Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Thinking Straight About Ukraine and Taiwan

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Baltics, Biden, China, credibility, deterrence, extended deterrence, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, semiconductors, strategic ambiguity, Taiwan, Ukraine, Ukraine War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin

A flurry of developments in the last few days has underscored my frequently made and related points that

(a) America’s Ukraine policy is the height of recklessness because it’s courting any risk of nuclear war on behalf of a country whose fate it stlll doesn’t consider a vital interest; and

(b) the common claim that the best way to protect (genuinely vital) Taiwan is to beat help Kyiv defea Russia is nonsensical – and dangerously so precisely because of that nuclear war risk.

The evidence that Washington doesn’t view Ukraine as vital? Its continued refusal to admit it into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the longstanding U.S. security alliance. As explained repeatedly on RealityChek, for decades, the NATO allies have been protected not only by an American pledge to come to their defense whenever needed, but by a U.S. nuclear umbrella. This arrangement aimed at deterring attack by convincing potential aggressors that a such an assault on attack on any of them would trigger – if necessary – a response with the most destuctive weapons ever created and therefore their total annihilation.

And since the resulting nuclear conflict would threaten America’s very existence as well, this policy of “extended deterrence” was bolstered by the stationing of relatively small U.S. conventional forces directly in harm’s way. Their purpose – lending credibility to the American nuclear threat by leaving a President no choice but to push “the button” to save them in the likely event of their being overrun by a superior foe.

Given the literally existential stakes involved, U.S. leaders would need to be literally crazy to adopt such policies to defend countries whose loss would not pose literally mortal threats to American survival, independence, or prosperity. That’s why not every country on earth enjoys NATO-like protections.

But Ukraine lately has been a weird – and indeed absolutely perverse – exception. U.S. policy is clearly running some nuclear war risk – not by deploying any combat forces in the country (some auditors of weapons shipments are officially on the ground) but by deploying major forces in the immediate vicinity of a conflict that could well spill over borders and engage them.

At the same time, the United States still opposes admitting Ukraine as a NATO member and therefore extending to Kyiv that nuclear guarantee. Indeed, according to a Financial Times piece last Thursday, the Biden administration even opposes setting up a timetable for Ukrainian membership.

Reportedly, the main reason is fear of further provoking Russia, and increasing the odds of potentially catastrophic nuclear weapons use. But of course, if Ukraine is vital enough to be risking nuclear war already – due to the next-door military deployments – then what’s the problem? Would a NATO admissions announcement really worsen that risk materially?

If so, U.S. officials strangely haven’t made that argument. And if so, why is that even a consideration? When a truly vital interest is endangered, those are exactly the risks that by definition are worth running. In fact, when a truly vital interest is endangered, why not pour in U.S. forces to try turning the tide decisively?

Instead, the real reason is surely that U.S. leaders understand that Ukraine isn’t vital at all, but have decided to run not-trivial nuclear war risk anyway in hopes of threading a needle. I’m still waiting for a convincing explanation of why that strategy isn’t terrifyingly irresponsible.

One common answer: Preventing Russian success in Ukraine will best protect the nearby NATO countries – and at zero nuclear war risk because there would be no need for them to invoke the explicit nuclear guarantee they do enjoy.

That’s not a crazy argument. But this reasoning still leaves the United States in the bizarre (and needlessly dangerous) position of running non-trivial nuclear war risk to protect a non-vital country in order to avoid any nuclear war risk to protect countries that are deemed vital.

This argument is weird not least because – logically anyway – it credits the U.S. nuclear umbrella with little or no effectiveness. Why else would proponents believe that, having subdued a country with no explicit U.S. nuclear guarantee, Russia would inevitably attack a country with one? Along with tripwire forces?

This argument also ignores Russia’s failure to attack these very NATO countries. And it’s so far let them alone even though, especially in the case of the Baltic countries, they’re immediate Russian neighbors and in 1940 were officially absorbed into the old Soviet Union. They also contain big ethnic Russian  populations. That may not strike Russian dictator Vladimir Putin as an historical justification for re-gaining them as strong as that which he cites for Ukraine. But it’s still no doubt significant in his mind. It’s hard to avoid crediting the NATO nuclear guarantee for this success.

Which brings us to Taiwan. Unlike Ukraine, it’s genuinely vital to the United States. Unless you want to chance living in a world where China controls the global supply of semiconductors, and the technology needed to manufacture the most advanced versions of these chips. These rapidly improving devices are the building blocks of all the computing and communications systems central to the weapons that will soon dominate war-fighting, and of future innovation in the military and civilian worlds alike (including in artificial intelligence). Not so incidentally, increasingly advanced semiconductors will determine whether your privacy remains private.

Ukraine hawks of course insist that frustrating Russia there will help deter China from attacking Taiwan as well. And it’s true that Taiwan doesn’t enjoy a nuclear guarantee from the United States. It’s not even a formal treaty ally. But bilateral defense relations have recently moved much closer, and President Biden has several times promised that the United States will in fact move to defend the island against Beijing (see, e.g., here), removing much of the “strategic ambiguity” that has marked American policy for decades.

And these kinds of measures – which include a weekend statement from a Congressional Republican leader endorsing such actions, too – will deter China much more effectively than anything that happens in Ukraine for a very simple reason: Combined with such specific steps, and likely follow-ons, Taiwan very importance makes them credible.

