China wants a Western-style military but is having problems and isn't there yet. But can China fully succeed without having a Western-style society? As an aside, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not achieved by three divisions! Yes, an American Army, an American Marine, and a British division spearheaded the invasion. But if you looked at the maneuver battalions sent before the war, those were the front-line equivalents of 3 Army divisions, 3 Marine divisions, and 1 British division. The major innovation was reducing iron mountains of supplies and reducing the artillery component dramatically to rely on air power for fire support. [Division equivalents corrected, with link to restore my memory. And to be fair, Australian and Polish special forces were involved even though they did not contribute maneuver elements.]
Kids are ignorant and intellectuals prey on them. Let's hope that while growing up that being hit about the head and shoulders with the clue bat helps them grow out of their Santa Claus socialism which requires gulags and secret police to attempt--but which ultimately fails leaving good little boys and girls dead, imprisoned, or ground under the boots of the uncaring state. Tips to Instapundit.
The idea that Trump will seek a third term is nonsense. His comments simply highlight that Democrats have in many ways through their unhinged and relentless--with a good measure of illegality--Resistance practically if not literally denied him his first term. Have you forgotten what they did even before he was sworn in, let alone since then? He'll leave after two terms, assuming he wins reelection. As he should.
Nigeria knocked down the jihadis in the north by 2017 after seeing the situation spiral to horrible dimensions prior to getting serious. But the jihadis are gaining ground again in the face of corruption that provided an opening to Boko Haram to rebuild and re-terrorize the locals.
If Americans should only rely on the state for personal protection from criminals, why would you support riots, arson, and violence to make sure Black lives matter? Tip to Instapundit.
Do not become confused. When Iran allows IAEA inspectors into a facility, the Iranians have moved everything out and believe they have scrubbed it sufficiently to get a clean bill of health from the IAEA.
Israel continues to strike Iranians in Syria who are seeking to turn Syria into a launching pad for attacking Israel.
That would be great if China relied on attracting Taiwan into reunification. But wouldn't it require a free China to make the case? I suppose if China remains a dictatorship I can't be sure that enough Taiwanese won't fall for that kind of gambit, but if they do there is nothing America can do to stop it (other than to make sure we don't sell Taiwan F-35s so they don't get turned over to China). But I doubt that China can persuade Taiwan to give up their freedom. And so at some point China will try to conquer Taiwan. America needs to prepare capabilities we haven't thus far in case China invades, as I argued in Military Review recently.
Planes and weapons with longer ranges plus drone refueling planes will eventually extend the reach of carrier aviation. That will help with survival. But I guess it depends on whether enemies extend their reach, too.
I guess I'll watch the Detroit Lions now that I can without cable. But the rest of the NFL is dead to me. And we'll see if woke BLM Marxist cheerleading crap (and yes, yes, of course Black lives matter--but BLM is a Marxist scumbag group) turns me off the Lions. And keep in mind that the Lions haven't turned me off because of their record and play.
An Atlantic author argued that "law and order" conservatives should vote for Biden to keep the peace after the election because Democrats will not accept the results if Trump wins and we will see street violence. The author has no idea what "rule of law" means. Conservatives who value rule of law do not consider submitting to blackmail "rule of law." To Hell with them and their blackmail. This sort of thing can't be rewarded or they'll be back again and again with the same threat.
Oh FFS, riots took place over this?! No peace, no justice.
The Islamic Republic of Iran. And other places where the jihad is hurting the brand of Islam. If the nutballs are to be defeated in the Islamic Civil War, this is a necessary shift. More narrowly, the shifts in attitude against Iran are rolling back Iran's regional power.
Instapundit and a colleague are preaching to the choir here on TDR on this court fines issue, as I mentioned in a recent data dump: "I know I've mentioned this issue before, but relying on fines and penalties is a disgraceful way to raise money and this 'taxation by citation' smacks of tax farming granted by the states to local governments on the backs of poor and working people. Government should be financed by direct taxes. The federal court system should be used to break this as arguably a civil rights violation."
Norway has long known the joys of bordering Russia.
