What Was Unclear About "Axis of Evil?"

Iran will go nuclear and we're just watching them do it.

How is this a surprise to anybody at all?

It’s now two weeks since we learned that British intelligence has concluded that the North Koreans couldn’t have developed their nuclear weapons all by themselves. According to the Telegraph, “North Korean scientists are people of some ability, but clearly they’re not doing it entirely in a vacuum,” said one government minister. The two main suspects, according to the Brits, are the Iranians and the Russians.

This is not exactly breaking news. For years, I have written about the Nork/Iranian joint nuclear venture, and a long version of the story written by Gordon Chang appeared in 2015, suggesting that Iran had outsourced part of its nuclear program to Pyongyang[.]

Long ago I assumed that Iran had hidden elements of their nuclear program beyond the reach of any attack on Iran.

And I was certainly correct about Syria, as the Israeli attack many months later proved.

Indeed, I worry that just outsourcing research underestimates the potential problem.

Good Lord, people, how is it possible to have a hole in the Iran nuclear deal this important so long after it was agreed to?

The U.N. nuclear watchdog's chief urged major powers on Tuesday to clarify a part of their nuclear deal with Iran dealing with technology that could be used to develop an atom bomb, an area Russia said the agency should leave alone.

Did that idiot Secretary of State Kerry spend all his time practicing his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in the mirror rather than negotiating an actual deal that slowed Iran down even a bit?

Iran will go nuclear. It's madness.

Have a super sparkly day.

The Charge of the Kurdish Brigade

I worry that the Iraqi Kurds with their futile independence referendum have damaged American efforts to pull Iraq away from Iran.

The Kurds voted to secede from Iraq. The vote total isn't in, but the result is not in doubt.

Not that this means that the Kurdish regions have declared independence. Kurdexit will take time to negotiate.

And no negotiations may work. An independent Kurdistan faces military resistance from the Turks and Iranians who have their own restive Kurds.

Iraq's Kurds need Iraqi cooperation to succeed by giving the landlocked Kurds an outlet to the sea in the face of Turksih and Iranian opposition.

But as America works to integrate Iraq back into the Arab world and alignment with America after President Obama walked away from Iraq in 2011 to allow Iran to gain influence, this vote hurts the effort.

One, without the Kurds to balance the minority of pro-Iranian Arab Shias, America's effort is weakened.

Two, Iraq may seek to get closer to Iran--notwithstanding recent distancing after the near-defeat of ISIL--to fight the Kurds:

A top ranking delegation from Iraq's armed forces headed to neighboring Iran on Wednesday "to coordinate military efforts", according to a statement from the Iraqi military.

Indeed, parliament called for taking Kirkuk from the Kurds:

The Iraqi parliament on Wednesday asked Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send troops to the Kurdish-held region of Kirkuk and take control of its oilfields.

So the pro-Iran elements in Iraq have been strengthened by opposition to the Kurdish vote.

And it could get worse. Will Sunni Arabs in Iraq be happy to be a smaller minority without the Sunni (but not Arab) Kurds to help balance the Shia Arab majority?

Will the defeat of ISIL in Iraq be a temporary lull before the Iraqi Sunni Arabs embrace another jihadi group the way Sunni Arabs embraced al Qaeda after the destruction of the Saddam regime before abandoning them in the 2006-2007 Awakening only to embrace ISIL to protect themselves against the increasingly Iran-friendly Iraqi government following America's withdrawal in 2011?

I hope continued American-led Western presence in Iraq and Saudi efforts to diplomatically engage Iraq will be enough to calm Sunni Arab worries and encourage anti-Iran Shia Arabs in Iraq.

I sympathize with the Iraqi Kurds. I do. They deserve a state. Eventually they should have one. With America's support. But trying to win independence right now is madness.

Hopefully the Kurdish leaders of Iraq calm things down and make it clear that they will use the referendum results to win more autonomy within Iraq rather than to formally sever ties. Let people get used to the idea of an eventual Kurdish state.

UPDATE: Iran blocks fuel trade with the Iraqi Kurdish region in response to the Iraqi Kurdish referendum.

UPDATE: That's interesting:

Iraq's military prepared Saturday to take control of the international borders of the northern Kurdish region. ...