With Ukraine, the opposite proposition obviously holds: Because it was never vital, U.S. efforts to prevent an invasion failed. For high stakes commitments to achieve low stakes goals are inherently non-credible.

Importantly, making grandiose promises to achieve transparently less-than-grandiose goals is no way to build or maintain credibility worldwide, either.  Instead, it’s much likelier to create or reenforce impressions of stupidity or pigheadedness – not good looks when last I checked.

The argument that going too far down the above Taiwan road needlessly creates too much risk can’t be dismissed out of hand. But even if it increases the odds of World War 3, because Taiwan is vital – and unless the word is meaningless –  going further down the road (including with symbolic gestures like the meeting in California between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwan’s president) can’t be ruled out, either.

Like so many foreign policy and national security questions, though, “how far” – and trying to thread that needle – is a matter for legitimate debate. But because Ukraine isn’t vital, assuming any nuclear risk on its behalf has been a foolhardy, potentially suicidal blunder. And indisputably so – at least for anyone without a death wish.

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Im-Politic: DeSantis’ Real Ukraine Mistake

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election 2024, foreign policy, Im-Politic, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, politics, Ron DeSantis, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin

Since the Ukraine War is the first international crisis in decades that could draw the United States into a nuclear war, and since Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis could well become the nation’s next president, it’s vital to explain why the real mistake made by DeSantis in recently commenting on U.S. policy toward the conflict isn’t the one his critics have charged he’s made.

Instead, it’s a mistake that’s not only different, but actually serious, because it could eventually force him to support deeper and more dangerous U.S. involvement if he ever wins the White House.

The mistake DeSantis supposedly made in an interview published yesterday was flip-flopping, or at least seeming to walk back, an earlier statement downplaying Ukraine’s importance to the United States, and stating that because of nuclear war risk, should sharply limit its military aid and shift its focus to pushing for a peace deal.

Here’s his full statement to Fox News-talker Tucker Carlson. To me, the key passages are:

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests – securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party – becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.” And

“Without question, peace should be the objective. The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table. These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.”

The core ideas: Ukraine’s fate is not a vital national interest of the United States’, and is therefore obviously not worth risking exposing America to a nuclear attack from Russia.

Full disclosure: At this point, DeSantis is my preferred presidential candidate. So keep that in mind as I evaluate his comments. And this Ukraine position is my position. But of course, it’s far from a consensus. According to supporters of current Biden administration policies (and even more aggressive actions), these first DeSantis remarks were fundamentally off-base because Ukraine is in fact a vital U.S. interest, and because therefore Russia’s aggression must in fact be defeated (a goal that could take several somewhat different forms) “no matter what,” as Mr. Biden recently declared.

It should be apparent even to DeSantis opponents or those neutral, though, that he was not proposing dropping all aid to Ukraine and leaving that country at Vladimir Putin’s mercy. But backers of the current (and even more aggressive) American policies thought confirmation of their flip-flop (or less dramatic “walk back”) claim came in yesterday’s DeSantis remarks. Here’s the passage they believe shows that the Florida Governor now sees the error of his ways in calling the war a “territorial dispute that’s not of “vital” importance to America:

“Well, I think the [“territorial dispute statement has] been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong.

“What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting and that’s what I was referring to and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it, but I think the larger point is, okay, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO. That’s a good thing. I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified (in invading) – that’s nonsense.”  

I don’t see how these words can be read in any way other than saying that “territorial dispute” was poor wording, and that DeSantis still opposes any U.S. steps to “escalate more involvement.”

But his rationale for opposition changed significantly here. As opposed to simply denying that Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity are vital U.S. security interests and therefore not worth the nuclear risk, here he’s saying that there’s not “sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement because “Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO.”

That is, previously, DeSantis’ position focused solely on Ukraine’s intrinsic value to the United States. Russia’s strength or lack thereof was immaterial. Because he’s said nothing about changing, much less ending, the U.S. commitment to the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) alliance, whose members are protected by an American nuclear guarantee, I assumed that he believed that nuclear deterrence plus the major buildup of conventional forces from NATO members in those allies in Ukraine’s neighborhood would suffice to keep Putin at bay whatever Ukraine’s fate (which is my position).

But in the new interview, DeSantis made his opposition to a harder Ukraine line conditional on Russia’s capabilities, not Ukraine’s intrinsic importance. And I worry that if he becomes President this stance could trap him into a Biden-like Ukraine policy, with all the nuclear war risk, if Russia proves stronger (or more reckless) than he currently surmises, or after it becomes stronger in a post-Ukraine war world. As a result, he would wind up risking nuclear attack on America for a country that he may still consider of inadequate intrinsic interest to the United States – which I view as the height of foreign policy irresponsibility.

It’s still very early in the 2024 presidential cycle. In fact, DeSantis isn’t even a declared candidate yet. He’s a foreign policy newbie and it’s not even known yet who he’s been getting his foreign advice from – if he’s indeed getting any in a systematic way. So there’s still time for DeSantis to tack back to a genuine America First-type approach.

