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. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donald Trump is not, and never has been, a conservative

 Consider what he had to say about a couple of particular topics in Iowa:

Former President Donald Trump drew contrasts between himself and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday in Davenport, Trump’s first visit to Iowa since announcing a run for president. 

Speaking to a full Adler Theatre, Trump called his potential rival “very, very bad on ethanol,” compared him to 2012 GOP candidate Mitt Romney, and accused DeSantis of supporting raising the minimum age for Social Security benefits.

During his 2012 campaign for Congress, DeSantis expressed support for restructuring Social Security and Medicare, which aid millions of seniors in the United States, to make them more financially sustainable.

While in Congress, DeSantis voted on nonbinding budget resolutions that called for raising the retirement age and slowing the growth of future spending.

This bit of ethanol pandering is classic Trump transactionalism. He knows that the subsidies are federal gravy for Iowa corn producers and framing it as sacrosanct just may buy their loyalty, the only thing the Very Stable Genius gives a flying diddly about in this universe. 

It also makes clear that Trumpism is not about the free market, or, if you want to put it in macro terms, an allocation of resources that is in any way efficient:

One of the key reasons for the growth in ethanol production has been government subsidies for ethanol — $45 billion in tax credits giving 45 cents to ethanol producers for every gallon they produced between 1980 and 2011. This was a strange subsidy considering ethanol's inefficiency as a fuel, and given the fact that unlike other renewables, burning ethanol continues to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

It's not like the farmers growing subsidized corn for ethanol production didn't already have a market for their produce. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones calls it "shoveling... ag welfare to a group of people who were already pretty rich."

In January 2012, the legislation that authorized the ethanol tax credits expired. But this didn't end the subsidies for ethanol. Why did the powerful corn ethanol lobby let the tax credits expire? According to Aaron Smith of the American Enterprise Institute:

The answer lies in legislation known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which creates government-guaranteed demand that keeps corn prices high and generates massive farm profits. Removing the tax credit but keeping the RFS is like scraping a little frosting from the ethanol-boondoggle cake.

The RFS mandates that at least 37 percent of the 2011-12 corn crop be converted to ethanol and blended with the gasoline that powers our cars. The ethanol mandate is causing corn demand to outstrip supply by more and more each year, creating a vulnerable market in which even the slightest production disturbance will have devastating consequences for the world's poor.[AEI]

So the ethanol subsidies are still alive through government-guaranteed demand from the Renewable Fuel Standard mandate.

There are so many curbs on human freedom involved here: a mandate, government playing favorites, wealth redistribution.

The other topic on which he pulled the I'll-never-change-one-thing-about-this-government-goodie was Social Security. We covered this last month at LITD, excerpting generously from a piece by Tiana Lowe. We'll just re-up the relevant portion of that:

 I want to discuss a Washington Examiner piece by Tiana Lowe that deserves wide readership. It's short, and it's some bracing straight talk about that perennial third rail: Social Security.

She starts by recounting what President Biden had to say about it last night:

"So tonight, let’s all agree to stand up for seniors," Biden said. "Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security. We will not cut Medicare. Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned them. If anyone tries to cut Social Security, I will stop them. And if anyone tries to cut Medicare, I will stop them."

Lowe point out that this is a lot of sound and fury over something that ain't even happening:

But not only is Biden arguing against a straw man here — sadly, no sitting Republicans actually are pledging to cut entitlements — but he is also forgetting that doing nothing is tantamount to a massive cut of Social Security benefits!

Why is that the case?

Absent a major reform from Social Security, the program will become insolvent in a little more than a decade. Upon insolvency, benefits will be slashed by 20% to 25% across the board.

Okay, nobody is talking about cutting benefits or structurally reforming the program. Well, where do we look next to face our country's debt-and-deficit precipice?

If Republicans wish to balance the budget within the decade without touching entitlements or defense spending, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects Congress would need to slash 85% of the rest of the budget.

Could tax hikes fill in the void of the Social Security Trust Fund once insolvency hits? Maybe — if Democrats and Republicans were comfortable with jacking up the payroll tax by 25%.

