US/Russia Relationship – Page 2

The Mess That Is Congress

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Henry Driggers Park, Brunswick, GA – December 2023 photo by Kyle Morgan

“Dress me up for battle when all I want is peace
Those of us who pay the price come home with the least”

(from 1976’s “Harvest for the World”, by the Isley Brothers)

There are only 11 days left until Christmas, and there are only three more days this year when the Senate is in session, and just two days left for the House. That schedule could be amended and lengthened if both Houses can reach agreement on anything before they break this Friday.

Prime among the legislation that should/must pass is aid for Ukraine. And Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy’s in Washington to try to help turn a few politicians to help. From the WaPo:

“The visit — less than three months after Zelenskyy’s last trip to Washington — comes at a critical time for the supplemental appropriations bill….Republicans have demanded that the package include border policy changes, and some Democrats criticized the White House on Monday for being willing to give up too much in those negotiations after Biden said he was willing to agree to “significantly more” to strike a deal.”

Biden says he’s willing to deal, but Congress seems very likely to leave for the holidays without passing any new Ukraine package. From David Frum in The Atlantic:

“The ostensible reason is that they want more radical action on the border than the Biden administration has offered. The whole aid package is now stalled, with potentially catastrophic consequences for Ukraine. Ukrainian units are literally running out of ammunition.”

“How is any of this happening? On past evidence, a clear majority of Senate Republicans sincerely want to help Ukraine. Probably about half of House Republicans do too. In a pair of procedural test votes in September, measures to cut or block aid to Ukraine drew, respectively, 104 and 117 Republican votes of the 221 (Republicans then) in the caucus.”

Biden’s offer to negotiate with Republicans about the border is meaningful. The fundamental reason for today’s border crisis is that would-be immigrants game the asylum system. The system is overwhelmed by the numbers claiming asylum. Most of those claims will ultimately be rejected, but the processing of each takes years. In the meantime, most asylum seekers will be released into the US.

Biden’s proposal is $14 billion of additional funding that would pay for 1,600 new staff in the asylum system. New hires can speed up the process, reducing the incentive for asylum claimants who get de facto US residency while their claim is pending.

But are Republicans willing to negotiate? It doesn’t seem like they are. The Republicans in the Senate’s position is stated by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) who said:

“There’s a misunderstanding on the part of Senator Schumer….This is not a traditional negotiation, where we expect to come up with a bipartisan compromise on the border. This is a price that has to be paid in order to get the supplemental.”

This is 2023: For some Republicans, what matters isn’t what they get, but how they get it.

That’s also true in the House where Speaker Johnson (R-Bible) told Zelenskyy that the US southern border should come first in negotiations with Democrats over aid for Ukraine.

Clearly the Republican House members are in it to strike poses and television hits. They do not want to make deals. They each want to position themselves as the one true conservative too pure for dealmaking. The only things they’re willing to admit they want are the things they know to be impossible.

It’s a complicated situation, because House Republicans have one set of immigration demands while Republicans in the Senate refuse to say what their demands are.

This means Biden has to make a deal that Senate Democrats won’t want. Otherwise we’re headed to a “no” that will doom Ukraine and disgrace the US in the eyes of the world while doing nothing to remedy the crisis at the border.

If Congressional leadership was ever needed, it’s needed today.

Jon V. Last in the Bulwark lists the two real-world reasons for Biden to give in. First, that Ukraine is more important than our domestic immigration policy:

“The war is a finite event, the results of which will influence global economics and security for years and decades to come. Depending on the outcome, NATO will either congeal or fracture. Peace and security in Europe will either stabilize or destabilize. China will either be deterred or encouraged in its quest to subjugate Taiwan.”

Second, immigration is a perennial challenge for America. Even if we “solved” current immigration problems today, next year, we’d have more immigration problems to re-solve:

“Immigration does need reform. Huge sections of the system are broken, the humanitarian crisis at the border is real, and there are some areas where Democrats and Republicans have similar views of which reforms are needed.”

Jon Last also points out that there are good political reasons for Biden to make a deal. First, a deal makes Republicans co-owners of the border problem. For Republicans, immigration is like abortion: It’s not an issue they want to solve; it’s a political club they want to wield.

Second, Biden can paint Republicans as anti-Ukraine even after making an immigration deal. He can say that Republicans didn’t want to fund Ukraine (which polls well with voters) so he had to take action to make sure they didn’t hand Putin a victory.