If he doesn’t, all else equal, I’d have to reconsider my support. And the next presidential campaign’s foreign policy debate, and the nation’s approach to Ukraine War and national security overall, will be all the poorer.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Biden Shows How Not to Make the Case for His Ukraine Policy

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Biden, Common Sense, deterrence, geography, national interests, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Soviet Union, Thomas Paine, Ukraine, Ukraine War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin

Not that any more evidence was needed, but President Biden’s speech last week in Warsaw, Poland illustrated perfectly why his Ukraine war policy has been so reckless. Unless you think the United States should court nuclear war risk for a song.

Speaking just ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s, to an audience that he knew would include his own countrymen as well as the large local crowd that assembled to hear him, the President could have said something on the order of:

“If Putin takes any part of Ukraine, he’ll go after our NATO allies and the rest of Europe next, placing his military just an ocean away from U.S. shores”; or

“If Putin takes any part or all of Ukraine, his dominance of the Black Sea region will be a giant step toward inevitable global conquest”; or

“If Putin takes any part or all of Ukraine, he’ll control minerals and other natural resources vital to the U.S. economy, and hold America hostage.

Or the President could have mentioned all these points to make the case that Ukraine’s independence per se is a vital U.S. interest for all sorts of specific reasons. He wouldn’t even have had to explain why, if that’s the case, it wasn’t admitted to the NATO alliance years ago, which would arguably have deterred the Russian attack in the first place by extending it the protection of America’s full nuclear arsenal – as befits a genuinely vital interest.

After all, who was going to call out this whopping inconsistency in his policy? A Regime Media deeply convinced of the globalist claim that the security of literally every country on earth is a vital U.S. interest, whether it’s an official American ally or not?

But Mr. Biden’s speech included none of these arguments. In fact, he’s never made these arguments. Instead, in Warsaw, he continued bloviating about Russia’s foes facing “fundamental questions about the commitment to the most basic of principles.  Would we stand up for the sovereignty of nations?  Would we stand up for the right of people to live free from naked aggression?  Would we stand up for democracy?”

And about the “eternal” stakes being “A choice between chaos and stability.  Between building and destroying.  Between hope and fear.  Between democracy that lifts up the human spirit and the brutal hand of the dictator who crushes it.  Between nothing less than limitation and possibilities, the kind of possibilities that come when people who live not in captivity but in freedom.  Freedom.”

There’s a good reason of course that Mr. Biden has never made specific, interest-based arguments for deep involvement in the Ukraine war – because when it comes to the United States, they’re just so much hokum. In fact, they’re even hokum-y for much of Europe even though it’s in Russia’s neighborhood. Because surely those in its Western half know that for decades during the Cold War, they were nearly as unaffected as Americans by the Soviet Union’s domination not just of Ukraine, but of all of Eastern Europe. And if they don’t, they should.

In the 1777 pamphlet The Crisis that so systematically and eloquently advocated for American independence, Thomas Paine faulted Britain for a “natural temper to fight for a feather” – that is, for vainglory rather than necessity or even significant tangible advantage. Consequently, that country “for centuries past, [had] been nearly fifty years out of every hundred at war with some power or other” and consequently had become a full partner in “the dismal commerce of death” and “the war and desolation [that] have become the trade of the old world.”

The thirteen colonies, by contrast, enjoyed advantages, resulting from geographic distance and consequent remoteness from European power politics and diplomacy, that afforded them “a retreat from their cabals.”

Clearly, this isn’t 1777, but the Atlantic is still a formidable geopolitical barrier; Ukraine is very far away; the United States today, unlike the Thirteen Colonies, is no military pygmy; and the power whose designs Mr. Biden would have the nation resist “as long as it takes” can create an ample nuclear “commerce of death.”

Opponents of the President’s Ukraine policy aren’t arguing that the oceans (or other circumstances) mean that the United States has no vital interests abroad. Instead, they’re insisting that, especially in a nuclear age, these interests be defined with precision and with a tight focus on considerations where the cost/benefit ratio is overwhelming weighted to the latter, not on gauzy appeals grounded in simple emotion. Mr. Biden’s failure to justify his approach to Ukraine in anything close to these terms is compelling evidence that this interest-base case simply doesn’t exist, and that the farther he proceeds down this road, the greater the needless peril to which he’s exposing America.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: China’s Not Getting Biden’s (Vague) Message

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Asia-Pacific, Biden, Biden administration, China, Indo-Pacific, Japan, national interests, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Taiwan, Taiwan Strait, Vladimir Putin, Xi JInPing

Everyone old enough to read this post is way more than old enough to remember all the optimism that emanated from the last summit between President Biden and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping – because it took place just under two months ago.

In particular, as the White House stated, Mr. Biden

“reiterated that [the bilateral] competition should not veer into conflict and underscored that the United States and China must manage the competition responsibly and maintain open lines of communication. The two leaders discussed the importance of developing principles that would advance these goals and tasked their teams to discuss them further. “

In other words, Xi said that he bought in to this idea of a responsibly managed Great Power competition. And this conclusion quickly became the conventiona wisdom about the summit. As The New York Times argued, despite

“the deeply divergent views behind their disagreements, including over the future of Taiwan, military rivalry, technology restrictions and China’s mass detentions of its citizens….with the stakes so high, both Mr. Biden’s and Mr. Xi’s language represented a choice not to gamble on unrestricted conflict but to bet that personal diplomacy and more than a decade of contacts could stave off worsening disputes.”