And then there's what the VSG had to say on Truth Social about one of America's thorniest foreign-policy problems:

“Kim Jung Un of North Korea, who I got to know and got along with very well during my years as President, is not happy with the U.S. and South Korea doing big training and air exercises together,” Mr Trump said. “He feels threatened. Even I would constantly complain that South Korea pays us very little to do these extremely expensive and provocative drills. It’s really ridiculous. We have 35,000 in jeopardy soldiers there, I had a deal for full payment to us, $Billions, and Biden gave it away. Such a shame!!!”

Folks to the right of center finding appeasement of totalitarian belligerents loathsome has Cold War roots, but it's still found fairly recent expression. Barack Obama deservedly came in for outrage for his apology tour, accepting a Loan Chomsky book from Hugo Chavez in front of the world's cameras, and pursuing a worthless agreement with Iran about its nuclear program.

But the VSG speaks in terms about Kim suggesting maybe they ought to get a room, and the drool-besotted cult is fine with it. 

And there's the transactional element again. These allies, they need to pony up! We're putting a lot of young US asses on the line over there!

No, his culture-war nods, delivered in the most boneheaded manner possible, do not make up for stuff like this.

Still, most Republicans want him to be the 2024 presidential candidate. 

That's sick. 

 

This is kind of a big deal

 One of the West's most agenda-driven enemies has upped its presence right here in our hemisphere in an eye-opening way:

Iran's navy is set to station warships for the first time in the Panama Canal, a critical trade route in America's backyard that has never before seen an Iranian military presence.

Rear Admiral Shahram Irani, the commander of Iran's navy, said on Wednesday that his forces will establish a presence in the Panama Canal later this year, marking the first time Iran's military has entered the Pacific Ocean.

Iran in recent years has placed a greater focus on moving its military into Latin American territories as it strengthens relations with anti-American dictators in the region, most notably in Venezuela. Iranian vessels have docked more frequently in Venezuela as Tehran's hardline regime seeks to prop up dictator Nicolás Maduro. These moves are meant to provoke the United States and signal that Tehran has the ability to station its military apparatus a stone's throw from U.S. territory.

Joseph Humire, a national security analyst who focuses on Latin American issues as executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society think tank, said Iran has been laying the groundwork for this type of voyage by holding joint exercises with allies such as Russia and China, two nations that have also been strengthening their ties with Latin American countries.

"This is what Iran has been building in Latin America for the past 30 or 40 years" by establishing embassies and bilateral agreements with a host of nations, Humire said.

Iran's goal "has always been to have a military presence in Latin America, so it's not surprising at all for its navy to announce it's going to make moves on the Panama Canal," Humire said, noting that in addition to Venezuela and Nicaragua, Iran has opened relations with Colombia.

"This is a tremendous escalation if it is to happen," Humire said. "Many people may discount Iran in terms of its capabilities … but I would not discount it because they have been building to this for a very long time."

I know that several camps will have their say as Congress deliberates a defense budget, but let us hope that those who understand the magnitude of the threats characterizing the lay of the land at the outset of 2023 prevail. This is no time for posturing. North Korea tested an unprecedented 95 missiles last year. Russia continues to diminish any chances it has of joining the community of civilized nations that prize international order with its atrocity-driven assault on Ukraine, and the risk of nuclear consequences continues to rise. China continues to breathe down Taiwan's neck.

It would be nice if we had enough of a sense of national unity to seriously understand the stakes, but we'll take what we can get. As I say, a US defense budget based on adult priorities would be a good start.

 

These are times that require our ability to pay attention to several things at once

There's no shortage of fresh horror being revealed throughout the length and breadth of Ukraine. At times, it's almost too much to let in.

But let's not confine our focus to that aspect of the state of the world stage.

For instance, there's the thinking of Russia's elites:

A prominent Russian TV presenter said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is approaching a "new stage" in which Moscow will find itself at war with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — and by extension, the entire world.

"I believe the special military operation is entering a new stage. Ukrainians alone are no longer enough," said Vladimir Solovyov, according to the translation of a video clip tweeted on Thursday by The Daily Beast's Julia Davis.

In the widely shared clip, Solovyov noted that NATO countries have been supplying weapons to Ukraine. "We'll see not only NATO weapons being drawn into this, but also their operators," he warned while speaking on his show "Evening with Vladimir Solovyov."