Third, an immigration deal shores up Biden’s position with Hispanic and swing voters. Immigration is a very important issue to voters and large majorities of them disapprove of Biden’s immigration policies.

Fourth, Biden can then reinforce his 2024 narrative that the election is a choice between governing, or chaos. He’s going to try to disqualify Trump and make 2024 a contest between a workhorse who gets bipartisan compromises done and a chaos agent who burns everything down.

JV Last says:

“Cutting a deal on immigration in order to get aid to Ukraine lets Biden say (a) “I’m the guy who gets business done by doing bipartisan compromise,” but also (b) “If you don’t like this deal, Democratic voters, then we have to win back the House.”

Good thinking from Last.

Wrongo has generally steered clear of debates over immigration and the Wall because they have a high noise to signal ratio, and neither side is always great on the facts.

It’s curious: You would assume that all Republicans should be pounding on their Congressional representatives to increase the number of immigration judges immediately! But they aren’t since that would conflict with their idea of shrinking the administrative state. They shouldn’t be able to have it both ways.

One way to cut illegal immigration down would be to crack down on foreign remittances. Most immigrants are sending money back home to help the rest of their families survive. If remittances required an ID card that only citizens or those with a valid visa could obtain, remittances would fall.

All we can do now is hope for cooler heads to make a deal before year end.

Are Drones Replacing Artillery As “The King Of Battle”?

The Daily Escape:

First Snow, Cedar Breaks NM, UT – October 2023 photo by Dawn A. Flesher

America is all a-twitter over whether we are going to continue to fund Ukraine. The basic argument NOT to fund them going forward is how expensive it is, and how the money could be better used at home. Paul Krugman disputes this:

“In the 18 months after the Russian invasion, US aid totaled $77 billion. That may sound like a lot. It is a lot compared with the tiny sums we usually allocate to foreign aid. But total federal outlays are currently running at more than $6 trillion a year, or more than $9 trillion every 18 months, so Ukraine aid accounts for less than 1% of federal spending (and less than 0.3% of GDP. The military portion of that spending is equal to less than 5% of America’s defense budget.”

Wrongo isn’t saying that $77 billion is chump change. But if the MAGA types making the argument to spend it at home instead of in Ukraine would actually agree to increasing social spending with it, they’d have a solid argument. But that’s doubtful. It’s difficult to see them agreeing to spending anywhere near that level to improve the economic distress of America’s middle class and poor.

One thing that thinking about this expense highlights is just how expensive our military hardware has become. Take the F-35 fighter jet, which cost about $80,000,000 each. Air and Cosmos International reports that the maintenance costs for the F-35 are $42,000 per flight hour. And it’s reported that only about 26% of all F-35s are “available” at any point in time, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

It’s maybe an unfair comparison but think about how many drones Ukraine could purchase with one hour’s operating expense of one F-35, or with one of the bombs it carries, which cost about $500,000 each. One hour of F-35 operating expense equals about seven switchblade drones. The smallest Switchblade model fits in a backpack and flies directly into targets to detonate its small warhead. Each F-35 bomb’s cost is equivalent to around 90 drones.

America’s military strategy is based on air superiority, followed by massive bombing sorties and artillery fire. The big lesson in Ukraine is that piloted aircraft have been mostly irrelevant. Russia has many more and newer aircraft, and although they’ve bombed much of Ukraine, they haven’t gained an advantage as a result. Basically they’re using jets to launch missiles from positions beyond the range of Ukraine’s Stinger and Patriot missile systems.

Similarly, Russia’s navy hasn’t been decisive vs. Ukraine. Russia has the advantage at sea, while Ukraine’s ancient fleet is bottled up. But Ukraine is managing to ship (some) grain because the Russian navy is hiding from Ukraine’s cheap naval drones.

Ukraine isn’t breaking through Russia’s lines because its military, like Russia’s military, isn’t fit for the purpose. The artillery-based stalemate on the ground would favor Ukraine if it wasn’t for the in-depth layering of land mines by the Russians in the Ukrainian territory that the Ukies are trying to retake.

The days when Russia could advance into Ukraine under a screen of artillery fire, as they did during the first summer of the war, are over. Ukraine is the one advancing now. From Mark Sumner:

“Over the past several months, Russia tried to make advances at Svatove, quickly capturing a series of villages. That attack fizzled within days, and a week later Ukraine recaptured all the territory it had lost. Something similar happened at Kupyansk, where Russia was reportedly massing over 100,000 troops to drive Ukraine back across the Oskil River. Ukraine is still on the east side of the Oskil, and still in Kupyansk.”