And the U.S. Institute of Peace, a Congressionally-sponsored “independent” think tank, closely paraphased the President’s main claim: “Despite the differences between both countries, there appears to be a growing openness to the use of diplomacy to manage the relationship.”

Yet it’s already clear – from China – that these contentions aren’t aging so welll. Just consider what’s happened in the last month alone:

>In mid-December, China began stepping up naval and air drills near a chain of southern Japanese islands, including sending a carrier battle group that simulated an attack on this Japanese territory.

>Several days later, the Chinese teamed up with Russia’s Pacific fleet for a week of joint exercises that Moscow said [quoting Reuters here] “included practising how to capture an enemy submarine with depth charges and firing artillery at a warship.”

>On December 21, a Chinese fighter jet flew within 20 feet of a U.S. Air Force reconnaisance plane flying over the South China Sea.

>On Christmas Day, 47 Chinese military aircraft flew across the median line over the Taiwan Strait and into air space claimed by the island. Reportedly, the incursion was the largest in months.

>And on December 30, Xi and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, held a videoconference in which Xi promised “in the face of a difficult and far from straightforward international situation,” Beijing was ready “to increase strategic cooperation with Russia, provide each other with development opportunities, be global partners for the benefit of the peoples of our countries and in the interests of stability around the world.”

China predictably blamed U.S. provocations and Japan’s recently announced and dramatic military buildup for this dangerous sequence of events, but the more important point by far is this: The Biden administration continues its long-time habit (see, e.g., here) of speaking in terms of processes and procedures that can only reenforce the impression of America defining its interests in the Asia-Pacific region in dangerously vague ways, and China obviously keeps thinking of its objectives in much more specific, concrete ways. In other words, it’s time for much straighter talk from the United States.   

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. Ukraine Policy Dangerously Flunks the Logic Test

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alliances, deterrence, Nancy Pelosi, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin

There must be some kind of psychic connection between my good buddy Ace (so nicknamed because he’s actually flown in U.S. Air Force fighters), and Nancy Pelosi.

Just the other day, he made what I thought was the genuine genius point that the most important question surrounding U.S. policy toward Ukraine is one that’s never, ever, been asked: If Ukraine has indeed become a vital interest of the United States (a category into which, as I’ve repeatedly stated, e.g. here, it was never placed even during the depths of the Cold War), why wasn’t it admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) long ago? Even stranger, why the continuing NATO cold feet of so many U.S. leaders who are so fond of claiming the vital importance of ensuring Ukraine’s success?

And hot on the heels of Ace’s questions, the House Speaker on Friday declined to endorse Ukraine’s request not just for inclusion in the decades-old Atlantic alliance, but for “accelerated accession” that would speed up a process that’s normally pretty complicated in normal times.

Yes, that’s the same Speaker Pelosi who had previously sounded pretty adamant about the need to stand with Ukraine “until the fight is done” because its fight for freedom ”is a fight for everyone.”

But as pointed out in the same news report that quoted Pelosi’s more temperate later remarks, even though these are anything but normal times in Europe, there’s no shortage of reasonable-sounding reasons for continuing caution. Specifically:

“The West fears that Ukraine’s immediate entry into NATO — which requires the unanimous approval of all 30 member-nations — would put the U.S. and Russia at war due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine as well as its forced annexations announced Friday.”

I wrote “reasonable-sounding, ”however, very deliberately. Because if you give the matter even a little serious thought (as Ace has), it becomes clear that such rationales make no sense at all.

In the first place, even though Ukraine remains outside NATO, the Western aid that’s helped Kyiv’s forces resist Russia so effectively has created a powder keg situation in Ukraine’s neighborhood (by stationing large numbers of U.S. troops right next door) that could all too easily ignite war between the two aforementioned nuclear superpowers anyway.

It’s true that the decision of the United States and Ukraine’s other allies to combine these deployments with hemming and hawing on NATO membership has so far produced a favorable outcome: Moscow’s been frustrated without nuclear weapons being used, much less a world-wide conflagration resulting.

At the same time, this needle-threading act could fail at any minute – which surely explains President Biden’s oft-stated declarations from the get-go that U.S. troops will not be sent into combat in Ukraine. He’s obviously determined minimize that dreadful possibility.

But all this prudence becomes completely inexplicable – at least if you value coherent thought – upon remembering what the word “vital” means in this instance. It’s describing an objective so important (Ukraine’s survival in its current form) that failure to achieve it would (at least at some point down the line) end America’s very existence, either as a physical entity or as an independent country. Even those who aren’t literalists presumably fear that failure to protect a vital interest will leave the United States only the most nightmarish shell of its present self.

To their credit, U.S. leaders who spearheaded the creation of the nation’s major alliances and supported their maintenance have put the country’s money where its mouth is. They have not only promised to use nuclear weapons against nuclear-armed adversaries to protect alliance members whose security is seen as vital. As I’ve often explained (e.g., here), they’ve deployed U.S. forces in “tripwire” configurations aimed at practically forcing Washington to push the fatal buttons and risk America’s nuclear destruction if non-nuclear defenses crumble.

