Showing posts with label Foreign Affairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foreign Affairs. Show all posts

Saturday, November 27, 2021

"The enemy gets a vote"

By Donald Sensing


Way back in the last millennium when I wrote or helped write operations plans for the US Army, I always remembered a catch phrase we planners had used for a long time: "The enemy gets a vote."
Which is to say that when we acted, the enemy reacted and almost immediately the plan's assumptions would be negated. That's why we also said, "No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy." Dwight D. Eisenhower put it this way: "Planning is absolutely essential, but plans are useless."
And so we come to this administration trying to manage the world's oil supply. Bureaucrats' plans bear all the hallmarks of "static analysis," when planners assume there is only one variable and that they can control it, and nothing else changes and the result is always unicorns and rainbows. This is, ahem, especially true under Democrat administrations, and nowhere more in evidence than the current administration's energy policy, headed by a publicly inept Secretary of Energy who admitted on camera that she has no idea how much oil the United States uses per day.
She also said that the Biden administration cannot do anything to bring oil prices down because oil prices are "controlled" by OPEC.
But don't worry because President Biden has announced that OPEC should increase production and that he is ordering 50 million barrels of oil to be released from the US Strategic Oil Reserves (SPR). That'll show 'em!

Here is an excerpt from the White House press release:
The U.S. Department of Energy will make available releases of 50 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in two ways:
32 million barrels will be an exchange over the next several months, releasing oil that will eventually return to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the years ahead. The exchange is a tool matched to today’s specific economic environment, where markets expect future oil prices to be lower than they are today, and helps provide relief to Americans immediately and bridge to that period of expected lower oil prices. The exchange also automatically provides for re-stocking of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over time to meet future needs.
18 million barrels will be an acceleration into the next several months of a sale of oil that Congress had previously authorized.
That final graf means that 36 percent of the oil released will be sold to other countries, including China. The 32 million barrels released to US oil companies will take place " over the next several months." Last year, the US used just more than 18 million barrels of oil per day, but that was in a year of low economic activity. This year's figures have not been published but are certain to be significantly higher.
But using only 2020's consumption, what the White House announced is that over the next several MONTHs the administration will add a grand total of 1-2/3 days of oil to the American market. Wow!
But wait! There's more! I gotcher proof that static analysis is useless rat cheer! OPEC decided it gets a vote! Hey, where did they get that idea?
The administration said that it would release 32M barrels to the US economy over time, expecting it to drive down oil prices, then purchase 32M barrels for the SPR at lower prices than today's. (India and Japan also said they would release oil from their national reserves.)
So OPEC plus Russia basically said, "Lower prices later? Nope, not a chance. We will simply cut production by at least an equal amount that you are releasing."
Who could not have seen this coming? Only this White House and its Secretary of Energy.
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Monday, January 6, 2020

Link this, sucker!

By Donald Sensing

What is NATO good for? Well, pretty much nothing, at least right now. As I wrote in 2008,  "What has NATO ever done for us?" The answer is also pretty much nothing (since the fall of the USSR) and I do not take back a word of it.

America is moving rapidly to tribalism, pushed hard on purpose by the Marxist, America-hating revolutionary vanguard. And the very concept of "citizen" is vanishing. Because "Pre- & post-citizens" was written by VDH, you automatically should read it. My own relevant essays are here.

With Soleimani blown to smithereens, what to make of Iran's threats to retaliate? Oh, they will do something, but if they were capable of doing worse, they would have already done it. And with Soleimani dead, they have a huge blank in their murderous-imagination planning because, "Top commander's assassination leaves Iran with very few options to retaliate."

Then read Hussain Abdul-Hussain's thread on why "reporting in the main news outlets NYT and Wash Post is so misinformed (either on purpose or because of incompetence)... ."

Oh, when Trump blew up Soleimani, the Left was unanimous that it was an act of war that was going to start World War 3! Oh, how we long for the good old days when Obama launched 2,800 strikes on Iraq, Syria without congressional approval. And how fondly we remember "Obama's Breathtaking Expansion of a President's Power To Make War." Good times, eh? Good times!