Iraqi troops now in Turkey and Iran are expected to start enforcing control over the border crossings in and out of the Kurdish region, but are not expected to move into Kurdish territory.

So the Iranians and Turks are hosting Iraqi troops on their territory to control access to and from the Kurdish region. Does this tell you what you need to know about the prospects of formal independence for Iraqi Kurdistan?

How do the Iraqi Kurds think they are going to interact with the world when all their borders go through countries hostile to Kurdish independence?

I expect the Iraqi Kurds to back down from any declaration of independence. Autonomy is all the Kurds can hope for now.

One day, Iraq's government may be fine with Kurdish independence, which would make Turkish and Iranian hostility to an independent Kurdistan less important. But that day of peaceful division like the Czechs and Slovakians achieved is not yet in sight.

UPDATE: America is caught in the middle and we are willing to mediate.

The Kurdish vote was magnificent, but it is not statesmanship.

The End of the Car Seat Saga

I put Car Seat the car seat into the dumpster for good last night. Lamb said it would be okay after many years of providing seating for various stuffed animals in our living room.

You may recall the saga of the car seat my daughter outgrew but which she embraced at the last moment and eventually I brought it in like a new member of the family.

Now I'm actually feeling oddly sad about this ending.

EU Hard Without the Vengeance

Prime Minister May seems determined to engineer a Brexit, and held out an olive branch to the European Union:

On the other hand, leaving the EU does not mean that Britain is no longer a proud member of the family of European nations, or that we are turning our backs on Europe, or that we want the EU to fail. Quite the contrary. The success of the EU, she said, is a profound U.K. national interest. She even hinted that the U.K.’s absence would make things easier in some ways. She doesn’t want Britain to “stand in the way” of the reform of EU institutions that President Junker had launched last week — as the Brits would undoubtedly have done inside the EU given that the reforms aim to tighten its corset of Brussels regulations.

Which is interesting. May is telling continental Europe that rather than being angry about Brexit, they should be happy that Britain, with different standards of governance than much of the continent, will be out of the European Union.

Britain inside the EU would just be the fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench, the pain in the ass, if it remains. The EU should be wise enough to recognize that and refrain from trying to punish Britain for daring to reject the EU's ever closer union.

Getting out should be the prime objective with details negotiable. The details can be amended in future years if the prime objective is achieved. If quibbling over details that aren't decisive interferes with the prime objective, May is making a mistake.

NOTE: In retrospect my Die Hard-inspired title just doesn't work. Sorry ...

Nothing New Under the Sun

I've been meaning to comment on this election approach for quite some time but never got around to it:

The [Hillary Clinton] campaign relied far too heavily on something that campaign technicians call “data analytics.” This refers to the use of models built from a database of the country’s 200 million–voters, including turnout history and demographic and consumer information, updated daily by an automated poll asking for vote preference to project the election result. But when campaign developments overtake the model’s assumptions, you get surprised by the voters—and this happened repeatedly.

Astonishingly, the 2016 Clinton campaign conducted no state polls in the final three weeks of the general election and relied primarily on data analytics to project turnout and the state vote. They paid little attention to qualitative focus groups or feedback from the field, and their brief daily analytics poll didn’t measure which candidate was defining the election or getting people engaged.

This was supposed to be a re-run of the Obama campaign approach, repeating its success.

I'm transcribing this passage from a physical book, The Shield of Achilles, by Philip Bobbitt, quoting Edward M. House's Philip Dru (p. 393).* So you're welcome. For the 1916 re-election campaign, President Wilson's close advisor and strategist House believed there were:

twelve states that were debatable , and upon whose votes the election would turn. he divided each of these states into ["the smallest possible units that could be arranged with available campaign funds"] and began by eliminating all states he knew the opposition party would certainly carry ... He also ignored the states where his side was sure to win. In this way he was free to five his entire thoughts to [a very few districts]. Of [a unit of] five thousand, he roughly calculate there would be two thousand voters that no kind of persuasion could turn from the national party and two thousand that could not be changed from the opposition. This would leave one thousand doubtful ones to win over. So he had a careful poll made in each unit, and eliminated the strictly unpersuadable party men, and got down to a complete analysis of the debatable one thousand. Information was obtained as to their race, religion, occupation, and former political predilection.

