Category: Military Spending

A MAGA Idea Wrongo Supports

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Tucson, AZ – January 2023 photo by Leila Shehab

Sometimes your worst political enemies are on the same page with you. Axios reports that a:

“…threat of cuts to US defense spending has emerged as a flashpoint in House Republicans’ first week in the majority, widening the GOP’s isolationist fault line and exposing the fragility of Kevin McCarthy’s young speakership.”

The backstory here is that according to Bloomberg, among the concessions new House Speaker McCarthy made to secure the job was to agree to vote on a budget framework that caps 2024 discretionary spending at fiscal 2022 levels. Unless the Pentagon is exempted, that could result in a $75 billion drop in defense spending:

“National defense spending, which primarily funds the Pentagon, was about $782 billion in fiscal 2022 and rose $75 billion to $857 billion in fiscal 2023.”

The deal that McCarthy has apparently agreed to would have the House commit to passing bills that would cap all discretionary spending at fiscal year 2022 levels, or roughly $1.47 trillion.

But one of the big wins for Senate Republicans in last year’s budget talks was a bigger defense budget. Sen. McConnell might want to check in with the House MAGA Republicans, since they’re going in the opposite direction.

Wrongo agrees that the idea of cutting $75-$100 billion (or more) from the Pentagon should be up for discussion. Consider that in 2021, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a study that outlined three options for saving over $1 trillion in Pentagon spending over the next ten years without damaging our defense capabilities.

All three options involved cutting the size of the armed forces, avoiding large boots-on-the-ground wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, and relying on allies to do more in their own defense.

Wrongo wrote about the 2021 CBO study here. The CBO report put the potential cut in historical perspective: A $1 trillion cut (14%) over a decade would be far smaller than the cuts to America’s military spending in 1988-1997 (30%), and the 25% cut we had in 2010-2015.

A $1 trillion saving isn’t chump change. Those funds could be used to prevent future pandemics, address climate change, or reduce economic injustice. These are all pressing American problems.

The MAGA’s ideas on defense spending cuts might find support from a few progressives in Congress, including Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Mark Pocan (D-WI), who pitched a $100 billion haircut for the DoD earlier this year. But this year’s Pentagon budget boost easily passed both the House and Senate on a bipartisan basis.

Both Republican and Democratic House war hawks will resist the idea of cutting defense spending. Some will cite the defense of Ukraine, which will only account for $45 billion of military spending in the coming year. Some will mention Taiwan, citing China’s aggressive military stance toward the island nation.

But how about developing a clear global military strategy along with the willingness to carry it out? Instead of simply talking about how many dollars we should spend.

And the CBO’s proposed strategic shifts don’t account for what could be saved by streamlining the Pentagon by reducing its cadre of over half a million private contractors, many of whom perform tasks at prices higher than it would cost to do the same work with government employees.

The likely outcome is that House Republicans will fail to cut defense spending while sticking to their plan of holding the 2024 discretionary spending flat. So Republicans will focus on social spending to reduce the fiscal 2024 budget to 2022 levels. But if you ask Americans what spending they want to see cut, they will never say that we ought to cut people’s retirement security.

Wrongo has little hope that this 118th Congress will work to solve the three great problems that face America: Our revenue problem, our social spending/cost inflation problem, and our defense spending problem. As Jennifer Rubin says in the WaPo:

“The danger for the GOP has always been that a short stint in irresponsible governance will wake up the electorate to their manifest unfitness, thereby dooming the party’s chances in 2024. The danger for the country is that, in the meantime, the MAGA extremists will do permanent damage to the U.S. economy and national security.”

The hard Right MAGAs and the anti-democracy Republican Party must be made into a permanent minority, as it was during the Roosevelt years, and for decades thereafter.

The battle for 2024 starts now.

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Saturday Soother – December 24, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Santas on the Grand Canal in Venice 2017 photo via WSJ

(This column is late coming to you since the big storm left the Mansion of Wrong with no internet for two days, due to a large tree falling across our road. The high winds prevented crews from working to remove it for 24 hours. It also may be Wrongo’s last column until Jan. 4th.)

The New Year will continue to bring us the chaos that we’ve sadly become accustomed to. The 118th Congress and its Republican House majority will again test America’s norms. The 2024 presidential election is going to bring an extra silly season of political news, so take a real break if you can.

One thought for year end is to set out a framework for thinking about America’s commitment to Ukraine.

We know that a significant number of Republicans and some Democrats want to pull the plug on our support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. For now, the majority think it should remain a “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes” situation. Implicit in the second viewpoint is that American soldiers are never going to be combatants in Ukraine, and that we’re not talking about another 20-year war like in Afghanistan.

