So the Jeddah talks have begun

 So post-America has finally deigned to meet a Ukrainian delegation, after sending unmistakable signals to the world that it cares not whether that nation continues to exist as a sovereign entity, and that, in its view, Russia has the more sensible view of how to proceed.

The meeting is being hosted by Saudi Arabia:

Ukrainian and U.S. delegates are starting their talks in Jeddah on March 11 in a meeting that will likely have a major impact on Washington's future support for Kyiv and any effort to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

"The meeting with the U.S. team started very constructively; we are working towards a just and lasting peace," said President Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.

The Ukrainian delegation is said to include Yermak, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, and Zelensky's Deputy Chief of Staff Pavlo Palisa.

The U.S. delegation is led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

The stakes are high:

Kyiv is entering the talks with a weak hand but is prepared to do what it needs to to get the U.S. back on its side.

"We're ready," a source in the President's Office told the Kyiv Independent when asked about the prospect of signing the mineral deal.

In an effort to convince the U.S. that Ukraine is serious about peace and in the hope that Washington will resume military aid and intelligence sharing, Kyiv is also reportedlyproposing a partial ceasefire covering long-range drone and missile strikes, as well as hostilities in the Black Sea.

The U.S., however, may now want to extort more from a weakened Ukraine.

Having to offer so much to the U.S. before peace talks with Russia can begin in earnest is being keenly felt in Kyiv.

When asked what Ukraine was expecting at the talks in Jeddah, the source in the President's Office replied: "Finally hearing what the Americans want from the negotiations."

Deciphering that level of inscrutability is a daunting task. The Very Stable Genius's signals are anything but encouraging:

"So many of the things that Trump has said in the last two or three days give you the impression that he thinks Ukraine was going to lose regardless, that the Biden administration wasted a lot of money prolonging (the war), and we just have to get that over with," Volker said.

Nothing that has come out of the White House in recent weeks suggests Trump has any interest in reaching a peace agreement that is in Ukraine's interests.

After Polish President Andrzej Duda said that Ukraine would not survive without U.S. support, Trump was asked in an interview on March 9 if he was "comfortable" with the thought of his actions potentially leading to the destruction of the country.

"Well, it may not survive anyway," Trump said.

His assessment of Ukraine's future came around a month after he flippantly suggested the country "may be Russian someday" in comments that made clear his main interest lay in Kyiv's mineral wealth and the ability to pay back U.S. military aid.

Trump's transactional approach to negotiations that appear to have little regard for Ukrainian lives, territory, or sovereignty is a major source of concern in Kyiv, and the country as a whole.

"The expectations (of the Jeddah meeting) are alarming," Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, lawmaker from the Holos party, chairman of the parliamentary committee on freedom of speech, told the Kyiv Independent.

"Because recently the U.S. administration has demonstrated a desire not for just peace, but for the fastest possible reconciliation between the victim and the aggressor, without taking into account the interests of the victim."

Yurchyshyn acknowledged that an "optimistic" outcome for the talks would simply be to get relations back on track and for the U.S. to "take into account the interests of Ukraine in the future negotiation process."

But another unavoidable fact of the U.S.-led peace negotiations so far is that Washington has not yet had to truly negotiate with Russia.

The much-vaunted first round of talks between Washington and Moscow on Feb. 18 produced little of actual substance — restoring embassy staffing for further diplomatic missions, appointing representatives to further the negotiation process, and creating the necessary conditions for restarting U.S.-Russia relations.

While repeatedly strong-arming Ukraine into proving it is serious about peace, the White House has said nothing so far about how it plans to make Russian President Vladimir Putin order his armed forces to put down their guns.

There's going to be a lot of talk about "difficult choices" and "the realm of what's possible." That crap pales in comparison to the central issue: what's right and wrong. The Putin regime forcibly annexed Crimea in 2014 and assaulted mainland Ukraine in March 2022 with missiles, drones and ground troops. Children have watched their mothers raped by Putin's thugs. Other children - thousands of them - have been kidnapped and taken to re-education camps inside Russia. Hospitals and schools have been destroyed.  Russian government officials and television commentators have regularly bandied about the possible use of nuclear weapons.

