Category: NATO

Musk Is A Putin Pawn

The Daily Escape:

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, AZ – September 2023 photo by Bob Miller

Back in the 1950s, lefties were often called “fellow travelers” with Communists or the Soviet Union by Republicans.

Here’s a thought experiment: Elon Musk owns Starlink. He helped Ukraine take on the Russians using his constellation of satellites and transmit/receive terminals on the ground. When SpaceX started providing Starlink internet service to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, it created a lifeline for the country when its communications systems had largely been knocked out.

Musk got great PR for helping America’s plucky little friend in their war against the Russian invaders. But as the war ground on, Kyiv began to fear that Musk was becoming increasingly ambivalent toward assisting them. Then, just as they are on the verge of a decisive blow that might shape the direction of the war, he turned off the network, thereby saving the Russian fleet from a Ukrainian sneak attack. From the WaPo:

“The armed submarine drones were poised to attack the Russian fleet….[but] the drones lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.”

Ukrainian and American officials instantly scrambled to get service restored, appealing to Musk directly. After it was too late to continue the mission, Musk eventually agreed. His reasoning for torpedoing Ukraine’s torpedo mission has been well-reported over the past few days. According to the WaPo, Musk had second thoughts:

“How am I in this war? Musk asked….Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do peaceful things, not drone strikes.”

Later, when the Sevastopol operation was to begin, Musk remembers this:

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor….If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Musk says he was afraid of being responsible for a Russian nuclear escalation. Moscow had publicly stoked such fears throughout the Ukraine war, but Western intelligence agencies say there’s no sign they were or are serious. There is zero evidence that tactical nuclear weapons were being prepped for use.

Nothing like what Musk feared happened.

From Timothy Snyder:

“The voiced concern is that Russia could “escalate.”  This argument is a triumph of Russian propaganda. None of Ukraine’s strikes across borders has done anything except reduce Russian capacity. None has led Russia to do things it was not already doing. The notion of “escalation” in this setting is a misunderstanding. In trying to undo Russian logistics, Ukraine is trying to end the war.”

It’s curious that according to Ronan Farrow in a New Yorker article, around this time, Musk held conversations with Vladimir Putin (Musk denies speaking to Putin) – which seems to have had an effect on Musk’s change of position regarding Ukraine.

So this is the thought experiment: Is Musk naïve, or has he become a fellow traveler with Putin? He seems to have not only bought Moscow’s propaganda about nuclear escalation but acted on it. In either case, his “I was for helping Ukraine before I was against it” is a moral failure, and it’s a crime of providing material assistance to ours and Ukraine’s enemy.

He’s a fellow traveler.

We’ll never know if the war has been extended because the Sevastopol attack was aborted. We do know that since then, thousands of Ukrainians have died, and $ billions of Ukrainian assets have been destroyed.

This is a reminder of how Musk has amassed enormous influence through his dizzying pace of innovation that has left his competitors in the dust. It has also left governments (like our own), tip-toeing in their relationships with SpaceX in particular.

Wrongo thinks that US policymakers were happy to tolerate Musk’s early involvement in Ukraine because it saved money and solved an immediate tactical communications problem. But how wise was that in hindsight? There are reasons why diplomacy and international relations are left to elected governments in the West, and not put in the hands of one tech bro.

Rightwing Republicans have been pushing privatization without regulation for decades. Now that Musk has done just that with satellites and SpaceX, politicians and the mainstream media are shocked to find that the Ultra-Wealthy entrepreneurs don’t really believe in democracy.

Who could have known?

And think about it: Russia under Putin started this war. We’re involved because our national security interests in Europe are under attack by the Russian Federation. That constitutes a war, whether we choose to recognize it or not. Musk’s inaction must be viewed through that lens.

Our forces are not engaging in combat with Russian forces; that’s Russian propaganda. But we have history vs. Russia: We fought against Russian fighter pilots in the Korean war. They had advisors on the ground in Vietnam. We fought a Wagner force in Syria when they attacked our troops.

And Wagner isn’t a rogue mercenary organization. They are an irregular Russian force operating outside the norms of international law.

Musk and quite a few House Republicans need to understand the true nature of this war. We didn’t attack Russia. NATO didn’t attack Russia. And Ukraine didn’t attack Russia. Russia attacked Ukraine with a full scale invasion.

While Putin and his thugs are guilty of aggression, many Americans are guilty of being naïve. They fail to understand what failing in this fight will mean.

