are needed any further.

Full stop.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.