The View from Right Field

An Operation Warp Speed for Weapons and Ammunition?

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, while in Brussels earlier this week, that the West hopes better training will help Ukrainian forces to use less ammunition and artillery in defending against Russia’s attacks.  Russia is already using up to four times as many artillery shells as Ukraine, but somehow we think better training is the answer for Ukraine.¹  This is silly.  Better training is always good, but why can’t we get ammunition and artillery to Ukraine? 

It has been obvious since May or June of last year, if not before, that Ukraine needed ammunition and lots of it.  If we didn’t have enough, why weren’t we entering into contracts with suppliers last summer, so they could open plants, buy machinery, and hire workers to produce more ammunition?  If President Biden didn’t realize it, why didn’t the Pentagon tell him?

Helping Ukraine. Defending Taiwan. Talk Is Cheap. Actually Doing It Costs Money.

If you support Ukraine in its war with Russia, if you think the United States needs to defend Taiwan’s right to choose if it unites with China, then you need to support more money for defense.  The Russian attack on Ukraine is a new kind of war.  Actually, it’s not a new kind of war, but it is a kind of war that we have not seen for a long time.  It is a war of attrition, which means it is a war of weapons, supplies, and ammunition.

We are rapidly using up our inventories of all kinds of weapons and supplies in supporting Ukraine.  If we are going to continue to support Ukraine, we are going to need more of these things.  Right away.  And if we support the right of Taiwan to decide its own fate, we need to get supplies of these things to them – right away.  Plus, we need to replenish our own supplies because who knows where else trouble might arise.  There are countries and groups that might think now is a good time to take advantage.

Tanks for Ukraine. A Day Late and a Dollar Short Again? But It Could be Worse.

Ukraine is, at last, getting some tanks.  But consider how long it took for everybody to agree, and it’s going to what even longer for them to finally get delivered.  How much more could Ukraine have accomplished if they had gotten the tanks earlier.  But then, that seems to have been the story all along.  We’re always giving Ukraine weapons three or four months (or longer) after we should have.  We seem to be giving enough weapons to Ukraine so they can stop Russia from winning, but we never give them enough to actually get this war over with. 

There are lots of reasons people give for not giving Ukraine more weapons (and capabilities).  I’ll address two of them.  The first is that Vladimir Putin might escalate to nuclear weapons.  If that is the determining factor, then maybe we ought to stop giving any weapons to Ukraine, because otherwise we are just fighting to the last Ukrainian, without ever giving them a chance to win.  Is that fair?

The Holocaust and “Never Again”. I Wish It Were So, But It Isn’t.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, except people don’t.  After the Holocaust, the pledge was “Never Again” – except it happens again and again.  

Last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had an article on “The Communities That Risked Everything to Rescue Jews.”  It was a moving article about countries (Denmark, Albania), islands (Zakynthos, a Greek isle), and communities  (the Frenchtown of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon) who protected their Jews. 

But how many people are risking much of anything to protect others today.  Consider Rwanda in 1994.  Think of the “bug out” of Kabul in 2021.  And why did it take the U.S. and Germany so long to finally send tanks to Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin has been deliberately attacking civilians with rockets for months?  Some of those are not genocides (“genocide” is a word too easily thrown around today), but there are still innocent lives being lost that we could be doing something about.

But perhaps the most depressing thing on this Holocaust Remembrance Day may be the fact that the one thing uniting more and more of the far right and far left is hatred of Jews.

Tanks for Ukraine and a “Conversation” Between Biden and Scholz

We have a problem in Ukraine.  Things were going great, but now they’re getting tougher for Ukraine.  There is only so much that Ukrainian grit and Russian incompetence can accomplish.  Also, while we can continue to rely on Ukrainian skill and bravery, we cannot assume Russia will always be stupid.

To shift the odds back in Ukraine’s favor, we need to ship more weapons to Ukraine, especially offensive weapons.  And even more especially tanks.  Nobody (except, of  course, countries like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, who understand what Russia can do, because it has done it to them) has wanted to send tanks to Ukraine.  But that is changing.  The UK is sending some Challenger tanks.  The United States says Abrams tanks are too complicated for the Ukrainians to use and maintain, etc.  Germany doesn’t want to send its Leopard 2 tanks either.  While Germany has never wanted to send tanks (they claim they don’t want to escalate the war.  Huh?  Russia invaded eleven months ago and is now sending mass rocket attacks at Ukrainian civilians,  And it would be the Germans who would be escalating?), they are now using the argument that they won’t send tanks unless the United States will, too.

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.

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.

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”.