And in the last month the Very Stable Genius and his geldings have re-conferred "legitimacy" on the Putin regime.

It's obvious why. The VSG things the world's dictators sit at the cool kids' table. They're the kind of leader who gets things done, who command deference just by walking in a room.

Consequently, the VSG is engaging in outright evil. The Oval Office humiliation of Zelensky, the "pausing" of intelligence-sharing and aid, Rubio's opening bid at this Jeddah meeting.

It's evil, but it may well prevail.

 

Yeah, there's been a realignment, but it's as garbage as the previous alignment

 We're starting to see the broad outlines of a second Very Stable Genius administration come into focus, and it indicates, as expected, an incoherent populist-nationalist mess where the few sound, conservative policies get sullied by having been folded into the overall cluster-you-know-what.

Henry Olsen is kind of an odd cat. He's a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a fine house in Washington, and he's capable of articulating the conservative vision as applied to specific areas, but he, for some reason, seems to have a soft spot for Trump. 

The latest example is his current New York Post column, in which he asserts that Trump's November victory signals an historic American political realignment, which is probably true, but doesn't follow up with much in the way of signals as to whether he thinks it's a healthy one:

Signs suggest it could be something even worse: a historic defeat that puts Republicans in the political driver’s seat for a generation or more.

That’s because the exit poll showed that more voters said they were Republican than Democrat — for the first time in a presidential election since 1928.

Such a result hasn’t happened since talking pictures were new and Babe Ruth clobbered homers in the original Yankee Stadium.

No one alive today has ever voted in a presidential race where this has occurred.

Now, watch how he words this part.:

A world where Republicans lead Democrats by 8 to 10 points in partisan preference is one where Republican preferences and priorities prevail.

Like the GOP in the last century, Democrats could win only by running as “me too” candidates, offering a slightly less bold version of the Republican agenda.

Well, okay, but those preferences and priorities are, as I say, populism-nationalism with the occasionally actual conservative position showing up like a blob of flour in a lumpy gravy. 

Olsen does qualify his wowee-zowee level of amazement with this:

This isn’t set in stone, though: Trump needs to have a successful term.

If the economy tanks, or illegal migration continues, or Trump goes to war with China or Russia, voters will flee from the GOP like rats off a sinking ship.

Trump could also mess up by prioritizing issues he didn’t run on.

George W. Bush did that in 2005, when he tried to reform Social Security without first getting a mandate to do so.

Barack Obama, too, in 2009 and 2010, when he made passing Obamacare his focus even after running as a centrist.

Trump could make either or both mistakes. Failure and fecklessness will be punished.

But imagine if he doesn’t.

Imagine an America in 2028 that’s at peace, with illegal immigration virtually ended, the woke tsunami broken and the economy humming.

Henry, the signs during this transition period don't point in the direction of the scenario you want us to consider.

At a time when the very notion of the West is extremely wobbly (the financial woes of Britain and France, the Orban camp within NATO, Turkey's clear shift to an anti-Israel stance, the ongoing inadequate trickle of what Ukraine needs to defeat Russia, the cultural rot and population decline common to Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic), he's getting his kicks with kidding-on-the-square comments, as well as outright threats, to the United States' allies and neighbors:  

Trump on Wednesday continued to tease US territorial expansion in social media posts, criticizing the operation of the canal and doubling down on suggestions the US should absorb Canada and Greenland, a territory controlled by Denmark.

In a sardonic Christmas message, Trump claimed Chinese soldiers are operating the Panama Canal and reiterated his criticism that Panama is exploiting US vessels that use the waterway.

“Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in ‘repair’ money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about ‘anything,’” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network.

In the same message, Trump called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “governor,” again insinuating Canada should become a US state. He also suggested the citizens of Greenland “want the US to be there, and we will.”

Recall that he also got off on a contentious footing with Mexico's new president Claudia Sheinbaum, suggesting US forces may have to enter Mexico to deal with the cartel problem.