The campaign focused on just the key districts in the key states they needed to add to their base electoral vote tally. It worked.

And it was done before computers.

The passage leapt out at me, and seemed so out of place and time that I'd almost suspect a time traveler with a laptop doing the data crunching to return President Wilson to the White House for some purpose we will never know.

Although to be fair, Clinton's data crunching was really model crunching. Model outputs aren't data.

*Although the work quoted is fictional and pre-dates the campaign, Bobbitt takes it as reflecting what House believed and followed in the actual campaign.

Well That's Darned Sporting of Our Navy

Let's hope no enemy decides to shoot at our Navy ships while they do this for "safety:"

Following this year’s pair of deadly collisions between U.S. guided missile destroyers and merchant ships, the Navy is now considering whether it’s surface fleet is often too stealthy.

Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson were peppered with questions Tuesday about their efforts to prevent further collisions while appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

One of the immediate changes to fleet operations, according to Spencer and Richardson, is the Navy’s surface fleet ships will now announce their presence in heavily trafficked shipping lanes.

I've worried our ships could be self-targeting. For now, some of them are.

Macron the EUxplorer

French President Macron wants the leadership of Europe after Merkel's bruising reelection:

French President Emmanuel Macron offered an ambitious vision for European renewal on Tuesday, calling for the EU to work more closely on defense and immigration and for the euro zone to have its own budget, ideas he may struggle to implement.

I haven't been this inspired in years.

http://www.invitationurn.com/dora-the-explorer-little-star/

Let's hope Macron has a map to get to his EU destination.

From somewhere here: http://dora.wikia.com/wiki/Map

UPDATE: Merkel "welcomes" Macron's thoughts.

UPDATE: Mockery about Macron aside, this analyst starts with a breathtakingly idiotic paragraph:

“A sovereign, united, democratic Europe.” This is the vision French President Emmanuel Macron outlined in a landmark speech on September 26, at the Sorbonne in Paris. Calling for a more united and democratic EU is not new. However, for a leader from a major country to passionately assert that European integration reinforces national sovereignty, rather than diminish it, is refreshing.

"Refreshing?" I think that analyst spelled "stupid" wrong.

European integration--ever closer union--under the EU led from Brussels will create a multi-ethnic empire that crushes national sovereignty. How an analyst can claim the opposite is stunningly idiotic.

It Takes a Caliphate to Raze a Childhood

The children twisted by ISIL during their years-long occupation of Iraqi territory will be a problem for years to come:

From the stateless children of ISIS members, to child soldiers and the tens of thousands indoctrinated in ISIS schools, a generation of young Iraqis has been traumatized and radicalized by the nihilistic jihadist group. They are at war with themselves and their own community.

In the words of one trauma specialist, many of these children have, as a result, lost their “trust in humans and humanity.”

The problem has been raised before.

Add these children to the problems of taking our Goddamn time defeating ISIL's caliphate.

UPDATE: Tell me again that killing every one of those jihadi bastards is somehow wrong:

ISIS propaganda chiefs have released chilling footage of a fresh-faced child suicide bomber blowing himself up in the desert.

They can't be killed soon enough.

Relationship Status: It's Complicated

Turkey tries our patience:

Turkey’s state run news agency Anadolu on Wednesday published an infographic showcasing the capabilities of the country’s new Russian-acquired S-400 missile defense system — and its ability to shoot down U.S. aircraft.

That's nice, so-called NATO ally.

Sigh. I continue to believe that having Turkey as a highly flawed ally is better than pushing them to be an enemy.

I suspect that Turkey will eventually pull out of NATO. But I wouldn't try to hasten that day.

Perhaps they'll come to their senses before that happens.

Pretext?

The North Koreans claim America declared war on them. Will North Korea strike?

This is disturbing:

"The whole world should clearly remember it was the U.S. who first declared war on our country," [North Korean] Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told reporters in New York.

Obviously America did not declare war on them.

But North Korea could decide to strike first--even if it is almost assuredly futile--and may rest their decision on this interpretation.

After all, Trump pushed North Korea's attack plans from marginally inevitable to a higher level:

North Korea’s foreign minister told world leaders Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s insult calling leader Kim Jong Un “rocket man” makes “our rocket’s visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more.”