At the moment, Ukraine appears capable of successfully capturing areas it targets and holding them against subsequent Russian assaults.

That’s not to say that the militaries built by the US, NATO, China and Russia are useless. Obviously, they have great value. But it’s clear how capital intensive warfare has become. Ukraine is showing us that there is an evolution in military tactics underway right in front of us.

In Ukraine, drones—both aerial and aquatic—have reached a critical mass. They are demonstrating widespread capabilities that make some traditional weapons systems take on more limited roles. And the immediate future in the Ukraine/Russian war will be drone warfare.

Any military in the world will become somewhat obsolete particularly in a land war, without a robust drone and anti-drone program. All are working feverishly to get there. Except perhaps for Turkey, who’s Bayraktar drones are already exported to both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war.

In Ukraine, drones have redefined the front lines. Before, we generally regarded the front line as the area where the infantry of both sides were engaged. But if soldiers with drones and a smart phone can project force sufficient to stop a tank 4-5 miles away, and then pick up another $1,000± drone and do it again a few minutes later, where’s the real front line?

This and more can be done with precision weapons like HIMARS at even greater ranges. But that requires more expense, more setup, and greater levels of support. There’s a vast logistical train behind a weapon like a mobile HIMARS launcher.

Going back to Napoleonic times, artillery has always been called “the king of battle”, because there’s no real defense against it once it’s firing. But this old artillery officer can tell you that it comes with those pesky logistics problems and much more expense and training.

In contrast, what’s needed to support a DJI quadcopter is in the hands of the operator. Early in the war, drones were performing roles that formerly were played by traditional aircraft. Now they’re also performing the roles of artillery and mortars. They are precision systems that deliver value at not just a lower price, but with fewer burdens of transport, maintenance, and training.

Like Ukraine, Russia has a lot to gain from drones since they bypass the two things that Russia does badly: logistics and training. You don’t need to get a million shells to the front lines if you can get a hundred thousand drones—and better than half of them will hit their target.

Drones can’t replace much more of the military equipment in the field, because the legacy equipment still has a big edge in both range and destructive power. But the cost-benefit ratio of drones is incredibly favorable. As battery technology continues to improve, the destructive power of drones will go up without significant incremental development cost.

What we’re seeing in Ukraine is the 2020s version of the asymmetric warfare that killed us in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Guerilla tactics on their home turf were more valuable than all of our expensive weapons systems.

And Russia is getting their ass kicked by the same kind of asymmetry in Ukraine today.

(Many thanks to Brendan K. for his input to this column)

Henry Kissinger’s Reputation

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Flaming Gorge Reservoir Recreation Area, UT – August 2023 photo by Doreen Lawrence. The Gorge is the largest reservoir on the Green River.

Welcome to your Monday wakeup call! Wrongo has lived a long life, but he’s still 20 years younger than Henry Kissinger. Kissinger turned 100 in May. When Wrongo was in his late teens, he was protesting against the war in Vietnam. At that point, Kissinger was already a foreign policy advisor to the failed presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller.

He would go on to become Nixon’s national security adviser and Secretary of State, a crucial figure overseeing the conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, that many say included war crimes. Kissinger was never indicted, but Anthony Bourdain wrote the following about Kissinger in his 2001 book “A Cook’s Tour”:

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia—the fruits of his genius for statesmanship—and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.”

But unlike other possible US war criminals like Reagan and Nixon, Kissinger has never needed to rehabilitate his reputation. As Rebecca Gordon says:

“….despite his murderous rap sheet, the media and political establishment has always fawned over him.”

Kissinger is remembered for his initiative to open diplomatic relations between the US and China in 1972, though full normalization of relations with China would not occur until 1979.

Kissinger’s second innovation was inventing the for-profit third act of a public service career. Before him, former foreign policy principals usually wrote a memoir, gave the occasional foreign policy speech, and maybe became head of a nonprofit.

But Kissinger pioneered a for-profit third act in 1982 when he and Brent Scowcroft founded Kissinger Associates (with the help of a loan from the international banking firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus) to offer advisory services to corporate clients. Kissinger’s prime selling point was that he had access to the corridors of power, not only in Washington, but in Beijing and Moscow.

Wrongo started out being a fanboy, having read Kissinger’s 1957 book “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” while in high school. It criticized the Eisenhower Administration’s “massive retaliation” nuclear doctrine. It also caused much controversy at the time by proposing the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis to win wars. Once Wrongo was running a tactical nuclear missile base in the mid-1960s, he was no longer a fan.

