Serenity Now!

I hope "reviewing" doesn't mean updating a hopelessly outdated plan, right?

[Over] the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, according to two American officials.

Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan’s hostages. To fly them out of Incirlik would be to mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance. To keep them there, though, is to perpetuate a nuclear vulnerability that should have been eliminated years ago.

Have I been warning about our nukes in Turkey for a while now (a shallow and quick search says more than two years), or what?

Have a super sparkly day.

UPDATE: Yeah, that's what I've said:

Ankara doesn’t have access codes for devices, but they could be cracked over time and the fissile material could be used to make homemade weapons[.]

The Turks aren't the problem. Erdogan is the problem.

Sadly, the article says agreements require us to get Turkish approval to move the nukes. Even without such an agreement on movement (which makes sense, who wants nukes traveling in your country without knowing there are safeguards?), we'd need Turkish approval so we don't risk a confrontation.

A better bet would be to disable them until we can get them out.

The Truth is Out There

This guy wants a serious investigation into UFOs because of three reasons:

1) The national security threat of advanced technology that we don't have;

2) The threat of collisions (!) with these UFOs;

3) To combat global warming (!); and

4) Humans will discard "baser" motives (oh, freeing Iraq from Saddam's depravity was morally wrong?) in favor of "loftier" and "nobler" goals.

What is really funny is that the author said there were three reasons, but I really don't think 1 and 2 are one reason.

Oh, and he proposes a "civilian-led quick reaction force could be established to rapidly assess such incidents."

Okay, I'll say it--call that force "the X-Files."

My view is that if there really are aircraft with advanced technology flying around out there, they are experimental American aircraft.

Or we are just trying to scare the crap out of Russia and China who will assume these incidents are American experimental craft with a clever disinformation campaign.

And note that this piece was in The Hill and not The Onion or The Babylon Bee. That was a seriously funny story.

Unless the author is part of the American disinformation campaign. The truth is out there, somewhere.

A Poll Supportive But Not Needed

Project Fear in Britain to sow enough doubt, confusion, and fear to derail the Brexit referendum in a delayed departure from the European Union has not worked.

Brexit is more popular now than it was in the referendum, according to one poll (tip to Instapundit):

The biggest poll since the referendum itself, conducted for ITN by ComRes with 26,000 Britons, conclusively shows the public want Brexit sorted, with 54% of respondents saying we should support abiding by the referendum result and leave the EU.

That's 54% of those who chose, leaving out undecideds. But even with them factored in the pro-leave side hits 50%. That's after the long delay and the nonstop fear campaign that the Remainers and their EU allies have rolled out since the 2016 referendum.

This should bolster Prime Minister Johnson, who already seems solidly committed to getting out this month one way or another.

Remember, the EU is an anti-American and anti-democratic project. It is in America's interest and European interests to wreck the EU before it does real harm.

The referendum was supposed to be a one-time final decision. The vote was not supposed to be stretched out with fear and a second referendum to reverse the first. But this poll bolsters the Leave side who want to go through with the original deal that the 2016 vote would be final.

UPDATE: I think that if Leavers can't take a deal that Prime Minister Johnson has gotten with the EU that it is crazy to think anyone can:

The work of the backroom team is largely done. Now the deal heads to the Commons, where its fate will be decided tomorrow.

After everything that has happened in this chaotic year, it should be obvious to any MP who voted for Brexit, or who thinks that the referendum result should be honoured, that this is the moment of truth. It is long past time to accept that a deal that secures orderly departure will involve compromise. This is the only viable deal there is going to be. Parliament and the courts will block off a no-deal exit. If the refuseniks are stupid enough to reject this historic win — a deal and departure on October 31 — they risk getting no Brexit at all, ushering in an even darker period for our democracy.

This transparently obvious message does not, yet, seem to have penetrated all Brexiteer skulls in parliament.

Britain must get out of the European Union. Once out, they can then work on fixing the flaws of the exit. The European Union's entangling cheese regulations should not be more powerful than Soviet tanks and secret police in holding together the Soviet empire.

UPDATE: Does Johnson have the votes lined up (tip to Instapundit)?

UPDATE: The issue remains in doubt.

UPDATE: So Johnson has the votes?

Parliament wants a delay until Parliament can pass legislation governing Brexit. They haven't done it in more than three years. So this seems like yet another delaying tactic to kill Brexit.

Johnson sent a letter to the EU requesting an extension for leaving the EU--which he was required to send--without his signature. And sent another letter saying he does not want an extension.

I'm not sure of what is going on with the maneuvering except that Remainers don't want to obey the 2016 referendum result. Is the EU getting tired of the drama and delay?

Apparently a vote on the Brexit deal will take place Monday.

Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder

The Army is not allowed to have its own planes to support its troops the way the Marines have (and as the Navy has for naval warfare and ground attack). Yet still the need for ground support remains.

This Army project does not speak well of the Army's confidence in the Air Force's willingness to provide close air support:

In 2017, the US Army established a collection of cross-functional teams (CFTs) aimed at rapidly pushing forward key technologies to advance the services' next generation of capabilities. One of those teams was the Long Range Precision Fires "pilot," an effort to develop the next generation of Army artillery—including "deep fires," an artillery capability that can strike at strategic targets well within an adversary's defenses.

That effort has spawned what Army Futures Command chief Gen. John Murray described to Congress last year as "the Strategic Long Range Cannon, which conceivably could have a range of up to 1,000 nautical miles" (1,150 miles, or 1,850 kilometers).

As I've said, it is a matter of trust. The Air Force doesn't want the Army to have combat aircraft but isn't terribly eager to support the Army in direct combat with Air Force aircraft.

Surely the Air Force can't deny the Army cannons.

And then brush up on Lanchester's Square Law.

UPDATE: The Russians, too, want better artillery.

Strike Three

I'm not willing to go to war with Turkey despite my desire to help the Syrian Kurds.

So we avoided that disaster. It seems as if critics of the president are determined to paint his decision to get out of the way of Turkey's invasion of Syria to establish a border buffer zone as a total disaster despite avoiding that own-goal of making our NATO ally Turkey an instant enemy rather than hoping we can outlast Erdogan who is slowly eroding our alliance.

Huh?

Since the outbreak of Syria's brutal civil war, the United States has stated several objectives -- destroying Islamic State extremists, easing from power President Bashar al-Assad and limiting Iran's influence.

In just one decision, President Donald Trump may have undone all three.

How did Trump undo three objectives?