A few things to think about. Do we have a choice to support Ukraine, or is supporting them a necessity? We have talked about the difference between “wars of choice” and “wars of necessity” throughout Wrongo’s adult life. Two of our worst military experiences were in wars of choice: Vietnam and Afghanistan. We didn’t have to intervene in either, but our political leaders decided that America’s national security had a true connection to both conflicts. The clear wars of necessity for America were the US Civil War, and the two World Wars. All threated the existence of the US homeland.

Somewhere in between wars of choice and necessity is Ukraine. It isn’t an ally where we are obligated by a treaty, like we have with Europe via NATO. We are obligated to defend any NATO member who is attacked. For example, that would mean a war against Latvia is a war against the US.

We spent 20+ years fighting in Afghanistan. Given what we learned there, would America ever spend a minute fighting for Latvia? When Trump was president he flirted with saying we wouldn’t immediately commit to defending just any NATO country, and he wasn’t alone in that thinking.

That means we could consider choosing not to defend NATO at all, or not to defend individual NATO countries.

We’re facing Cold War II with China and Russia. Our new Omnibus budget allocates 10% more money to national defense than last year, largely because of the possibility of fighting both countries at great distances from home. The budget implies that our national security is threated by both of them.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could become a generation-long rolling war between Russia and the small NATO countries that border either Russia or Belarus, if Ukraine loses. Would America then rally and support NATO? Where would we draw the red line? Support for Germany but not for Poland? Ok, we’ll support Poland, but not Latvia?

We need to think through our priorities. We fought in Afghanistan because we believed fighting a far enemy (al-Qaeda) was better than waiting and fighting them as a near enemy. That is also the basis of why we created and remain a member of NATO: Fighting Russia over there was smarter than fighting it nearby, like in Cuba.

Neither China nor Russia are presently our near enemies. If China invades Taiwan, direct involvement by the US would be another war of choice with a far enemy. Ukraine represents a war of choice with a different far enemy, but one in very close proximity to our treaty partners, an enemy that could cross NATO’s trip wire at any time.

Our history suggests that the American people will agree to wage wars of choice if they are relatively cheap and short in duration. What we call a cheap war is mostly a partisan political question. But talking about the cost of a war of choice is a proxy for how Americans value the country that we’re intent on supporting.

Ukraine is a proxy war of choice. We have very few people on the ground and none in a direct combat role. The twin goals are to preserve Ukrainian independence and to bleed Russia of its conventional military capability. Americans need to consider the following implications for national security:

  • Since our resources are limited, should we choose between containing Russia or containing China?
  • What is the goal of containing either or both?
  • How important are the small NATO counties to our national security?
  • If Ukraine loses its fight with Russia, would our national security be weakened?
  • If yes, can we live with that, or should we be doing more now?

On to a Saturday that’s also Christmas Eve! Forget tree-trimming and the last-minute Amazon shopping for a few minutes. It’s time to unplug and land on a small oasis of soothing in the midst of all of the chaos.

Gaze out at the last few leaves on the trees, and listen to the late Greg Lake, of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, perform 1985’s “I Believe in Father Christmas”. Although most people think of it as a Christmas song, Lake wrote the song to protest the commercialization of Christmas. Here Lake, along with Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson on flute perform it live at St. Bride’s Church, in the City of London along with the church’s choir:

The last line of the song says: “The Christmas you deserve is the Christmas you get.”

That might be considered harsh in some circumstances, but it might also be true. Anyway, Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year to all. Let’s hope the deep divisions in our country can be somehow healed by a seasonal miracle.

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Zelensky’s Visit

The Daily Escape:

Conga line of Santas warming up for their Santa Run, Victoria Park, London, UK – 2018 photo by Yui Mok/PA

When Wrongo heard that Ukraine’s President Zelensky was likely to visit Biden, he was concerned for Zelensky’s safety, since he would be exposed for a significant period of time. It turns out that he flew on a US military plane:

“Flight data shows a US Air Force plane landed at Joint Base Andrews…shortly after noon after taking off from Rzeszow, Poland, which is located near the Ukrainian border. Polish television station TVN24 posted footage of Zelensky in Rzeszow, saying he took a train to Poland before boarding an aircraft.

The Air Force describes the plane, a C-40B, as an ‘office in the sky’ for senior military and government leaders, including capability to conduct secure voice and data communication.”

The Biden administration was so completely behind Zelensky coming to DC that they worked to insure both his safety and his ability to talk to his generals while enroute.

The question of “why now?” is easy to answer. The Omnibus Bill that is yet to pass Congress includes a significant aid package for Ukraine. Zelensky will be home long before the Omnibus Bill is approved by both Houses, which needs to happen before year end.

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched Zelensky’s speech to Congress, and Wrongo can report that he’s never wearing a tie to address Congress again! The contrast between a wartime leader wearing essentially the clothes he wore on the war’s front lines 24 hours before, hammered home the relative difference between our soft Congresscritters and what Ukrainians are facing each day.