Wrongo met Kissinger in the mid-1980s at an event hosted by David Rockefeller at his Pocantico Hills estate. HK was walking his dog, a particularly obstreperous Golden Retriever. Wrongo asked “What’s the dog’s name?” Kissinger replied: “Madman”. Could there be a more perfect name for a Kissinger family pet?

Kissinger provided advice, both formal and informal, to every president from Eisenhower to Trump (though apparently, not yet to Biden). His fingers are all over the foreign policies of both major Parties. And in all those years, no “serious” American news outlet ever reminded the world of Kissinger’s long history of bloody intervention in other countries.

In fact, as his hundredth birthday approached, he was fawned over in an interview with PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff. From Rebecca Gordon:

“Fortunately, other institutions have not been so deferential. In preparation for Kissinger’s 100th, the National Security Archive, a center of investigative journalism, assembled a dossier of some of its most important holdings on his legacy.”

A third thing that Kissinger is associated with is the use of the concept of “Realpolitik” in foreign policy. It means conducting diplomatic policies based primarily on considerations of the reality on the ground, rather than strictly following ideology or moral and ethical premises.

Realpolitik has come to mean something quite different in the US: It is associated not with “what is” but with “what ought to be” on the ground. In Kissinger’s realpolitik, actions are good only when they sustain and advance American strategic power. Any concern for human beings that stand in the way, or for the law and the Constitution, are not legitimate.

Ukraine War Reveals Our Broken Military Supply Chain

The Daily Escape:

Archangel Falls, Zion NP, UT – August 2023 photo by Torsten Hartmann Photography

The most important thing we’ve learned from the Ukraine War is that the US isn’t ready for a protracted war. One of the big reasons why, as The Insider says, America no longer builds weapons the way it used to. And we need to start building weapons again at tempo.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has drawn a similar conclusion about US weapons manufacturing: There is no surge capacity and it will take years to revive it. According to their study, replacing the inventory of the critical items used in Ukraine, like 155 millimeter artillery shells, will take 4-7 years; Javelin missiles will take 8 years to replace; Stinger missiles 18 years. Before the Ukraine War broke out, the US was producing only about 14,000 155mm shells per year, enough for two days of fighting in Ukraine at current usage rates.

This scramble for ammunition reflects how ill-prepared the US and its allies are to sustain an intense and/or protracted land war.

Think back to America’s weapons building capabilities during World War II. We became an industrial powerhouse, cranking out warships and aircraft at a breakneck pace. One example: The Navy built ships in just weeks — its fleet grew from just 700 to over 6,000 over the course of the war.

The US maintained this capacity for decades but, as The Insider reports:

“Nowadays, it might take years to build a US Navy ship. The reasons for this are complex — shifted priorities, increased technology on board…labor costs — but the effect is clear: In a high-intensity conflict, the US would face challenges in not only producing vessels but also repairing any ships damaged in battle.”

These aren’t the only weapons that are in short supply. The Pentagon issued a study in April on the contraction of our Defense Contracting industry, which went from 52 primary contractors in the 1990s down to just six today. (full disclosure: Wrongo owns what is for him, a substantial number of shares in one of the six companies.)

During Clinton’s presidency, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Defense Secretary Bill Perry convened defense industry CEOs (known in the industry as the “last supper”) and told them that they should not assume production contracts would be maintained at Cold War levels, and they needed to diversify to survive. Many of the companies got out of defense production, and those that remained merged to secure market share of what became dwindling orders from the Pentagon.

This insured that US weapons suppliers wouldn’t be ready for a future that included China’s defense spending surge, the Russia-China strategic partnership, or today’s war in Ukraine.

Now, the Pentagon is revisiting whether industry consolidation has gone too far.

The WSJ reports that today, the industrial base of defense vendors is about 55,000 companies, down from 69,000 in 2016, and many of them are small firms. This smaller base has become a choke point as shortages of labor, chips, rocket motors and other components are stymieing efforts to boost arms production. The WSJ quotes Halimah Najieb-Locke, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense in charge of industrial-base issues, that the Pentagon:

“…is increasingly reliant on a smaller number of contractors for these critical capabilities….That impacts everybody’s ability to ramp production.”

These supply chain issues also dog the global arms manufacturing industry. US companies hold the first five spots in the top 10 ranking of arms sales, with China taking another four. The consolidated sales of the top five have fallen since the start of the Ukraine War.