Then there are the tariffs, about which a National Retail Federation report released last month had this to say:

• The proposed tariffs on the six product categories alone would reduce American consumers’ spending power by $46 billion to $78 billion every year the tariffs are in place.

• The proposed tariffs would have a significant and detrimental impact on the costs of a wide range of consumer products sold in the United States, particularly on products where China is the major supplier.

• The increased costs as a result of the proposed tariffs would be too large for U.S. retailers to absorb and would result in prices higher than many consumers would be willing or able to pay.

• Consumers would pay $13.9 billion to $24 billion more for apparel; $8.8 billion to $14.2 billion more for toys; $8.5 billion to $13.1 billion more for furniture; $6.4 billion to $10.9 billion more for household appliances; $6.4 billion to $10.7 billion more for footwear, and $2.2 billion to $3.9 billion more for travel goods.

• Based on current trade, average tariff rates for all categories examined would exceed 50% in the extreme tariff scenario, up in most cases from single or low double digits.

Then there is - yeah, I'm gonna go there - the appearance that the VSG is instinctively drawn to associates and appointees whose sex lives and marital track records are as sordid as his. Musk, Hegseth, Kennedy. Matt Gaetz, who is no longer in the running for Attorney General, nor even a House member, but to whose defense the VSG came a couple of days ago, calling the exhaustive ethics report "unfair."

Henry, character is not a part of the Trumpist vision that now pervades the Republican Party.

Then there is the hawking of a perfume line and the Lee Greenwood Bible during this transition period. 

Donald Trump thinks this whole thing is a hoot. He's never experienced more glorification, which is the end aim of anything he does in life.

Henry, I honestly don't get your wow-this-is-exciting assessment of this new Republican alignment. It's not going to achieve your dream scenario, and any table scraps of conservatism to be found in it are hopeless tainted by the surrounding garbage.

"New political era." Big effing whoop. We're still headed toward the same accelerated decline the Left had us on. 

 

 

 

 

 

Donald Trump hates economic freedom - today's edition

 This isn't going to be one of those dispassionate analyses of the reality what the Republican Party has become. Statisticians and sociologists are doing a fine job of painting that picture. The 2024 election made clear that there is lots of realignment going on in post-America. There's a swath of the electorate that spans a lot of demographics, but has in common a feeling of being unsettled by the vast economic and cultural changes of the last several decades. It wants stability and familiarity.

But the truths of economics do not change. The free market, as described and defended by the great thinkers known well to all actual conservatives - Adam Smith, Bastiat, William Graham Sumner, Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt and Milton Friedman  - has proven that it is the only kind of economic system compatible with the other levels of human freedom. In fact, it's really not proper to speak of it as an "economic system." It's the absence thereof. It's the way human beings naturally transact in the absence of an externally imposed system. It's the sum total of millions of agreements reached daily between buyers and sellers of goods and services as to the value of each.

The 2024 Trumpist Republican Party gives not the first flying f--- about it. 

Exhibit A is this social media post by the Very Stable Genius:

I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan. Through a series of Tax Incentives and Tariffs, we will make U.S. Steel Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST! As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!

Donald Trump Truth Social 09:21 PM EST 12/02/24 

@realDonaldTrump

9:32 PM · Dec 2, 2024

·

318.5K

 Views

Excuse me, but it is not any of the federal government's business who buys US Steel. This is blatant, vulgar pandering to those who, for emotional reasons, bristle at the thought of a foreign company owning a manufacturer of one of the world's most basic manufacturing materials with the words ""United States" in its name. This is what the yay-hoos mean by "America First." The government is not there to guide the economy's dynamics in one direction or another.

Exhibit B is the bringing back of one of the most shameful hucksters from VSG 1.0:

President-elect Trump on Wednesday named his once-jailed former aide Peter Navarro as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing to the incoming White House, picking a loyal ally to help implement broad plan for tariffs.