Those policies have aimed above all to deter aggression, and despite the apocalyptic dangers they’ve raised, have been eminently sensible because a thoroughly respectable case ca be made, based on specific, concrete considerations, for the paramount importance of these allies.

For example, it is wholly plausible that the subjugation by hostile powers of places like Germany and Japan and Taiwan could produce intolerable consequences for the United States. In particular, each of those countries possesses technological and industrial prowess and assets that a country like China or Russia could harness to exercise control over the main dimensions of American life.

The point is not whether you or I personally agree or not. Rather, it’s that such fears are anything but crazy.

By contrast, there’s nothing specific and concrete that Ukraine boasts that I can think of – or, more revealingly, that any of its supposed champions have brought up – that Russia could use to achieve anything like the above results.

And this observation leads directly to the second logically loony flaw in America’s Ukraine policy – the one identified by Ace: If in the minds of U.S. leaders Ukraine actually was so all-fired important to begin with, or became so at some point before the Russian invasion (which the President has just declared must be resisted “unwaveringly”), why wasn’t it admitted to NATO right then and there, complete with the nuclear defense guarantee?

Not that any such move would have guaranteed that Russia would have kept hands off. But given that dictator Vladimir Putin hasn’t yet attacked any NATO members in Ukraine’s immediate vicinity or anywhere else, and that Mr. Biden’s vow throughout the entire crisis that the alliance will defend “every inch” of its members’ territory, surely is one reason why, wouldn’t admitting Ukraine before Moscow moved been a no-brainer?

Instead, the United States and the West have danced around this question for more than thirty years – and counting – practically from the moment Ukraine declared its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in August, 1991. What’s been the problem during this entire period?

I mean, the place is supposed to be vital! In other such instances, that’s why the United States has even contemplated using nuclear weapons at all. And yet so far, Mr. Biden’s clear bottom line, even during the invasion’s early days, when his own administration assumed Zelensky’s government to be doomed, has been that U.S. forces will stay out as long as the combat stays inside Ukraine. In other words, he’s wavered. And almost inevitably, this position has sent Putin the message that Washington and the West ultimately don’t view that country as worth accepting the risk of national suicide.

So thanks to Ace, it must by now be evident that the United States has long believed that it could secure a vital interest with half measures (never a good habit to fall into) or that America should expose itself to an existential threat on behalf of an interest that’s short of vital.

And the folks who believe in either position are supposed to be the post-Trump adults in the room? And will be in charge of Ukraine strategy and the rest of American foreign policy for at least two more years?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Demonization and Double Standards on Gas Prices

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Biden, demand, Democrats, Elizabeth Warren, energy, gas prices, inflation, oil, oil prices, sanctions, supply, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, {What's Left of) Our Economy

According to the reasoning of President Biden, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and many other Democrats and progressives, Vladimir Putin, or Big Oil, or American gas station owners, or some combination of those three, have been getting nicer or less greedy and/or more patriotic (when speaking of the domestic actors). What’s the evidence? The average price of a gallon of gasoline in Anerica has fallen during this period.

After all, the President and his fellow Democrats have been saying since at least mid-spring March that prices at the pump had been soaring because the Russian dictator’s invasion of Ukraine (and resulting sanctions) has pushed up world oil prices, because the world’s oil companies have been earning “windfall profits,” and because U.S. gas station owners have been (unpatriotically) price-gouging.

Since mid-June, though, as Mr. Biden has just noted, gas prices are down. So the above culprits must have become less villainous. In fact, since several authoritative sources track these prices, it’s possible, depending on which one is considered most trustworthy, to know exactly how much less villainous.

Specifically, according to the GasBuddy.com website, national average pump prices are down 6.87 percent over the last month. So clearly, Putin, Big Oil, and gas station owners have collectively become 6.87 percent less heinous and/or avaricious and, in the case of U.S.-owned oil companies and the gas station owners, less unpatriotic.

The widely followed Lundberg survey says regular grade gasoline has become 4.14 percent cheaper during this period – so the Democrats’ culprits in its view haven’t become quite so benign.

They look better in Triple A’s eyes, though, since that organization calculates that pump prices are off by 6.74 percent.

Of course, the above analysis is the most childish and even self-serving form of nonsense. Gas prices, like prices of practically everything, depend on numerous interacting factors having nothing to do with foreign strongmen or corporate iniquity. World oil prices are the biggest single determinant, but these in turn are affected by national and global demand, which in turn results from the overall state of the economy, which in turn can be strengthened or weakened by fiscal policy (e.g., stimulus bills) and monetary policy (e.g., interest rates). Don’t, however, forget refining and pipeline availability, and even weather (as in bad hurricane seasons shutting down oil facilities in the Gulf of Mexico in particular).

Complicating matters further, these and other oil price determinants don’t affect retail gas prices all at once, as they understandably take varying amounts of time to work their way through a lengthy production and distribution system. Meanwhile, future supplies depend on private investors examining this multi-faceted and highly fluid landscape to judge whether committing capital to the oil industry is their best bet for maximum returns. And these calculations are inevitably highly uncertain given that any payoffs will inevitably be years off.