There was a notable absence of Republican House members at the joint address. CNN estimated that only 80-some of the GOP House caucus were there. Apparently, all of the GOP Senators were there since Mitch McConnell is a functioning caucus leader, unlike House Minority Leader, Keven McCarthy, (R-CA) who couldn’t wrangle his caucus to attend.

That’s a sure sign of what is to come in January when the GOP controls the House of Representatives.

Despite what House Republicans think, Ukraine’s cause remains popular in the US, with two-thirds of Americans supportive of sending money and arms. The bad part is that this new poll shows Republican support for either sending additional military aid or additional economic aid to Ukraine are now down to 55% and 50%, respectively; worse, 43% of Republicans want the US to withdraw all support for Ukraine.

America desperately needs to have a discussion about Ukraine’s war with Russia, particularly about whether there are limits to our support for Ukraine. Our support so far has been necessary but it hasn’t been sufficient to cause Russians to leave Ukraine, or to compel them to negotiate about leaving.

The issue of the extent of our support will become a big political issue when Congress reconvenes in January, so we should start the discussion now.

A couple of final observations: Zelensky is patriotic, courageous, and charismatic, and a compelling speaker. He delivered his speech in English. It was to Wrongo, an endearing effort to reach out to Americans on an emotional level. And at least for Wrongo, it worked.

In the end, the two most important parts of Zelensky’s speech were first, to remind Americans that sacrifice is necessary to defend democracy. And that unless Russia is pushed back within its borders, few of us, particularly in Europe, are safe. Second, Zelensky pointed to the burgeoning relationship between Russia and Iran, and that Iran’s participation has been unchecked while it wreaks devastation on Ukraine.

We should develop a strategy to interdict the movement of Iran’s drones to Russia. That’s an escalation that makes sense to Wrongo.

By underlining that Ukraine needs still more military and humanitarian aid, Zelensky was calling on reluctant Republicans to do the right thing when it comes to funding what is likely to be a prolonged and open-ended war. We have to hope that they will.

Zelensky’s trip to military front lines in Bakhmut the day before allowed him to deliver a gift to Biden of a Ukrainian soldier’s battlefield medal. Biden’s response was perfect:

“It is undeserved but appreciated.”

People keep forgetting Biden is good at this. Zelensky’s camaraderie with Biden was reassuring. His speech before Congress was motivating. Overall, it was a great day for Zelensky.

Let’s listen to “Silent Night”, here performed in 1980 by the Temptations. This was their second recording of it, this time with Dennis Edwards, Melvin Franklin & Glenn Leonard on vocals. The song begins with Dennis saying, “In my mind, I wish all to be free”, not the traditional way to start “Silent Night”.

Questlove, speaking with Terry Gross, says that when a Black performer starts with “In my mind” as Dennis Edwards does here, you know you’re going deep:

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Monday Wake Up Call – December 19, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Skiing Santas at Sunday River Ski Resort, Newry, ME – Dec. 11, 202, AP Photo/Robert F. Bukat

(As we cruise towards Christmas, each day this week we will feature pictures of Santas and/or Christmas trees, along with loopy songs vaguely representative of the season. You’ve been warned.)

The war in Ukraine has once again reminded policy makers of the importance logistics plays in winning on the battlefield. In reading a Defense One post by Marcus Weisgerber, Wrongo learned that demand for weapons by Ukraine — combined with worker shortages, inflation, and other factors — has made it more difficult and more expensive to produce the most in-demand weapons. This describes the current problem:

“The US has sent 13 years’ worth of Stinger production and five years’ worth of Javelin production to Ukraine…”

That’s in 10 months. And a newsletter by CDR Salamander states the overall problem clearly:

“The Ukrainians would have run out of weapons and ammunition months ago if the former Warsaw Pact nations in NATO didn’t empty what inventory they had left of Soviet Era weaponry and the rest of NATO led by the USA didn’t wander the world trying to soak up as much available inventory money could buy. That and the rapid adoption of NATO compatible equipment by the Ukrainians is helping, but that has revealed other problems – who says the West has enough to give?”

It is said that amateur warriors deal in tactics while professional soldiers deal in logistics. Both sides in this war are burning through their weapons stockpiles at unsustainable rates even though the war seems (at least momentarily) to be a stalemate. The US and NATO had little in stockpiled weapons even before the Russo-Ukrainian War, able to mount only a very limited or short war as they did (poorly) in Libya. This has been true for the past 20 years. Now those limitations are out in the open.

US defense spending could rise 10% percent in 2023. A good chunk of the increase is meant to rush weapons to Ukrainian forces fighting the Russian invasion, along with replenishing the US missiles, artillery and other weapons sent to Ukraine.

But the sad truth is that it isn’t clear that US or European defense companies, along with the thousands of small businesses that supply them, can meet this increased demand. There are plenty of reasons, including worker shortages and supply-chain disruptions that have been exacerbated by the pandemic and the global current economic outlook.