Navarro served as White House trade adviser in Trump’s first term. That eventually led to Navarro serving a a four-month sentence for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Just hours after Navarro’s release from prison in July, he got a roaring reception by Republicans during his prime-time speech endorsing Trump for a second term at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

“I am pleased to announce that Peter Navarro, a man who was treated horribly by the Deep State, or whatever else you would like to call it, will serve as my Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing,” Trump posted on Truth Social in announcing Navarro’s new role. “During my First Term, few were more effective or tenacious than Peter in enforcing my two sacred rules, Buy American, Hire American. He helped me renegotiate unfair Trade Deals like NAFTA and the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), and moved every one of my Tariff and Trade actions FAST….”

The president-elect added that the senior counselor position will allow Navarro to use his experience and “his extensive Policy analytic and Media skills” to push forward the Trump trade agenda.

Implementing tariffs were a key part of Trump’s reelection campaign. He threatened last week to impose steep 25 percent tariffs on all goods from U.S. allies Canada and Mexico and ramp up tariffs on China with an executive order signed on Day 1.

The president-elect went on to praise Navarro in the Truth Social post.

“Peter is not just a superb, Harvard-trained Economist, he is a noted author of more than a dozen bestselling books on strategic business management and unfair Trade. He did a superb job for the American People in my First Term,” Trump said, “Peter will do even better as Senior Counselor to protect American Workers, and truly Make American Manufacturing Great Again.”

Navarro was convicted of two counts of contempt of Congress — one for failing to produce documents related to the Jan. 6 probe and another for skipping his deposition before the now-defunct House committee that was investigating the riot at the Capitol that day.

So the VSG means business. He's showing his collectivist impulse. He has a vision of what American economic activity should look like and will use public policy to shape it accordingly. The stinking president of the United States is not supposed to have a vision of what American economic activity should look like. 

Didn't conservatives oppose FDR for grand-scale government economic interference? And those of Johnson, Carter and Obama?

Post-America is in no position to claim it sets an example for less-developed countries that want to up their prosperity and liberty levels.

Someone has to say so.

 

 

 

 

The worthlessness of ceasefires

 LITD posts have lately mostly been of a world-affairs nature, haven't they? That's because, for all post-America's other vexations - the utter silliness of both political parties, rampant loneliness, the resistance of the woke apparatus to being dismantled, the debt that is on track to crowd out all other government expenditures in a few short years, not replenishing the country's population, an utter disregard for the transcendent - foreign policy incoherence is the one most likely to take the first bite out of our safety and comfort and the reliability off our institutions.

Because each has been going on for a few years now, we have become inured to the severity of Russia's attack on a sovereign nation, and the savagery Iran, through its proxies, has inflicted on Israel. We assume that, with regard to the over-arching association of rogue players, each with its own ideology and internal agendas, that is bound together by a common intention to end the US-dominated international order that's been in place since 1945, sharp minds are on the case and will see that nothing gets too out of hand. 

Thus, we have clowns in the current administration, and the one coming in in January, coming up with "solutions" to the above-mentioned conflagrations based on an "end wars" mindset.

That's a really stupid way to approach the current situation. There are risks attendant to a goal of the attacked nation-states in each case winning their wars, but they're small compared to the consequences of appeasing the aggressors.

Tell you what. I'm going to quote Seth Mandel's latest column at Commentary in its entirety, because there'd be no point in trying to improve upon its incisiveness:

Buried in a New York Times explainer on the ICC’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu is this helpful nugget: “Gaza has been controlled by Hamas since 2007 and the militant group does not recognize its subjugation to a Palestine state.”

And why? Because Hamas is essentially a hostile occupying force on behalf of Iran. And who else falls into that category? Hezbollah in Lebanon. And for good measure, let’s add one more: Arguably the most troublesome pocket in the West Bank centers on Jenin, and the troublemakers in Jenin are proxies of Iran as well. For all intents and purposes, the city is foreign territory.

Here’s the point: Israel is not in conflict with any of the “host countries,” however generously we use that term, with whom it is supposedly negotiating.

It’s fun to pretend, but it’s not productive. Foolish faith in ceasefire agreements with entities that do not recognize the sovereignty of their own territory is how we got here. Oct. 6, 2023 was the last time a ceasefire’s false sense of security governed Israel’s understanding of the status quo. Oct. 7, 2023 was the result.