One, ISIL already lost its caliphate. And everyone who isn't ISIL in Syria has an incentive to kill those jihadis who still roam around. Turkey hardly wants ISIL to replace Kurds along the Turkish border.

And I'm not even sure there was a massed ISIL killer prison break to blame on Trump, as the media has breathlessly reported. Some reports say it was an escape by family members and supporters rather than actual ISIL fighters. So forget that calamity for now.

Two, America has no stomach to overthrow Assad. We never have seriously tried to do that. This decision does not make that goal any less likely than it was. Strike two.

As for the third disaster of limiting Iran's influence, explain how we enhanced Iran's influence? Iran's influence comes from Assad's need for Iran's help to stay in power. Honestly this crisis could go either way on that issue.

With Assad having less need to attack more cooperative Kurds (because the Kurds want Assad's help against Turkey) to restore Assad's authority, doesn't Iran's influence drop? And doesn't a broke Iran unable to spend as much in Syria have to spend more to add Turkey to the list of foes to fight?

And doesn't Turkey's invasion put Putin in a dilemma, wanting to back Assad and back Turkey to split it from NATO?

I say that is strike three on the disaster at-bat. I guess some people just don't like Trump playing the game at all. And they'll do what it takes to paint a bloody disaster:

In the news media’s frantic desire to hype every decision made by President Trump as the literal end of the world, their rush to judgement often overlooks accurate sourcing. The latest potential fake news story comes from ABC News, who may have used a video from a Kentucky gun range, and passed it off as Syrian gunfire, in two separate stories, Sunday and Monday.

Also, don't forget that Turkey's Erdogan--not Trump--made the decision to invade Syria. Trump decided not to fight Turkey and decided not to leave our troops in the way when the Turks came across the border.

How would a US-Turkey clash make things better? Would a fourth much more important objective of not letting Erdogan totally wreck Turkey's NATO membership have been attained by a war?

This is not a total disaster. It may work out fine. Or at least as good as it can get given the complicated battlefield, our limited options, and our low appetite for war there.

Right now I won't say Trump made the best decision. It's complicated over there.

But he may have made the least bad decision. And I don't hear his critics say what a good decision would be considering the risks of escalation, given their insistence that Trump made a monumentally bad choice.

Hey, I'm just glad we didn't further militarize the struggle back in 2012, about 400,000 deaths and several new armed participants ago.

And note that Turkey's action has probably spoiled any efforts (which I figured would likely fail in the long run) to get Russia as an ally in place of America.

Again, work the problem.

UPDATE: Rethink your conclusion that Trump abandoned the Kurds. What price were we to pay to fight Turkey over the Kurds?

The Dinosaurs Evolve

The Army is beginning to equip Abrams tanks with the Trophy active protection system. But the attack-defense battle never really ends.

This is good:

U.S. Army M1 tanks will soon be equipped with anti-missile protection systems, now that the service has taken delivery of the Israeli-made active protection systems.

The Army plans to equip 4 armored brigade Abrams tanks with Trophy. 

Of course, my view is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Luckily the Army isn't stripping the Abrams of its heavy passive armor to rely solely on the APS to protect the tank.

The Turkish Incursion

The Turkey Crisis is complicated. The idea that this is an Orange Man Bad Crisis is nonsense. Grow the ef up. I want to help the Syrian Kurds. But I'm not willing to go to war with Turkey to win the Kurds independence from Syria.

The Turks could wait no longer and the Syrian Kurds wanted too much from America:

The Americans, unable to get the Turks and Syrian Kurds to work out a compromise deal, finally did what they had long said they would, and pulled their troops out of Syria. The compromise offered was continued military support, but very few Americans in Syria, if the Kurds would pull back and allow the Turks to establish their long sought security zone.

This was not a spur of the moment Trump decision.

America should not have decided to go to war with Turkey to protect the Syrian Kurds, as much as I like the Kurds and dislike Erdogan. And our 50 troops in northern Syria in the battle zone were not going to stop the invasion. Even our thousand in the rest of Syria are not enough. And if we start bombing our Turkish NATO ally--which does have a legitimate security worry about some Turkish Kurds who are hard core terrorists--the Turks can respond by taking a lot of American troops in Turkey hostage. Oh, and the nukes.

Plus the Kurds didn't do us a favor by fighting ISIL. We helped the Syrian Kurds as much as the Kurds helped us. And after we (plus non-Kurdish Syrians in the SDF) jointly defeated ISIL in Syria, the Kurds would be thrilled to have America fight for an independent Kurdish state carved out of Syrian territory. We do not have an obligation to fight that war for the Kurds.

We had a common interest in destroying ISIL. After that, what? The Kurds won't help us overthrow Assad--and we won't as Obama and Trump made it clear. And we won't support an independent Syrian Kurdish state--which our Iraqi and Turkish friends would not appreciate.

So don't tell me that the result of our decision is that the Kurds turned to our enemy Assad:

Kurdish forces long allied with the United States in Syria announced a new deal Sunday with the government in Damascus, a sworn enemy of Washington that is backed by Russia, as Turkish troops moved deeper into their territory and President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of the U.S. military from northern Syria.

We--both Obama and Trump--have operated on the theory that you can strike a king (Assad) without killing (overthrowing) him, and all will be fine.

And I've long said that in the absence of a serious American effort to topple Assad that the Kurds would have to cut a deal with Assad (I noted that in this post and in this post, for example). The Kurds have finally started to do what I knew they had to do because the Kurds weren't going to help overthrow Assad  and we weren't going to fight for their independence from Assad. We didn't have a serious effort to topple Assad before Russia intervened on his side in 2015. But now we will fight Russia, Iran, and Syria to save the Kurds?

Also, if you are blaming Trump for the escape of hundreds of ISIL fighters, the Australians say it is Turkey's fault:

Australia's foreign minister says Turkey is solely responsible for the escape of Islamic State group fighters from custody in Syria.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne was commenting in the Australian Senate after hundreds of Islamic State families and supporters escaped from a holding camp on Sunday amid fighting between Turkish forces and the Kurds.

And there is the added detail that families and supporters of ISIL fighters were part of the escapees. So how many actual terrorist were there?

When I say this is complicated, I'm not kidding. That's why I called it a multi-war rather than a civil war. A lot of actors are involved:



We aren't abandoning the Syrian Kurds. We are abandoning the Kurds' goal to hold the border region which anti-Turkish Kurds need to fight Turkey.

We've been trying to protect the Kurds in that border area but we've run out of stalling tactics. The Turks were coming in and we could fight the Turks or get out of the way. What should we have done under those circumstances?