"Inevitable all the more?" I don't think that word "inevitable" means what he thinks it means.

Which is why I was glad we escorted the B-1 bomber run up the east coast of North Korea recently with F-15c fighters.

Rolling the Dice

Japan's prime minister will roll the dice:

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he would dissolve parliament's lower house on Thursday for a snap election, seeking a mandate to stick to his tough stance toward a volatile North Korea and rebalance the social security system.

Abe, in power for five years, had been expected to call the election for next month to take advantage of improved support and disarray in the opposition camp.

I hope it works better than it did for British Prime Minister May who ended up shooting herself in the foot over the Brexit negotiations.

The last thing we need is a weakened Japanese government as the crisis with North Korea heads for a decision point.

Unclear on the Concept

Yes, Maduro will be thrown under the socialist bus for failing to implement Chavez' brilliant socialism plan. Every failed socialist/communist state--and that's all of them--has an excuse and people in the West ready to believe them. But I digress. My real point is to remind you about why I drone on about rule of law.

Chavez, you see, made sure the people were behind him in his socialist quest:

New York University historian Greg Grandin has pointed out, Chávez “submitted himself and his agenda to 14 national votes, winning 13 of them by large margins, in polling deemed by Jimmy Carter to be ‘best in the world.’”

That quotes Vox. I won't go there. 'Tis a silly place.

There were votes. And the people backed Hugo Chavez. A wagon train needs to yoke the oxen to get them pulling in one direction and a socialist dictatorship is no exception.

What was lacking was rule of law. Those votes merely allowed Chavez to push forward his dictatorship under the color of law. Without rule of law, elections are shams or selective questions put to the people by the rulers when it is convenient to the ruler.

And it is clear that Venezuela's rulers cared about the views of the people only when the people agreed with the rulers. Now the voice of the people is ignored and suppressed--starved and shot by Maduro's goons.

Maduro didn't betray the vision of Chavez. Maduro is the continuation of it. Just as Stalin was the continuation of Lenin and not a change of course.

Only a dotard could think otherwise.

Between Peace and War

America is clamping economic sanctions harder on North Korea by targeting businesses that trade with North Korea. Is this an alternative to war or a step to war?

Sanctions just got more serious:

President Trump announced he has just signed a new executive order that "significantly expands our authority to target individual companies, and financial institutions that facilitate trade with North Korea."

The announcement came at a lunch with South Korean President Moon Jae-In and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The order, which aims to cut off sources of revenue that fund North Korea's nuclear and weapons programs, comes in response to North Korea's repeated missile and nuclear tests. It targets any individual or entity that trades goods, services or technology with the North.

Mr. Trump also praised a new action taken by China's central bank to demand that other banks stop doing business with the North. "This just happened," Mr. Trump said.

That's great. But I hope nobody on the DMZ is lowering their guard. Sanctions effective enough to compel a foe to change their policies may be indistinguishable pain-wise from an actual kinetic attack:

[Sanctions] are unlikely to achieve our objectives peacefully for the simple reason that any sanctions that hurt a target nation enough to compel them to change their priority policies more to our liking will be sanctions tough enough to seem like an act of war to the target nation's leadership. So sanctions tough enough to work will likely just compel the target nation to escalate to military action as their response.

If these sanctions truly bite, North Korea could consider them acts of war and respond with their own form of war--actual warfare.

Remember, the choice of war is not our decision alone. North Korea could initiate war.

Weekend Data Dump

The Abrams tank continues to be updated. Active protection systems remain worryingly in the future.

This will have to increase a lot more to be a trend; but some on the left not only realize that "liberal minded" isn't a synonym for "open minded," but see "liberal minded" as increasingly "authoritarian minded."

Honestly, this isn't necessarily a big deal: "According to Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center released Tuesday, 37 percent could not name any of the five rights protected by First Amendment, and just about half (48 percent) could name freedom of speech." I don't know if I could name all of them if just asked out of nowhere. But I know there are a number of rights in the First Amendment. And I know how to look them up. I recall a story (perhaps a myth but useful, anyway) of a reporter being astounded that Albert Einstein of all people didn't remember the speed of sound at sea level. To which Einstein responded, "I know where to look it up."