So it’s indeed childish to ignore the complicated and constantly interacting dynamics of an enormous industry that at bottom needs to keep wrestling with inevitably fluctuating supply and demand conditions. And it’s self-serving because for years the President and his party have clearly worked hard to reduce the role played by a fossil fuel like oil in the U.S. energy picture.

If you doubt that self-serving claim in particular, or any of the above analysis, ask yourself this: Are these oil industry critics remotely as likely to start praising the producers and the gas station owners (or Putin) for reducing prices as they’ve been to slam them for the price increases?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Could the West Blink First on the Anti-Russia Sanctions?

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energy, fossil fuels, G7 Summit, Group of 7, inflation, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, sanctions, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin

Quite a few years ago, I fretted here that one big obstacle could appear before too long to any U.S. government ambitions to squelch cyber attacks from rogue states with cyber retaliation of its own: Some of the main rogue states (like Iran and North Korea) and larger aggressors (like Russia and China) were likely to have a higher pain threshhold than America’s because they were so much poorer and their populations so much more used to hardship. So in any prolonged cyber duel, Washington could well be forced to cry “Uncle” before its adversaries.

Fast forward to today, and this very problem seems to be plaguing the U.S. and  overall free world/western policy of punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine with various kinds of economic sanctions.

It’s not that Russia’s economy hasn’t suffered from these measures. But headlines and news developments like this have become awfully common in recent weeks:

>”U.S.-Led Alliance Faces Frustration, and Pain of its Own, Over Russia Sanctions”;

>”Pressed by domestic economic challenges and a desire to see European nations contribute more to Ukraine’s defense, U.S. lawmakers appear more wary of committing further military aid for Ukraine or slapping new sanctions on Russia”;

>”French energy giants tell households to ration supplies ahead of looming winter shortage”; and

>”Japan tells business and public to save power to avert Tokyo blackout”

And accompanying these reports have been news items and findings like:

>”Russia’s economy is weathering sanctions, but tough times are ahead”;

>“Why Russia’s Economy Is Holding On”;

>”Russia’s ruble hit its strongest level in 7 years despite massive sanctions”; and

>Revenue from Russia’s fossil fuel exports “exceeded the cost of the Ukraine war during the first 100 days….”

As indicated, Russian stoicism isn’t all that’s at work. The country’s immense fossil fuel deposits, the world economy’s continued crying need for them (preventing the sanctions from being global in scope), and the high prices oil in particular has been fetching ironically because sanctions have crimped overall global supply, have enabled Moscow to keep its economy a going concern. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, clearly certain that he’d antagonize many foreign powers with his expansionism plans, has also been working for years to insulate his country from just these punitive measures. (See, e.g., here.)

But by the same token, for many years, Putin’s imperial ambitions, the massive amounts of resources they’ve commanded, the curbs on personal spending required to build a fortress economy, and the pervasive corruption he’s needed to tolerate (and even encourage) to keep potential rivals placated (and of course feather his own nest) have produced a dismal failure of an economy by virtually every important non-security-related measure. (See here and here for two especially insightful analyses.) And yet there’s absolutely no sign that conditions that western populations would find completely unacceptable have remotely immiserated the Russian people enough to spark any kind of revolt.

Moreover, considering this situation in light of the recent statement by Jens Stoltenberg, head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that the Ukraine conflict could last for “years,” it’s easy to see why the mounting energy shortages and historic inflation they’ve helped feed could tip the odds surrounding the current economic conflict of wills in Moscow’s favor.

And it’s no discredit to the American character to venture that U.S. resolve seems particularly vulnerable precisely because economic sacrifices continue to be demanded on behalf of a country whose fate has never been and is not now a vital security or economic interest.

To me, there’s an obvious message being sent by these trends and circumstances – along with the steady transformation of Eastern Europe into a genuine powderkeg that could all too easily explode into a nuclear World War Three: It’s becoming more important than ever to end this conflict and its clearly unforeseen, tremendous collateral damage ASAP, even if the outcome isn’t ideal from Ukraine’s standpoint.

But that’s not what the heads of government of the Group of Seven (G7) major industrial powers think.  They’ve just declared at their current summit in Germany, “We will continue to provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes” – even though before too long these leaders may start running out of followers.   

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Glimmers of Hope on Ukraine?

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Biden, Blob, chemical weapons, cyber-war, David Ignatius, Donbas, EU, European Union, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky

As known by long-time readers of RealityChek (see, e.g., here and here), I’m no fan of David Ignatius. Literally for decades, the Washington Post pundit has veritably personified the Blob – that mainly New York City- and really mainly Washington, D.C.-based mutually reenforcing network of current political leaders and senior bureaucrats, Congressional staff, former officials, other hangers-on of various kinds, consultants, think tankers, academics, and journalists who have long championed globalist U.S. foreign policies despite the needless national security and economic damage they’ve caused.

Not so incidentally, they keep moving in an out of public service so continuously that they’ve not only blurred the crucial lines between these spheres, but they’ve more than earned the term “permanent (and of course unelected) government.”

So imagine my surprise when I opened my Washington Post Thursday morning and discovered that Ignatius had written what may be the most important American commentary yet on the Ukraine War. His main argument is that President Biden and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin have each decided on a set of goals that could reduce the chances of the conflict spilling across Ukraine’s borders, and especially into the territory of neighbors that enjoy a strong U.S. defense guarantee. This chain of events could all-too-easily lead to direct U.S.-Russia military conflict that could just as easily escalate to the all-out nuclear war level.

