The View from Right Field

Thoughts of One and a Half Dozen of the Other*

It’s getting hard to write longer posts these days, so here are some short thoughts that I wish I could develop further but haven’t been able to get to:

• Re Ukraine: Joe Biden is doing a pretty good job, certainly better than either of his predecessors (especially Barack Obama, who wouldn’t even sell antitank weapons to Ukraine after Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Donbas in 2014).  But President Biden could be doing better.  We need to sell/give the Ukrainians more weapons and more powerful weapons.  The best, and quickest, way to end the war is for Ukraine to win.  Let’s help them do it – now.

• Given all the weapons we are shipping to Ukraine, we need to replenish, and build up, our own inventories.  That means spending more money on defense – and committing to do it for an extended period of time.

Supporting Taiwan With Military Preparedness, Not Just Words and Visits

In The Wall Street Journal’s editorial yesterday about Nancy Pelosi’s speakerships and the lessons the GOP can learn from them, the Journal gave Speaker Pelosi due credit for “believ[ing] in American freedom” and visiting both Ukraine and Taiwan this year.  However, as Walter Russell Mead said at the time of her trip to Taiwan in August:

“Mrs. Pelosi is sincere in her support for Taiwan …. But to make that support effective, she should have beat the drum for the past 15 years for greater military preparedness even if this meant larger defense appropriations.”

Are the Sanctions Against Russia Working?

The Economist asked this question in its August 27 issue.  The answer was equivocal:

“On a three- to five-year horizon isolation from Western markets will cause havoc in Russia. …

The trouble is that the knockout blow has not materialised. Russia’s GDP will shrink by 6% in 2022, reckons the IMF, much less than the 15% drop many expected in March, or the slump in Venezuela. Energy sales will generate a current-account surplus of $265bn this year, the world’s second-largest after China. After a crunch, Russia’s financial system has stabilised ….

It turns out the sanctions weapon has flaws.” 

Helping Europe Stand Up to Putin’s Blackmail – Is Helping Us, Too

Chris Giles wrote in the Financial Times last Wednesday on how Europe could withstand a Russian cutoff of natural gas deliveries this winter.¹  Basically, it requires product substitution (products requiring lots of natural gas in their production should be made elsewhere), more coal needs to be used for power in the short run, Germany needs to not shut down their three remaining nuclear power plants, etc.  Starting in January, ships that can liquify liquid natural gas (LNG) for Germany will go online. 

Which got me thinking: What are we doing to help out in this situation?  If LNG can help, what are we doing to increase our exports of LNG?  Obviously, we should have already been doing things like this, but it’s not too late to start now.  We just need to hurry.  We need to not get caught up in permitting delays and environmentalist objections.  This is a war.  We need to do what is necessary to win it.  It won’t take that long.  Maybe a year or two.  We can still meet our environmental goals.  But right now, we need to not let Vladimir Putin get away with blackmail and intimidation – and war.²
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¹ Chris Giles. “Europe can withstand a winter recession,” Financial Times, August 10, 2022.  (Behind the FT paywall.)
² In any case, anybody who thinks Vladimir Putin cares about climate change is silly.

Pelosi, Biden, and Taiwan – Part 2

I wrote here about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.  Among other things I asked whether Secretary Pelosi planned her trip without talking to President Biden, or at least to his people, first? Well, apparently she did – or at least that is what one of the panelists in the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ “World Review with Ivo Daalder” said last Friday.¹  More specifically, they said that Speaker Pelosi (or her people) told President Biden (or his people) that she would not go to Taiwan if he asked her not to.  But here is the kicker: Speaker Pelosi also told the President that if she did not go to Taiwan at his request, she would have to publicly say why she wasn’t going. 

The panelists all sort of passed over this comment, but I think it is pretty big.  It seems to me that Speaker Pelosi was basically threatening the President: If you tell me not to go, you’re going to get all the blame and you are going to look weak to the American people.²

Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan – and Joe Biden

So, was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan a good idea?  I don’t know,¹ though once the visit was leaked and China objected so vociferously, she had to go.  Still, the visit raises all kinds of questions.  Here is one I had: I find Joe Biden’s comments last month criticizing the trip and saying the Defense Department was worried about the trip, more than a little bizarre.  Speaker Pelosi and President Biden are both Democrats.  I am sure Speaker Pelosi knows how to reach President Biden when she wants to talk to him.  I am sure he picks up the phone when she calls.  Did this mean Secretary Pelosi planned her trip without talking to President Biden, or at least to his people, first?  That would truly be bizarre. 

Let’s Use the Defense Production Act – To Produce Stuff for Defense

The Defense Production Act was passed in September of 1950 to enable the President, by executive order, to order businesses to accept and prioritize contracts deemed necessary for our national defense.  Recently, President Trump used the DPA to, among other things, order General Motors to make ventilators for Covid.  (At the time, the experts said we needed more ventilators.  We wound up needing fewer than the experts thought would be necessary, but that happens sometimes.)

President Biden has used the DPA for numerous things, too, including fire hose and baby formula.

Where Do We Get Our Purposes From? Business, Government – Or Ourselves

The following letter to the editor, which appears in the Financial Times on May 16, 2022, relates to a column by Brooke Masters in the FT of May 12, 2022, entitled “Profits not purpose still dominate at Volkswagen”:

Brooke Masters notes that Herbert Diess, Volkswagen chief executive, has called for a quick end to the Russian war against Ukraine (not that he calls it that), in order to “get back to trying to open up the world again”.  As Ms. Masters says, “[p]rofit not purpose is his priority”.

Ukraine: What Is the US Doing; Is It Enough; How Do We Know?

I try to follow what is going on in Ukraine, including what the United States is doing to help Ukraine and whether we need to do more.  I read articles.  I listen to panel discussions and podcasts.  And I get confused.

Consider whether the US is providing enough military aid to Ukraine and whether we are providing the right military aid.  In a panel discussion Friday morning sponsored by the Atlantic Council, Gen. Philip Breedlove (ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said this about what we are providing (these are my words, not direct quotes):

Gaffes, Red Lines, and Credibility

[This is a follow up and elaboration on my post of March 26, 2022.¹ ]

In the 2020 presidential election, I didn’t vote for Joe Biden even though I wanted Donald Trump to lose.  I couldn’t bring myself to vote for President Biden because, as Robert Gates said in 2014, “I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”^2,3  Fortunately, I live in Illinois, so my vote was not necessary for President Biden to win Illinois’s electoral votes. 

Which brings me to President Biden’s recent “gaffe tour” of Europe.  Michel Kinsley famously defined a gaffe as “when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say."  President Biden gave us two great examples of this on his trip.  First, he said, apparently unscripted, that Vladimir Putin was a “war criminal.”  That is probably true, but how is it helpful?  We need to get the war in Ukraine over.  How does making Vladimir Putin think he might be prosecuted as a war criminal help do that?⁴