Let’s look at the ceasefire deal with Hezbollah announced yesterday.

The deal halts the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah for 60 days. Both the IDF and Hezbollah are to clear their forces from Lebanese territory south of the Litani River tout de suite. Filling the vacuum will be the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers—both of which are compromised by their deference to, and fear of, Hezbollah. A complaint board that will determine compliance with the agreement and adjudicate claims of violations will be under the supervision of the United States.

Yesterday, President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron crowed that, “after many weeks of tireless diplomacy, Israel and Lebanon have accepted a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon.”

Between Israel and Lebanon? Have there been hostilities between Israel and Lebanon? Because it would be very silly to have Lebanese troops patrol the buffer zone if the buffer zone is meant to separate the IDF from Lebanese troops.

It’s wonderful that “Israel and Lebanon have accepted a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon.” Whoever this “Lebanon” guy is, he sounds nice. But I have no idea what he’s doing here.

Last week, men almost surely hired by Iran murdered in cold blood a Jerusalem-born Chabad rabbi in Dubai. Are Biden and Macron working on a “ceasefire” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates? Of course not, and no one is even suggesting such a thing, because it would be patently ridiculous on its face and arguably a mockery of the victim.

So that’s the conceptual absurdity of this ceasefire. What about its practicality?

“Eight vehicles and a motorcycle carrying Hezbollah personnel arrived at the ruins of Kfar Kila near Matula,” Israel’s Kann News reported this morning. “The IDF force that was on the spot drove them away with warning shots.”

Metula is an Israeli town on the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah had begun the ceasefire by advancing on Israel. Wrong direction, guys! Like legendary Vikings defensive end Jim Marshall recovering that fumble against the 49ers in 1964 and then running 65 yards into the wrong end zone—except on purpose.

And Israel’s response was to fire warning shots, because anything more aggressive—anything actually appropriate to the threat, in other words—would have triggered condemnation from the very allies that negotiated this ceasefire.

The Lebanese Armed Forces cannot enforce this ceasefire. If they could, they would have already cleared the area of Hezbollah, which has been operating with impunity for four decades. And the UN peacekeepers are Hezbollah’s trusted allies—that may sound harsh but it is just plain fact.

Yes, Israel is hoping to run out the clock on the Biden administration and have freer range of action once Donald Trump takes office. But Hezbollah knows Biden is on his way out, too, and that Trump is on his way in. And the enemy always gets a vote. Sometimes that vote is expressed by a nine-vehicle Hezbollah convoy encroaching on Israel’s sovereign border, in contemptuous contravention of a ceasefire signed by “Lebanon.”

And now, let us look at Keith Kellogg, the Very Stable Genius's choice for a guy to impose defeat on Ukraine: 

Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, President elect-Trump's pick for special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has pushed a proposal to end the war between the two countries through Ukraine ceding land to Russia.

Why it matters: Trump named Kellogg as his choice for special envoy on Wednesday, months after Reuters reported on Kellogg's policy plan in June. The plan for a ceasefire signals U.S. support for the war effort would be scaled back.

• It also would mark a shift from the Biden administration's stance on the war and could be met with pushback from European allies.

Zoom in: Kellogg, who served as national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, co-authored a research report detailing his Ukraine policy proposal with former NSA chief of staff Fred Fleitz.

• "The United States would continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement," Kellogg and Fleitz state in the plan.
• But future U.S. military aid will require Ukraine to participate in peace talks with Russia, according to the report.
• To convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to join peace talks, "President Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal with security guarantees," the pair wrote.

The big picture: Trump has vowed to end the war in Ukraine using his personal relationship with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to get a peace deal.

Here's how the VSG thinks about such things:

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to end Russia's war with Ukraine if elected, saying in September that he would negotiate a deal "that's good for both sides." He also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and questioned further U.S. assistance to Ukraine.

"Good for both sides." What the hell kind of formulation is that? Russia is the aggressor in this situation. The West has no business dangling a nice outcome before Putin. The only way to speak of Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine is in terms of defeat.