Solovyov, a prominent state media figure and supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has often repeated and amplified the Kremlin's pro-war rhetoric on the state-owned channel Russia-1.

In the clip, he noted that Russia was "starting to wage war against NATO countries."

We'll be grinding up NATO's war machine as well as citizens of NATO countries," Solovyov said. "When this operation concludes, NATO will have to ask itself: 'Do we have what we need to defend ourselves? Do we have the people to defend ourselves?'

"And there will be no mercy. There will be no mercy," he added.

Echoing Putin's call for the "de-Nazification" of Ukraine, Solovyov said: "Not only will Ukraine have to be denazified, the war against Europe and the world is developing a more specific outline, which means we'll have to act differently, and to act much more harshly."

And there are signals from the top echelon of influential Chinese figures that ought to give us pause:

The prominent former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a highly popular state-run Chinese media outlet, published a commentary on Saturday urging Chinese citizens to “prepare for a military struggle” in the near future. 

The commentary, written by journalist Hu Xijin, came after U.S. senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and six other U.S. officials visited Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, last Thursday. The visit was strongly denounced by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, who warned that China is “firmly opposed to any form of official exchange between the U.S. and Taiwan.”

This guy doesn't mince words:

In his most recent comments about the highly tense U.S.-China-Taiwan situation, as reported by Newsweek, Hu asserted that there is a “very high probability” that there will “ultimately” be a “direct military confrontation.” He noted there was a "sense of crisis" in Taiwan.

"As the situation in the Taiwan Strait deteriorates, we must prepare for a military struggle," Hu wrote.

Regardless of who starts the confrontation, Hu added that any kind of “high-intensity military crisis,” even if not war, would be highly consequential. 

And North Korea doesn't take kindly to South Korean talk about preventing the North from  launch sites being positioned in a hostile manner: 

The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un says Pyongyang would retaliate with nuclear strikes if South Korea launched a pre-emptive attack.

Kim Yo-jong, a senior official, has issued two statements responding to remarks from South Korean officials.

South Korean Defence Minister Suh Wook had said the South was able to strike the North's missile launch points - sparking the furious reaction.

Exit question: Is the possibility of a nuclear weapon being detonated somewhere by somebody in the near or intermediate future less or greater or the same than it was, say, a year ago?

 

 

 

 

The world stage in 2022 is showing us once again that human nature doesn't change

 "We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable, and the potential for significant international conflict is increasing, not decreasing."

- Joint Chiefs chair General Mark Milley

"It is obvious that the key institution of the world to combat aggression and ensure peace cannot work effectively."

- Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky

"Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required."

- Winston Churchill

A lot of keystrokes have been expended in recent weeks on the near-certainty that the 77 years of relative global stability we enjoyed from 1945 until 2022 were a hiccup. Events of late only reinforce that view.

There is, of course, the dressing down that Zelensky gave the UN General Assembly yesterday, in which he provided gruesome details of what Russian soldiers have been doing to his country's civilians. He then asked why the hell the UN should even exist:

The Ukrainian leader then criticized the body, asking representatives point blank: "Where is the security that the Security Council needs to guarantee? It is not there, though there is a Security Council."

Zelensky added: "It is obvious that the key institution of the world designed to combat aggression and ensure peace cannot work effectively.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to remind you of Article 1, Chapter 1 of the UN Charter. What is the purpose of our organization? Its purpose is to maintain and make sure that peace is adhered to. And now the UN charter is violated literally starting with Article 1. And so what is the point of all other Articles?" he asked.

 Mark Milley appeared before the House Armed Services Committee and spoke bluntly of a new era in which the world will be less stable. In terms of threats, he mainly spoke of Russia and China, and understandably so.

But anyone interested in trying to stave off a really dark future had better, as the saying goes, be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

We - that is, the US, the West in general, along with stability-seeking Pacific Rim nations - have known for a long time that the North Korea problem was not going to go away by itself. 

We've tried an Agreed Framework, Six-Way Talks, summits and "beautiful letters," but the threat has not abated.