And the Pentagon was slow to award contracts to rebuild weapon stockpiles. Those that were awarded quickly had to be fast-tracked by top-level Biden administration officials. And it gets worse. Many defense firms are short-staffed relative to what’s needed to fulfill anticipated Pentagon orders to replace weapons sent to Ukraine. Defense One quotes Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes:

“The real question is, can we actually build it?….They can appropriate all the money, but…if we take months and months and months to get on contract, that’s months and months of delay.”

Raytheon builds the Stingers that are so depleted.  They are willing to ramp up, but it takes investment and lead time to grow production. More from Hayes:

“We want to be prepared to meet the demand that’s out there….I wish I could snap my fingers and then all of a sudden miraculously, throw a building up and train 500 people [to build them], but it just takes time.”

American business calls this “Lean Manufacturing“.

A final illustration of how a simple part that gets caught in the supply chain becomes a big problem: The Eurasian Times reports that German ammunition manufacturers have warned about delays in receiving cotton linters. They are a necessary component for propelling charges from small guns and artillery. All European ammunition producers depend on China for cotton linters, even though it is a commodity produced and traded globally. The time to get them to Europe has tripled to nine months.

Much like we learned during the height of the pandemic, our supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Lean Manufacturing and “Just-in-Time” supply chains drove the prices of imported goods through the roof, but increased demand meant that we still had to wait months to get what we ordered. Have we learned anything?

Like during the pandemic, the Russo-Ukrainian War is sending a clear warning to everyone throughout the West: We need to ramp up production, capacity, and have a more reliable – if somewhat less efficient, supply chain to support our military. This is a hard lesson, because unlike jets, missiles and ships, ammunition and expendables are hidden away in bunkers. And if your governments and diplomats do their job, they will never be used.

However, if/when you need them, like right now, the need is existential. Time to wake up America! We can’t depend on capitalism only to solve our supply chain problems. To help you wake up, take a moment to watch the Foo Fighters, who closed 2017’s Christmas episode of Saturday Night Live with an extended performance of “Everlong” that morphs into a pair of seasonal classics:

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US Military Needs Recruits

The Daily Escape:

Old Victorian farmhouse between Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA – photo by Dave Alvin

The NYT has a report about how hard it is for the US military to find new recruits:

“Almost across the board, the armed forces are experiencing large shortfalls in enlistments this year — a deficit of thousands of entry-level troops that is on pace to be worse than any since just after the Vietnam War. It threatens to throw a wrench into the military’s machinery, leaving critical jobs unfilled and some platoons with too few people to function.”

More:

“The Army is the largest of the armed forces, and….As of late June, it had recruited only about 40% of the roughly 57,000 new soldiers it wants to put in boots by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.”

Still more: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Less than a quarter of young American adults are physically fit to enlist and have no disqualifying criminal record, a proportion that has shrunk steadily in recent years. And shifting attitudes toward military service mean that now only about one in 10 young people say they would even consider it.”

This is shocking. You don’t have to be a competitive athlete to join the Army. Too many young men have prison records. The military should seriously consider issuing waivers for criminal history. A willingness to die for one’s country should be seen as a gigantic step towards rehabilitation.

And since just 10% of potential recruits are willing to consider serving, young people have obviously understood the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq. Why would young people want to die for wasteful wars of choice that have nothing at all to do with protecting their country?

These shortfalls put pressure on the military to bring in people who are either marginally qualified or unqualified. Wrongo ran a US Army unit in Germany during the Vietnam war. Back then, the US Army couldn’t recruit enough people who met its basic standards. The DOD came up with a program called Project 100,000 in October 1966 to recruit new soldiers who previously had been below the military’s mental or medical standards.

Project 100,000 personnel died at higher rates than other Americans serving in Vietnam. In Germany, more of our Project 100,000 soldiers served time in military jails than did our regular recruits. The project was ended in December 1971.

It looks like the Army is currently walking toward implementing a similar solution to the same problem it had 45 years ago.

Since jobs are plentiful in America, and wages have increased, the military has to compete by sweetening their deal with signing bonuses (up to $50,000). The military has also downsized. The number of active-duty service members is now about half of what it was in the 1980s and it’s projected to keep decreasing.

Also, the shabby way we treat our veterans hasn’t gone unnoticed by young people. The Watson Institute researches the cost of the Afghan war. They say that more than 40% of the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have already been approved to receive lifetime disability benefits. This is what happens when you continually redeploy the same soldiers into a 20-year long battle. Many get permanently injured.

And most of the costs associated with caring for post-9/11 veterans have yet to be paid, and will continue to accrue for years into the future.

July marks the 40th anniversary of doing away with the draft. We instituted the all-volunteer army because during the Vietnam War, significant numbers of draftees didn’t want to serve. The all-volunteer army was a bad idea then, and it’s still a bad idea. The post-9/11 wars were the first major test of our all-volunteer military.