All the F-16s, ATACMs, mines and Storm Shadows should have been provided no later that March 2022. Yes, it's great that they're arriving now, but their ability to be game-changers is badly diminished.

Trump, of course, views the whole thing transactionally. He wants to wind this up with minimal bad effect on what he perceives to be Putin's high regard of him. 

Ceasefires are nothing but a tamping-down of wrongs that will come back in another manifestation at some point. Fifteen years after the 1953 armistice that stopped fighting between North and South Korea, the crew of the USS Pueblo spent a year in captivity in the Kim dynasty's worker's paradise. Nixon's "peace with honor" in Vietnam led to the April 1975 crashing through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon by tanks from the North, and the still-repugnant scene of desperate Vietnamese trying to hang on to the runners of the last helicopter to take off from the US embassy roof. 

If Ukraine and Israel don't achieve total victory over Russia and Iran respectively, we will have abandoned the world stage to Dodge City status. 

Post-America has decided it  has no use for moral clarity. Bad things will result. 

The lightning rod that is Ukraine

 The world waits with bated breath to see how the incoming Trump administration is going to handle Russia's continuing savaging of Ukraine.

At the recent Halifax security conference, representatives of various nations searched for signs of continuity between Biden's policy and Trump's, but one participant says it had more the feel of a therapy session. 

I don't know a whole lot about Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), but I'm impressed by the priorities and fealty to the Constitution that seems to be guiding him on this matter:

South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds has dismissed calls for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be trusted to honor such an agreement.

"As much as I would like to believe we can negotiate with a tyrant, I suspect we may be deceiving ourselves," Rounds said in reference to Putin at the Halifax Security Forum on Friday.

"Do you believe that this tyrant, if you offer him a part of a free country, do you think he's gonna stop?" Rounds said.

"I wish I could say there's an easy way out, there's not."

The Republican's sentiments stand in contrast with those of President-Elect Trump, who has previously claimed he could end the conflict in one day.

Rounds also bemoaned the restriction placed on Kyiv in its response to Russia's full-scale invasion.

"I just feel so frustrated that we have not been able to provide them all of the equipment that they need, and all of the weapons systems that they need, in order to respond to the absolute tyranny coming from Russia," said Rounds, who did reportedly stress that his views were not those of the incoming administration.

(As a side note, I also dig his recent introduction of legislation  to dismantle the Department of Education. Progressives are going to use this to conflate actual conservative policy with Trumpist yay-hoo-ism. And the Trumpists will say, "This is conservatism now." This is why I write my occasional "wheat from chaff scoreboard" posts over at Precipice. )

I have to imagine that he's going to get upbraided by the drool-besotted throne sniffers for showing an  independent streak. In fact, that's already started. The disgusting Laura Ingraham tweeted that Rounds was "already undermining" the Very Stable Genius. Sorry, toots, but the legislative branch is independent of the executive.

We. of course, have no idea what the VSG would actually do to achieve this peace in 24 hours he speaks of. Presumably, he's confident that his personal charm would be the deciding factor in a sit-down with Mad Vlad and President Zelensky. You know, like the way the summits and beautiful letters changed North Korea into a legitimate member of the international community.

The Trumpist excuses for not seeing that the Ukraine and Israel situations are morally identical range from "America First" isolationism to the argument that we need to focus all our world-threat attention on the way China is breathing down Taiwan's neck. Another argument is that support for Ukraine drains resources from the effort to seal the southern US border. (The actual truth is that, given our $36 million debt, we don't have the money for anything. But for the world's only superpower ostensibly committed to a stable, Western-oriented world order, expenditures must be made anyway.)

There's also the "start World War III" argument, articulated recently by Joe Rogan  and Donald Trump, Jr. who, for good measure, trotted out the hackneyed term "military industrial complex." As if it's okay not to do the right thing because there's some attendant risk.

There's a more sinister line of argument that tries to let Putin off the hook for the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the more general war against Ukraine he commenced in February 2022. 

That matters a great deal at present, given the VSG's nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to the DNI director position.