This is bad. I don't like siding with Erdogan over the Syrian Kurds. I don't deny that. But it could be worse.

Again, America is not abandoning the Syrian Kurds, as our officials have stated:

The impulsive action of President Erdogan to invade northern Syria has put the United States in a tough situation, given our relationship with our NATO-allied Turkey, who has fought alongside the United States in the past; the Syrian Democratic Forces, who helped us destroy the physical caliphate of ISIS; and the safety of U.S. military personnel.

Rather than get pulled into this conflict, we put the welfare of our soldiers first, while urging Turkey to forego its operation, and working hard with us to address their concerns through the development of a security zone along the border. ...

We have not abandoned the Kurds. Let me be clear about that. We have not abandoned them. Nobody green-lighted this operation by Turkey -- just the opposite. We pushed back very hard at all levels for the Turks not to commence this operation. But Lord knows they have opposed this relationship between the United States and the YPG since its infancy in 2014. The Turks have opposed it all along the way, and so we should not be surprised that they've finally acted this way.

Remember too that the Kurds still want our help despite America's decision to get our fewer than 100 troops out of one corner of that buffer zone Turkey wants to control. The Kurds can't afford to trust Assad despite turning to him. And if the Kurds know we won't go to war with Turkey for them, that's a good dose of reality for the Kurds to have.

There is the claim that the Turkish invasion will prompt a full American withdrawal of our thousand troops in Syria. The United States will pull 1,000 troops out of Syria and put them in Iraq to watch ISIL in Syria. Our Tanf garrison will remain in southern Syria. But Turkey's operation is thus far small and not going farther than a border belt. Why would we have to pull out of the rest of Syria because of Turkey's actions? Maybe we will, but with our forces on the border inside Iraq, we could quickly move back into Syria to support the SDF fight against ISIL after the Turkish invasion settles in to hold their border zone. If the Kurds decide not to trust Assad, Syria, and Iran.

Do you really think this is a simple Orange Man Bad issue? Turkey is the country that started this crisis:

The U.S. did not “green light” the Turkish incursion. In practical terms, there was little the U.S. could do to prevent Turkish action without becoming more directly embroiled in the Syrian conflict. The irony was that, by helping crush ISIS, the U.S. has created conditions for Turkey to act more boldly.

This is a problem provoked by Turkey's long-delayed decision to invade Syria that is exposing a lot of competing interests left over from the Syrian multi-war (the term I've used to call the conflict with its civil war of multiple factions and multiple foreign actors fighting for conflicting, parallel, and overlapping objectives) and our lack of interest in really fighting for any of our interests or the interests of our allies.

What were we supposed to do?

Turkey will have to defend their buffer zone. And not just against Syria Kurds but against Syria which formally owns the territory and against the Iranians, Russians, and jihadis:

Building this buffer zone, however, comes with costs, from rising tensions with Syria, Russia and Iran to problems with the United States and Europe, to an ongoing Kurdish insurgency. And the more Turkey expands the buffer, the more of these costs it will incur.

Already the Syrians are reacting:

Syrian government troops moved into a series of towns and villages in northern Syria Monday, setting up a potential clash with Turkish-led forces in the area, as U.S. troops prepared to pull out.

The Syrian army's deployment near the Turkish border came hours after Syrian Kurdish forces previously allied with the U.S. said they had reached a deal with President Bashar Assad's government to help fend off Turkey's invasion, now in its sixth day.

And remember that Erdogan has gutted the Turkish military with ongoing purges following the small coup attempt several years ago. How well can the Turkish military defend and police the zone? Will their local proxies be reliable Turkish hand puppets?

If the Kurds, Syrians, Iranians, Russians, and jihadis start to probe and attack the zone, does Turkey really expect their NATO allies to trigger the alliance in defense of Turkey who launched the attacks and occupation? Nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

Remember too that Turkey holds the threat of sending another massive wave of Syrian refugees (and people claiming to be Syrian refugees) to Europe--as Turkey already did. So do you think European outrage about Turkey will translate into support for fighting Turkey or even taking real, as opposed to symbolic, countermeasures? Especially when Turkey is saying the buffer zone will be a place to put Syrian refugees--that is, the refugees won't be cocked and loaded ready to be fired at Europe?

This isn't the first time I've pointed out the problems with the Syrian Kurdish issue. This is hard. Perhaps Trump didn't make a good decision. But I'm hard pressed to deny he may have made the least-bad decision.

But hey, I'm at least glad we didn't further militarize the Syria conflict back in 2012 by supporting the rebellion then-untainted-by-jihadi rebels.

Although I'll say again that we really need to decide what we are doing in Syria. Let's see how this unfolds. I'm open to this being a mistake. But a lot needs to happen before I know if good or bad things flow from Turkey's decision to invade and Trump's decision not to stop Turkey.

Now let's work the problem.

UPDATE: The American vice president and secretary of state went to Turkey to try to get a ceasefire. So we're working the problem.

And of course at some point when the Turks have the ground they want for their buffer zone, they want a ceasefire.

UPDATE: The Turkish invasion (so far mostly proxies on the ground and Turkish firepower) to fight Syrian Kurds so far hasn't resulted in any Kurdish public complaints about America abandoning them. I haven't heard it, anyway.  That's odd, isn't it?

UPDATE: There will be a 5-day ceasefire to allow our allied Kurds to withdraw from the buffer zone area.

UPDATE: I'm hearing that a "permanent" ceasefire will begin after the withdrawal and that our sanctions will be withdrawn.

UPDATE: We did not betray the Kurds. As I said, I'd rather not side with Erdogan over the Syrian Kurds.

But I'm not willing to go to war with a NATO ally to defend the Kurds who want an independent state. Who wants to rattle NATO like that when Putin's Russia looms in the east?

UPDATE: Statement from our secretary of defense.

Putin Effed Up Royally

Russia really was the loser in the Democratic debate last night.

While the whole Trump-Russia collusion thing was always absurd in my view, Russia did intervene in our 2016 election to sow chaos. That Democrats and the media were the major players in creating that chaos over the last three years does not lessen what Putin did. That's just what Russia and the Soviets before them do. Democrats just noticed in 2016 and it shocked them.

As Glenn Reynolds noted in his debate review, Putin was the biggest loser in the debate:

I don’t think this many Democrats have stood on a stage and promised to stand against Russian infiltration in my lifetime. Seriously, it’s a huge pivot from when Barack Obama mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for calling Russia our greatest geopolitical foe.