Leaving aside their bravery and personal sacrifice, which was profound, how do you think they did?

On September 11, 2001, roughly one in every four American men were military veterans. But over the past two decades, the number of veterans in the population has declined to fewer than one in eight.

We need to re-institute the draft to spread the responsibility for our defense to all Americans. Barring reinstituting the draft, the number of military in our population will continue to decline. The Census Bureau projects that the number of veterans will be just 1 in 14 by 2040. By 2050, when the costs of providing medical care and benefits for veterans of the post-9/11 wars reaches its peak, few Americans will have a direct relative who was involved in those wars.

The other benefit of a draft is that it exposes young people to others of all races, ethnicities, and beliefs, and forces them to find ways to get along to accomplish a mission.

That would be both a refreshing and necessary change.

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Ukraine War Escalates

The Daily Escape:

Lupine, Rocky Mountain Front, MT – April 2022 photo by Jack Bell Photography

After just a few months, the Ukraine war is escalating dangerously. Russia decided to shut off gas exports to two EU nations, Poland and Bulgaria because they won’t pay Russia in Rubles. This escalation came one day after the US and other Western allies met to coordinate speeding up deliveries of more and better weapons to Ukraine.

Cutting off gas was called blackmail by the EU. But it isn’t blackmail, it’s war by other means. And it was totally foreseeable years ago when Europe happily set up its bulk gas buying relationships with Russia’s Gazprom.

There also were explosions in both Russia and in Transnistria (a separatist part of Moldova) that knocked out two powerful radio antennas and hit the state security ministry. Transnistria houses Europe’s largest ammo dump, filled with old Soviet armaments. It’s just 1km from the Ukraine border. Russia has blamed Ukraine. Ukraine blamed Russia.

Inside Russia’s Belgorod province, near the border with Ukraine, Newsweek reported that an ammunition depot was on fire. It’s unclear whether this was caused by poor local management, Ukraine, or sabotage.

And Germany decided to send anti-aircraft self-propelled guns to Ukraine. The Gepard, a tank with two 35-millimeter anti-air cannons, was phased out from the German army more than 10 years ago. But Germany still has many available. One problem is Switzerland, a key supplier of ammunition for the Gepard, has banned the export of that ammo to Ukraine.

It’s clear that the US and NATO are dipping their toes deeper into this conflict, and that Russia is expanding its efforts as well. The question is: whose toes get nipped first?

The Express is reporting that on Wednesday, Putin told Russian lawmakers in St. Petersburg:

“If anyone decides to meddle in ongoing events and create unacceptable strategic threats for Russia, they must know our response will be lightning-quick….We have all the instruments for this, ones nobody else can boast of. And we will use them, if we have to….We have already taken all the decisions on this.”

The big question today is whether the EU and NATO will say cutting off gas to one of us is cutting off gas to all of us. That would be a substantial escalation from where both stood on Russian gas in February.

By cutting off gas supplies, Russia may be making the same strategic mistake that the Confederacy made with its Cotton Embargo at the beginning of the US Civil War. That initially caused considerable economic pain, but both the French and British started importing Egyptian and Indian cotton. The South lost a long term market by its action. By the time the Confederacy realized it, they’d lost their key cotton export ports because of the US Naval blockade.

This is really Russia’s attempt to bully its biggest Western customer, Germany. As the Confederacy discovered, cutting off your big customers creates an aspect of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). It will be interesting to see how the rest of the EU deals with Russia’s demand for Ruble payments.

A few weeks ago it seemed Germany would blink first, but after its announcement to send armored vehicles, that seems less certain. The Russians are simply driving Europe to reduce their reliance on Russian gas and oil, with imports from other sources and renewables.

This is certainly an existential war for Ukraine and, given the current round of escalations and the bellicose talk out of Moscow, it’s becoming an existential war for all of Europe as well.

There’s an emerging feeling in the EU that Ukraine must win for Europe to feel secure. Winning is everything for both Ukraine and Russia. While Russia seems to be winning on the ground in Ukraine, they’ve been mostly stagnant for nearly a month while steadily getting chewed up by Ukraine’s defensive tactics. Ukraine on the other hand, is being bombed and shelled back to the 19th Century.

In the short term, things look bleak for Ukraine. In the longer term, if the West’s weapons resupply works, things look bleaker for Russia. And in the sanctions war, it also looks bleak for Russia in the longer term.

Europe probably can replace most of its Russian oil and gas imports within 12-18 months. OTOH, the Russian war machine is dependent on the West’s chips, optics, and other high tech, all of which are embargoed. It will take Russia years to replace them.

A final thought. Corruption in Russia’s military has been a serious problem since at least the 1970s. That time frame is important, because it means that no current Russian military officer has ever lived in an un-corrupt military culture. That doesn’t mean their military isn’t dangerous, but maybe we’ve exaggerated their prowess.