Speaking of war, why was this an act of war:

Remains of the car Qassem Soleimani was riding it. 
... but this was not?

Smoke rises from the reception room of the U.S. embassy that was burned by Pro-Iranian militiamen and their supporters, in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020 (Link)
But the chickens come home to roost, even if to a new coop: "Obama official thinks Trump's strategy worked."

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Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Mexico and USA - failed states to be?

By Donald Sensing

Mexico is teetering into failed-state status:

A Drug Cartel Just Defeated The Mexican Military In Battle

The idea that a nation of 120 million people with whom the United States shares a 2,000-mile border and ever-increasing economic ties might spiral into collapse has not seriously occurred to the American people. We’ve had a century of relative peace on our southwest border, and aside from dealing with an occasional surge of illegal immigration, we have assumed that it will continue. It will not.

Culiacan should be a wake-up call that the war now underway in Mexico will not stay there, and that we’d better start thinking about what that will mean for America.
 Wall 2.0: Might Have to Put Machine Guns On the Wall (Just in Case)
You may have read the news just a few days back: the Mexican military captured not one but two of El Chapo’s sons in the heart of Culiacán, the Sinaloan capital. One son freed himself—which is to say his entourage and retainers at hand overpowered and killed the soldiers at hand—and then, in a decisive riposte, seized the entire city center of Culiacán to compel the liberation of his brother.


 The forces that emerged were in the literal sense awesome and awful. Heavy weaponry that would be familiar on any Iraqi, Syrian, or Yemeni battlefield was brought to bear. More and worse: custom-built armored vehicles, designed and built to make a Sahel-warfare technical look like an amateur’s weekend kit job, were rolled out for their combat debut. Most critically, all this hardware was manned by men with qualities the Mexican Army largely lacks: training, tactical proficiency, and motivation.

Then the coup de grace: as the Chapo sons’ forces engaged in direct combat with their own national military, kill squads went into action across Culiacán, slaughtering the families of soldiers engaged in the streets.
Same post: "You might think nothing could be worse than ISIS. You’d be thinking wrong."
After about three months of training it was time for the “final exam,” which involved “cutting people up a special way,” Capache explains. Recruits took turns administering a specific, byzantine series of stabs and slashes to a live victim—usually a thief or petty criminal the cartel deemed deserving of such punishment. The first series of ordered knife cuts was meant to torture for information without killing. Then to strike fatal blows. And at last to cut up the body by hand for disposal. — In Mexico’s Drug Cartel Country, a Murderer Who Kills Murderers Tells His Story  Trust me, you don’t want to RTWT  ]

A state entering the preliminary stages of "failed"Yes, antifa is the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis.
Last weekend [in August] in Berkeley, Calif., a group of neo-communist antifa — “anti-fascist” — thugs attacked peaceful protesters at a “No to Marxism in America” rally, wielding sticks and pepper spray, and beating people with homemade shields that read (I kid you not) “No Hate.” The Post reports how one peaceful protester “was attacked by five black-clad antifa members, each windmilling kicks and punches into a man desperately trying to protect himself.” Members of the Berkeley College Republicans were then stalked by antifa goons who followed them to a gas station and demanded they “get the [expletive] out” of their car, warning, “We are real hungry for supremacists and there is more of us.”

The organizer of the anti-Marxism protest is not a white supremacist. Amber Cummings is a self-described “transsexual female who embraces diversity” and had announced on Facebook that “any racist groups like the KKK [and] Neo Nazis . . . are not welcome.” The protest was needed, Cummings said, because “Berkeley is a ground zero for the Marxist Movement.”

As if to prove Cummings’s point, the antifa movement responded with jackboots and clubs — because their definition of “fascist” includes not just neo-Nazis but also anyone who opposes their totalitarian worldview.