The Kim family is so damn touchy that any remark from anyone suggesting that prudent measures are called for in the face of the threat sparks even more explicit expressions of threat:

On Sunday, Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, issued blistering rhetoric directed at Suh and threats toward Seoul.

“The senseless and scum-like guy dare mention a ‘preemptive strike’ at a nuclear weapons state,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media. “South Korea may face a serious threat owing to the reckless remarks made by its defense minister.”

“South Korea should discipline itself if it wants to stave off disaster,” she said. 

Kim Yo Jong, a senior official in the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, is in charge of relations with Seoul and Washington. South Korea’s spy service says she is the North’s No. 2 official behind her brother. 

Pak Jong Chon, a secretary in the Workers’ Party’s central committee, separately warned that “any slight misjudgment and ill statement rattling the other party under the present situation” may trigger “a dangerous conflict and a full-blown war.”

The first-strike option is not new:

Seoul has long maintained such a preemptive attack strategy to cope with North Korea’s growing missile and nuclear threats, but it was highly unusual for a senior Seoul official under the Moon administration to publicly discuss it.

Well, maybe it was about time.

The incoming South Korean administration seems to understand that serious readiness is critical at this time:

Advisers to South Korea's president-elect sought redeployment of U.S. strategic assets, such as nuclear bombers and submarines, to the Korean peninsula during talks held on a visit to Washington, one of the advisers said on Wednesday.

The team of foreign policy and security aides to incoming president Yoon Suk-yeol met U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan as Yoon seeks a more constant security presence to deter threats from North Korea as it steps up weapons tests.

"Deploying the strategic assets is an important element of reinforcing the extended deterrence, and the issue naturally came up during the discussions," Park Jin, a four-term lawmaker who led the delegation, told reporters.

Are the above-mentioned collection of the world's stability-seeking nations able to muster the requisite seriousness to deal with the moment? The Biden administration's zeal for reviving a JCPOA-type of agreement with Iran, which well may include Russia as a signatory, would indicate otherwise.

Likewise, the imposition of sanctions on Russia and the seizure of oligarchs' yachts has not stopped the Russians from ripping out Ukrainians' tongues, raping mothers in front of their children, yanking people huddled in shelters out for torture and execution and shelling of government buildings, schools and hospitals. 

What is to be done? Obviously, pretty much anyone reading this is not in a position to pick up a gun, to jar the UN back to its senses, or otherwise dramatically move the needle.

But we can acknowledge that, per Milley, we are in a new era. We can maneuver through our daily lives in such a way that we aren't surprised when we encounter hard things. 

 We can stop prattling about our species having evolved beyond the innate depravity the has made itself abundantly clear throughout history. 

Our little reprieve is over.

 

 

US foreign policy has been off the rails for some time

 Bob Woodward, collaborating with Robert Costa on this one, has a third book on the Trump presidency coming out. Woodward is a standard-setter for investigative journalism, but some question aspects of his pursuit of truth.  To my knowledge, though, there hasn't been any credible refutation of the material in the Trump books. If someone - besides the Very Stable Genius himself or any of the drool-besotted members of his cult - had attempted to discredit the gist of Woodward's reportage on that era, it would have made a significant splash.

The pre-release excerpt from Peril, the latest in the series, that is garnering buzz is about Joint Chiefs of Staff chair General Mark Milley's concern about Trump's deteriorating mental state in the last few months of Trump's presidency, and the measures Milley took to mitigate possible policy results. 

That Trump was coming unglued is something we were all able to verify with our own eyes and ears. His mega-boorish behavior at his October debate with Biden, his statement in the wee hours of November 4, the phone call to Brad Reffensperger begging him to "find" 11,000 votes, the tweet about how the rally scheduled for January 6 would be "wild," his inaction as the attack on the Capitol unfolded, and his big-baby refusal to attend Biden's inauguration all testify to it. Woodward's book adds some new details, but Trump's dangerousness was already established. 

Two wrongs don't make a right, however, and Milley cultivating a back-channel relationship with his Chinese counterpart and assuring him by phone that Milley would give him a heads-up if the US were going to attack China is a violation of the chain of command that warrants immediate investigation. There are procedures in place for countering bad moves being considered by a commander-in-chief; Milley's approach isn't one of them.