Wrongo asked Ms. Right if she could name a city in Moldova. She came up with bupkis. Wrongo understands that Bupkis has lovely churches and museums.

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Monday Wake Up Call – November 22, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, NV – November 2021 photo by Marcia Steen

Today is the 58th anniversary of the assassination of President John Kennedy. While it wasn’t the first time Americans dove deep into conspiracy theories, who killed JFK has always been a controversial topic surrounded by conspiracy theories since that November day.

Over the weekend, we passed a sad milestone. The number of US Covid deaths in 2021 surpassed the deaths in 2020 and we still have a month to go. So far, there have been 385,457 deaths this year vs. 385,343 in 2020 according to the WSJ.

Wrongo has a few observations about what our continuing saga with Covid says about America. Almost 200 million of us are fully vaccinated. In addition, we have had 47 million confirmed cases to date. That means 74.8% of us have some level of antibodies to the several variants of Covid that have traveled through our population in the past two years.

But because: 1) Vaccines haven’t made it beyond the rich world (only 6% of the population in Africa is vaccinated) and 2) Americans seem to value the freedom to control their bodies over public health, new variants that may not be controllable by current vaccines could infiltrate the US.

There’s one very concerning new variant, B.1.640. It appears to be from Africa and has only been seen in small numbers. Apparently it’s bad. The Jerusalem Post mentioned it in” New COVID variant found in France: Reason for panic or not quite yet?” after it spread to Europe:

“A new COVID variant identified in a handful of European countries is raising concerns among some health professionals because there are changes to the coronavirus spike protein that have never been seen before.”

The B.1.640 variant has nothing to do with Delta. Researchers have had a really hard time placing it on the known Covid family tree, because it’s so far removed from anything else, that it just sits on a very long branch of its own. They think that it may elude our current vaccines.

If true, this would be another example of viral evolution completely blindsiding us. And if it isn’t this one, we’ll probably see some other variant.

The sad truth is that America is no longer willing to fight Covid. We think its too hard, and we don’t like doing difficult things. Too many of us don’t want to choose between public health and our economy.

Our unofficial policy is to expect that Covid will become a gradually declining annual infection. But that’s based on the assumption that we have a successful vaccine, that the current variant is all we’ll see, and that the virus will lose its potency over time.

Nobody dares say it out loud, but Covid has revealed the US to be a prime risk for a bioweapon attack.

If a terror group, or an adversary country decided to launch a biological attack, there is clearly nothing that we would do to stop it. How do we know that? Because Covid could have been a biological attack, and it was allowed to spread broadly instead of being properly dealt with. Because it was “too hard” to try to stop it.

We’ve spent countless $ trillions over the last 20 years for “national security”, and this is where we’ve gotten to? Wrongo is starting to think that Churchill’s comment that “the US will do the right thing, after we’ve tried everything else” was overly optimistic.

Time to wake up America! We’ve got to toughen up, or face defeat, not only on the battlefield but in ICUs across America. To help you wake up, here’s a throwback song from another era. Listen to “I’d Love to Change the World” by the late Alvin Lee & his group, Ten Years After from their 1971 Album: “A Space In Time.”

The video doesn’t feature the band, just the song from the album. The video is a film student project that Wrongo likes. Overall, the song  looks at what were considered the biggest problems in the world in 1971: Overpopulation, economic inequality, pollution, and war. Unsurprisingly, the issues remain the same:

Sample Lyric:

Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor
Till there are no rich no more

I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I’ll leave it up to you

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Saturday Soother – November 13, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, UT – November 2021 photo by Byron Jones

This week’s Veteran’s Day apparently isn’t finished with Wrongo just yet. It’s important to remember that when the US war in Afghanistan ended in August after nearly 20 years, there were both hard and soft costs that had been paid, and much that remains to be paid.

The Pentagon reports the hard costs of our Afghanistan adventure to be $825 billion. However, the “Costs of War” project at Brown University estimates those costs at $2.313 trillion. But it gets worse: They estimate the costs of all US post-9/11 war spending at $8 trillion, including future obligations for veterans’ care and the cost of borrowing on the associated federal debt for roughly 30 years. They also estimate the human costs of the “global war on terror” at 900,000 deaths.

Those are all truly staggering numbers.

And Congress is now considering next fiscal year’s military budget. Defense One is covering this so you don’t have to. They’re saying that the proposed 2022 defense budget will be another bipartisan effort by the old-timers in the House and Senate to add more money than was asked for into the pot. And it’s part of a long history of hiding flimsy arguments behind dramatic rhetoric: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“This year, both the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and House Armed Services Committee (HASC) have displayed a similar unwillingness to distinguish between needs and wants in their versions of the National Defense Authorization Act, which recommend adding $25 billion and $24 billion, respectively, to President Biden’s recommended $715 billion Pentagon budget.”