I'm not sure why it is such an affront to all that is good and holy to argue that colonial powers can do some good for the subject people, even as you rightly say that unlawfully controlling other people is wrong. Infrastructure, education, rule of law, and forms of good governance can be used by the colonial people when they've thrown off the colonial master, no? (Erm, what about the aqueducts?) Colonial powers may build those good things for their own purposes that have nothing to do with trying to improve the lot of the subject people, but they are still good things in the long run. But that good doesn't justify colonialism (or any type of authoritarian power over your own people, of course--I'm speaking to you commie fan boys (and girls) who don't mind breaking a few eggs for a yummy socialist omelet). And the argument for benefits may be wrong. If so, demonstrate that with counter-arguments.

As a rule, I think that when a convicted person's prison/probation sentence is completed, the former convict's punishment should be ended. Sadly, that is not the case. Good grief, give them a chance to build a law-abiding life, will you?

Has American vote-hacking hysteria infected Kenya? The French firm that built the machines says there is no evidence of hacking in the nullified presidential election. That's interesting enough. But this is fascinating: "OT-Morpho supplied the 45,000 tablets used to identify voters biometrically and an associated system used to transmit the results of votes counted by electoral officials as well as a photograph of the paper form 34A on which votes were tallied." In the battle for election integrity, liberals here claim that requiring a photo ID to vote will deter lawful voting. In Kenya they require biometric identification to vote. That isn't too onerous for Kenyans apparently. Also, go back to paper ballots.

You know, it occurs to me that maybe Democrats need Hillary Clinton's blamefest of a book to avoid looking in the mirror to blame themselves for nominating the only candidate on the planet who could have lost to Donald Trump. The fantasy world of evil plotters under every bed who undid the brilliance of selecting Hillary Clinton is perhaps more soothing than confronting the fact that Democratic voters screwed up. I can understand why Hillary Clinton needs to convince herself that she didn't screw things up. She needs to sleep at night and Chardonnay in those quantities is surely bad for her health. But what excuse do Hillary! supporters have for believing this fantasy world? Are mental health counseling bills piling up too high?

Can you even imagine liberals not exploding in outrage if a senator had said a Moslem nominee could not serve because of their religion rather than saying that about a Catholic nominee? After all this time, some Democrats apparently don't think that Catholics have assimilated into American society, despite a long history of voting for Democrats.

I don't understand why wearing a pussy hat is celebrated as empowering women while saying "boobs" is anti-woman. Clay Travis is crude to say what he said, but so are a lot of leftists who enjoy shocking middle America. I just don't understand how the left makes standards.

I didn't understand the brief panic by Democrats over President Trump's DACA order. None of the facts supported the panic but there it was. I just shook my head in genuine confusion over the reaction. I didn't doubt that the Trump order was about regularizing the clearly illegal Obama DACA order in some form. Democrats seemed to think the round-up (and perhaps death camps the way they talked) was about to begin. Mind you, I think whatever law emerges should end chain migration through the once-children and that criminals should be barred more strictly than the Obama executive order provided, but I wouldn't kick them all out. But it should be understood that  any law is based on our compassion and interests and not any "right" to stay here.

This is understandable considering my youngest is past the toy stage. I did my part to shore up Toys R Us for a long time.

Venezuela didn't like Trump's Tuesday UN speech. But Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza is addled if he thinks this comparison hurts Trump: "... for a moment we didn't know if we were listening to president Reagan in 1982 or President Trump in 2017." I think that footage will be in the Trump reelection campaign.

Climate science admits that the climate change models over-state the effect of CO2 on temperatures. Last week that position was considered "denying" the science despite the obvious failure of reality to conform with model outputs over the last decade and a half. But no worries. I'm sure that's the only thing that last week's science got wrong.

Are Navy helicopters the new PT Boat for littoral combat? It is true that they are better than sending in the LCS which is too big, vulnerable, and expensive for that role despite the intent. And it is true that helicopters can be armed for taking on any target. But helicopters lack the persistence of something that floats. The idea has merit, but I think it would be better to say that helicopters could be the manned strike element of a team that also has more persistent presence provided by unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) that prowl the littorals. Let me add that a modularized auxiliary cruiser could be used as the mother ship for Navy anti-ship helicopters paired with USVs.