Whew! That’s enough for this week, it’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we try to find a place of calm and then gather ourselves for another week of polycrisis without end.

We’re aerating the lawns on the fields of Wrong, but only overseeding a small portion of it, since a 50 lb. bag of quality grass seed costs $225 vs. the $75 it was in the before times. Whip Inflation Now!

We’re likely to have thunderstorms for the next few days. So grab a chair by a large south-facing window and watch and listen to Playing For Change’s version of the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple”. It features the Dead’s drummer Bill Kreutzmann along with a host of performers, including the late Jimmy Buffett and David Crosby. Jerry Garcia lent his slide guitar to CSN’s “Teach Your Children” years ago, and Crosby returns the favor here. Time to listen to some feel-good music.

Robert Hunter wrote this song for the Dead in 1970. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Grateful Dead in 1994 and is the only non-performer to be inducted as a member of a band. Hunter was a lyricist:

 

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Alaska! And Russia!

The Daily Escape:

Castle Mountain from Stikine River, Wrangell, AK – September 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo. Castle Mountain is on the border between Alaska and British Columbia. This is a Nunatak, or a mountain that was higher than its surrounding glaciers, so over the centuries, it wasn’t rounded off by glacial movement.

This is the first day in several when we’ve had internet (or mobile) connectivity. So, here are a few thoughts on our Alaska trip and on the momentous news out of Russia.

First, we’ve had uncharacteristically beautiful weather! It’s usually raining at this time, but its been sunny and relatively warm for the first 10 days of our trip. Over the next few days, once we have better bandwidth, Wrongo will post more photos from the trip.

We have spent all of our time in Southeast Alaska, dropping in and out of fjords where the cruise ships cannot go. We’ve also spent quite a bit of time talking to members of the indigenous Tlingit nation. It is always interesting to learn about one of the many cultures that make up America. Ms. Right and I spent a morning with Joe Williams, a Tlingit ambassador and a former mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska. Attached is a video of Joe giving some highlights of Tlingit history. Joe explained about the Eagle and Raven clans and how the Tlingit gave their children over to uncles and aunts to be raised. The sociology of their tribes and family structure was fascinating.

Second, what the hell is going on in Russia? Wrongo and Ms. Right have gotten to know a retired Marine officer who is traveling with our group. He’s providing commentary for the BBC from our small ship, when we have comms. He says it is way too early to tell how this will fall out, or if there will be a new power alignment in Russia, or if this will make any difference in the Ukraine war.

But as the WSJ’s Peggy Noonan famously said in 2000, “it would be irresponsible not to speculate”, so here goes. It’s clear that Prigozhin became a threat to his buddy Putin simply by leveraging Russia’s assets. As Yale’s Timothy Snyder says:

“Unlike most of its other ventures, Wagner’s war in Ukraine was a losing proposition.  Prigozhin leveraged the desperation of Russia’s propaganda for a victory by taking credit for victory at Bakhmut.  That minor city was completely destroyed and abandoned by the time Wagner took it, at the cost of tens of thousands of Russian lives.”

Before the aborted coup, Wagner’s primary source of funding was the Russian state. Whether that will continue, given the supposed “deal” between Prigozhin and Putin, remains to be seen.

A couple of other points. Will Prigozhin actually go to Belarus? If he does, will he take some or all of his Wagner forces with him? If they all go to Belarus, who will be paying them? Its difficult to believe that Wagner and Prigozhin will remain inactive for very long. As mercenaries, they survive on extracting money from a benefactor and/or from the places where they operate.

There are several possible “deals” between Putin and Prigozhin that drove his “exile” in Belarus. According to the BBC, Prigozhin agreed to move to Belarus after he negotiated directly with Belarus leader Lukashenko.

Wrongo is most intrigued by the possibility that Wagner could open a second front in the Ukraine war from Belarus, similar to what Russia attempted in February 2022. Back then it looked like this:

With most of Ukraine’s military assets focused on a counteroffensive in the east and south, an attack from the northeast could prove decisive at a point in time when Moscow looks to be weak and vulnerable.

Will this happen? The thing to watch for is how many Wagner assets move to Belarus along with Prigozhin (assuming he moves there). Imagine if part of the “deal” is that Prigozhin is tapped by Belarus to be their army’s commander-in-chief, and they launch a second front during the driest time of the year, rather than in February like last time. Belarus was somewhat neutral in 2022, but since then have become much more tightly aligned militarily with Russia

Russia on the attack may have the resources to open up a second front in Belarus. The question is whether Ukraine can defend itself on one front while attacking Russia on its eastern front.