More:

“It is difficult to imagine how either the SASC or HASC could convincingly demonstrate the necessity of such military spending increases when none of the most urgent crises facing the United States today have military solutions. Furthermore, the credibility of both the Pentagon and Congress on this subject is, to put it mildly, underwhelming: one has an extensive history of budgetary boondoggles, and the other is openly cozy with the U.S. arms industry.”

Defense One says that the most frustrating aspect isn’t the exorbitant amounts, but the lack of any substantive strategic justification for the increased spending by either Chamber. In specific, Defense One argues that  there’s been no effort to demonstrate that the Senate’s billions are funding needs instead of simply political wants.

Remember this is from Defense One, a stalwart defender of America’s military.

We shouldn’t assume legislators think carefully about the public’s interest when crafting the defense budget. Over the years, the defense budget process is driven partly by what the administration and the Pentagon ask for, and by what the defense industry wants for its bottom line. (Full disclosure, Wrongo holds a significant number of shares in a large defense contracting firm.)

US military spending in 2020 was $778 billion. The next closest nation was China, at $252 billion. In third place was India at $72.9 billion. Another perspective is to compare what we spent to fight in Vietnam to the costs of our Apollo moon landing. Apollo 11 got to the moon in July of 1969. That feat cost the US about $25.8 billion.

During the same era, it’s estimated that the Vietnam War cost the US $141 billion over 14 years. That means that we spent about as much in two years in Vietnam as we spent on the entire space race!

When we think about accountability for the costs of the Pentagon, we should remember that the Pentagon has never passed an outside expense audit. Waste is endemic; and the Pentagon simply fabricates numbers, but receives nearly zero pushback from Congress.

There’s so much corruption in the halls of Congress that we will never know how little we could spend on defense. Maybe we should just make some deep cuts to the defense budget and force real strategic decision-making down their throats.

Enough! It’s Saturday, and we need to take a break from trying to figure out whether Steve Bannon or Kyle Rittenhouse will ever go to jail. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

With a soaking rain in Connecticut today, we’re limited to indoor sports. Most of our fall clean-up is still ahead, but today, let’s grab a seat by the window and listen to pianist Max Richter’s “Mercy” with Richter on piano and Mari Samuelsen on violin. Richter originally wrote the piece 10 years ago for violinist Hillary Hahn. For Richter, “Mercy” places the need for mercy and compassion firmly within our view:

 

 

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China’s New Missile Threat

The Daily Escape:

Moonlight on Nantucket Sound, Dennis Port, MA – October 2021 Samsung Note 20 ultra photo by Kelly O. & Bob W.

(We leave Truro, MA today, returning to our workaday lives in CT. It has been a wonderful time on Cape Cod, eating very well, and visiting with both local family, plus a few who traveled to spend time with us.)

From Vice:

“ the Financial Times, citing anonymous US intelligence sources, has reported that China tested a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead in August that left the Pentagon stunned.”

They’re saying that China may have launched a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) with a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV). Opinions differ, but they fired something that orbited the globe and dropped a hypersonic glide vehicle against a target.

Wrongo lost the fob for his car once, they’re expensive to replace. What are we talking about, and why should we care? In August or possibly in July, China tested a missile that might be a FOBS. While Wrongo ran a missile unit in the military, that was 50+ years ago, and the technology has vastly improved – so he’s not an expert.

Let’s define what we’re talking about: “Hypersonic” means that it flies faster than the speed of sound. Hypersonic means speeds from Mach 5 to Mach 25, which is orbital velocity. All ICBMs are hypersonic when they re-enter the atmosphere.

An ICBM can be tracked from launch, and since it can’t be redirected during flight, we will have 10+ minutes warning of the targeted location. But a FOBS can stay in orbit for an indeterminate time. You won’t know where it’s going until it begins its descent, which means that by the time it’s possible to determine the target area, there might only be 2-3 minutes of warning.

This has implications for our missile defense umbrella. A traditional ICBM flies a parabolic trajectory so a missile tracking radar can make projections of where and when it will hit a range of targets, providing “early warning” to our threatened locations.

But as the Drive says:

“The maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle, descending from high-altitude at extreme speed, could travel thousands of miles to its target, which can be…offset from a normal ballistic track. Complicating things…these systems can attack from the south pole, not just the north where most of America’s ballistic missile early warning, tracking, and defensive apparatus is focused.”

Our missile defense system is designed for launches from the north. Seems like a bad time for us to figure out they can also come from the south.

Regardless, America’s military has little ability to intercept China’s weapons. Our mid-course intercept capabilities are focused on traditional ballistic missile flight profiles. In practice, America’s missile defenses have never been able to stop China’s missiles, so this additional Chinese capability doesn’t change our vulnerability to their nuclear weapons.