Milley isn't any great shakes generally speaking. His attempt to push back on charges of fostering woke-ness in the military at a House Armed Services Committee hearing in June was pretty lame.  And where was his concern for how a president under whom he was serving was handling a major foreign policy matter as Joe Biden allowed the Afghanistan withdrawal to be fatally botched? 

Milley's buddying up to General Li takes on a particularly disturbing cast in light of how US-China relations have gone so far in the Biden era. There was the dressing-down of Blinken and Sullivan by their Chinese counterparts at the Anchorage meeting in March. More recently, China has violated Taiwanese airspace in the conduct of "invasion war games."

So far in the twenty-first century, we have not been electing presidents with the foreign-policy chops this country has needed. 

Trump wasted a great deal of time and jet fuel holding summits with Kim Jong-Un. His sleazy phone call to the president of Ukraine got him impeached. He famously insulted leaders of allied nations in person and on the phone. 

Barack Obama's apology tour, his entering into a patty-cake agreement with Iran concerning its nuclear ambitions, and shameful little episodes such as letting Hugo Chavez present him with the gift of a Noam Chomsky book in front of the world's cameras all confirmed that he meant what he said about America needing fundamental transformation.

George Bush's naive notion that the Middle East and Central Asia, comprised of decidedly non-Western cultures, were ripe for Westernization did much to undo what he was right about - namely, that the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the Baathist regime in Iraq were rogue entities. He also pursued appeasement with North Korea, repeatedly sending Christopher Hill to East Asia for Six-Way Talks aimed at getting North Korea to change its stripes. 

The prospects for righting this state of affairs aren't encouraging. With both of the country's major political parties vying to out-ridiculous each other, it seems unlikely that either will nominate a presidential candidate for the 2024 race that will instill confidence in his or her seriousness about the stakes on the world stage. 

Thursday roundup

 Kamala Harris, as part of a live-streamed event focused on empowering women, will be having a conversation with . . . Bill Clinton. 

Saying the uncomfortable part out loud: Bryan Walsh at Axios says that even if this "degrowth" movement has appeal to someone - and there are some very silly people to whom it does - you can't have the kind of advancement in terms of comfort, convenience, safety and general quality of life the human species has enjoyed over the last two centuries without economic growth. 

Lee Ann O'Neal - who, it bears mentioning, is Korean-American - at Real Clear Politics says that there is no statistical data to back up the current buzz suggesting that bigotry-driven acts for which Asian Americans would be on the receiving end are much of a thing. 

Good read by Daily Beast senior columnist Matt Lewis entitled "The Evangelicals' Trump Obsession Has Tarnished Christianity."

Speaking of the Very Stable Genius, he's endorsing Jody Hice, a House member from Georgia who supported the attempt to overturn Biden's election, in Hice's bid to unseat Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was on the receiving end of that interminable "I-just-need-you-to-find-11,000-votes" call in January. 

Andrew T. Walker has a piece at The Gospel Coalition entitled "Emabttled on All Sides, Does Religious Liberty Have a Future?"

North Korea just test-fired some ballistic missiles. 

The fruits of patty-cake - today's edition

 During the later years of the Obama era, I had many posts with this title. Evidence was ample that Iran had not done much beyond complying with the narrowest interpretation of the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. There'd certainly been no change of heart, no desire on Iran's part to begin to really act like a well-intentioned member of the international community. When two US Navy patrol boats were captured by Iran in the Persian Gulf, their crew members photographed on their knees with their hands behind their heads, on the day Obama was to give the State of the Union address, or when the Ayatollah Khameini or top-ranking Quds Force or Revolutionary Guards spokesmen continued the rhetoric about the US being Iran's number one enemy, or when Iran continued to build ever-more powerful missiles, or when it would get caught shipping materiel to terrorist groups, I'd write a post with this title.

The reason was to hammer home a basic point of sensible foreign policy: you don't appease rogue regimes that have repeatedly declared that you are their enemy.

Pulling out of the JCPOA was one of the handful of laudable policy moves to come out of the Trump administration in my estimation.

But I feel pretty sure Trump did it from a transactional motivation rather than from adherence to the above-mentioned principle. He thinks in terms of deals, and saw the JCPOA as a bad one.