The debate publicly locked in what I noted in amazement in 2016:

Democrats have clearly all gotten the memo to ignore answering anything substantive about the damning information found in the Wikileaks releases by attacking the now-evil Russians as the source of the information and questioning the patriotism of anybody who isn't outraged about that origin alone.

Which is kind of funny coming from the party that only four short years ago mocked Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for saying the Russians are our number one geopolitical foe.



... That ill-informed mockery that the Left embraced at least fit well with the late Cold War Democratic tendency to see the evil Soviet Union as morally equivalent to free America. Republicans say the Russians are our enemies? Oh no, our flaws are so much more worse, the Democrats said. America is unworthy of opposing them, they argued.

But now, in response to Russian hacking of Democratic emails, these Democrats are suddenly hard-line Code Warriors ready to go toe to toe with the Russkies in cyber-space to protect their precious bodily emails.

To be fair to the Democrats, it has to be unfamiliar territory to have Russians trying to undermine Democrats rather than undermining Republicans, as the Soviet Russians regularly did during the Cold War with their propaganda efforts that our Left ate up like organic kale.

So Democrats who once excused or explained or downplayed anything the Soviets did abroad or at home now despise the Russians with white-hot fury.

Do you doubt me when I note that the Fuck-Up Fairy lives in Russia?

And once again I will ask, what will happen when the Russian people notice that Putin has effed up royally?

Russia has alienated the West which was not a military threat to Russia by pointless threats to the West given weight by Russian invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, even though the West was willing to help Russia upgrade their defense industry until 2014; while China stole and then surpassed Russian military technology and production methods.

And recall that China has dormant claims on Russian Far Eastern territory with a treaty keeping those claims dormant up for cancellation in 2021.

Putin isn't brilliant. He is weakening Russia's economy, failing to arrest the decline of Russia's defense industries, alienating potential allies, and strengthening potential enemies all for the "glory" of Abhkazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, parts of the Donbas, and bases in Assad's Syria.

And he's not that impressive riding a horse bare-chested, truth be told.

Chimps with nukes.

What Western plot could be as effective at wrecking Russia than Putin himself? Seriously, why isn't there a conspiracy theory floating around Russia on that possibility?

Seriously, Putin has rallied the most left-wing Democrats to the idea that Russia is the enemy. The Left denies anyone but Republicans are enemies. For Christ's sake, people, those lefty nutballs looked at 9/11 and asked "why do they hate us?" as if we did something to deserve three thousand dead at the hands of jihadis!

President Obama made his famous Cairo outreach speech to the Moslem world on the theory that by telling the Islamic world that he was president that he would basically disarm their hate.

And President Obama sent Secretary of State Clinton to Moscow with the amazingly mistranslated "reset" button in the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008.

Yet now the Democrats claim that talking to a random Russian is treason.

Really, bravo Putin. Well done.

Well That's Not Reassuring, Is It?

Hong Kong protesters better stock canned goods and ammo.

Uh oh:

China’s president Xi Jinping has warned efforts to divide or destabilise China will end with “shattered bones,” as international pressure mounts over the government’s handling of protests in Hong Kong and a widespread crackdown on Muslim minority groups.

“Anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones,” Mr Xi said, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

I tend to think that is a literal rather than figurative threat.

I fear bones will be broken and the only way for Hong Kong to survive with their freedoms mostly intact is to break the legitimacy of Peking's rulers and crush the Chinese Communist Party.

I hope the odds of that aren't as long as they seem.

And a reminder that Michael Yon is filming in Hong Kong, and moved his videos to YouTube from Facebook.

A Republic, If We Can Keep It

Rule of law is at risk in America.

Decades ago, I read of a Roman--perhaps fictional, as my memory is hazy--noting their bad leaders who said that it was better to endure a series of bad rulers than to resort to coups to put a good leader in charge. The damage from that non-rules based change of leader would be far greater than the effects of the bad rulers replaced under the rules. Because one day the rules would return Rome to a good ruler. But the Roman elites decided that a coup was the short-term solution to their government problems. They chose poorly. Civil wars resulted.

The latest impeachment farce is much less than any of the past impeachable crimes that failed to show actual crimes. Have you forgotten them?

[There were] the voting machine gambit, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the emoluments clause, the McCabe-Rosenstein faux-coup, the Comey memos farce, the “resistance” efforts outlined by the New York Times anonymous op-ed writer, the campaign finance violations accusations, Stormy, tax returns, whistleblowers, leakers, the Mueller 22 months charade, and now impeachment 2.0[.]

But now, after that history, Ukrainegate is the real deal for impeachment 2.0? Get a grip, people.

Really, as Taibbi writes, this is a permanent coup attempt:

We are speeding toward a situation when someone in one of these camps refuses to obey a major decree, arrest order, or court decision, at which point Americans will get to experience the joys of their political futures being decided by phone calls to generals and police chiefs.

My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.

The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped.

After Democrats said they were cool with all of Obama's executive powers that he gathered in the Oval Office, Democrats are horrified that Trump has them.

And now the Democrats have carried out a non-stop effort to undo a lawful election. Will Democrats enjoy it when Republicans match Democratic resistance starting the day after the next election the Democrats win?

Will Democrats be fine with unleashing American law enforcement and intelligence assets on the Democratic president-elect for the three months until swearing in, in order to have information to wage unrelenting resistance for four years?

Democrats are killing rule of law in America with their unrelenting turn-it-to-11 resistance.

It is insane to push any type of impeachment even as the election campaign is now running on the Democratic side. An election will give us a chance to settle our dispute in just one year.

It is self-destructive to America to push serial impeachment attempts in the absence of any actual impeachable crime.

And it is doubly insane because Trump despite his personal failings is not actually harming America with his policies. We remain free and prosperous.

The Democrats are throwing out so many BS charges (and given their past histories of doing the same things but without the sophistication and media allies to have deniability, it is enraging to see Democrats do this) because the Democrats hope voters will think that if there is that much smoke here must be a fire.

I hope voters will see that the smoke is just from what the Democrats are smoking.

Do you wonder why I'd crawl across broken glass to vote for Trump next year despite my long history of despising Trump? People, despite my loathing of Hillary, I did not vote for Trump in 2016.

But Democrats have acted so much worse than mere mean Tweets that I have no choice. Good God, the Democrats are acting so horribly with such dire consequences for America if they succeed that I have to consider the possibility that Trump has to be mean and gross and whatever other adjective you want to use to defeat them and preserve our republic.

That's what the Democrats have done with their insanity. Trump is the bulwark against the destruction of rule of law!

I'll be voting for rule of law far more than I will be voting for Trump or even voting against whatever far left loon the Democratic primary system spits out.