Having this paradoxical slowdown in sales amid an increase in demand speaks to the larger challenges of a defense contractor base that is geared to peacetime production. The Defense Department has a role in this failure, since they rarely award contracts for multiyear procurements beyond current requirements. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown said that the military hasn’t focused enough on keeping a steady flow of munitions production and procurement:

“In some cases, because you don’t have a threat on your doorstep, munitions aren’t…high on our priority list…”

Making the age-old point that sometimes, “just in time” isn’t. More from the WSJ: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Lockheed and second-ranked Raytheon Technologies Corp. jointly produce…Javelin antitank missiles, but they expect it will take two years to double output that is now at around 400 a month.”

“Greg Hayes, chief executive at Raytheon, said that Ukraine has burned through five years of Javelin production since February and 13 years’ worth of Stinger antiaircraft missiles.”

Aerojet Rocketdyne is an example of a small but crucial cog in the defense industry. It builds the rocket motors used in the Javelin and Stinger missiles deployed in Ukraine. Labor and supplier issues have delayed its deliveries of rocket motors. Raytheon, who makes the Javelin along with Lockheed, said it will be 2024 before Aerojet catches up with engine orders.

The US is also facing a nearly $19 billion backlog in arms sales to Taiwan. Control of the Pacific would be a crucial part of any war with China, and Beijing has the world’s largest navy. According to a 2022 Pentagon report, the country has about 340 ships and submarines. The US, meanwhile, has fewer than 300 warships. Despite that, the US is committed to growing its fleet. Its number of ships is expected to increase to 350 by the 2040s.

To keep up with China, the US will need to build more ships and submarines more quickly. But it has a smaller number of shipyards and a skilled-labor shortage.

All of this will take money, billions of it. But we’re already first in the world’s defense spending. The worst military equipment is equipment that isn’t unavailable when it’s needed. That is not to say that the Defense Contractors should be given a blank check, but we are in dangerous times.

The US spends more on national defense than the next ten countries combined. Defense spending accounts for 12% of all federal spending and nearly half of US discretionary spending. The Defense Contractors are floating on a sea of profits from their captured Pentagon customer.

But is it better to spend extra dollars to have weapons inventory on hand than pay the much higher political cost of a military failure? Can those dollars be found within the existing defense budget rather than by adding to it? From a strategic viewpoint, shouldn’t we build capacity in peacetime when we don’t yet need it (while hoping never to), so that if the US does need it, the capital assets are in place?

The real issue is the stop/start government procurement process. We saw this in N95 mask sourcing, where domestic suppliers downsized over the years to a point where they couldn’t meet the surge in demand when Covid hit. After they ramped up, the government walked away from them when mask mandates ended.

This is also true in defense. Over the last 25 years, Congress has passed more than 120 Continuing Resolutions to fund the Pentagon instead of annual appropriations bills. With Continuing Resolutions comes chronic uncertainty for companies about when they’ll get paid, or when they can proceed to a new phase of weapons development or production.

Nothing is forcing the DOD to only do business with a small group of contractors (other than no one else bids on the contracts because the DOD won’t award to them). The issue is a shrinking domestic manufacturing base, and a lack of sustained business in the defense sector to support a larger field of competitors.

Market forces require efficiency. Sadly, efficiency comes at the cost of resiliency. National security priorities should deal with the stop/start issues that face our defense industry. In 2020, the National Defense Industrial Association’s report on the readiness of the Defense Industrial Base said 27% of critical defense supplier industries would likely experience shortages in the event of a surge in demand for combat-essential products.

And two years later, it happened in Ukraine.

Over the longer term, the US should develop an industrial reserve policy that pays companies to maintain excess capacity, such as warehousing critical, long lead-time parts. Much of today’s production challenges could be easily resolved by giving selected weapons or weapons systems a “protected” status, making them outside of the usual DOD acquisition and contracting rules that limit the flexibility and commitment needed to ensure a continuous production line.

This strategy would be expensive. But Russia’s war in Ukraine has reinforced the necessity of maintaining a deep inventory of weapons which we no longer have today. And it’s no longer a question of whether the US industrial base is prepared to rapidly surge production. It’s clear that we are not, because the necessary investments have not been made.

(hat tip to Brendan K. for his useful insights for this article)

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

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.