Die, die, die! With festering boils, die!
The "Harris administration?" Oops. Well that's awkward. Luckily Biden will never be aware of what Harris revealingly said. I guess the plan is to have Biden named the President Emeritus about 5 seconds after swearing in--God forbid. Or maybe Biden already thinks he is the vice presidential candidate. This is seriously sad. I watched my father retreat from the world through dementia, going through the motions of living because of diminishing awareness.
India and Japan signed a logistics support agreement. Which will allow Japan to operate in the Indian Ocean with more ease and will allow India to operate in the Pacific with more ease. Of note, "Japan becomes the sixth country with which India has such an arrangement, adding to the United States, France, Singapore, South Korea, and Australia."
Um, no: "A [Chinese] group army is made up of 78 combined-arms brigades, each of which can have as many as 5,000 soldiers." So each group army has up to 390,000 troops just in the combat brigades? But earlier the author said each of the 13 group armies have 20,000 to 45,000 troops total. A group army is actually made up of six of those brigades. Math is involved, unfortunately. I stopped paying attention after reading that.
There is no way Biden will debate Trump. Democrats who say Biden was fine in the primary debates neglect to point out that Biden was one of a dozen (?) on the stage and that Biden was speaking or the target of the others who spoke a small fraction of time. How will Biden handle being half of the debate? Especially if you consider that time since then hasn't been kind to Biden's mental capacity.
I don't think that normalizing trade with China was a mistake. I think normalizing Chinese espionage as the price of doing business with China was the mistake. A China plugged into the global system America designed but without thinking that China can get away with murder while in it would be much better now (and weaker).
Putin will want to nip this in the bud.
Well that's certainly inconvenient for the narrative.
That was great. The outrage of the comrades was better.
"Biden says American suburbs will be destroyed by fires, floods, and “superstorms” if Trump is reelected." By election day he will be predicting a full slate of Biblical plagues. Tip to Instapundit.
Russian military exercises in Belarus this month and next month make me nervous.
Has Chicago (and other cities) been sacrificed with the lockdown craziness for the purpose of dragging Biden over the finish line? "Two weeks to bend the curve" made sense. And even tacking on a couple more weeks just in case was okay. But it became a lockdown until Democrats say "science" says so. And I wouldn't be shocked if the only "science" is the election of Biden. Or maybe the reaction to the open-ended sentence of confinement will cause a voter backlash.
The wounded China continues to push its neighbors.
"Crimes against humanity." I'm shocked that a UN human rights investigation would say anything mildly bad about Maduro's socialist Hell hole.
From the Israeli perspective, Erdogan's energetic efforts to expand influence throughout the former Ottoman Empire is disturbing. Note the 5,000 Turkish troops in Qatar, which has a dispute with Saudi Arabia. So we have a three-way contest to lead the Moslem Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey.
Shouldn't we be on to the next BS "scandal" by now?
What part of "state-owned enterprise" was unclear all this time?
Did President Obama warp the ideological make up of O-7s and up? I don't know enough to evaluate this. Although too many retired ones seem willing to intervene in our politics.
China's blackmail and bribery database. Via Instapundit.
Are Democrats working themselves up into a paranoid frenzy that could turn violent after the election? I tend to think this is just cynical pre-election work to convince people to vote Democratic out of fear of violence. But they've been in this turn-it-to-11 Resistance frenzy for so long that I worry they might believe their own BS. But even if they are, I suspect this will be restricted to the usual communist Antifa/BLM suspects egged on by the Twitter universe--which hardly represents America. Via Instapundit.
A new dawn for U.S.-Democratic Republic of Congo relations?
I'm of two minds on the issue of whether America has too many officers or not. On the one hand, we have too many for day-to-day operations. On the other hand, if our military ever had to be expanded we'd need those officers who can't be trained quickly in an expansion. It would be nice to get the excess out of chains of command, of course to avoid slowing down decision-making. But how?
Ukraine is still struggling to build a real democracy. Rule of law is vital. I've warned that without rule of law Ukraine will just be a smaller version of Russia and unable to generate sufficient combat power to defeat a major invasion.