And then he put his signature inconsistency on display by making an abrupt turn from longstanding US policy toward North Korea and setting up and participating in the summits with Kim Jong-Un. We had to listen to gushing rhetoric about beautiful letters and North Korea's enormous potential, knowing full well there'd be no resulting change in that country's stance. 

If the JCPOA was driven at least largely by Obama's and Kerry's narcissistic determination to be seen as visionary peacemakers, Trump's overtures to Kim were that determination on steroids. 

And, no surprise here, it was all for naught:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to expand his nuclear arsenal as he disclosed a list of high-tech weapons systems under development, saying the fate of relations with the United States depends on whether it abandons its hostile policy, state media reported Saturday.

 

Kim’s comments during a key meeting of the ruling party this week were seen as applying pressure on the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has called Kim a “thug” and has criticized his summits with President Donald Trump.

 

The Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying the “key to establishing new relations between (North Korea) and the United States is whether the United States withdraws its hostile policy.”

The Kim regime has the same basic stance it's had for decades:

He again called the U.S. his country’s “main enemy.”

“Whoever takes office in the U.S., its basic nature and hostile policy will never change,” he said.

So when some drool-besotted Trumpist starts in with the list of supposedly great accomplishments of the Very Stable Genius and gets to this subject, you can respond, "I think we can take that one off." 

  

North Korea proves impervious to the VSG's attempts at patty-cake

 Kim - who, by the way, proved once again that speculation stemming from his occasional absences from the spotlight that he might have been incapacitated or died is off the mark - may write beautiful letters to buffoons in order to stroke their egos and buy time, but made unequivocally clear that the real agenda has nothing to do with summits, letters and other place-holding gestures, but rather this kind of thing:

North Korea unveiled what analysts believe to be one of the world's largest ballistic missiles at a military parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Workers' Party broadcast on state-run television on Saturday.

The massive weapon was carried by an 11-axle truck at the climax of the almost two-hour ceremony and military parade in the capital of Pyongyang.

Analysts said the new missile is not known to have been tested, but a bigger weapon would allow North Korea to put multiple warheads on it, increasing the threat it would pose to any targeted foe.

"Largest *road-mobile* liquid-fueled missile anywhere, to be clear," tweeted Ankit Panda, senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"Liquid fuel, Huuuuge, capable of carrying MIRV nuclear warheads," tweeted Melissa Hanham, deputy director of Open Nuclear Network at Stanford University.

"What North Korea has shown us, what appears to be a new liquid-fueled ICBM that seems to be a derivative of what was tested back in late 2017, known as the Hwasong-15, is much bigger and clearly more powerful than anything in the DPRK's arsenal," said Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean studies at the Washington DC-based Center for the National Interest.

North Korea can now hit North America with multiple warheads in one strike.

And the Supreme Leader was one proud tyrant:

Speaking before the tanks and missiles rolled by, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un touted his country's military and said it was there to defend the people.

"We will continue to strengthen war deterrence as a means of self-defense," Kim said. 

"Our war deterrence will never be abused or used preemptively, which will contribute to protecting the sovereignty and survival of the country and pursuing regional peace," he said.

"However, if anyone hurts the national safety or threaten to use military force against us, I will preemptively mobilize all of our strongest offensive forces to punish them," Kim said.

And it appears that the hermit kingdom understands that its stooge in the White House may be an ephemeral partner in patty cake. No matter; summits and letters were merely the tactic that worked best over the last four years. NK was willing to bide its time during the Agreed Framework, the Six-Way Talks and the era of strategic patience. None of it has any effect on the long-term pursuit of the Kim dynasty's aims. 

Two global-stage hot spots to keep an eye on

China and India are squaring off in the Himalayas:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India broke his silence on Wednesday over the 20 Indian troopers killed this week by Chinese language forces alongside the nations’ disputed border, warning that his nation was able to “giving a befitting reply.”

In a brief televised speech, Mr. Modi stated that “the sacrifice of our troopers won’t be in useless.”

“The sovereignty and integrity of India is supreme, and no person can cease us in defending that,” he stated. “India desires peace, but when provoked India is able to giving a befitting reply.”