From Jeffery Lewis of Arms Control Wonk: (brackets by Wrongo)

“They [the US] have a very poor [anti-ballistic missile] test record…It’s around 50% percent and only in very scripted scenarios. They don’t test in adverse weather. They’ll cancel missile defense tests on account of rain.”

Doesn’t work in the rain? Shouldn’t we have a more legit missile defense system? What if I told you it  cost more than $30 billion?

US spy satellites have revealed that China is constructing hundreds of new missile silos in northwestern China. Their military buildup is, at least in part, a reaction to the perceived threat of America’s pivot to China from the Middle East.

If this report ends up being accurate, one thing is likely: There will be a new profit center for America’s defense contractors! The Pentagon is pushing to deploy a whole new space-based early warning and tracking system for hypersonic and ballistic missiles.

Expect new calls for hugely expensive missile defense capabilities in Congress, as well as demands to do whatever possible to bring China to the bargaining table in hopes of obtaining some type of strategic arms limitation treaty.

Speaking of now wanting a new treaty, China and Russia have both expressed concern, multiple times, about the US abandonment of the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. The ABM Treaty was a 1972 deal with the Soviet Union that limited the number of such systems both countries could develop and deploy.

Colin Powell and George W. Bush dismantled that treaty in the wake of 9/11. Perhaps if GW Bush hadn’t unilaterally abandoned it in 2001, we might not be talking about this today.

Our presidents can say whatever they want, but our adversaries have to look at the worst case for their own defense, just as we must. They believe that abandoning the treaty opened the way for a US first nuclear strike.

But don’t be too worried about this.

Rest assured we will have an effective defense/response system just as soon as we can get the parts from China.

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DOD Could Save $1 Trillion Without Changing US Security

The Daily Escape:

Sea Street Beach East Dennis MA – October 2021 photo by Ulla Wise

Rather than adding to the current vibe of general despair, a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) offers a number of interesting perspectives on how the US defense budget could sustain a $1 trillion cut over the course of 10 years.

The CBO report says that national defense programs could absorb a well-structured $1 trillion cut while still protecting the homeland and America’s allies from foreign adversaries.

From Responsible Statecraft:

“The new report outlines three different options for cutting the Pentagon budget by $1 trillion over the next decade — a 14 percent reduction. Doing so would still leave the department with $6.3 trillion in taxpayer dollars over the next ten years, in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars.”

The report’s mandate was to look at how to adjust the size and focus of US military under smaller federal budgets. It created three broad options to illustrate the range of strategies that the United States could pursue under a budget that would be cut gradually by a total of $1 trillion, or 14%, between 2022 and 2031. They developed the options using their Interactive Force Structure Tool.

Here are the CBO’s three options for military force reduction:

  • Maintain the existing national security strategy but with fewer personnel.
  • Change the existing national security strategy to focus more on countering adversaries with international allies and coalitions.
  • Change the existing national security strategy to focus more on protecting America’s access to sea, land, and air and space.

In all three options, the CBO slashed full-time active forces, while leaving the less expensive reserves at their current levels. While acknowledging that “none of the plans are without risk,” they concluded that the Pentagon could reduce spending without sacrificing our security.

According to the report, in all three of CBO’s options, units would be staffed, trained, and equipped at the same levels as they are today, but there would be fewer units, or different combinations of units. The CBO chose to retain fully staffed units because, while personnel are expensive, partially staffed units would not be able to execute their missions. That would make the US more of a paper tiger than we are currently.

The CBO report also put the potential cut in historical perspective. While significant, a $1 trillion cut (14%) over a decade would be far smaller than the cuts America’s military spending in 1988 to 1997 (30%), and the 25% cut we had in 2010-2015. A 14% cut from fiscal years 2022 to 2031 would also still leave annual defense spending at more than it was at any point from 1948 through 2002.

Lindsay Koshgarian, program director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) said:

“The US military budget is now higher than it was at the peak of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, or the Cold War….We are spending far too much on the Pentagon, and too little on everything else…”

A $1 trillion saving isn’t chump change. Those funds could be used to prevent future pandemics, address climate change, or reduce economic injustice. None of those are small matters. And they are all matters of political priorities.

No self-respecting Republican war hawk would have anything to do with cutting the military’s budget. And with the exception of a handful of left leaning Democrats, every other Democrat will shrink from the idea of reducing the military budget. It’s too risky politically.

We actually need Congress to solve three problems: Our revenue problem, our social spending/cost inflation problem, and our defense spending problem.

The CBO idea tackles the defense spending, but we need to consider taxes and revenue along with spending. We need to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals while cutting that defense spending.

Turning to social spending, if you ask Americans what spending they want to cut, they will never say that we ought to ravage people’s retirement security. And 90+% of entitlement spending goes to the elderly, the disabled, or people who worked at least 1,000 hours in the past year. The big savings should come from reducing the growth in the cost of medical services.

Taking $1 trillion from Pentagon spending would be a great start, but we have other work to do.

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