And let’s be clear: Totalitarian is precisely what they are. Mark Bray, a Dartmouth lecturer who has defended antifa’s violent tactics, recently explained in The Post, “Its adherents are predominantly communists, socialists and anarchists” who believe that physical violence “is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective.” In other words, they are no different from neo-Nazis. 
Well, the Nazis were socialists, but saying that provable historical fact makes progressives' heads explode.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini invented the word fascist as the name of his post-World War 1 party, which he symbolized with the ancient Roman symbol, fasces, a bundle of reeds tied together with an axe, used by the Roman magisterium to symbolize the power of Roman law over life and death.

The Roman fasces, symbol of the Italian fascisti party of the early 20th century. 
In 1932, Mussolini defined Fascism for the Italian Encyclopedia. It included this nugget:
The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, th`e Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....

...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....
Sound familiar? It's almost a transcript of the Democrat debates so far.

Mussolini's street enforcement arm were called the Blackshirts, who were,
...originally the paramilitary wing of the National Fascist Party and, after 1923, an all-volunteer militia of the Kingdom of Italy under Fascist rule, similar to SS in Nazi-Germany. Its members were distinguished by their black uniforms (modeled on those of the Arditi, Italy's elite troops of World War I) and their loyalty to Benito Mussolini, the Duce (leader) of Fascism, to whom they swore an oath. 
Hitler copied the concept with the National Socialist Sturmabteilung, SA, who unofficially were called Brownshirts. In the early stages of the Nazi movement the Brownshirts were simply paid street thugs. Later Hitler put them under military-like discipline and they carried out planned, focused violence against Jews, communists, trade unionists and others.

So who is Antifa? They are the street thugs of the American Left, committing violence against Americans of other political persuasion. As for the Democrat party, if I had a dollar for every time a prominent Democrat or presidential candidate denounced Antifa and its violence, I would be, um, broke.

But Antifa is well funded and its leaders, at least, are paid, according to the LA Times, which also points out that paid protesters are not exactly a new thing in American politics. Most of Antifa consists of "useful idiots," but the ranks of trained and very capable Antifa blackshirts (for black is their preferred color of dress) are growing.

This is simply the socialist-left template. Military theoretician Carl von Clausewitz said that war is a continuation of politics by other means. For socialists, violence is a continuation of politics - but not by "other means," for the Left defines politics in  warring terms: "class struggle," "rising up," "workers' revolution," and such. Politics and violence therefore are not separate activities. Politics is simply a continuum that encompasses both non-violence and violence.

This is why I have maintained for three years that there is a new American civil war coming, no matter who is declared the winner of 2020's election. If Trump wins, organized, pre-planned Antifa violence will erupt the same day. If Warren or another Democrat wins, violence will follow later, as the fascisti victor turns toward emplacing socialist rule over Americans.

Mexico is already a nation at war with itself. It is on the precipice of failed state status. And as Mexico is now, the United States will be in only 13-14 months. I pray we will not come to a sauve qui peut state of affairs.

Update: These, too.

The Rethink We Need to Avoid America’s Collapse, by Robin Burk.

Our Revolution’s Logic, by Angelo Codevilla
In 2010, Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Angelo Codevilla reintroduced the notion of "the ruling class" back into American popular discourse. In 2017, he described contemporary American politics as a "cold civil war." Now he applies the "logic of revolution" to our current political scene.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

When clarity is at a premium

By Donald Sensing

The BBC gets to the point: "Trump’s lack of clarity on foreign policy may prove catastrophic"

Of course the thing about red lines is that they need to be crystal clear. In the immediate aftermath of the strike this seemed to be the case. The message was: use nerve gas again and consequences will follow.

But on Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer muddied the waters.

Asked if air attacks with conventional weapons might also draw US punitive action, he said: "If you gas a baby, if you put a barrel bomb into innocent people, you will see a response from this president."

Barrel bombs, though, tend to be large canisters filled with explosives and shrapnel that are typically dropped by Syrian government forces from helicopters. In other words they are conventional rather than chemical munitions.

So was Mr Spicer broadening the red line? Belatedly the White House had to issue a clarification noting that what he really was saying was that barrel bombs containing chemical weapons would draw a US response.