Mr. Modi spoke two days after Chinese language and Indian forces battled with golf equipment and fists in a desolate border area excessive within the Himalayas, the primary lethal border skirmish there greater than 4 many years. The conflict instantly raised tensions between the 2 nations, that are each led by nationalist leaders who need to mission a picture of power at dwelling and to the world.

Both sides has stated it doesn’t need a struggle, at the same time as they’ve blamed the opposite for beginning the conflict and stated they had been able to defend in opposition to additional incursions.

China’s overseas minister, Wang Yi, scolded his Indian counterpart on Wednesday, based on the Chinese language International Ministry. Mr. Wang accused Indian troops of scary the confrontation on Monday by violating an settlement reached days earlier to de-escalate the tensions on the border.

“The Indian aspect should not misjudge the present scenario and should not underestimate China’s agency will to safeguard territorial sovereignty,” Mr. Wang informed the Indian minister of exterior affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in accordance to a statement released in Beijing.

And North Korea has blown up the joint liaison office that handled inter-Korean relations. Kim Yo Jong had described the building as "useless" just before the demolition. And now it's threatening to mass troops at the border. 

We're up to our eyeballs in crises here at home, but it behooves us to keep these on our radar screen.

All for naught

Both our current president and his immediate predecessor have had a thing for appeasing America's enemies.

In the case of Barack Obama, the motivation was a mixture of the leftism he was steeped in, which sees the United States as needing to make amends for a supposed world-stage arrogance, as well as Obama's inherent narcissism, which manifested itself as a desire to be remembered as a visionary who ushered in a new era of global harmony. His narcissistic secretary of state John Kerry shared this latter motivation.

Of course, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action into which they convince an alliance of Western nations to enter with Iran was a joke. While Iran may have temporarily reduced its production of  nuclear fuel, it continued apace with missile production, sponsorship of terrorism, belligerent rhetoric and gestures of humiliation. Particularly symbolic was its capture of a US Navy crew the day of Obama's State of the Union Address. The captors made much hay of the photograph it took of the crew members on their knees with their hands behind their heads.

The Very Stable Genius is likewise a narcissist, but, as with any other trait he exhibits, it gets erratically expressed and doesn't lend itself to the kind of analysis that assumes any kind of strategy. In the case of Trump and North Korea, a notion to try cozying up to Kim rather than continue in a mode of tension just popped into his head one day. There resulted two summits, one in Singapore and one in Vietnam. Three, if you count Trump's stepping, for a few minutes, over the border between the ROK and the DPROK while on a visit to the former. There was the Trump-speak gushing about "beautiful letters" and how North Korea had the potential to be a robust player in the international community.

Again, the result is now confirmed to be a joke:

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has no interest in maintaining a good relationship with US president Donald Trump, it is reported on the the two year anniversary of the leaders first summit. 

Amid heightened inter-Korean affairs, the despotic regime has announced it sees no improvement in relations and says US policies prove Trump's administration remains a long-term threat to the secretive state and its people.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon made statement carried by state news agency KCNA, in which he slams a "hypocritical empty promise" made by Trump at the historic meeting two years ago.

The Singapore summit in June 2018 represented the first time a sitting American president met with a North Korean leader, but the statement that came out of the meeting was light on specifics, and instead gave four general commitments. 

Ri said in retrospect the Trump administration appears to have been focusing on only scoring political points while seeking to isolate and suffocate North Korea, and threatening it with preemptive nuclear strikes and regime change.

"Never again will we provide the US chief executive with another package to be used for achievements without receiving any returns," he said.

"Nothing is more hypocritical than an empty promise." 

On Thursday North Korea criticised the United States for commenting on inter-Korean affairs, and said Washington should stay quiet if it wants the upcoming presidential election to go smoothly. 

Ri said North Korea's desire to open a new cooperative era runs deep as ever, but that the situation on the Korean peninsula is daily taking a turn for the worse. 

"The U.S. professes to be an advocate for improved relations with the DPRK, but in fact, it is hell-bent on only exacerbating the situation," Ri said.

Ostentatious fawning got the VSG exactly nowhere.

Sucking up to bad guys is never a smart move.