Thoughts About Blowing Up The Ukrainian Dam

The Daily Escape:

Ray Wells Dune Shack, Provincetown, MA – June 2023 photo by Sarah E. Devlin. The shack is one of the largest of the historic dune shacks on the Outer Cape. It is made available for two weeks at a time through a combination of juried artist awards and a lottery system for members of the Peaked Hill Trust, a nonprofit group.

Have you been following the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam and power plant in the Russian-held part of Ukraine? Wrongo is still a little numb about the magnitude of what’s happened.

The dam is about 100 feet high and two miles across, and it holds back more than four cubic miles of water at its peak capacity. The reservoir is nearly 120 miles long. It had the only remaining roadway across the Dnipro River. The dam was also a source of hydroelectric power for the region. The dam was close to peak capacity when it gave way. In May, the water in the reservoir rose so high that it over topped the dam, apparently because the sluice gates couldn’t be opened by the Russians.

After weathering months of Russian air attacks on its energy infrastructure with missiles, bombs, and drones, blowing the dam has caused a permanent loss of electrical generation capacity of 357 Megawatts, or 1.4 Terawatt-hours per year. And Ukraine isn’t in a position to be giving up any sources of electricity. The cost of rebuilding it will be enormous and take years.

Both the Ukrainians and the Russians are blaming each other for the dam’s destruction. But as Yale’s Timothy Snyder says:

“Avoid the temptation to begin the story of this manmade humanitarian and ecological catastrophe by bothsidesing it. That’s not journalism.”

Snyder also says this:

“…is a humanitarian disaster that, had it not taken place within a war zone, would already have drawn enormous international assistance. Thousands of houses are flooded and tens of thousands of people are in flight or waiting for rescue. Another consequence is ecological mayhem, among other things the loss of wetland and other habitats. A third is the destruction of Ukrainian farmland and other elements of the Ukrainian economy.”

“Whatever the immediate cause of the dam break, it would not have happened without Russia’s invasion, without Russia’s earlier explosion at the dam, without Russia’s mismanagement of the water flow.”

So the speculation about who did it isn’t nearly as important as looking at the economic and military effects of losing the dam and the subsequent flooding:

“The sudden release of 18 cubic kilometers of water, about the volume of the Great Salt Lake in the US, will sweep the Dnipro River’s banks and tributaries downstream, threatening 80 settlements with flooding, including part of the city of Kherson and much of the eastern bank of the Dnipro, which is occupied by Russia.”

Still, armies that are attacking don’t blow dams if it would block their path of advance. Armies that are retreating do blow dams to slow the advance of the other side. At the moment of the explosions at the dam, Ukraine was advancing, and Russia was retreating.

And the timing is more beneficial to Russia than it is to Ukraine because it closes off the possibility of attack from the west for a significant period of time.

Last year, many feared the Russians would blow the dam as they withdrew from Kherson, although that would have prevented water in the reservoir behind the dam from reaching Crimea. Crimea is chronically water-short, although its local reservoirs are currently at capacity. There is a canal that brings water directly from the dam to Crimea.

The dam’s destruction now forces the Ukrainian government to use resources to mitigate the damage instead of using them in their counteroffensive. Secondly, it eliminates a key vehicle crossing point over the river.

Militarily, blowing the dam protects Russia’s flank from possible incursions across the river at least until the resulting mud flats dry out. The breadth of the waterlogged areas will mean that Ukrainian forces will have to wait at least a few weeks during which Russian forces can regroup and/or redeploy to other locations.

It may be that Russia has made a purely military decision, sacrificing the long-term future of Crimea in exchange for a short-term gain vs. the Ukraine counteroffensive.

Have the Russians now fully entered a “scorched earth” phase of the war? The Crimean reservoirs are full, so there is no immediate danger to the drinking water supply, but the long term prospects for water in Crimea are now dim. Regardless of who wins this war, the dam and canal will take years to rebuild.

It’s really difficult to see a plausible story where Ukraine had both the means or motive to cause this disaster. If Ukraine had done this, it would have taken precision missile strikes. But local reports about the explosions said that they were underwater and possibly from inside the dam.

Some will argue that Ukraine could have infiltrated special forces to blow up the dam. But that’s something out of a movie plot, not real life.

People should remember that for the past 15 months Russia has been killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, whereas Ukraine has been trying to protect its people and the structures that keep them alive.