These are the interesting times we are doomed to live through. Let’s close with a tune from the Aquabats. This was recommended by granddaughter Mallory for our trip to Alaska. Here is “Hot Summer Nights (Won’t Last Forever)” from their 2005 album “Charge!”. Seems appropriate for our trip and for Prigozhin, no?

Sample Lyric:

Dear Elizabeth,
I hope you’re doing well
I think it’s so awesome that you’re out monitoring glacier patterns
In some remote part of Alaska where no one can get a hold of you
I thought I’d try anyway

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Russia Is Building Huge Amounts Of Unspendable Rupees

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Rio Grande Bridge, Taos, NM – June 2023 photo by Auggimage

Over the year that Russia has been at war in Ukraine, the west triggered sanctions to isolate Russia from getting access to hard currency. One result is that the sanctions have forced Russian to sell crude at discounted rates. At the cheap prices, India emerged as a major buyer of Russian oil. The discounts have led to India importing more oil from Russia than ever before. Here’s a chart:

According to data from Vortexa, the increase amounts to about 500k barrels/day since November, 2022. Russia now supplies India more crude than Iraq and Saudi Arabia combined. Prior to the Ukraine war, the chart shows that India bought very little oil from Russia. But as the sanctions cut off major Russian banks from much of the West’s payment systems, finding other markets that would trade for oil in currencies other than the dollar became a challenge.

India’s buying Russian crude made sense because India is a major buyer of Russian weapons. Since 2017, Russia has accounted for $8.5 billion of the $18.3 billion New Delhi has spent on weapons imports. Business Insider reports that India has been buying Russian oil using rupees since Moscow has been shut out of the USD-denominated global payments system.

Snapping up discounted Russian crude has also widened India’s substantial trade deficit with Russia. This has left Russian oil companies and banks with billions of rupees in their Indian bank accounts.

Russia is now amassing $1 billion worth of Indian rupees each month and it’s struggling either to use in India or to convert into rubles to repatriate the currency. Bloomberg estimates that the total of Russian assets in built up in India since 2022 equals $147 billion. And it’s not like Russia can send the rupees back home, because India has restrictions on capital outflows by foreigners. So, Russia is looking at $2 to $3 billion more rupees stuck in India every quarter.

Bloomberg quoted Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in India in May:

“We need to use this money. But…these rupees must be transferred in another currency, and this is being discussed now…”

Nandan Unnikrishnan, a Russia expert at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in New Delhi, told DW:

“Russia wants a currency that it can use to buy goods that it requires for its economy… the question is identifying that currency…Russians would be happy to use the yuan,”

That’s because the Russia-China bilateral trade is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. OTOH, New Delhi would not be comfortable allowing trade settlement in the yuan, given the tense relations between India and China due to their border disputes. Reuters news reported that the Indian government had asked banks and businesses to avoid using the yuan to pay for Russian imports.

So Russia has a big problem. They would like to use the proceeds of oil exports to finance the Ukraine war. Putting how big the stranded rupees are in context, Russia spent $68 billion, on defense in 2022, according to Reuters. As Alexander Isakov, Russia economist at Bloomberg Economics says:

“There are no alternative oil importers of India’s caliber on the horizon for Russia, so exporters and banks will gradually accept settlement in rupees…”

Western pundits and economists have talked endlessly about how the sanctions weren’t doing much to close off Russia from the rest of the world. But the sanctions that cut off major Russian banks from most of the West’s payment systems, have created a real challenge to Russia finding ways to get paid for their crude so that they can finance their war in Ukraine.

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China’s Triangulation Of Russia And The West

The Daily Escape:

Joshua tree in bloom, Joshua Tree National Landmark SW, UT – March 2023 photo by Lisa Simer

We’re back at the Mansion of Wrong after a few lovely days in St. Helena, CA. Surprisingly, it seems that lots of things happened while we were away. From Heather Cox Richardson:

“So, for all the chop in the water about the former president facing indictments, the story that really seems uppermost to me today is the visit China’s president Xi Jinping made today to Moscow for a meeting with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.”

In 2015, shortly after Russia intervened in the Syrian Civil War, Wrongo asked a visiting Russian author who spoke at our local library whether Putin wanted to move Russia closer to the west or to the east. He said unequivocally that Putin was a product of the west and would keep Russia in the west’s orbit.