The Dutch are again showing their mistrust of the European Union. With Britain leaving the Dutch feel out of place and alone on the continent. The Dutch should be wary. The proto-imperial EU seeks to get rid of the prefix. If the Netherlands wants to remain free rather than be a mere province, it should follow Britain. If Britain can forge trade ties with Europe despite EU desires to punish Britain for Brexit (and deter smaller states from following suit) the Dutch might be emboldened to leave. America should support that. The Dutch were among the few countries that actually fought with their Afghanistan contingent. As I've said, we can have friends in Europe. But Europe will not be America's friends.
Somebody got their Biden decoder ring!
Letting "science" determine Xi Jinping Flu pandemic policy. To Hell with them. They have little credibility left as the defenders of sacred "science."
More serious prison time, please.
The U.S. will try to enforce UN sanctions on Iran on its own after the UNSC rejected "snapback" sanctions. I never believed snapback provisions had any legs.
The Russians are one step from declaring Venusians ethnic Russians, aren't they? Then it will be Russian "little green men" versus Venus little green men.
It has puzzled me that pundits claim ignorant Republicans reject masks and social distancing when I see young people violating those practices. To me it seemed highly unlikely that all those young people are all conservatives. It may be a matter of giving young people advice on how to safely be young people rather than just telling them don't do this and don't do that.
I haven't seen evidence that Antifa is trying to make forest fires worse by deliberately setting them. But it would not be beyond them given that Hamas has for years been trying to set fires in Israel with their kite (and balloon, I believe) incendiary campaigns launched from Gaza.
"Cause and effect" is apparently an alien concept to people on the left.
Yes, the news is largely dead and replaced with partisan propaganda. I think "journalism" schools have done more harm than good.
I'm supposed to wring my hands that mostly left-leaning Europeans don't like Trump? I was rightly skeptical that European love of Obama would help America much. And today NATO is arming up to contain Russia despite Europeans not liking Trump. I can live with that.
Again, I'm really pissed at teacher unions for refusing to go back to work in schools where the most disadvantaged could use in-person learning. But teachers might have old relatives at home! It's unsafe, they say! I guess we are all lucky that grocery store workers and every other essential employee out at work is single without any vulnerable relatives at home or in their life. To Hell with the teacher unions.
I remain confused at how "mostly peaceful" protests with so few riots, arson, looting, and murder that violence can only be called a Republican myth can turn out to be the most costly unrest in American insurance history.
I'm sure we'll appropriately file China's complaints about American-Taiwanese relations:
There are reasons for China to invade Taiwan soon. But would China take that risk? This is my portion of that Military Review issue.
I've mentioned that Democrats will have problems replacing Biden once mail-in voting starts. How do Democrats handle losing votes for Biden when Biden is no longer on the ballot? So these dates for state mail-in voting pretty much define the deadlines.
The United States says Hezbollah has established caches of ammonium nitrate across Europe for terror attacks. I wonder why this was public and not quietly told to European governments? Is America worried that Europeans will look the other way if Hezbollah promised the Europeans to "only" attack American or Israeli targets and spare Europeans?
Words have consequences. Hahahahahaha!
Is the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic crisis essentially over in America? By this measure, yes. To be clear, this doesn't mean the virus is gone. But the crisis is over and now we have a more routine problem to cope with. Tip to Instapundit.
European cooperation with Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline just gives Russia leverage to blackmail Europeans and--by providing an alternative to pipelines that cross Ukraine--is a weapon against Ukraine daring to act like an independent nation free of Russian control. The latter should be a warning to the Europeans about what Russia is thinking. Don't collude with Russia on this weapon. [Edited for bad link.]
Should the United States recognize Taiwan's ability to participate in international bodies over Chinese objections? Would that trigger a Chinese war on Taiwan on the condition of Taiwan making a move toward independence?
Will the Navy extend the service life of the carrier Nimitz? And a couple more that followed. I must be old. I remember that first-of-class ship entering the fleet and being pretty excited about it.
So ... whose influence was he peddling?