But the goals identified by Ignatius are encouraging because they indicate that both Mr. Biden and Putin have retreated from dangerously ambitious objectives they’ve referred to throughout the war and its prelude. For the U.S. President, this means a climb-down from his administation’s declarations that Russia can’t be allowed to establish anything close to a sphere of influence that includes Ukraine, and that would prevent it and potentially any country in Eastern Europe from setting its own defense and foreign economic policies.

For Putin, this means confining his aims to controlling the eastern Ukraine provinces with large Russian-speaking populations, not the entire country

Ignatius’ most convincing evidence regarding the American position is Mr. Biden’s statement on Thursday that with its growing military support for Ukraine, the entire western alliance was  “sending an unmistakable message to Putin: He will never succeed in dominating and occupying all of Ukraine. He will not — that will not happen.” As Ignatius pointed out, this statement, “though resolute in tone, left open the possibility that Putin might occupy some of Ukraine, in the southeastern region where Russian attacks are now concentrated.”

Moreover, this Ignatius observation matters considerably in large measure precisely because the author is so well plugged in to the staunchly globalist Biden administration. If he’s putting points like this in print, the odds are good that it’s because he’s heard them from genuinely reliable sources, and even because those sources are using him as a vehicle for trial balloon floating.

Ignatius’ most convincing evidence regarding the Kremlin’s position is Putin’s statement the same day that the Russian forces that have virtually destroyed the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol have “sacrificed their lives so that our people in Donbas [the aforementioned eastern Ukraine region] live in peace and to enable Russia, our country, to live in peace.”

Those last words in particular suggest that Putin now believes a Russia-dominated Donbas can serve as an acceptable buffer between Russian territory and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that expanded its membership in the 1990s and early 2000s to countries directly bordering Russia.

On this issue, though, big questions remain: Would Putin permit what’s left of Ukraine join NATO (in which President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he no longer interested) or the European Union (which Ukraine still wants)? Or would Moscow let a rump Ukraine do what it wished on these defense and economic fronts? At the same time, the very uncertainty created by these Russian and Ukrainian (and now U.S.) statements makes clear there’s a deal that can be struck before Ukraine experiences much more suffering.

But as Ignatius himself notes, this week’s Biden and Putin positions are anything but guarantees against disastrous escalation. The reason? As I’ve written, the longer the fighting lasts and especially the more intense it becomes, the likelier spillover gets – whether from air raids to artillery strikes to the spread of toxic clouds from exploded chemical or even nuclear weapons, to cyber attacks (e.g., by Russia against U.S. or other western computer systems intended to interfere with the Ukraine weapons supply effort or with the West’s intelligence sharing with Kyiv).

So the Biden and Putin statements may be necessary developments for securing a non-disastrous end to the Ukraine war, but they’re hardly sufficient. Some serious form of outside pressure looks to be essential — either President Biden on Zelensky, or (seemingly less likely) China on Putin. Without it, Americans — and Ukrainians — arguably are left with hoping for the best, a strategy with an historically unimpressive record of success.        

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Ukraine War is Creating Entirely New Nuclear Strategy Risks

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Biden, biological weapons, chemical weapons, deterrence, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, red line, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine invasion, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin

The increasingly blustery way leading American politicians and chattering class members (mainly conservatives) have been talking about nuclear weapons and the Ukraine war is getting scary enough for me, and should be for you. (See, e.g., here.) Unless it’s OK that a major American city (or ten) may wind up looking like besieged and decimated Mariupol because playing chicken more boldly (but so far mainly verbally) with Moscow pushes above zero the odds of them getting hit by Russian warheads?

But something that worries me even more about these cataclysmic possibilities: For two main sets of reasons, the war could well create possibilities for nuclear weapons use that differ markedly from the scenarios that have dominated American planning for decades – and all the evidence indicates still dominates it today.

The first entails both Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine itself and the Russian dictator’s apparent decision to react to Ukraine’s stunning success to date in fighting back by raining maximum destruction on that country’s population. The second entails expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) membership right up to Russia’s borders after the Cold War ended and the old Soviet Union’s satellites became truly independent states and sought to join.

Simply put, the longstanding and existing scenarios have gone something like this: The Soviet Union (and now Russia) thinks about invading a NATO member (almost always the former West Germany) with its vastly superior conventional forces, but is deterred paradoxically by the very weakness of NATO’s conventional forces. The likelihood of these NATO forces getting overwhelmed and destroyed (along with all the NATO civilian personnel located nearby), would supposedly leave an American President no choice but to try to repel the attackers with nuclear weapons. The prospect that this escalation would turn into an all-out, world-destroying conflagration would be enough to prevent Moscow from attacking in the first place.

Today, however, the situation and possible nuclear scenarios are vastly different. After all, Putin has invaded not a NATO member – that is, a country whose security has been guaranteed by the alliance – but a country that hasn’t been permitted to join NATO. On the one hand, that’s comforting (except for the Ukrainians) because President Biden and other NATO leaders have ruled out the idea of direct military intervention in the conflict – precisely for fear that Russia could respond by attacking NATO units in Ukraine with nukes, or by attacking NATO forces and bases in members bordering Ukraine, or elsewhere in NATO-Europe, or even by striking the United States.