How many Democrats--and Taibbi seems to fall into this category--will look at this political situation and say, "I may disagree with who you lawfully elected, but I will defend to the death your right to elect a president under our rules." So far not many, if Twitter and the media are to be believed.

But I retain hope.

Tips to Instapundit.

UPDATE: Related thoughts on the threats to freedom of speech.

Is This All About a New Aussie Buzz Word?

I don't understand how Australia is rethinking their strategy in a world of great power competition when the Australians already seem to have set a strategy. An they are still buying and incorporating the weapons needed on the defense side of that strategy.

I'm not sure what has changed in Australia's strategic environment that justifies this:

Australia clearly faces a turning point as it confronts the new global situation created by the rise of the 21st century authoritarian powers, and the return of geopolitics as well as the need to radically rethink globalization.

Does Australia assume that the challenge is to protect the rules-based order and to contribute to global efforts, often but not exclusively led by the United States: Somehow China and Russia can become normal allies and by largely peaceful means can work a coda to the inherited “rules based order.”

Or is it about geopolitical contest and conflict with the 21st century authoritarian powers at the heart of the challenge?

What turning point?

Australia is in the process of building a military with the core being F-35s, large submarines, and high quality ground forces capable of being dispatched abroad. Not for solo operations but, as a small power, in cooperation with America and other allies.

Didn't Australia decide to be a conventional shield and sword to leverage American assistance?

So this is all pretty settled already--over at least a decade--isn't it?

Certainly, the author in the initial link doesn't seem to think anything has changed--and over a longer period than I've blogged about:

My position on this is clear and has been from 1991 on. In that year, I did work for senior DoD officials where I outlined how Air and Naval modernization coupled with a strategy of backing regional influentials would provide a key way for the U.S. to be a key global power, but not a superpower.

What is different now in Australia's strategic situation from that decade-old observation? Is it really about Trump? If so, get a grip down under.

Get the Nukes Out!

American nuclear weapons at the Incirlik base in Erdogan's Turkey are nothing but potential problems.

You think?

The question of whether Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is really a US ally was put to US defense secretary Mark Esper on Fox television this morning. “No, I think Turkey, the arc of their behavior over the past several years has been terrible,” he said.

Which brings up a problem: The US is storing perhaps 50 air-dropped thermonuclear bombs at its Incirlik Airbase in southern Turkey, less than 100 miles from the Syrian border where this conflict is taking place.

I've been complaining about those bombs being there for a while. We have an Erdogan problem and not an S-400 purchase problem--or even a broader Turkey problem, so I think we should cauterize the wound and hope for better days with Turkey post-Erdogan.

But until those better days, nukes in Turkey aren't doing us any good.

Would Erdogan even let us use them in a conflict with Russia? Would Turkish pilots drop them on a NATO enemy? Not when Erdogan is stiff-arming America while remaining in NATO where it can use membership as a shield against NATO responses to Turkish actions.

Does having nukes in Turkey that Erdogan could order used--as long as he gets American permission--be enough to keep him from pursuing nukes purely under Turkey's control?

Get real. If Erdogan wants to rebuild Ottoman-era influence (without the actual imperial control), having to ask America permission should obviously show that this reason to keep our nukes in Turkey just doesn't work.

Right now the only purpose for those nukes is to allow Erdogan to capture the nukes by seizing control of the Incirlik base where our troops are stationed.

And Erdogan could use our captured troops as hostages until he can figure out how to use them, how to disassemble them and get the nuclear material out for his own use, or sell them to the highest bidders. Or some combination.

Get those nukes out. We have others in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy for actual NATO missions. We can add to those stockpiles with the weapons currently in Turkey or even see if the Greeks might like them on Crete.

Or we could bring them home, or send them to INDOPACOM.

Wherever those American nuclear bombs should be, Turkey under Erdogan isn't that place.

UPDATE: More people are noticing this problem:

Frayed U.S. relations with Turkey over its incursion in Syria raise a sensitive question rarely discussed in public: Should the United States remove the nuclear bombs it has long stored at a Turkish air base?

We should absolutely pull them out.

Or disable them on site if Erdogan hinders removal because he likes having hostages.

The idea that we should have gone to war with Turkey over the Syrian Kurds on the border with Turkey is insane. And this is just one issue that makes that urge lunacy.

Weekend Data Dump

Interesting transhumanism article on merging humans and machines. I wonder if AI merged with humans will, as humans get used to automatically following that "best" choice from the AI, simply be vulnerable to control by whoever manages to hack--or build--the AI? Let's hope China doesn't get that technology. Tip to Instapundit.

The protests are getting more intense in Hong Kong and aren't going away any time soon, it seems. Michael Yon has moved his videos to YouTube.

Verdict first, trial later.

I really don't think America is heading to civil war--whatever that means. The late 1960s and early 1970s were much worse violence-wise and divisions. What we have is a persistent even split without a consensus forming in the electorate yet. I concede that the previous era of unrest didn't have the Internet to allow the fanatics to organize and bolster fanaticism; and to make the fanatics look like a larger part of the population. I personally don't feel the need to stockpile guns, ammo, and canned goods.

Germany may be tilting toward the Boeing F-18 over the Airbus Eurofighter Typhoon as a replacement for aging Tornado fighters because of the nuclear mission. I will be shocked it that factor wins out in the selection.

I'm Spartacus Biden!

Heh.

Morocco continues to be a quiet bastion of pro-Western stability in the Arab world (albeit on the periphery).

From the "Well, Duh" files. This has been going on well before Obama formalized it with his Pacific "pivot."

So Gandhi is problematic with his flaws? That's fun. Now do Mohammed.

Better dead than rude. I really don't get nuance.

Hearing someone talk about the bad timing of getting an MA in Soviet studies in 1991, just when the Soviet Union disappeared reminded me of my wisdom of refusing to major in Soviet studies. I focused a lot on the Soviet Union but thought majoring in Soviet studies was rather defeatist. It would be saying that the USSR would be around my entire career. So I stuck with an AB (that's BA for you non-Michigan people) in history and political science and an MA in history, in 1986 and 1989. Good call.

I never like Shepard Smith on Fox News. He always seemed obviously left-leaning and his departure affects me not one bit. Oh, and am I the only one not to know he is gay? Not that it matters, of course.

The Marines aren't prepared for great power warfare. The Marines have long been less ready for this kind of conventional combat than the Army because of the Marines' lack of armor.