Let's have a look at her track record on this subject:

n the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies.

Gabbard, then a US congresswoman on a visit to the Syria-Turkey border as part of her duties for the foreign affairs committee, had a question for them.

“How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.

It was a revealing insight into Gabbard’s conspiratorial views of the conflict, and it shocked Moustafa to silence. He knew, as even the young children did, that Isis did not have jets to launch airstrikes. It was such an absurd question that he chose not to translate it because he didn’t want to upset the girls, the eldest of whom was 12.

“From that point on, I’m sorry to say I was inaccurate in my translations of anything she said,” Moustafa told The Independent. “It was more like: How do I get these girls away from this devil?”

Even before Gabbard left the Democratic Party, ingratiated herself with Donald Trump and secured his nomination to become director of National Intelligence, she was known as a prolific peddler of Russian propaganda.

In almost every foreign conflict in which Russia had a hand, Gabbard backed Moscow and railed against the US. Her past promotion of Kremlin propaganda has provoked significant opposition on both sides of the aisle to her nomination.

Her journey from anti-war Democrat to Moscow-friendly Maga warrior began in Syria. The devastating conflict was sparked by pro-democracy uprisings in 2011, which were brutally crushed by the Assad regime. It descended into a complex web of factions that drew extremist Islamists from around the world and global powers into the fray.

You will note that peacenik lefties, libertarians and Trumpists all have in common this emphasis on the ickiness of war, untethered to moral considerations. 

Within Europe, there's less than a unified stance on the matter. So far in the war, Romania has proven a stalwart supporter of Ukraine, but that looks to change with the probable election of isolationist Calin Georgescu as Romania's president.

Something else to consider: the war in Ukraine is ratcheting up, and eye-opening developments could well occur between now and January 20. That could change some players' calculus.

In any event, let's be clear-eyed about the fact that not everyone wants to see the acceptable outcome - Ukraine's total defeat of Russia - take place. 

Lotta variables in a very volatile situation.  

 

There's a palpable Cuban-missile-crisis-y feel to the present moment

 I think the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 is still considered the moment at which the world came closest to nuclear war. Maybe that's just because I live through it and remember grownups discussing it. I was alive for the Suez Canal crisis of 1956, which, in retrospect, was another moment when the danger level was pretty heightened, but I was an infant. We're finding out that we weren't all that far away from such a point of peril in Vietnam in 1968.

But in recent years, that hair-trigger tension level has abated:

For more than three decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States and its allies faced no serious nuclear threats.

But no sooner do Madelyn Creedon and Franklin Miller, writing at Foreign Affairs, assert as much, than they follow it with this splash of cold water:

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been rattling his nuclear saber in a manner reminiscent of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Chinese President Xi Jinping has directed a dramatic buildup of China’s nuclear arsenal, a project whose size and scope the recently retired commander of U.S. Strategic Command has described as “breathtaking.” The Russian and Chinese leaders have also signed a treaty of “friendship without limits.” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is supplying weapons and troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, and North Korea is improving its ability to strike both its neighbors and the U.S. homeland with nuclear weapons, as it demonstrated with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test launch on October 31.

Europe is particularly on edge.

The Nordic countries tell their citizens "prepare and we ain't foolin'":

On Monday, millions of pamphlets landed in Swedish homes eerily titled: "If Crisis or War Comes," while other nations issue their own chilling advice to fearful citizens.

Stockholm has warned of what they call the worsening security situation - otherwise known as Russia's bloody invasion of Ukraine - and urged Swedes to prepare for conflict.

Meanwhile neighbouring Finland have published its own chilling advice online to prepare "for incidents and crises".

In a scarily detailed section on military conflict, the digital brochure describes how the government and president would respond in the event of an armed attack.

The Finnish brochure stressed that its authorities are "well prepared for self defence".

Norwegians also received a pamphlet urging residents to know how to manage on their own for a week in the event of extreme weather - or war.

In summer, Denmark's emergency management agency put out a warning to Danish adults detailing the water, food and medicine necessary to get through three days of crisis.