On the other hand, the very fact of heavy fighting in a country right next door to NATO members raises the possibility of the conflict spreading into those countries. This spillover could occur either by accident, or because Putin decides to attack the alliance’s extensive efforts to supply Ukraine. In turn, either such Russian operations could kill or wound NATO personnel who might be accompanying the weapons and other aid shipments as they travel through Ukraine, or Putin could decide to take out the facilities in Poland and other NATO countries from which these supplies are being sent into the war zone.

And don’t forget the spillover possibilities even from Russian attacks on Ukrainian forces inside Ukraine. Because Ukrainian resistance has been so effective (an outcome that so far was not only totally unexpected to the U.S. national security apparatus, but that contrasts strikingly with the longstanding assumption of Russian conventional military superiority that still underlies the alliance’s deterrence strategy), Moscow might need chemical or biological or nuclear weapons to regain the initiative. If these threshholds are crossed, the effects could, as noted here, easily blow beyond Ukraine’s borders and into NATO territory. And if NATO territory is affected, wouldn’t that qualify as an attack on a NATO member, or members, that would activate the alliance’s Article Five obligation that members view such a development as “an attack on all” – the core of the NATO treaty and the ultimate key to whatever deterrence power it’s assumed to have created?

Much more than the violations of international agreements that would result from these Russian moves, that’s why Mr. Biden and other NATO leaders have been warning Putin about “red lines” that he mustn’t cross by using these weapons of mass destruction. Yet the vague terms NATO has used to describe its promised responses so far make clear that alliance leaders haven’t yet decided how they actually would respond, and how to convey that message convincingly to Moscow. And yes, a Russian cyber-attack on a NATO member would trigger the same kinds of questions, uncertainties, and outright dangers.

As I’ve written repeatedly (notably here), the U.S. military doctrine that resulted and still prevails never deserved high marks for prudence, common sense, or even the basic test of a healthy sense of self-preservation. So it’s not like there’s a compelling case that Washington’s strategists today will come up with anything more sensible to handle these radically different challenges. And that’s all the more reason to try to put much more energy into stopping the fighting ASAP by cutting a deal that will surely fail to satisfy either Ukraine or Russia, but that ends, at least for the time being, the kind of reckless nuclear weapons talk that could all too easily lead to catastrophic nuclear weapons use – even if neither the United States nor its allies are actually attacked.     

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: How Strongly Does Most of the World Really “Stand with Ukraine”?

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General Assembly, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, The New York Times, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, United Nations, Vladimir Putin

The New York Times deserves a lot of credit for running this article yesterday, which reported that, as the headline observed, “In Some Parts of the World, the War in Ukraine Seems Justified.” At the same time, there’s strong evidence that “some” greatly understates the case – to the point that it’s entirely unclear that the piece’s supposedly context-providing claim that “Most of the world has loudly and unequivocally condemned [Vladimir] Putin for sparking a war with Ukraine” holds much water.

If you’re skeptical, just look at the United Nations General Assembly vote condemning the Russian dictator’s invasion and demanding its immediate end and the total, unconditional withdrawal of Moscow’s forces from all of Ukraine’s “internationally recognized borders.”

Yes, the resolution voted on was sponsored by 90 of the 193 UN members and backed by 141 – more than the two-thirds required for adoption. And yes, only Russia and four other equally reprehensible dictatorships (including satellite state Belarus and client state Syria) voted “No.”

But 35 countries abstained and 14 UN members didn’t vote at all. And the abstaining countries represented a huge share of the world’s estimated population of nearly eight billion. Between China and India alone, we’re talking more than 35 percent of the global total. (These and the population figures below come from the reliable Worldometers.info website.) 

And you can add to these abstainers’ ranks Pakistan (221 million), Bangladesh (167 million), Vietnam (97 million), Iran (84 million), South Africa (59 million), Uganda (45 million), Sudan and Algeria (44 million each). The non-voters, meanwhile, included Ethiopia (115 million).

Do the math, and these countries’ populations sum to just under 3.7 billion. That’s nearly 47 percent of the global total – and it doesn’t even include Russia’s 146 million people

No one’s saying that most of these countries’ governments are democracies that represent the popular will (although India’s clearly is). Indeed, some of their people have publicly protested Russia’s aggression. (See, e.g., here and here.)

But nothing indicates that these demonstrators mirror majority opinion in these countries or even close, for whatever reason – ranging from the kind of sympathy for Russia reported in the Times piece to ignorance or apathy. That is, maybe big shares of these populations haven’t heard about the war to begin with, or if they have, pay little attention to its developments because they’re too preoccupied with struggling to eak out a living.   

By the same token, nothing indicates that Putin’s war enjoys broad, much less deep, support in these countries, let alone in any others, either. And it’s surely significant that the countries that have condemned the invasion account for a strong majority of the global economy. That’s even the case for the smaller group of countries that have imposed various kinds of sanctions.

The UN votes, however, do make clear that, however tempting and inspiring it is to think that  “most of the world” really does “loudly and unequivocally” Stand with Ukraine, as the Times contends, the reality is a lot more complicated.