Putin Sanctions Some Of Trump’s Enemies

The Daily Escape:

Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains NP, TN- May 2023 photo by Melissa Russell

At the G7 conference in Japan, the Group of Seven (G7) countries announced new sanctions on Russia:

“In a statement, the G7 leaders said restrictions would cover exports of industrial machinery, tools and technology useful to Russia’s war effort, while efforts would be pursued to limit Russian revenues from trade in metals and diamonds…. The actions targeted Russia’s sanctions evasion, future energy revenues and military-industrial supply chains, with sanctions imposed on more than 300 targets on Friday.”

For America’s part, the Treasury imposed sanctions on 22 people and 104 entities in more than 20 countries, while the Department of State targeted almost 200 people, entities, vessels and aircraft.

The NYT reported that Russia had a response ready. Putin sanctioned some Americans:

“Among the 500 people singled out for travel and financial restrictions…were Americans seen as adversaries by Mr. Trump, including Letitia James, the state attorney general of New York who has sued him for alleged fraud, and Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel investigating his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents after leaving office.

Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia who rebuffed Mr. Trump’s pressure to “find” enough votes to reverse the outcome of the election, also made the list. So did Lt. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot the pro-Trump rioter Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021.”

Other prominent figures on Russia’s new list included Barack Obama and Rachel Maddow, as well as late-night television hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Myers. Newsweek quotes Swedish economist Anders Åslund, who wrote in the Kyiv Post:

“Needless to say, nobody from Fox News…is being sanctioned,”

But Newsweek also reported that Russia’s new list included a few Republicans: Senators Katie Britt of Alabama and JD Vance of Ohio, as well as Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

It’s kinda difficult to follow Putin’s thinking about the GOP politicians, but you can imagine Trump saying: “It’s a strong list. A perfect list. People were crying when they read it.”

The NYT added: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The Russian Foreign Ministry offered no specific explanation for why they would be included on the list but did say that among its targets were ‘those in government and law enforcement agencies who are directly involved in the persecution of dissidents in the wake of the so-called storming of the Capitol.’”

From MSNBC’s Steve Benen: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The use of the phrase ‘so-called storming,’…was unsubtle. The Kremlin isn’t just targeting Trump’s perceived domestic foes, Putin and his government are…embracing Trump’s preferred rhetorical framings about stories [Trump]….doesn’t like.”

Some context by Benen: (brackets by Wrongo)

“There’s…precedent for Russia imposing sanctions on prominent Americans who’ve criticized Vladimir Putin’s government. Nearly a decade ago…after Russia took Crimea, the Kremlin faced bipartisan condemnations in Washington, DC. Soon after, Moscow announced sanctions against Republicans [including] then-House Speaker John Boehner and then-Sen. John McCain, as well as several Democrats, including then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and then-Sen. Mary Landrieu.”

More: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…in each instance, [regarding Crimea] Russia’s sanctions at least made some sense: They targeted prominent American policymakers, each of whom had at least some role in US foreign policy, and each of whom had criticized Moscow’s policies to one degree or another.”

And as Peter Baker says in the NYT:

“…what is particularly striking is how much President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is adopting perceived enemies of former President Donald J. Trump as his own.”

When we think about the impact of the new Russian sanctions, it seems that banning Americans from entering Russia in 2023 is a bit like a mother banning her kid from eating kale.

Not allowing NY’s Attorney General, or Georgia’s AG, or the DOJ’s special counsel in the Trump investigations, Jack Smith to enter Russia isn’t going to do anything to help Russia hold on to Ukrainian territory they have seized. From Martin Longman:

“By a simple process of elimination it’s clear that the strategy is to help Donald Trump win the presidency, which they expect would disrupt America’s ability to support Ukraine.”

Putin must be taking the long view, since even if Trump is elected, he wouldn’t take office until January 2025. That’s a long time to wait for the western support for Ukraine to weaken.

And, of course, if the US defaults on its debt, which Trump has been urging Republicans to do, it would be a victory for Russia, possibly equal to anything they could ever hope to gain on the battlefield.

Saturday Soother – May 13, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Monument Valley, AZ – April 2023 panoramic photo by Rich Vintage Photography

The ripples from Trump’s appearance on CNN continue. Politico reports that: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Nearly under his breath….Trump said that he and…Putin “used to talk about” Moscow’s intention to launch [an] invasion in Ukraine.”

What’s Trump talking about? The invasion happened in February 2022, more than a year after Trump left office. In fact, Russia didn’t even begin massing troops on the Ukraine border until March 2021 while Trump was already at Mar-a-Lago. Russia’s troops were partially withdrawn by June 2021, although the military infrastructure was left in place. The second build-up began in October 2021, lasting until the invasion in February 2022.