I don't like Senator Rand Paul. I used to give him the benefit of the doubt. And in opposition perhaps he had a useful role. And my view was shaped by Rand being better than his father, who is a lunatic. But Rand Paul doesn't know how to alter his behavior in the majority. He let's the pursuit of the perfect be the enemy of the good--or even just the adequate. Which helps Democrats a lot in the near-balanced Senate. I have similar thoughts about McCain. He sacrificed much for America, and I respect him for that. But being tortured by enemies isn't a shield against all criticism forever.

This is an interesting video.  Before the Black Lives Matter movement with its anarchist and communist leadership took the stage to condemn all of America, I was ready to support opposition to laws (selling "loosies" is a priority street crime?) and police practices (don't militarize street cops) that led to African Americans being needlessly killed by police. I'm for freedom and not a police state. Whether or not police killings of African-American men is rampant or statistically consistent with police encounter rates, No Lives Don't Matter. Nobody should be killed on the street before courts judge the person. Even worthless scum who deserve to die need a day in court simply because those who are law-abiding need to be secure that they will be treated fairly and safely in police encounters. And there are bad police. Of course. That most police are good doesn't refute that. If Black Lives Matter truly sought justice through the American ideals that man in the video spoke about, BLM would have more success than the rabble-rousing the a-holes who lie about some encounters ("hands up, don't shoot," was a lie pure and simple) and who condemn America itself for the actions (in Democratic-controlled cities, of all places!) of those who violate American ideals. I hope that speaker influenced his followers as much as the people he spoke to.

I hear that John Kerry has bitter words of complaint about the possibility that America may renounce the Iran deal. I really don't care what Spongespine Spandexpants has to say about anything.

America is establishing an air defense base in Israel to "identify and intercept a spectrum of aerial threats[.]" The article specifies shooting down rockets and missiles. I'm not exactly sure what is to be stationed there given that manpower appears to be only a few dozen American soldiers. Is it some type of point defense system or short-range air defense system with a weapon or two? "Base" is seemingly a big title for such a small unit. Is this an Army National Guard air defense unit that will rotate most of the troops through on 2-week deployments with just a permanent garrison of a few dozen full-time reservists as the cadre? I'm scratching my head.

So where the Hell were these Hollywood types during the Cold War when the Russians were a bigger threat? On a personal note, although I was focused on the USSR in my college education, I refused to be a Soviet major because I thought that was a way too pessimistic way to look at the world. Really, was I to assume my entire career would be focused on the USSR? It would always be there? Good call for me. Although I didn't go into foreign policy analysis as a career. Life happens while you plan, eh? And I've forgotten all my Russian language skills. Oh well. And seriously, people, stop going on about Russian revolutionary "hyrbrid warfare." It isn't a thing. As I've said before, hybrid warfare is Russia invading a country, denying they are invading, and the West effectively going along with that fiction.

I'm so old I remember when it was ridiculous (and an insult to Saint Obama!) to suggest President Obama's administration "wiretapped" Trump.

Holy cow, Puerto Rico got nailed by Hurricane Maria. It will take months to fully restore electricity? Critical facilities (like hospitals and police--and probably connected politicians) will come first, of course. I hope FEMA is up to the task of helping Puerto Rico's government help to ordinary people who have to cope until the grid returns to their neighborhoods. What do you do, have daily food, ice, and water distribution to more than 3 million people for months on end? Do we evacuate as many as we can to the mainland until repairs are made? On a separate issue, is this hurricane an opportunity for Puerto Rico to declare bankruptcy given their looming financial collapse? Or an opportunity to restructure debt in exchange for financial reforms?

One of the subway (tube) bombers in London was referred to a "deradicalization" program.  Why do I get the feeling that the program doesn't deradicalize participants as much as it coaches them on how to pass as normal non-jihadi people?

The circular firing squad in Sacramento has paused to reload.

Marawi City has proven to be a death trap for a lot of jihadis who made an odd "charge of the light brigade" into the city. The Philippines has done a good job of killing Abu Sayyaf jihadis while avoiding civilian and friendly casualties over the last four months. I assume our military has provided support. UPDATE: We certainly sent drone support.

All blue-eyed people share a single ancestor from more than 6,000 years ago. Please tell me science isn't telling me I can't date a blue-eyed woman because we're cousins.

I know people are frustrated that Congressional Republicans are having trouble passing legislation. It is frustrating. But I hope Republican voters don't punish them next year. Really, I'd prefer a Republican Congress that is unable to pass legislation than a  Democratic Congress that will definitely pass legislation.

I'm not the only one disturbed about Pope Francis. I'm hardly the poster boy for the faith, but I don't insist my church ratify my failings. Francis makes me less eager to self-identify as Catholic. I suspect his tenure will weaken the institution.

If you want to see real abuse against Moslems, focusing on America is highly misguided.

Iraq's Kurds plan to hold their Monday referendum on independence. No word about whether the regional government wants to act on a positive vote. I have sympathy for the Kurds. They deserve a state. But Iranian, Turkish, and Iranian hostility (and add in Syrian hostility, eventually) will doom the land-locked entity. I'd rather the Kurds negotiate a looser relationship with the central government. Eventually, when Iraqis get used to looser ties, perhaps the full divorce can be achieved with no more drama than the division of Czechoslovakia. UPDATE: Related thoughts.

Oh good grief, just write the check.

Space Utility Vehicles?

Is there a more annoying vessel in the Star Trek universe than the "runabout?"

I'm not a huge fan of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but it is adequate and occasionally pretty good. I never really watched it when it was original. It has been my Plan B Netflix show for a while and I'm finally nearing the end stage of the series.

But a recent episode raised my low-level annoyance with the small ships the DS9 base uses to move around.

One, it is a bit annoying that somehow that which had required large starships to carry and power--a warp drive--is now available on such a small vessel. It is also armed and functions as a fighter aircraft with shields that allow it to battle starships.

But what really annoys me is that they are called "runabouts." And when the base was apparently under massive attack, the order to "launch the runabouts" was given.

And it really sounded like the captain was ordering the sortie of all the minivans in the fleet.

I wish the vessel had been given a better name than one that implies it has room for all the kids going to soccer practice.

Are Nuclear Weapons the Only Potential Card North Korea Has?

South Korea seems awfully supportive of America's push to stop North Korea from going nuclear. Especially for a leftist government. Does this mean North Korea's conventional and chemical weapons threats to Seoul aren't as strong as I thought?

A long time ago, I wrote about the different objectives that South Korea, Japan, and America have concerning North Korean nuclear weapons. Just look at South Korea:

Look at South Korea. They seem annoyingly unconcerned about North Korean nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Sure. The North Koreans and their Chinese allies captured and destroyed Seoul--where a quarter of South Korea's population lives--twice in the Korean War. And since then the North Koreans have had an army poised to launch an offensive to capture the city a third time. Even though North Korea's army is declining and South Korea's is growing more powerful, the North Koreans retain large numbers of tube and rocket artillery within range of Seoul that could turn the city into rubble without even crossing the DMZ. So North Korea getting a few nukes is rather irrelevant. North Korea doesn't need nukes to wreck Seoul.

And then there is the possibility of winning. What if something happens and North Korea collapses? Will South Korea have to step in and spend the money to build northern Korea up to ROK standards? Sticker shock is an understatement. They've seen what West Germany had to spend for a far better off East Germany. South Korea wants North Korea to exist, stop being a threat, and slowly catch up with South Korea economically. And then let South Korea absorb them. Good luck with that foreign policy goal!

Of course, with American forces deploying away from the DMZ, the South Koreans may get increasingly nervous that large numbers of Americans won't die in the opening hours of a North Korean attack. This would Leave South Korea a little more exposed. South Korea might change their positions to account for this.

My point in that exercise was that America could afford to be patient because North Korea posed no threat to America; and that South Korea wouldn't see North Korean nuclear weapons as much worse than North Korea's ability to possibly take Seoul or wreck it with conventional artillery (or even chemical weapons).

For America, our recent policies to stop North Korea in contrast to when we were patient then reflects the new threat to America itself. This is consistent with my thinking.

But South Korea has been going along with the increased American pressure to stop North Korea before it can threaten America with nuclear weapons.

Is this American-South Korean cooperation because North Korean nuclear weapons would pose a new threat to destroy Seoul? Was I wrong to assume that North Korea without nukes already had the ability to destroy Seoul?

