Tag Archives: military

Political Rants

Pulling us up to the brink again

I’m not in the greatest state of mind right now, so I’ll be brief. I just wanted to take a moment to amend my post from last week, Examining the Three Crises Three. In short, I missed a crisis or two. And the one that appears to be percolating up into the national consciousness is the Ukraine Crisis.

Now, the national conversation about this conflict is enough to drive anyone mad. I have never seen so many policy cross-currents between left and right as over this question. Trumpist right-wingers are adapting a narrow anti-war stance that appears to be counseling caution with respect to Russia and crackpot aggression toward China. “Muscular” liberals and centrists appear to be hell bent on building an iron wall around the Soviet …. I mean, Russia. Dogs are dancing with cats. What a mess.

What about the Minsk agreement?

There is a diplomatic solution to this. Anatol Lieven, writing for The Nation, details The Minsk II agreement, worked out in 2015, which provided for limited autonomy for some of the disputed parts of Ukraine. He writes:

“A solution exists that was drawn up by France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine and endorsed by the US, the European Union, and the United Nations. This solution corresponds to democratic practice, international law and tradition, and America’s own past approach to the settlement of ethnic and separatist conflicts. Moreover, it requires no concessions of real substance by either Ukraine or the US.” (Ukraine: The Most Dangerous Problem in the World)

Lieven works with the Quincy Institute, a foreign policy think tank headed by Andrew Bacevich, none of whose researchers are likely to show up on Morning Joe anytime soon.

So why are we ….? Oh, yeah.

We appear to be beefing up our presence in Eastern Europe, preparing to wield crippling sanctions against Russia, etc. The one thing we don’t appear eager to do is simply admit that Ukraine is not in the short line for NATO membership. Frankly, it shouldn’t be in the long line either. And most of the commentators closest to power claim that the U.S. has no intention of defending Ukraine militarily within its borders.

Okay, but what is this conflict about? Why are we facing off at the front lines of what has the potential to be a disastrous, perhaps world-ending war? My guess is that it’s because we always lead with the military. That’s where we hold the strongest hand, so we always play it. See Iraq. See Libya. See Syria.

Instant money – just add congress

Congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle – Democrats and Autocrats (formerly Republicans) – are falling over each other trying to shovel money into Ukraine’s military. The price tag is around $500 million.

When it comes to this sort of thing, there’s always money. When it comes to pulling people out of poverty, even children, the cupboard is bare. Let’s hope this little investment in bellicosity doesn’t trigger the global holocaust we’ve been arming up for since before I was born.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Keeping an eye on the foreign policy blob

After a week of nearly non-stop domestic news, good and bad, I’m going to talk about foreign policy. Think of this as the latest in an ongoing series of posts about how bad Biden’s foreign policy is. Frankly, the only good thing I can say about it at this point is that it is better than Trump’s version, albeit not by much.

Longtime readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast Strange Sound (now on hiatus) know that I have been critical of Biden’s imperial world view from the beginning. Since his candidate days, he has de-emphasized foreign affairs. His campaign web site, for instance, included almost no detailed information about his plans in this regard. That was not because he had no plans – it was because he didn’t want to talk about them.

Target Asia (again)

If you watch the mainstream media, you can’t miss the extent to which they are obsessing over China. They don’t do that unless our nation’s political leaders give them the space to bloviate. This is true of the so-called liberal networks, like MSNBC.

Morning Joe, for instance, platformed Indiana Senator Todd Young, who stuck to his party’s current insistence on referring to the nation of China as “The Chinese Communist Party”. (See Young’s pinned tweet about his “Endless Frontier Act”.) Young spent some of his time warning of China’s undue influence in the South China Sea (which, as the name suggests, is closer to them than it is to us). There have been multiple stories, also, about China’s supposed military hardware, like hypersonic missiles, and so on.

Enter the killer subs

This would be laughable if it weren’t so potentially dangerous. The United States accusing another country of throwing its weight around militarily is objectively ridiculous. We have a much, much more muscular presence on the periphery of China than China does. That includes massive military installations throughout the region, thousands of troops, fighter/ bomber squadrons, and a fleets of warships.

Case in point, as Noam Chomsky pointed out recently on Democracy Now!, a single Trident submarine holds enough nuclear weapons to destroy nearly 200 cities in Asia. We have more than one, of course, and have contracted with the Australians to ensure that there will be more killer subs patrolling the Chinese coast.

So, why the hell …. ?

Of course, this policy is about Asia writ large and who calls the shots in the region. American presidents have been focused on this for multiple administrations, with a significant uptick since the Bush II regime. A permanent presence is essential to our ability to project power – and, crucially, the credible threat of power – across the continent.

That’s why it’s target China time. Frankly, we can’t maintain a large military presence in the region without inventing some enemies. I’m personally convinced that that is the reason why the Korean conflict has remained in stasis for seven decades. We need to keep the threat level up to continue this toxic policy.

In short, regardless of what happens on the home front, we need to keep an eye on Biden’s foreign policy establishment, even – and really, especially – if they don’t want us to.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Onward christian soldiers.

The president is seeking Congressional authorization for his current campaign in Syria and Iraq. Looks like he’s going to get it, though begrudgingly on the part of knee-jerk hawks like McCain, Graham, and their various appendages. Not open-ended enough. The generals are complaining! we’re told. They’re unhappy with limitations and micromanagement by the President of the United States, the pundits say. Okay … first thing: sorry you’re unhappy with your jobs, generals. Maybe you should consider stepping down. You take your orders from civilian leadership … that’s how it works in the American military. Don’t like it? Resign.

This turned out well.That said, our President is on the brink of another useless military adventure. As this is debated, will anyone in Congress ask, “When has this ever gone well?” Kosovo? Don’t say Kosovo. We made the killing worse, predictably. Afghanistan? Just as ungovernable as ever, only now with more dead people. Iraq? Please! Libya? Now divided between two hostile governments; a failed state shedding refugees by the thousand. Now the conversation is centered not so much on whether we should fight in Iraq / Syria, but rather how heavily we should get involved. I hear a lot of T.V. talkers advocating for a ground war. They should consider whether they would want their kids to fight it. Or if maybe they’d want to fight it themselves. Anything short of that is just talk.

Obama got in some trouble at the “National Prayer Breakfast” for bringing up the unfortunate history of Christianity, as a counterpoint to his condemnation of extremist Islam. Of course, he needn’t have gone back so far. There’s another extremist religion he might have talked about – one far more deadly than ISIS or any other crazed sham-Muslim group. It’s called American First-ism, and it’s killed hundreds of thousands over the past decade. Can ISIS match that? Can they even come close?

There’s only one way to stop groups like ISIS: stop creating them. ISIS would be nothing without the large disenfranchised Sunni community in Iraq – a community at war with its own government, for whom the arrival of Iraqi security forces means a death sentence. They support ISIS as a counterbalance to Baghdad. Until they have a stake in Iraq’s future, there will always be another ISIS.

luv u,

jp