It’s clear that he was wrong. Russia has moved away from the west, possibly permanently. Earlier in March, Wrongo said the following:

“The US is attempting to isolate both China and Russia. With Russia, we’re using ever-tightening economic sanctions. With China, we’re building a geographic containment strategy among our allies in Asia.”

And on Monday, Chinese President Xi met with Russian President Putin in Moscow. Here’s a meeting summary from the blog Institute for the Study of War:

“… [the meeting]…on March 20…offered a more reserved vision for Russian-Chinese relations than what Putin was likely seeking. Xi and Putin touted the strength of Chinese-Russian relations in their meeting…but offered differing interpretations of the scale of future relations….on March 19 Putin published an article in Chinese state media in which he argued that Russia and China are building a partnership for the formation of a multipolar world order in the face of the collective West’s seeking of domination and the United States pursuing a policy of dual containment against China and Russia.”

….Xi offered a less aggressive overarching goal for Russian-Chinese relations in his article published in Russian state media….in which he noted that Russia and China are generally pursuing a multipolar world order but not specifically against an adversarial West. Xi instead focused…on presenting China as a viable third-party mediator to the war in Ukraine….

David Ignatius concluded in the WaPo that the meeting was about:

“A strong China…bolstering a weak Russia….The Chinese aren’t providing weapons (yet), but Xi certainly offered moral and psychological support in what might be described as a get-well visit to an ailing relative….The paradox of the Ukraine war is that Putin’s bid for greater power in Europe has made him weaker. This diminished Russia will fall increasingly under China’s sway….Maybe that’s the biggest reason for Xi’s…visit: He is bolstering a flank against America and the West.”

China’s dominance over Russia will grow if Russia cannot find a way to end the war in Ukraine. Russia has lost its energy markets in Europe because of the invasion, so it must depend heavily on demand from China. China’s growing economic power in Asia coupled with its capabilities in space, cyber, and artificial intelligence will increasingly dwarf Russia’s.

Russia’s economy is concentrated on exports of energy. It also has a major population problem. The Economist reports: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Over the past three years the country has lost around 2million more people than it would ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease and exodus. The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 fell by almost five years, to the same level as in Haiti. The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than it had been in the months of Hitler’s occupation.”

More:

“…the life expectancy at birth of Russian males plummeted from 68.8 in 2019 to 64.2 in 2021, partly because of Covid…Russian men now die six years earlier than men in Bangladesh and 18 years earlier than men in Japan.”

And the Economist says the exodus of well-educated young people at the start of the Ukraine War also hurts Russia’s future. According to its communications ministry, 10% of IT workers left the country in 2022. Many were young men, further skewing Russia’s unbalanced sex ratio. In 2021 there were 121 females over 18 for every 100 males. More:

“Demographics is rapidly making Russia a smaller, worse-educated and poorer country, from which young people flee and where men die in their 60s.”

As Wrongo said, separating China from Russia used to be a central goal of US foreign policy. The Biden administration tried that strategy in reverse: Warming relations with Moscow at the June 2021 summit in Geneva in part to concentrate on the challenge China presented.

How did that work out?

Now it’s China trying the role of triangulator. Xi’s playing off the split between the US and Russia, helping Putin, but also keeping some distance while building China’s bona fides with the third world.

Xi’s also used China’s close relations with Iran to make a diplomatic breakthrough between the Saudis and the Iranians, something that the US could never achieve.

We seem powerless to blunt what’s happening before our eyes.

And all the while, the Republican Party of the world’s greatest superpower argues about drag queens and wokeness.

Wake up America! Check out what China, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia are building for us. You’re not going to like it.

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Monday Wake Up Call, Diplomacy Edition – March 13, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Wildflower bloom, Peridot Mesa on the San Carlos Reservation, AZ  – March, 2023 photo by Sharon McCaffrey

China has brokered an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to re-establish diplomatic relations. The agreement, reached after four days of talks with senior officials in Beijing, may ease tensions between the two Middle East powers after seven years of fighting a proxy war in Yemen. In the war, Saudi Arabia has supported Yemen’s government and Iran has backed the opposition Houthis.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia announced they will resume diplomatic relations and open up embassies once again in their respective nations within two months, according to a joint statement.