Or is the basis for my conclusion changed? North Korea surely weakened since I wrote that post more than a decade ago. Maybe North Korea had that capability a decade ago but no longer has it.

And South Korea has grown stronger. Maybe southern options, like clearing a no-launch zone north of the DMZ, are more credible now.

America may or may not be stronger in general than a decade ago but America does have new capabilities to harm North Korea in a narrow range of power. We have lots of penetrating bombs now with more stealth aircraft to drop them.

This change in South Korean worries may also indicate that South Korea doesn't believe North Korea has nuclear weapons yet--as opposed to nuclear devices, which they clearly have.

So I raise the possibility that talk about the capability of North Korea to destroy Seoul if we lead a strike campaign against North Korea's nuclear infrastructure may no longer be accurate.

Heavy is Good

NATO needs more heavy armor to contest the Russian army in combat:

A recent RAND study concluded that it would take a month or more for the U.K., Germany and France to generate a combat-ready armored brigade[.]

I assume that means each would have that problem and not that they could collectively field a brigade. The former is bad enough.

Consider that Russia's AstroTurf separatists in the Donbas reportedly have 700 tanks. So they have more fielded tanks than France (240), Germany (225), and Britain (156) have in combat units combined.

Russia has 2,800 in combat units plus many more in reserve.

It is hard not to conclude that if fighting enemies rather than disorder is the mission of NATO, then NATO needs more heavy armor, as I wrote in 2002 about our armor plans that envisioned replacing the Abrams with a 19-ton Future Combat Systems (FCS) vehicle with lethality and survivability equal to the Abrams tank (see article starting on 28):

Barring successfully fielding exotic technologies to make the FCS work, the Army must consider how it will defeat future heavy systems if fighting actual enemies and not merely suppressing disorder becomes its mission once again. The tentative assumptions of 2001 will change by 2025. When they do, the Army will rue its failure today to accept that the wonder tank will not be built.

We didn't replace the tank with a wonder tank; but we did get rid of tanks as if they aren't really needed anymore.

That was a bad idea given that fighting actual enemies is again the mission.

From Central Front to Central Hub

Germany is still an important location for American bases despite German-American tensions that have grown since we won the Cold War.

Yes, in addition to being important for defending NATO Europe, Germany is an important location for projecting military power into an arc of crisis from the Gulf of Guinea to Central Asia (see my article starting on p. 15):

American bases in Europe already provide a stepping-stone for CONUS-based forces to use to deploy to trouble spots from Angola to central Asia.

Germany was once the front line of NATO. Now it is a staging area. I have to believe that German government attitudes reflect this change.

But Germany does remain a NATO ally and member of the West despite friction.

Delivery System Progress Continues

Iran continues to develop missiles:

Iran said on Saturday that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that such activities were grounds for abandoning their landmark nuclear deal.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran on Friday.

It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone of the missile, which has a range of 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) and can carry multiple warheads.

I think you can be pretty confident that Iran will have nuclear warheads for these missiles, notwithstanding that Iran nuclear deal that Obama fans claim is so great.

Remember that Iran got wording on missile testing that they wanted. That genius Kerry said it prevented Iran from testing nuclear missiles. Iran says the wording doesn't prevent testing and are going forward.

Use the Perry Hulls

Could we restore 7 Perry class frigates for anti-drug work in Latin America?

If recommissioned, seven retired Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates would serve as basic surface platforms, stay close to U.S. shores, assist drug interdiction efforts or patrol the Arctic without an extensive upgrade to its combat systems, the Secretary of the Navy said on Wednesday.

It's nice to see the hulls are available.

But I'd rather see a few of the hulls used to build new APDs (destroyer transports--or frigate transports in this case) to move company-sized Marine teams (sorry, content behind USNI membership wall).This would be to test concepts prior to building APDs from scratch.

In World War II we used a lot of troop transports converted from old destroyers (DD) and from destroyer escorts (DE). They could carry about a company of troops.

I think we have a new need for these given the potent anti-ship weapons and surveillance capabilities of potential enemies. As the Commandant of the Marine Corps warned, the big amphibious warships are "lucrative targets" for an enemy.

If the Navy wants 7 hulls for those other missions, I suggest The SOUTHCOM Queen modularized auxiliary cruiser to make up the difference.