Politico says that Trump mumbled at some point, that he and Putin discussed Russia’s intention to launch a second, larger incursion of Ukraine. Was Trump talking to Putin about a possible invasion of Ukraine after Trump left office? If so, what are the chances that Trump shared his news with Biden?

Today, let’s spend a bit more time on one of the reasons why we must rebuild our energy grid. Wolf Richter of Wolf Street writes that in 2022, electric vehicles (EVs) made their first visible dent in US gasoline consumption: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“Gasoline consumption in the US dipped by 0.4% in 2022…(vs.2021) to 369 million gallons per day…. below where it had been in 2002, and down by 5.7% from 2019, and by 5.9% from the peak in 2018, according to data from the Energy Department…”

Wolf reminds us that employment grew in 2022 by 4.8 million. And miles driven by all passenger and commercial vehicles, including those powered by diesel, ticked up nearly 1% to 3.17 trillion miles in 2022, according to the Federal Highway Administration:

Miles driven still haven’t recovered to 2019 levels (-2.8%). That’s probably due at least in part to reduced commuting during the Covid Work From Home times. Now, many office workers are either working from home entirely, or are going into the office on some days and working at home on others.

So the data show that the economy grew and people drove more miles, but they bought less gasoline:

The above chart shows the impact of the various recessions on gasoline consumption. The deep dip in 2020, and the 2021 recovery only brought gas consumption back to 2002 levels. Then they fell off again in 2022.

The question is why wasn’t there a further recovery in gas consumption from 2021 to 2022? One factor is the rising fuel economy of American vehicles. This started many years ago, and it continues today. But Richter says that the growth in ownership of EVs has dented US gasoline consumption:

“EV sales in 2022 grew to a share of about 7% of total new vehicle sales in the US. In California, EV sales in 2022 accounted for 17% of total sales. These numbers are starting to show up at the gas station as a decline in gasoline sales.”

Still a 7% share of market is small and for now, the impact on gasoline sales is also small in the US.

Another way to look at this is that while gas consumption declined, electricity sold to end-users in the US broke out of 15 years of stagnation and set a new record. The chart below shows that electric utilities have been a no-growth business for more than a decade, but now the volume of electricity sold is suddenly spiking:

Wrongo isn’t sure if these trends will continue, but continued growth in the number of EVs on America’s roads seems undeniable. EVs have lower energy costs and lower maintenance costs. That economic reality seems guaranteed to be sustained in the coming decades. The battery cost curve will continue to decline and the rare metals required in EV batteries are beginning to be helped by both new supply and changing battery chemistry.

Still, Wrongo isn’t a fan of EVs. Perhaps when EV charging stations become ubiquitous, he will reconsider. And there will be a place for the ICE engine for a very long time.

That’s enough for this week. It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we disconnect from the crisis du jour and spend a few relaxing moments before charging headfirst into whatever next week brings. Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we’re off to the garden store to find vegetable plants for our puny garden.

It looks like a beautiful weekend in the northeast, so grab a chair outside and watch and listen to Manuel De Falla’s Danza from “La Vida Breve” (Life is Short or The Brief Life). It is from Falla’s 1905 opera. Here it is performed live at the ancient Roman Theatre in Cartagena Spain, by Paola Requena and Isabel Martínez who perform as the Carmesí Guitar Duo:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 7, 2023

(The Monday Wake Up Call will be published on Tuesday this week.)

America has been waiting for more than a year for the Federal Reserve to get control over inflation. In that time, they’ve jacked up interest rates to over 5%. A year ago, raising rates that high seemed unthinkable, but here we are. Wages have also risen.

There was some damage: A few horribly managed banks collapsed. A couple of auto dealer-lender chains that specialized in selling overpriced used cars to subprime customers collapsed. And there were some fiascos in commercial real estate.

All of that has led the Fed to indicate that there could be a “soft landing” for our economy. But with the latest jobs growth numbers, maybe the Fed will have to keep circling the airport. In April, 253,000 jobs were created. There are now a record 155.7 million payroll jobs. Over the past 3 months on average, 222,000 jobs were created per month. So is a soft landing ahead?

Please raise your seat tables to the upright position and pass your trash to the attendant. On to cartoons.

Coronations aren’t just for the Brits:

(Wrongo watched the coronation of King Charles III yesterday. Seventy years ago, he also watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on a 9″ black & white Philco television. Yesterday’s was on a 55” Samsung.)

The reality about the GOP: