Tag Archives: defense policy

No Travel Ban?

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In a recent Fox News op-ed, Dr Tom Frieden, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, argued against a “travel ban” covering the western African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, the nations hardest hit by the Ebola epidemic.

I answered most of his objections here.

In his latest piece, though, he raised a new objection, and he sounded like he actually meant it.

When a wildfire breaks out we don’t fence it off. We go in to extinguish it before one of the random sparks sets off another outbreak somewhere else.

Well, yes “we” do. These are called “fire breaks.” The fire teams fighting the wildfires, and the forest fires, do their best to isolate the fires to keep them from spreading by clearing a ring around the fire of combustible material, trying to make the ring wide enough that “random sparks” can’t jump the ring and set off “another outbreak somewhere else.” Nor is this an either-or proposition. While some fire teams are working hard to create that isolation, others are entering the area, fighting the fire directly, and extinguishing it.

So it should be here. We need medical expertise, teams, and supplies going into the three nations to help the locals deal with, bring under control, extinguish the current epidemic. And we need the quarantine—a ban on travel out of those nations, with the travel exceptions outlined in my article at the above link.

Frieden also raised two new objections.

We don’t want to isolate parts of the world, or people who aren’t sick, because that’s going to drive patients with Ebola underground, making it infinitely more difficult to address the outbreak.

It could even cause these countries to stop working with the international community as they refuse to report cases because they fear the consequences of a border closing.

These also are nonsense. Many of these nations’ people already are going underground, and they’re often attacking personnel trying to deal with the dead bodies. That they’re doing both out of ignorance and lack of understanding of the situation doesn’t alter the fact that they’re already doing both. This puts a premium on quarantine, to keep those underground from leaving, anyway.

The need for a quarantine also was demonstrated by the unfortunate situation involving Thomas Edward Duncan, who died last week in Dallas after having travelled from Liberia. He was symptom-free when he arrived in the US. Only a quarantine could have prevented his travel with its potential for spreading the virus.

A quarantine would cause these three nations from cooperating with the “international community” in fighting this epidemic? They would simply be cutting off their own noses. A quarantine still would leave the epidemic isolated and greatly reduced in its ability to spread throughout the same international community.

Frieden is right about one thing.

There is no more effective way to protect the United States against additional Ebola cases than to address this outbreak at the source in West Africa. That’s what our international response…will do.

Indeed. Getting after the source, though, must include a quarantine, in order to keep the source area—already large—at a manageable size while continuing entry into the area and helping the locals.

Blame Game

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President Barack Obama has some skin in this one.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, on Wednesday continued to advance on the strategic city, despite intensifying if still limited American airstrikes. And if Kobani falls, the White House is already blaming “our partner and friend” Turkey.

A senior Obama Administration official headlined a leading story in Wednesday’s New York Times about American frustration with Turkish “inaction” in Syria. “There’s growing angst about Turkey dragging its feet to act to prevent a massacre less than a mile from its border,” this anonymous official said. “This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone’s throw from their border.”

Blaming others for the existence of problems is all that this President knows how to do. He has no concept of actually tackling those problems; he has no concept of responsibility beyond the premise that responsibility always is someone else’s.

(Never mind, too, that this isn’t a NATO fight, anyway, unless Obama or his carefully anonymous “official” can name a member that’s been attacked by ISIS. Turkey’s obligation flows from its moral obligation—as does ours—and Turkey’s proximity.)

If Obama and his cronies in State and Defense spent half as much energy on fighting ISIS as they spend blaming others for not, the US already would have crushed these terrorists.

On the other hand,

If Mr Obama wants Turkey to help avoid a massacre, he should get on the phone and press for a joint military operation, reassuring Mr Erdogan that the US military will back up Turkish forces against ISIS, even if it means ground forces. This is what real wartime leadership would look like.

But that would require Obama and his administration to be able to be trusted. It cannot be.

Another…Ally

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I wrote earlier about the behavior of one of our purported Middle East allies. This is another example of that one’s un-ally-like behavior.

Kurdish protesters in Turkey demanding a show of force against Islamic State instead felt their government’s heavy boot Tuesday, as rubber bullets and tear gas rained down and heavy trucks rolled in to major cities where people took to the streets to decry the fall of the Syrian border city of Kobani.