Algeria never experienced the Arab Spring. Perhaps because the memories of the 1990s jihadi insurgency were too strong to risk unrest. But as the old ruler has faded and departed, the people of Algeria seem to want their spring, belated as it is. I don't say I have hope this effort will work. I'm just saying stuff is happening there. One can hope. Perhaps if it does work, the memories of the jihadis is strong enough to keep Islamists from hijacking the spring as Islamists did in Egypt with ballots, and as Islamists did in Syria with bullets. More here.

I hope this Air Force Base incident is just an over-eager pizza delivery guy, but that's not the way to bet.

This is nothing but theater. No barrier is impassable. I've always said the key is that barriers slow down people and give defenders a chance to mass enough strength to stop the "attackers" before they reach their objective.

Don't be dim, that was Obama's parting gift. Trump may not be able to take that back diplomatically and unwilling to use force. But this path isn't on him.

I'm not going to argue against the idea that our priority should be a modernized and ready military with expansion coming later. But arguments for the former by those on the left side of the aisle, as those in the Brookings Institution are (although I admit that my opinion of O'Hanlon skyrocketed when he was honest enough to recognize that the Iraq surge was working), are tainted by the ease with which lack of modernization and readiness (maintenance and training) can be slighted without people really noticing--as happened in the Obama administration. The British have the same situation--although worse, I'm sure. The army is a particular mess. And they are amongst the best resourced in Europe. Recall I was unhappy about their plans for their army.

Remember, if we're so determined to get to the bottom of foreign involvement in our 2016 election, the Ukraine-Democrat connection to the Russia collusion charade is important to know.

People are stupid. When I was in college we played a dorm-wide assassination game called "killer" which involved campus-wide dart gun shootings. It involved a daisy chain of targets. If you killed your target you got their target. I'm sure it is too problematic for modern college students to handle. I'd call this Peak Stupid but the 2020 presidential election campaign lies ahead of us.

I'm going to again tell people so excited about getting Trump's tax returns released to learn of misdeeds that the IRS already has Trump's tax returns.

Are Morning Joe and Maddow poring over the returns line by line going to detect crimes that escaped the notice of the friggin' IRS? Do they really think the IRS attitude is that as long as taxes were properly paid Trump could sell kitten meat to Elbonian restaurants?

The Australians figured out that China was involved in a "widespread" hacking effort against Australia.

Basically, Booker is saying Biden can't defend himself. That's a sweet attack disguised as Democratic solidarity, you must admit.

I'd take Democratic complaints that Trump is pulling out of northern Syria and abandoning Kurdish allies who helped us fight jihadis if I didn't remember Obama pulling out of all of Iraq in 2011 and abandoning Iraqis who helped us fight jihadis.

Perhaps it isn't appropriate to credit Trump with a continuing drop in most violent crime, including murder. But you certainly can't continue to claim that Trump is encouraging violence.

Remember that even if it is possible to safely deter a nuclear-armed North Korea, North Korea will sell their missile and nuclear technology to other countries. We don't have good options. Note that in that post I didn't even consider that we could negotiate a real deal with North Korea. So far that absence is correct rather than a failure of imagination. I'd like to be wrong.

Next year the United States will exercise a division in Europe that will command three armored brigades. This will be the largest exercise since the Cold War.

I protested the description of our pull out from the Turkish border region as being a pull out from all of Syria. We're talking 50-100 American troops moving out of the border region to other areas in Syria. And I ask again, are we to go to war with Turkey? I want to help the Syrian Kurds. But not by going to war with Turkey, which is still a formal NATO ally.

A reminder that it is perfectly legitimate for the president to ask foreign governments for help in criminal investigations. Democrats are conflating Barr's work with presidential requests for 
foreign help against the Biden family. That is questionable--although hardly an impeachable matter. Although the Obama administration set the precedent with its cooperation with foreign governments and the Hillary campaign--sometimes via private individuals as agents--in the fake charge of Trump-Russia collusion. Let's just say that it is mighty convenient for Democrats to be all-in on investigating the 2016 election right up to the moment Mueller exposed the accusations of Trump collusion as hollow. I say keep going to find out what happened in 2016.

The king is not amused. I'm not happy with the Thai royal family. We have a long history of friendship and alliance, but their suppression of democracy is troubling, to say the least. I'm hoping for better days ahead.

Poland and America have forged closer defense ties that enable American reinforcements.

Russia, Ukraine, Syria, and Venezuela.

Russia's opposition groups. I wonder if China and Russia would coordinate crackdowns on Hong Kong and Russian protests to dilute the focus of world protests against either crackdown?

In news sure to annoy China, 7th Fleet staged large exercises in the South China Sea.

The F-117 is only partially retired--with much better jobs than greeting store visitors.

I'd like to help the Syrian Kurds. I'm unwilling to go to war with NATO ally Turkey to do it. So I'm not unsympathetic about Americans complaining that we shouldn't abandon allies who fight with us against jihadis, the way the complaints have rolled in about pulling out 100 troops (max) from the long Syrian Turkish border region east of the Euphrates River. Still, it is just the border region which makes my Turkish war caveat apply. More broadly, we aren't abandoning the Syrian Kurds.  But after the outrage of supposedly abandoning our Kurdish allies there, now do Iraq and Afghanistan where our allies with our help kill jihadis every day. Yet somehow those campaigns have gone on long enough to reach their expiration date, I guess.

If Iran and Hezbollah where smart, they'd use the drone and missile capability demonstrated in the attack on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure to hit Israel's Iron Dome anti-rocket batteries prior to initiating a massed rocket barrage on Israeli civilians from Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. Which would definitely trigger an Israeli march to Baalbek.

Could Russian-Western relations be repaired? I hope so. Russia would be wise to ally with the West to jointly confront China which endangers both of us. But Russia is the side that needs to offer the most concessions to repair the damage Russia inflicted on our relations. Throwing Ukraine under the bus to get "better" relations pretty much ensures that relations aren't actually going to get better.

I returned from Las Vegas where I went with a couple friends from college. I lost less money than I was prepared to lose. And we saw three shows. A very funny comedy show and a good comic magician. Plus the Atomic Saloon show was very entertaining. I was pulled into participating. Think Lady and the Tramp. And I waited more than a half hour for my moment to get my (good humored) revenge. Much needed fun. Also, I can never look at hula hoops the same again. OMG Ailona is gorgeous.

I was sitting about five feet from her. Which obviously made an impression.