Please adjust your worship of Europe for their handling of the Xi Jinping Flu pandemic. As I've said, wait until this is over before comparing national efforts. And be sure to use uniform definitions and control for national differences in population vulnerability.
DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! Never mind.
What doesn't increase discrimination against Egypt's beleaguered Christians? Odd that blame should fall on them so easily given that nobody calls the covid19 virus the Christian Flu. Via Instapundit.
I heard someone say the Democratic plan is to ease Biden out of the presidential nomination, move Kamala Harris up to the top slot, and bring in a Bernie-type leftist for the VP slot. That seems unlikely. Why would the Democratic Party make such major efforts to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination in two primary campaigns only to throw a slot to him or someone like him? I think the effort--if it happens before the swearing in--will be to replace Biden but keep Harris where she is. And I think it has to happen before early voting begins to avoid wasting votes for Biden who won't be there. Or Democrats go all the way through the swearing in and 25th Amendment Joe out of the way. Hopefully Trump wins handily and the whole thing remains hypothetical.
Two weeks ago I observed: Is it just me or is yelling "Black Lives Matter" while looting a store the American version of jihadis yelling "Allahu Akbar!" while killing infidels? I should have offered a more direct comparison. Via Instapundit.
Nimitz and her escorts transited the Strait of Hormuz, I assume to enter the Persian Gulf. I do not like our capital ships in the Persian Gulf.
Huh.
Likely to be all too accurate some time in the next six weeks.
While I disagree with the idea that Trump hasn't tried to reach out to those who didn't vote for him in 2016--I think he hasn't tried to reach out to the relentless turn--it-to-11 Resistance that has opposed him from day one--this defense of the Electoral College is needed. I think mine is much better. And this is better than that:
Yeah:
Well, mourning for Ruth Bader Ginsburg without politics rushing in didn't last long. I'm unsure of whether it would help Trump more to have a Supreme Court nomination battle now to provoke Democrats into the kind of insanity that the Kavanaugh nomination demonstrated; or if it would be better to delay the nomination until after the election to give conservatives on the fence or even in opposition to Trump a motive to vote for Trump. And would that delay protect moderate Republicans in tight election battles? Would just dangling the possibility of nominating someone to the court prior to the election provoke leftist extremists into violence and insanity, thus reminding people about what Democrats have been supporting, without actually doing so? Given Democratic thinking about packing the court by expanding it, the question is tactical only for Republicans. Certainly don't think a delay even until next year would build good will with Democrats. Remember, too, Obama nominated a justice in 2016. Was he wrong?
I'm not terribly sure how much Putin cares if Belarusians hate Russia if Russia gets to control Belarus.
This is an interesting discussion of long-term thinking and short-term thinking by China and America over Taiwan that sets out the idea that rising powers like China are naturally long-term thinkers because they are weaker; while established powers like America are short-term thinkers because their strength pushes them to seek short-term gains because long-term adverse impacts are far away and uncertain. This makes far more sense and is worthy of inquiry than the silly notion that the Chinese are somehow naturally long-term thinkers. My contribution to that Military Review issue is here. The interesting part is that American and Chinese time horizons regarding Taiwan will get closer together as power converges.
Will the West Coast fires suppress voter turnout in the election? Or will the fires be under control well before then? If there are fewer voters it won't have any effect on how Californiaand Washington (Oregon is all-mail now, so that shouldn't be affected, right?) go in the Electoral College, coukld enough voters sit it out to give Trump a popular vote win? I can't imagine the fires not subsiding by then but how long do they have to rage to have an effect?
Is China's economic relationship with Taiwan a stranglehold on Taiwan that will draw Taiwan toward the mainland? My contribution to that Military Review issue is here.
Security around the president had best be tight because violent nutballs could react to the constant barrage of Trump-as-Hitler slander. Seriously. Via Instapundit.
Regardless of my speculation about tactical considerations--and I'm no political strategist--Trump looks like he will not shy away from a Supreme Court fight before the election.
The U.S. sent 6 armored personnel carriers with fewer than 100 troops to reinforce the small easern Syria contingent. I'll guess this is just a platoon-sized element.