As many as 19 people were killed around the nation in clashes with police over the government’s unwillingness to aid Kurds trapped in Kobani, a Syrian city a stone’s throw from the border and under siege by Islamic State.

And

[W]hile US-led fighter planes have led a Western coalition in bombing runs in an effort to halt Islamic State’s advance, Turkish troops have remained massed on the border.

Turkey seems perfectly happy to let ISIS do its thing if it means the Turks get to burn, or see burned, the Kurds.

Ground Troops to Fight ISIS

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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants some. After all, he’s worried that Kobani, the Kurdish city just on the Syrian side of the Turkish border and surrounded by the ISIS terrorists, is about to fall, with all the butchery that will ensue. And with that part of the Turkish-Syrian border then opened up for ISIS’ unfettered use.

Erdogan added

You can’t end this terrorism just by airstrikes. If you don’t support them on the ground by cooperating with those who take up a ground operation, the airstrikes won’t do it.

You’re absolutely right on that score, Mr Erdogan. You’re also right there, with Kobani just over the border from your own army. For how many Divisions can we put you down? When will you be ready to go onto the attack?

Our Navy’s—and our Country’s—Future

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Mark Helprin had some thoughts a couple years ago about this administration’s Naval policy; they’re worth revisiting these days in light of the People’s Republic of China’s ongoing grab for and occupation of the South and East China Seas, and especially against the backdrop of the PRC’s decision to deny the people of Hong Kong their right to choose their own government members, in particular their Chief Executive, in violation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. In the latter’s case, the PRC will tell the Hong Kong citizens who will be on the ballot and so for whom they’ll be permitted to “vote.”

Helprin quoted President Barack Obama in a 2012 campaign debate with Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney:

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

Helprin responded

To which one could say, like Neil Kinnock, “I know that, Prime Minister,” and go on to add that we must configure the Navy to face not the dreadnoughts of 1916 but “things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them,” and “ships that go underwater,” and also ballistic missiles, land-based aviation, and electronic warfare.

Then Helprin added a few kickers.

[I]n fact, except for advances in situational awareness, missile defense, and the effect of precision-guided munitions in greatly multiplying the target coverage of carrier-launched aircraft, the Navy is significantly less capable than it was a relatively short time ago in antisubmarine warfare, mine warfare, the ability to return ships to battle, and the numbers required to accomplish the tasks of deterrence or war.

And

China’s claims [to the South and East China Seas], equivalent to American expropriation of Caribbean waters all the way to the coast of Venezuela, are much like Hitler’s annexations. But we no longer have bases in the area, our supply lines are attenuated across the vastness of the Pacific, we have much more than decimated our long-range aircraft, and even with a maximum carrier surge we would have to battle at least twice as many Chinese fighters.

Not until recently would China have been so aggressive in the South China Sea, but it has a plan, which is to grow; we have a plan, which is to shrink; and you get what you pay for. To wit, China is purposefully, efficiently, and successfully modernizing its forces…. And yet, to touch upon just a few examples, whereas 20 years ago it possessed one ballistic-missile submarine and the US 34, now it has three (with two more coming) and the US 14. Over the same span, China has gone from 94 to 71 submarines in total, while the US has gone from 121 to 71. As our numbers decrease at a faster pace, China is also closing the gap in quality.

The effect in principal surface warships is yet more pronounced. While China has risen from 56 to 78, the US has descended from 207 to 114. In addition to parities, China is successfully focusing on exactly what it needs—terminal ballistic missile guidance, superfast torpedoes and wave-skimming missiles, swarms of oceangoing missile craft, battle-picture blinding—to address American vulnerabilities, while our counters are insufficient or nonexistent.

And what could become the coup de grâce if we let it continue:

The trend lines are obvious and alarming, but in addition we face a potentially explosive accelerant…. That is that whereas the American Shipbuilding Association (now dissolved) counted six major yards, China has more than 100. …it can surge production and leave us as far behind as once we left the Axis and Japan. Its navy will be able to dominate the oceans and cruise in strength off our coasts, reversing roles to its pleasure and our peril—unless we attend to the Navy, in quality, numbers, and without delay.

There’s one other requirement, more critical even than correcting the deficiencies Helprin identified: that’s the need for the will to use these—and that will must be evident, not merely claimed. Nor is it enough to say, “I don’t bluff.” It’s necessary to not bluff.