Blustering Toward an Unnecessary War
GBN in Britain beats BBC and Sky
There are about 330 million people in America, and approximately 329 to 330 million of them are probably unaware that our incompetent national security establishment has inched us to the brink of war with Russia. To borrow General Omar Bradley’s 1951 admonition against expanding the Korean War, today’s adventure would be, “The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”
At issue is Ukraine, on whose border Russia has apparently amassed a large number of troops. It did so once before this year without effect. Ukraine’s president, a former comedian, has made stark claims about the likelihood of Russian invasion and furthermore said that Moscow’s agents earmarked $1 billion for a coup against him that was to occur on December 1 or 2. He remains in power. Ukraine’s defense minister put the date of invasion in January or February, demonstrating wisdom about selecting doomsday timelines far enough away that no one will remember your incorrect prediction when the date arrives.
Of course, Ukraine’s president is free to say whatever he likes. The question is whether the United States should care. Apparently we do: Secretary of State Tony Blinken warned Russia that, “any renewed aggression would trigger serious consequences.” Britain and France in effect threatened to go to war over Ukraine’s “integrity,” albeit with a minor force that would incur all of the downside of war with no chance for victory, whatever that is in this situation. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also talked up concern, but had to walk it back on Tuesday, acknowledging that, as sprawling as NATO has become, it still does not include Ukraine: “We must understand the difference between a NATO ally…and a close and highly valued partner, Ukraine, for which we provide support, training capacity, equipment.”
Stoltenberg and his Atlanticist friends in Washington, which include the Pentagon and State Department bureaucracies, are helping to drive the problem. When the Soviet Union and later Russia did not obstruct the unification of Germany, Moscow thought NATO would not move farther east. It did so with aplomb, recklessly including the Baltic states, right on Russia’s border, next to its second-most important city, St. Petersburg. Now NATO, with Washington’s backing, continues to float the possibility of Ukraine joining the military alliance. Speaking last week in Riga, Latvia, just a stone’s throw from Russia, Stoltenberg said, “…we support Ukraine on this path towards membership…”
We can reason that Russia should have nothing to fear from NATO’s expansion toward its most important border, believing that we would never initiate war against Russia. But that is not how Russia sees it, and Russia has a point: how would we like it if a Russian-led military alliance came to include Canada and Mexico?
We can also reason that Moscow is wrong in its conduct and claims generally. After all, it was Russia that previously acquired parts of Georgia and Ukraine through force. But again, that is not how Russia sees the matter, believing that it was provoked by pro-American governments in those nations inviting western arms onto Russia’s borders. Both Washington and Moscow believe their own talking points and therein lies the problem: while neither country wants a general war, there is an outside chance that one may transpire as a result of escalatory language and military posture.
Some of the Biden administration’s attempts at brinkmanship are truly stupid. One such instance is the operation Washington has undertaken in the Black Sea, supposedly facing down the dominant Russian position there. The 1936 Montreux Convention strictly limits what the USA and other non-Black Sea states can put into that body of water, which must be accessed through the narrow Bosporus off of Istanbul. We can’t send in our stealthy submarines, nor can we bring our intimidating if increasingly vulnerable bling: our aircraft carriers. That is why the U.S. presence is usually capped at a sole destroyer and a lightly armed “command ship” that commands very little. Russia, on the other hand, has direct and unrestricted access to the Black Sea and its airspace. If we had to fight Russia, we would be on better footing virtually anywhere else in the world. Even low-Earth orbit would be preferable.
Blinken recently remarked that, “Diplomacy is the only responsible way to resolve this potential crisis.” He should practice what he preaches. Blinken should get his boss or whoever is calling the shots at the White House to stop our picayune but dangerous military prods, dropping the pointless Black Sea operations first, and propose NATO-Russia neutrality over Ukraine. Start a real discussion with Putin and look for overlapping national interests instead of playing the errand boy for freeloading European members of NATO and Ukrainian leaders who want to write checks that we would have to cash.
At a time when the greatest threats to America are China’s government, Islamists, and an internal threat from woke cultural Marxists, the last thing we need is a war with Russia. Fighting Russia over Ukraine, which involves no vital U.S. interests, would be “The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”
The Spy Who Came in from the Bold
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece on the difficulties of being a CIA officer in a digital era. Among the topics covered were the impossibility of using different aliases when biometrics at airport passport control tie you to your actual identity. There is also the problem of cultivating and meeting covert sources given cameras everywhere and cell phone tracking. The Journal reported:
In the new environment, it is “much more complicated to conduct traditional tradecraft,” CIA Director William Burns acknowledged during his February confirmation hearing. “The agency, like so many other parts of the U.S. government, is going to have to adapt.” He added: “I’m entirely confident that the women and men of CIA are capable of that.”
I’m entirely confident that they aren’t. The agency, which recently published a book complaining about Donald Trump and ran a political operation against him with a phony whistleblower, is failing at the jobs it was created to do. Chief among those is informing the president about what our enemies are thinking and planning to do. But I would bet the intelligence bureaucracy has zero sources close to Xi Jinping, the mullahs who run Iran, Putin, or even whichever committee of socialists is running Germany. The article inches up to one of several causes:
In an interview, a senior CIA official disputed suggestions that the agency’s operating space is shrinking, and said it would employ both new and traditional spy tradecraft.