The Turkish invasion of Kurdish territory in Syria is complicated. The Syrian Kurds have been our allies against ISIL. That was a common interest. But as I've said all along, the Kurds were not about to help us topple Assad which was the logical next step after defeating ISIL. So who bailed on who? Mind you, I think we should help the Syrian Kurds by pressuring Turkey to stop their attacks. Erdogan is not our friend even though Turkey is a NATO member. Going to war with Turkey over the Kurds is never going to happen. And I don't hold it against the Kurds that they don't want to die to overthrow Assad when someone else will take over if the effort succeeds, and the Kurds will retreat to their homeland anyway. We have decisions to make about Syria. Also, if ISIL fighters have escaped because of Turkish attacks, we should hunt them down and kill them.

So Iran says this sort of thing should be punished? Huh.

China is losing the trade war that America has organized.

I've mentioned that moron professors for stupid notions that they speak out loud have debased the value of the PhD, right?

Electric cars in large enough numbers may be ecological disaster (they'll run on coal and other fossil fuels, essentially); Oh, and solar power has a pollution problem, too. And in related news, Extinction Rebellion is an upper middle class nutcase suicide cult.

If there really isn't a college loan "crisis" the massive Democratic spending proposals are just legal bribes to young voters, no? Tip to Instapundit.

The media war on Trump. The media is spreading the darkness. Via Instapundit.

Russia in the Mediterranean Sea is an Annoyance /NOTHING FOLLOWS/

I really don't care about Russia's Mediterranean Sea ambitions.

This author describes Russian strategy in the Mediterranean Sea:

Russia’s strategy in the Mediterranean is focused on three key goals: taking advantage of the Mediterranean’s geographical position to improve Russia’s security, using Russia’s position in the Mediterranean to increase Russia’s status as an alternative world power to the United States, and providing support for the Syrian regime. The strategy has three key elements. The first element is the positioning of a credible military force in the Mediterranean. A permanent force in the region is important for several Russian objectives, including protecting Russian approaches and reducing Russia’s vulnerability to surprise.

While I see Crimea as a staging area to project power into the eastern Mediterranean Sea, I'm not sure what the author in that initial article means by this:

Russia has moved air defense batteries into Crimea, where these batteries provide further cover for Russian platforms operating in the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean.

How, pray tell, can anti-aircraft missiles in Crimea provide air defense coverage over the eastern Mediterranean Sea?

The S-400 has a maximum range (with the missile with the longest reach) of 250 miles; and the distance from Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea to Tobruk, Libya at the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea is over 1,000 miles while the distance from Sevastopol to Antalya, Turkey at the northern edge is almost 550 miles. How does Russia cover the Med with missiles at the very southern tip of Crimea?

Further, notwithstanding the author's note that the Russians are reinforcing their Black Sea fleet (the weakest of the four main fleets), unless Turkey--which controls the Turkish Straits--sides with Russia in a war with NATO, how does Russia support their fleet in the Mediterranean Sea from the Black Sea?

I see Russia's strategy in the Mediterranean Sea as having just one goal--a forward shield to protect Russia from military approaches from the southwest. The second goal the article notes is really part of the one goal that I see; and the goal of supporting Syria isn't a goal--it is a means to the one goal.

But Russia's naval weakness means that their naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea will live a brief but exciting life during a war with NATO (and until they die, won't be any threat at all in the Black Sea).

Unless Russia manages to collapse the NATO position in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Then the Russian fleet there might last a bit more than briefly, as long as Bulgaria and Italy hold firm in NATO and if Jordan, Israel, and Egypt stand with America.

I'm just not worried about Russia's navy (other than their SSBNs, of course) let alone their naval presence in the Mediterranean Sea.



Have a ball, Russia. We'll call it a draw.

A Longstanding Tradition of Existence

China celebrated 70 years of communist rule in China at the beginning of the month. Is communist China more powerful than the USSR and so there is no chance that the People's Republic of China could follow the USSR into oblivion?

China is weaker than it looks:

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 after 69 years of tyranny and aggression. On October 1, the People’s Republic of China will officially turn 70. The brutal regime of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping has made China the world’s longest surviving Communist country, and unlike the Kremlin of old, Beijing seems stronger than ever.

The contrast between China today and the Soviet Union at its death could hardly be more stark. In the early 1990s, Russia’s military was swiftly losing ground to American investment and innovation, forcing a global retreat of influence and power. Today, the People’s Liberation Army is quickly closing the gap with the U.S. armed forces and is projecting its newfound power from the Arctic to Africa to Australasia.

Communist China is also sprinting economically. It overtook Japan as the world’s second-largest economy in 2011, and its GDP has nearly tripled since then. Many forecasters say it’s a matter of when, not if, China overtakes the U.S. By comparison, the Soviet Union struggled to keep its economy even half as large as America’s.

Finally, China is markedly more oppressive than the Soviet Union at a similar age.

But that facade doesn't tell the story. China is much more reliant on the US-dominated trade world than the USSR ever was.

Let's check the economic record from 1960 to 2018 (the Russia figures go back to 1988 when it was still the USSR):



By world bank statistics, in the 1990-1991 period, the USSR had a per capita GDP of about $3,500. America had a figure of about $24,000. So the USSR's figure was 14.6% of America's.

Purchasing power parity didn't save the USSR from that stark imbalance. So why inflate China's GDP to artificially make it look weightier in world impact?

In 2018, China had a figure of $9,770 versus America's $62,641. That makes China's figure 15.6% of America's.

That doesn't sound like China is clearly more powerful than the USSR and so unlikely to face a similar economic collapse.

And it certainly doesn't sound as if America can't pressure China's trade-dominated economy.

I'm not saying China will collapse. I'm just saying that if it does we shouldn't be too shocked.

UPDATE: The Chinese people do realize that in Xinjiang the Chinese Communist Party is testing out the system for controlling all Chinese, right?

Does A2/AD Apply to China?

China launched its first major amphibious warfare ship. Which is kind of odd, when you think about it.

China now has an America-style amphibious warfare ship:

The Type 075 is a landing helicopter dock ship, or LHD. LHDs are large ships designed to hold a marine landing force and the transportation needed to get them ashore. LHDs have a large, full-length flight deck, similar to aircraft carriers, to launch and recover attack, observation, and transport helicopters. According to Naval News, the Type 075 is rumored to be capable of carrying up to 28 helicopters.

Remember, we have the capacity to lift just two brigades at once. And the Marines are rethinking amphibious operations in the face of persistent surveillance and cheap precision weapons in the hands of enemies defending the shores.

So China's commitment to those big ships is kind of odd, no? They are building these ships just when they are most vulnerable to a peer's military with the same kind of weapons China has fielded to defeat them?

Let me remind you that China doesn't have a monopoly on those anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) weapons.

