Tag Archives: foreign policy

Progressive-Democratic Party Intransigence

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Leaving aside Senator Rand Paul’s (R, KY) obstructiveness, the Progressive-Democratic Party Senators are opposing, as a bloc, Mike Pompeo’s confirmation as Secretary of State.  As The Wall Street Journal put it Wednesday,

Their new standard seems to be that any nominee who agrees with the elected President is disqualified.

And

What a message that would send to America’s enemies as President Trump prepares for his North Korea summit, decides on the fate of the Iran nuclear deal, and confronts a hostile Russia. Democrats say they don’t trust Mr Trump, but in denying him senior advisers they make it more likely he will govern by himself. Mark it down as one more example that hatred for Mr Trump has caused many of his opponents to abandon rational judgment.

However, in this sort of case, I think the WSJ‘s angst is overwrought and the Progressive-Democrats’ intransigence not so effective.  There are serious requirements for having an actual, sitting Secretary of State. However, Trump can get his advice from whomever he chooses; he doesn’t need formally sitting Cabinet members. He also can get folks who represent him to other nations from anywhere he wants. Advice and such representatives are what kitchen cabinets—a Progressive-Democratic Party invention—are for.

Nonsense

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Germany wants to be excused from American sanctions against Russia, sanctions that were imposed over Russia’s misbehaviors.  The misbehaviors include meddling in our elections, and Russia’s continued efforts to meddle in our upcoming elections.

Germany does a lot of business with Russia. Trade between the two countries rose to €54.5 billion ($67.4 billion) last year from €45 billion in 2016, despite increasingly stringent sanctions, and German companies have invested more than €20 billion in Russia in recent years.

This is nonsense.  And Germany plainly has been sidestepping existing sanctions right along.  The desire to be excused stems more from Germany’s choosing to be hostage to Russian oil and natural gas supplies than anything else.  Germany’s voluntary hostage status is accelerating through its support for a natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea that would run directly from Russia to Germany.

No, the sanctions are intended to hold Russia to account for its misbehaviors, to punish Russia for them.  No punishment occurs if exceptions are given out over this or that excuse or for any reason at all.  Sanctions may well be inconvenient for some entities other than the target, and that’s unfortunate.  Nevertheless, Germany needs to shape up and stop masquerading itself as victim.

“It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.”*

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From Victor Davis Hanson’s The Second World Wars:

In France during the 1920s, teachers’ unions had all but banned patriotic references to French victories (which were regarded as “bellicose” and “a danger for the organization of peace”) and removed books that considered battles such as Verdun as anything other than a tragedy that affected both sides equally.

Sound familiar?

How about this:

Of the Anschluss, Germany’s forced annexation of Austria, Chancellor Franz von Papen later concluded, “not only had there been no armed conflict, but no foreign power had seen fit to intervene.  They adopted the same passive attitude as they had shown toward the reintroduction of conscription in Germany and the reoccupation of the Rhineland.  The result was that Hitler became impervious to the advice of all those who wished him to exercise moderation in his foreign policy.”

 

*Extra points for naming the speaker of the quote.  No search engines, no Wikipedia; although consulting your print libraries is allowed.  Graduates of the Hillsdale collection of schools should know this from memory.

A Simple Solution to the US-PRC Trade Dispute?

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More like a simplistic one.  Martin Feldstein, ex-Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, has one, summarized by the headline and subhead in his Wall Street Journal op-ed:

How to Make Trade Peace With China
A mutual promise to abide by the WTO’s intellectual property rules would solve much of the problem.

Feldstein is…naive. By his own acknowledgment later in his piece, the PRC routinely violates WTO rules–and international court rulings, lately seen by the PRC’s refusal to abide by a Hague ruling against them regarding the Spratly Islands. The PRC will promise to abide by the WTO’s intellectual property rules?

The PRC government’s word is worthless.

Readiness Capability

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There’s a dismaying graph in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal that illustrates the combat readiness of several of NATO nations’ forces.

In essence,

If Europe came into conflict with Russia, only several thousand of the more than one million troops in its armies would be ready for rapid deployment, military planners fear.

Plans to correct this (using the term loosely) don’t come close to the capability regularly exercised during the Cold War, when the US planned for moving 10 divisions into Europe within 10 days.  Current planning goal is to feed dribs and drabs into the furnace.

A US proposal would have the alliance commit to having 30 battalions, 30 fighter squadrons and 30 naval ships ready to deploy. That would translate to roughly 30,000 troops and more than 360 fighter planes.

Sadly, given Europe’s long history of free-loading off US nuclear and soldier commitments, and the EU’s current reluctance even to meet the nations’ 2% of GDP on defense commitment, that’s probably all we can expect out of that continent.

Feeding the furnace: 30 days was all that was necessary in WWII to overrun Poland once the Germans crossed the frontier, and it was all that was needed to knock France out of the war and push the remnants of British forces off the continent once Hitler moved west.  Only 60 days after Barbarossa went in, the Germans were approaching Leningrad, were over halfway to Moscow, and had overrun half of today’s Ukraine.  And that was against an allied contingent that, in retrospect, was better equipped and numerically superior, at least in the West.  The lack of political will then and now is the same, and Putin has shown the willingness to aggress as did Hitler, even if Putin is quite a bit more subtle about it.

And: the 30 days is from the decision to put the forces “on alert.”  Given the amount of warning available today, with the speed of modern communications, transportation, and so on—the ability to deliver tactical surprise—what is the time relationship between going on alert and having actually to launch the forces?  Thirty hours seems more like reality than does 30 days.

The graph, too, is misleading to an extent.  Italy currently can produce 5 combat-ready battalions in 10 days, while three other European nations can produce all of 3 combat-ready battalions apiece—in 30 days.  The rest, none at all in the time frame.  But what does that mean?  What is the actual combat capability of these nations’ units?  Until the term is normalized, the comparisons in the graph have only the coarsest of meanings.