Saudi Arabia is Sunni Muslim while Iran is a Shiite Muslim country. Saudi broke off relations with Iran in 2016 after protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran. The protests followed the Saudi execution of a Shiite Muslim cleric, Shia preacher Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. Al-Nimr had earlier spent 10 years studying in Tehran.

News of the diplomatic breakthrough came as a surprise to the US and to Israel. It was also a diplomatic and political success for Beijing. Here are some of the winners and losers in this.

The winners:

  • Iran, now with Russia, China and Saudi as allies, may be able to break the US sanctions.
  • Saudi Arabia has distanced itself even further from the US. It may now be able to end its involvement in the war in Yemen.
  • China, by outplaying the US. China’s success in achieving is recognition of its growing status in global politics.
  • Iraq and Syria will become more influential Middle East players as Saudi and Iran move to end their rivalry.

The losers are:

  • Israel, and specifically Netanyahu. For years, his twin foreign policy goals have been the isolation of Iran and the normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia, which has never recognized Israel. Also his efforts to pull the US into a war with Iran is now even more unlikely.
  • The US for being outplayed on a playing field it used to dominate. And for losing more global prestige to its rival China.
  • The Emirates for losing some political influence and also losing some of its sanctions busting trade with Iran.

Wrong thinks this could be a big geopolitical deal. It may bring peace or at least, an absence of war in Yemen. It is also a bold example of using diplomacy as a tool of national power. That’s a good reminder since the US has been mainly thinking about the war in Ukraine (and the threat of war in Taiwan). Our global focus has been on military power and economic sanctions.

The Ukraine war has led to a revival of the NATO alliance. This, along with the strengthening of European relations are diplomatic accomplishments. But since the start of the war, US global diplomacy has been directed at jawboning the third world into agreeing to the sanctions regime against Russia.

So China’s use of diplomacy to deliver a breakthrough agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran makes the US efforts look small and foolish. The NYT quotes Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel and Egypt:

“It’s a sign of Chinese agility to take advantage of some anger directed at the United States by Saudi Arabia and a little bit of a vacuum there….And it’s a reflection of the fact that the Saudis and Iranians have been talking for some time. And it’s an unfortunate indictment of US policy.”

After Trump killed the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and reimposed heavy economic sanctions on Iran, Iran moved to deepen its relations with Russia and now with China. Tehran has provided drones for Russia to use in its war in Ukraine, making it an important partner for Russia.

Now, by turning to China to mediate with the Saudis, Iran has elevated China in the region, while Israel finds its hopes for an anti-Iranian coalition with Saudi Arabia dashed. Is the looming axis of Iran and China a direct threat to the US? Probably not, but the balance of power in the region is changing.

We’ve spent decades in various wars in the Middle East, at a cost of more than $8 trillion. We tried showing the Middle East that strength came from military might. But China is showing the Middle East that you can win both the diplomatic and the economic battle without firing a bullet. Who knew?

Their approach to the Middle East is more constructive than America’s. China, like the US, has an agenda. But it has committed to building 1000 schools in Iraq; a country we “helped” by invasion.

Time to wake up America! The world is now challenging America’s heavy-handed unilateralism. We may be seeing the start of a post-America Middle East. To help you wake up watch and listen to Marcus King and Stephen Campbell of the Marcus King Band perform the 1966 Merle Haggard tune “Swinging Doors” at Carter Vintage Guitars:

Sample Lyric:

And I’ve got swinging doors, a jukebox and a bar stool
My new home has a flashing neon sign
Stop by and see me any time you want to
Cause I’m always here at home till closing time.

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The Looming Russia-China Alliance

The Daily Escape:

Peach trees in bloom, Low Gap, NC – March 2023 photo by Donna Johnson

Springtime brings hope after a dark, cold winter. The clocks leap forward this Sunday. It’s also a time to take stock of the old assumptions that our recent geopolitical strategies are built on. The US is trending in what may be an unsustainable direction in our global politics.

A year ago with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America sought to make Ukraine a proxy for the fight between authoritarianism and democratic forms of government. The Ukraine war caused several major changes within Europe and NATO:

  • Germany moved away from its strategic energy supplier, Russia.
  • NATO became more clearly unified than at any time since its founding.
  • The Eastern European members of NATO became the drivers of military engagement on the side of Ukraine.
  • The US and NATO have found they do not have the production capability to continue providing military weapons and ammunition at the rate Ukraine is using them.
  • This has made it clear that the US and NATO aren’t prepared for a major confrontation with a great power such as China or Russia.