I think these ships and the growing Chinese marine corps (building toward 6 maneuver brigades, I think) is a red herring as far as Taiwan is concerned. The marine corps is intended for power projection against small powers and not amphibious warfare against major opposition.

While marines could help against Taiwan, I don't think they'd be critical to success and nowhere close to being the main force in a Taiwan scenario.

The FBOH Competition Kicks Off

General Dynamics unveiled a model of their Griffin II in the Army light tank* competition. Be still my heart.

Here we go:

In 2017, the US Army has launched a program called Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) that will purchase 504 light armored vehicles. The Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) vehicle is a new combat vehicle required to address the capability gap identified within the Armys Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs). This vehicle would be incorporated in the IBCT structure as a weapon system solution to provide a protected, long-range, cyber-resilient, precision, direct fire capability for early/forcible entry operations.

My contempt for the idea that light tanks are the solution to infantry brigade weakness knows no bounds:

I have no idea what enemy is going to be sporting enough to send light infantry with only light armor up against our MPS-equipped infantry so we'll have dominance.

The light tank fantasy world is insane. Kill it now before these Future Burned Out Hulks are killed en masse on a future battlefield.

In my view, these light tanks are just Future Burned-Out Hulks (FBOHs, for the acronym addicted defense community):

How sporting of the Army! They want to give enemies a fighting chance on the battlefield by giving them potential targets easy to kill. Will nobody in the infantry reject those flaming coffins?

We have Abrams tanks. Use them, as I urged in Army magazine.

And if somebody calls them "agile" I will scream the cry of total despair:

I really hate the term "agile" to describe ships or ground vehicles because I don't think that anything is agile enough to avoid a missile hit.

When I see "agile" I read "expendable." But it is not polite to say that out loud.

So don't.

*You can call it a mobile protected system or mobile protected firepower. But it is a light tank. Light tanks can be killed by virtually anything on a modern battlefield. Of course, if they are cheap and don't have a crew, get back to me and we'll talk.

Fight for Democracy in Europe

Fifty years ago, democracy was in a minority globally, but lucky enough to be led by a powerful America.

In a review of a new book on the spread of democracy in the West, a reviewer states of the author:

He reminds us how, at the start of his period, democracies were rare: Europe was not merely severed by an Iron Curtain, but Greece was run by the Colonels, Spain by Franco and Portugal by Salazar. Outside the English-speaking world and north-western Europe there was little democracy; and his book is an account of democracy’s triumph, as Gorbachev lets the Soviet bloc go.

Indeed. I've noted that the Western tradition did not fully embrace democracy until after America entrenched in Europe following World War II and spread our influence. As I wrote in this post about the threat to America that could arise in Europe:

We forget the role that America played in creating the free and democratic Europe that we wrongly assume is the natural state of now-free Europe:

And that distance [between America and Europe] is allowing Europeans to revert to their pre-World War II nature of being a mix of autocracy, monarchy, and democracy. I had to be reminded by this author that our long period of influence in Europe during the Cold War had a role in making Europe truly democratic:

It is easy to forget--and this was a useful reminder to me--that Europe with its autocracies and monarchies was not fully part of a free West (although obviously part of the Western tradition) until we rebuilt Western Europe in that template after World War II. And NATO expansion after defeating the Soviet Union was more explicit in demanding democracy and rule of law for new members.

If left alone without the benefit of American influence, Europe as a political entity will evolve in ways hostile to America, as the proto-imperial body already exhibits[.]

My view is that the European Union is an attempt to reverse the American influence that led to the triumph of democracy in Europe. The EU proto-empire would like America out of Europe to allow the proto-empire to shed the prefix.

It is in America's interest to derail the EU imperial project. So we should support Brexit. We have friends in geographic Europe--but Europe as a political entity will not be our friend.

Treat or Trick

Britain needs Prime Minister Johnson to hold steady. So far so good.

Politico reports that Johnson is solid on Brexit:

“After decades of campaigning, three years of arguments and seemingly endless months of pointless delay, it is now just 25 days until the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union comes to an end. We will be packing our bags and walking out on October 31. The only question is whether Brussels cheerily waves us off with a mutually agreeable deal, or whether we will be forced to head off on our own,” he wrote.

If the EU works to deny Britain Brexit, Johnson should use British membership to grind EU work to a halt from within until Brussels cries uncle (and I read somewhere--I forget where--that Johnson plans to do just that if stymied in leaving).

As I argued before the vote more than three years ago, Brexit on sight, Brexit first, Brexit to kill the EU, keep Brexiting.

Derailing the will of people of Britain who were told their 2016 referendum would decide the issue would kill rule of law in Britain.

Remainers should be focusing on convincing the British people to rejoin the EU and making the case for it. If it is so good for Britain, that should be easy, right?

Talks Alone Won't Resolve North Korea

Last week North Korea test fired a nuclear-capable missile designed to be launched from a submarine:

North Korea test-fired what is believed to be a ballistic missile built to be launched from a submarine from waters off its east coast into Japan’s exclusive economic zone off Shimane Prefecture on Wednesday, showing off military technologies that if successfully developed would make it significantly more difficult for the United States to destroy its nuclear arsenal.

North Korea only has an ancient diesel model to hold such a missile if perfected. I imagine it would be sunk quickly by Japanese or South Korean subs that stalk it when it leaves port (here's related news on sub detection, including South Korea's incentive to improve ASW capabilities).

I don't think talks with North Korea can solve the problem.

People like to say that the Iraq War proved that despots need nukes. But that's not true. Iraq proved we'd tolerate despots if they give up nukes. That's what the 1991 ceasefire did under Bush 41, notwithstanding the later Clinton-era policy that made regime change in Iraq our official policy after Saddam defied his 1991 commitment to disarm and prove it. In 2003 we invaded Iraq because Saddam failed to prove he had given up his WMD programs.

The Libya solution in which Bush 43 got Khadaffi to give up his nuclear program led to the 2011 Obama intervention that led to Khadaffi being killed by rebels.

And the Ukraine solution in which Clinton in 1994 (with the Budapest Memorandum that included Russia and Britain) got Ukraine to give up its massive nuclear arsenal in exchange for guarantees of Ukraine's territorial integrity led to a Russian invasion and dismemberment of Ukrainian territory in 2014 during the Obama administration.

The latter two are the real examples of why North Korea won't trust a deal with us.

But I don't think Trump is willing to strike North Korea if talks fail.

And the North Koreans don't understand that they already have the ultimate deterrent to invasion.

Talk, talk, die, die is our only hope.