New and traditional tradecraft? That might be an allusion to the use of “illegal” or non-official cover officers. That is in contrast to official-cover spy runners, who pose as diplomats and can merely be expelled from a country if they are caught trying to recruit or run spies. Illegals are more effective since they don’t attract the instant attention and surveillance that embassy employees do, but if caught can be prosecuted for espionage. It’s a higher-risk, potentially higher-reward way of connecting with people willing to commit espionage on behalf of the USA. The CIA perennially suggests it is willing to consider greater use of this cover. For example, in 2010, Leon Panetta said, “The CIA will enhance its use of more flexible and innovative deployments overseas—including new approaches to cover—paving the way for even better intelligence collection.”
There’s no evidence it happened, at least not in a serious, effective manner. Also, it would not be a panacea for an intelligence bureaucracy that is overfed, unaccountable, and generally lost. Absent real human intelligence on top foreign leaders, we are left guessing their intentions. Presidents can guess for free, raising doubts about the need for an $80-billion-per-year intelligence bureaucracy.
Omicron Overkill
Santa came early for public health tyrants, government teachers’ unions, safetyite Karens like the ones who thought up Prohibition, and the media, all of whom had their spirits lifted by the emergence of the omicron variant. Australia, formerly and once again a penal continent, postponed its 184-step process of reopening to travel. Japan, which had just started a shorter quarantine option for business travelers with laughably unworkable requirements, closed its borders to foreigners. Taiwan didn’t need to take action since it never reopened at all. In leaderless Austria, there will be no regaling foreigners with “Edelweiss” and schnitzel this Christmas. In other parts of Europe (and in Los Angeles), people are asked to show their papers as in Nazi times.
In the USA, the Biden administration announced pointless impediments to international travel, which will further harm the decimated travel industry and workforce. Even double vaccinated and boosted Americans, who have a legal right to enter the USA, must get a test within 24 hours of travel home from abroad. No such test is required for domestic travel and that activity has not contributed significantly to covid mortality—likely because air filtration on airplanes does an excellent job.
Previously, Americans and other travelers needed a test within three days of departure for the USA. The new requirement is a costly nuisance: a vaccinated family of four might have to shell out nearly $1000 for rapid tests at an airport to get into America, or, if opting for a cheaper option, spend the last day of vacation wondering if results will arrive in time for a flight. Also pointless is the extension of the mask requirement on planes through March, despite increasing proof that masks are just safety theater. They do, however, create a sense of ongoing crisis—and a false sense of security in instances where danger actually does exist.
Not to be left out of the hoopla, leftwing Google announced it was delaying plans to return workers to its offices. The Northeast and the Left Coast are freaking out like it’s 2020, even as the rest of the country is back to normal. All of this before it is clear whether the omicron variant is worse than its predecessors—and amid early signs that the opposite is true.
Unlike politicians and shutdownistas, investors who put their actual money on line have decided that matters don’t look so bad. Markets have recovered initial declines. You would think that Republicans could find a way to benefit from spazoid Democrats, but you would be wrong. Some 80 House Republicans joined Democrats to create an unconstitutional federal vaccination database and give the incompetent CDC expanded spying powers. As Tucker Carlson mused on air, “maybe it will take a new party…to stop our descent into real tyranny.”
Beautiful Oil and Coal
Investors aren’t the only ones wagering that omicron might be a dud. Despite a recent decline in oil prices, OPEC+ decided to stick with its plan to gradually ramp up production by 400,000 bpd each month. However, Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy, and previously a White House aide whom George W. Bush called “Electric Bob,” remarked to Bloomberg:
The OPEC+ communique announcing that the meeting remains ongoing is very important. It signals they’re poised to pause or cut if conditions warrant.
If a slowdown in Europe does not materialize and whenever Asia really gets back to work, oil prices could skyrocket. Christopher Wood at Jeffries predicted that a full reopening could lead to oil at $150 per barrel; it is just under $70 today.
A contributing factor is the political war on oil in the West and general state of pretend that alternatives to oil and gas will become practical replacements soon. Shell just announced that it was pulling out of a major oil project in the rapidly declining North Sea given the potential for delays. That is a great sacrifice to the climate gods, except the climate inside the homes of poor and middle class Brits, which will be cold in winter and hot in summer.
Meanwhile in the USA, coal piles at plants have dwindled to their lowest point since the 1970s as a result of higher demand caused by a number of reasons, including very high prices for natural gas. Spot prices for coal have spiked. Instead of providing for cheap energy and energy security, our political class and corporate and media elite have focused instead on their religion, climate change alarmism. This fetish will go down as the biggest misallocation of attention and capital in human history. For the countries and companies that actually produce oil and gas, the future is bright.
Simon and Whiton
In our latest podcast episode, Mark and I pondered why Jamie Dimon kowtowed to Beijing instead of quitting, discussed oil ETFs and OPEC+ amid the omicron freak-out, asked why the New York Times doesn’t understand Chinese coercion of ethnic Chinese in America, and examined the odd coincidence between Fox declining to renew contracts for Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes and their sudden decision to get on their high horses. Equities discussed: JPM, USO, USL, SKYW, 2603-TW, 2618-TW, NYT. Please check out the episode and follow us.
Parting Shot
GB News beat both the BBC and Sky News earlier this week when Nigel Farage landed an interview with Trump. Farage interviewed me later in the morning about Trump’s comments on American power under Biden and the situation with Taiwan. Video below. The breakthrough for GBN is significant since Britain’s other TV news properties suck. The BBC is funded by British taxpayers and is more anti-American than Aljazeera. Sky News should offer an alternative but is somehow also lefty, peachy, ever-so-concerned, dumpy, shrill, and plain. GBN has a real spark and will gain speed. It’s actually worth reading the spiteful article in the leftwing Guardian about the coup, if only to enjoy the progressive tears.