The Ukraine war has precipitated other global consequences. While Russia has become a pariah to Europe, China has become one of Russia’s most important allies.

Many readers won’t remember that 60 years ago, there was a fundamental split between the Soviet Union and China, largely over differences in communist ideology. Over the years, they have slowly moved closer together, driven in part by US policy and by their shared quest for a global reset of geopolitical power.

Now they are willing to work together to dismantle or blunt the US-led world order.

This “alliance of autocracies,” is built on China’s and Russia’s belief that the US’s supremacy is waning. And they are entitled to rule within their own spheres of influence. And to use force if necessary to control those spheres. An alliance between China and Russia brings advantages to both countries. Recent US intelligence says that China may supply Russia with weapons to aid in its war against Ukraine. There is talk of China building a drone factory in Russia to supply its war in Ukraine.

Russia also desperately needs China to stabilize its economy by importing more below-market cost oil, a boon to China’s economy. In June 2022, Russia became the PRC’s largest oil supplier, eclipsing Saudi Arabia. While Russia is betting that Western fatigue will hand them a victory in Ukraine, China is sizing up America’s ability to engage in a faraway battle should China decide to invade Taiwan.

The US is attempting to isolate both China and Russia. With Russia, we’re using ever-tightening economic sanctions. With China, we’re building a geographic containment strategy among our allies in Asia. Containment has been helped by North Korea’s bellicosity against South Korea and Japan, who recently decided to partner militarily, much to China’s distress. The Pentagon has also expanded its bases in the Philippines while shrinking our military footprint in the Middle East.

With US/Russian relations basically clinging to life, prudence should have indicated that the US adopt a more friendly stance toward Beijing. However, we’ve prioritized support for Taiwan over better relations with China. Both the Trump and Biden administrations embraced high tariffs on Chinese imports.

In 2022, Biden added sweeping tech restrictions on China, including a provision barring the PRC from using semiconductor chips made with US tools anywhere in the world. That’s the harshest economic measure leveled against China since the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1979. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by China. China’s new foreign minister said:

“The more unstable the world becomes, the more imperative it is for China and Russia to steadily advance their relations.”

It’s clear that the Russia‐​PRC relationship isn’t yet a full‐​fledged military alliance, but it’s moving in that direction. And both are friendly with Iran and North Korea, which have also supplied weapons for Russia’s war in Ukraine. It isn’t a great stretch that these four could create a new “axis of evil” that could lead to the West needing to plan to fight two faraway wars simultaneously.

This is at a time when we cannot find enough munitions and weapons to fight one proxy war in Europe.

The odious Henry Kissinger once cautioned that it must be a high priority for the US to make certain that our relations with both Moscow and Beijing were closer than their relations are with each other. But our policy makers have done just the opposite.

While the argument for not continuing a proxy war in Ukraine has merit, Wrongo has argued that Ukraine is a war of necessity because democracy in Europe is what’s really on the line. And, with the 2024 presidential campaign about to start, Republican opposition to the war is growing.

Biden needs to keep what political capital he has, but he also needs to improve our ability to sustain our military support for Ukraine. That may be difficult because America hasn’t developed a solid military strategy for tomorrow’s battles which may well be with one or more of the great powers.

It is more difficult because we’ve spent the last 20+ years using $80 million-dollar planes to drop $400,000 bombs on $25 tents, while still wondering why we didn’t win any of our wars in the Middle East.

Ironically, our geopolitical strategy and the supporting military strategies may have the US in the position of being the midwife bringing a newborn Russia‐​PRC military alliance into the world.

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Monday Wake Up Call – February 27, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Blue Ridge Mountains, near Asheville, NC – February 2023 photo by Andre Daugherty

Yesterday, Wrongo posted the Gallup Poll’s recent survey showing that 65% of Americans support continuing with the war in Ukraine, even if it’s a prolonged conflict. Staying the course in Ukraine requires us to think carefully about both the means of continuing to arm Ukraine, and also about the ends we hope to achieve once the fight is over.

The New Yorker’s David Remnick interviewed Russian historian Stephen Kotkin about how the war in Ukraine ends. Kotkin points out that the war is far from over, but we can look at how it might end:

“The Biden Administration has effectively defined victory from the American point of view as: Ukraine can’t lose this war. Russia can’t take all of Ukraine and occupy Ukraine, and disappear Ukraine as a state, as a nation.”