Sweden and Finland recently gave up neutrality to join Nato after witnessing the atrocities Putin has unleashed in Ukraine since 2022.

Norway was a founding member of the Western defensive alliance on the other hand.

Germans, too:

Germans have been put on high alert for a potential World War 3 scenario with Russia following renewed threats of a nuclear strike from Vladimir Putin. The situation has escalated after US President Joe Biden authorised Ukraine to use long-range missiles against Russia, which Moscow claims has already targeted a weapons warehouse in the Bryansk region.

Putin warned in September that if Western countries allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russiawith their longer-range weapons, "it will mean that NATO countries, the US, and European countries are at war with Russia."

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has since stated that Russia poses not just a military but also a hybrid threat and that Europe needs to adopt a comprehensive approach to defence.Germany's Foreign Minister has also pledged that the country will not be "intimidated" by Putin, following revelations that Germany would serve as a NATO staging ground should the conflict escalate further.

According to a 1,000-page document titled 'Operationsplan Deutschland', Germany would host hundreds of thousands of troops from NATO countries and act as a logistics hub for dispatching military equipment, food, and medicine to the front lines. The German army is also advising civilians and businesses on how to safeguard infrastructure and prepare to defend the country against potential sabotage, drone attacks, and spying operations.

Germany is setting crisis plans into motion, assigning responsibilities for emergency actions and creating diesel stockpiles, following the lead of Scandinavian nations. Defence Minister Mr Pistorius announced on Tuesday that officials suspect sabotage caused damage to two undersea data cables in the Baltic Sea, one terminating in Germany, although evidence is yet to be found, reports the Mirror US.

Italy, Spain, Greece and the US have closed their Kyiv embassies for at least a day as Ukraine anticipates yet another brazen missile assault from Russia. 

Some bracing words from Sergey Markov:

The US has been given a chilling 'WW3 by Christmas' warning by pro-Putin spokesperson Sergey Markov.

Western allies, also including Britain and France, have taken a “big jump” towards a nuclear conflict by giving Ukraine permission to fire Western long-range missiles into Kremlin territory, Markov claims.

A regular Putin “mouthpiece”, Markov warned that the shock move by President Joe Biden could mean that Britons could be facing a Christmas in shelters.

But Putin lackeys routinely indulge in nuclear bluster, don't they?

Those in favour of the move have noted that the Kremlin and its mouthpieces in the state-controlled media and academia had threatened nuclear war every time the West had stepped up its support for Ukraine, including when it provided tanks, fighter jets and other sophisticated weapon systems.

However, Markov, currently the Director General of Russia's Institute for Political Studies, was convinced the move was different as it would mean that Western militaries would be directly involved in the conflict for the first time - Ukraine would require their assistance to use the precision guided missile systems.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, he said: “My reaction [to the White House’s decision] was awful, I couldn't sleep well because I am just afraid nuclear war is coming.

“This decision of United States, Great Britain and France is not a step towards nuclear war it is a big jump to nuclear war, nuclear catastrophe."

What's the latest with Iran's nuclear ambitions? 

 Iran has defied international demands to rein in its nuclear program and has increased its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels, according to a confidential report by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog seen Tuesday by The Associated Press.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency said that as of Oct. 26, Iran has 182.3 kilograms (401.9 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60%, an increase of 17.6 kilograms (38.8 pounds) since the last report in August.

Uranium enriched at 60% purity is just a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

The IAEA also estimated in its quarterly report that as of Oct. 26, Iran’s overall stockpile of enriched uranium stands at 6,604.4 kilograms (14,560 pounds), an increase of 852.6 kilograms (1,879.6 pounds) since August. Under the IAEA’s definition, around 42 kilograms (92.5 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60% purity is the amount at which creating one atomic weapon is theoretically possible — if the material is enriched further, to 90%.

The reports come at a critical time as Israel and Iran have traded missile attacks in recent months after more than a year of war in Gaza, which is governed by Hamas, a group supported by Iran.

It may be time to reassess the above-mentioned instances' status in the history of nuclear danger. Our present moment seems to offer enough to go around.