Kotkin thinks that from the Ukrainian viewpoint, victory has mostly to do with getting into the European Union:

“…that has to be the definition of victory: Ukraine gets into the European Union. If Ukraine regains all of its territory and doesn’t get into the EU, is that a victory? As opposed to: If Ukraine regains as much of its territory as it physically can on the battlefield, not all of it…but does get EU accession—would that be a definition of victory? Of course, it would be.”

Currently, we’re experiencing a war of attrition between Ukraine and Russia. In order to win this type of war, you have to out-produce your enemy’s weapons production.

But is that realistic? The US is the major supplier of arms to Ukraine, but we haven’t ramped up our production of the weapons we’re sending to Ukraine. Instead, we’re drawing down our supplies of armaments. More from Kotkin: (brackets by Wrongo)

“We haven’t ramped up industrial production at all. At peak, the Ukrainians were firing…upward of ninety thousand artillery shells a month. US monthly production of artillery shells is fifteen thousand. With all our allies thrown in, everybody in the mix who supports Ukraine, you get another fifteen thousand….So you can [produce] thirty thousand…artillery shells while expending ninety thousand a month. We haven’t ramped up…..We’re running out.”

So, can we actually provide the means to get to the ends Biden wants, or the ends that Ukraine wants? Not without doing something radically different than we’re doing now.

Politically, from here to the 2024 election we’ll see a debate about whether we should be in Ukraine at all. This debate will form a key element in who the Republicans select as their presidential nominee.

Mike Pence isn’t a first-level presidential candidate, but on Friday he rebuked fellow Republicans who have given less-than-robust support for America’s defense of Ukraine. On NBC, he lays out the classic Republican position clearly:

“…I would say anyone that thinks that Vladimir Putin will stop at Ukraine is wrong…”

NBC also quoted DeSantis: (brackets by Wrongo)

“An open-ended blank check [in Ukraine]…is…not acceptable…..Russia has been really, really wounded here and I don’t think that they are the same threat to our country, even though they’re hostile. I don’t think they’re on the same level as a China.”

The WSJ’s Kimberley Strassel writes that Trump intends to make limiting or ending the war in Ukraine a central element in his campaign. She quotes Trump:

“This thing has to stop, and it’s got to stop now…the US should negotiate peace between these two countries, and I don’t think they should be sending very much.”

Strassel thinks that Trump sees an opening to rally the part of his base that’s skeptical of military commitments abroad. So he, like Congressional Republicans are floating a false choice: A strong America globally or a strong America domestically:

“The GOP for more than 70 years has been the party of strong defense….Trump and a small group (at least for now) of congressional Republicans risk throwing all that hard-earned credibility away, neutralizing one of the party’s greatest strengths…”

Clearly there’s a developing split in the GOP over whether America should be backing the war or seeking immediate peace in Ukraine.

Regardless of Republican Party politics, don’t Ukrainians deserve the chance to try to win on the battlefield? Whether America is willing to ramp up its weapons production will partially answer that question. And whether we’re able to keep our eyes on the prize of a reunited NATO, a reunited EU, and a free Ukraine.

Time to wake up America! It seems possible that the Republican Party might shift to preferring a strong America domestically rather than a strong America globally.

That would be a political earthquake in our politics.

And how would the Democrats adjust? Their political brand is already pretty damaged among the White non-college educated in heartland America. Would the Dems become America’s military spending Party?

To help you wake up, listen to 1973’s “Live and Let Die” written by Paul and Linda McCartney, and performed live by McCartney:

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 19, 2023

(Wrongo and Ms. Right are sending healing thoughts to friend and blog reader Gloria R.)

There was a small article in the NYT saying that European gas prices had dropped to pre-Ukraine war levels:

“On Friday, the European benchmark price of gas fell below 50 euros ($53) per megawatt-hour for the first time since late 2021. Prices spiked above €300 per megawatt-hour in mid-2022, as Russia curtailed gas exports to Europe after its invasion of Ukraine.”

This isn’t what economists forecasted as the mid-winter energy situation in Europe, which all of a sudden has too much natural gas. It seems Russian gas isn’t indispensable to Europe. Natural gas is, but not necessarily Russian gas. Of course, the mild European winter was a big factor. And regional natural-gas inventories, which are at about 65% capacity, on average, are at their highest levels in years, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

Russia and its gas company Gazprom spent decades building the European (and specifically) the German market. The cost was the building of massive infrastructure to move their gas to Europe. Then Russia pissed it all away last February.

At great cost, they’ll eventually build new infrastructure to move all that gas to Asia and elsewhere. On to cartoons.

America has been reduced to this:

Or is it this?

Nikki says we need younger politicians:

Why the balloon story doesn’t go away:

More about America’s sickness:

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Saturday Soother – January 21, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Round Bald summit, TN, looking towards NC – January 2023 photo by Tim Lewis. Those are some very blue Blue Ridge Mountains.

From the NYT:

“Western defense officials on Friday failed to reach an agreement on exporting German – or American -made battle tanks to Ukraine, setting back Ukraine’s hopes of quickly getting weapons it sees as crucial to its defense against an expected new Russian offensive.”

This is the fractured state of play in NATO’s support for Ukraine. Despite a statement signed by nine other NATO allies saying they were willing to participate in a coalition of German-made Leopard 2 tank donors.

Germany has not yet decided whether to allow Leopard 2 tanks to be sent to Ukraine. The NYT also reports that German Chancellor Mr. Scholz has insisted Berlin would not send any of its own Leopard tanks unless the US also sends its M1 Abrams tanks. However, the Biden administration thinks that the M1 Abrams tanks – which run on jet fuel and require frequent maintenance and spare parts — would be difficult to position in eastern Ukraine, where supply lines could be cut off easily.

Germany’s reluctance may be due to polling that shows a sharp division among Germans over sending battle tanks to Ukraine. This is despite widespread support by Germans for providing other weapons. Some think this is also a byproduct of its legacy of blitzkrieg tank warfare in World War II.

This is big since Ukraine’s senior military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, has said his forces need about 300 Western tanks to make a difference in the battles for fiercely contested cities and towns in the eastern provinces of Ukraine that border Russia.

It’s clear that more and newer tanks are crucial in pushing back Russian forces. The Leopard 2 would help offset Russia’s superiority in artillery firepower. They would be of even greater value as the war begins its second year next month, and Ukraine needs to fight against a Russian spring counteroffensive.

OTOH, Britain has agreed to send to Ukraine 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks, and 30 artillery guns in a move it made at least in part to encourage other NATO countries to donate their own tanks.

There are clear advantages for deploying the Leopard 2: There are many in Europe (about 2,000). They are easy to move to Ukraine. The logistics and maintenance would be easier, as would providing  supplies, spare parts, and training.

But the US and Germany are dithering because they remain concerned about the possible escalation of the Ukraine War into a larger conflict. Any conflict between Russia and NATO powers has the potential to devolve into a nuclear war. And no one wants to see tactical nuclear weapons used on any battlefield.

While it’s useful to exercise caution, we crossed the escalation bridge when we sent the HIMARS precision-guided missiles to Ukraine. Give the tanks to Ukraine!

On to our Saturday Soother, where we will try to forget that Rep. George Santos (R-NY) is denying that he ever appeared in drag, even though there is a YouTube video of him in a dress and makeup at Carnival in Rio.

Sorry to put that image in your mind but try to relax for a few minutes and think about the great David Crosby who died on Thursday. Crosby was a notorious dickhead who got kicked out of every band he ever played with. After The Byrds, he teamed up with Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills and The Hollies’ Graham Nash to form Crosby, Stills & Nash. And later, Neil Young was added, making the group, CSNY.

By the end of his life, no member of CSNY would speak to him, despite Crosby’s efforts late in life to apologize to each of them. There’s a lesson to take from this. Evaluate your relationships. If something’s wrong or missing with the people who are important to you, do something about it before it’s too late.

Crosby wasn’t the primary singer or the main songwriter of the Byrds or of the CSN or CSNY songs that became mega-folk rock classics. But he was a superhumanly gifted harmony singer whose voice was the Super Glue of these groups.

It’s clear that the 2020s decade will see many of the remaining icons of the 1960s music scene leave us. Crosby, who received a liver transplant nearly 30 years ago (paid for by Phil Collins) is not someone Wrongo would have predicted to even make it this far.

Two ways to remember Crosby. Wrongo and Ms. Right strongly recommend “David Crosby: Remember My Name” a 2017 documentary in which Cameron Crowe interviews him.

One great song that Crosby wrote was on CSN’s 1970 album, “Déjà vu”. Listen to “Almost Cut My Hair”:

There are lots of dickheads in the music industry. Despite that it’s surprising how much good music gets made.

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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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