This lack of clarity would not matter quite so much if it was not characteristic of the Trump administration's whole approach to foreign policy. 
And it gets worse maybe: according to Eric Trump, one of the most influential voices calling for the cruise-missile attack against Sharyat airfield last week was ... wait for it! ... that internationally-renowned strategic thinker, Ivanka Trump.

My only safe space from that thought is that the Trumps are energetic self promoters, so Eric's comments may just be part of that.

But somehow the BBC's headline and Eric's boast seem oddly and depressingly related.

For a strategic analysis of the missile strike, see my essay "Just War and Syria Strikes" from last Saturday.

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Saturday, March 25, 2017

The Korean War never ended

By Donald Sensing

Retired US Army Col. and syndicated columnist Austin Bay, with whom I have enjoyed many informative email exchanges (for me, not him) explains in illuminating detail why the never-ended Korean War has reached a new tipping point. The peninsula is perhaps the world's most dangerous flash point now.

Tillerson: North Korea Threat Is Imminent, Strategic Patience Is Over

Read the whole thing. Then pray.

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Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Europe's children

By Donald Sensing



US Secretary of Defense James Mattis addressed NATO's defense ministers today and laid down the law: "Defense Secretary Mattis Tells NATO Allies to Spend More, or Else"
BRUSSELS — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, echoing his boss in Washington, warned on Wednesday that the amount of American support for NATO could depend on whether other countries meet their own spending commitments.

“Americans cannot care more for your children’s future security than you do,” Mr. Mattis said in his first speech to NATO allies since becoming defense secretary. “I owe it to you to give you clarity on the political reality in the United States and to state the fair demand from my country’s people in concrete terms.”

“America will meet its responsibilities,” he said, but he made clear that American support had its limits.
“Americans cannot care more for your children’s future security than you do."

In 2008, I posted, "What has NATO done for us?" and the answer then, as now, is pretty much zip, nada, null set.
NATO was founded in 1949 to form a bulwark against Soviet invasion of western Europe. ...

So just what does this mean today? Pretty much nothing. ... Who is there to attack either North America or Europe? There are really only two threats reasonably imaginable - Russia and Islamist terrorists. Let's consider them seriatim. 
I explained in some detail why NATO can't stop Russian moves against Georgia (which was going on at the time), Ukraine (which events proved me correct) or the NATO-member Baltic states.
In summary: Russia is no military threat to western Europe. And though its threat to the Baltics and Ukraine is more realizable, there is not much NATO can do about it in the event, anyway.
As for terrorism, that's obviously a real and in fact ongoing threat in Europe.
But let us imagine that al Qaeda [ISIS didn't exist then, but include it] mounts a truly devastating attack against a NATO capital city, killing thousands. Just how can NATO respond? It can't, certainly not for any response that would require self-lifting across strategic distances. The strategic transportation of NATO has always been oriented one way: US and Canadian forces flowing into Europe to defend it from the USSR, not forces flowing out of Europe to somewhere else in the world. NATO forces cannot go anywhere in the world in substantial force without the US Air Force or Navy carrying them.

Let us then ask the pointed question: Just how does continued NATO membership actually benefit that United States? I can think of only one way - forward stationing of US forces as a deployment point to locales farther east or toward the Middle East.

That's it. Is that worth the cost of national treasure and aggravation we have with the alliance, and which show no sign of abating?
And this relates directly to what Mattis said today:
Georgia's birth rate has tanked more than practically any other country in the world. In fact, by 2050 there will be only 100,000 Georgian women of childbearing age, if current trends continue. So, he said, if Georgians won't have children to grow up to defend Georgia, why should Americans have children to grow up to defend Georgia? I can't think of any good reason.

And the same question can be asked of every other European NATO member, except perhaps Britain and France. The birth rates of Germany, Spain, Italy and every other NATO country except Turkey are below the stable replacement rate of 2.1 average births per woman, most far below. Italy’s rate is 1.23 births per woman , for example, meaning that Italy’s population could shrink by one-third by mid-century. (Turkey’s birth rate is about twice as high as Italy's.)

Again the question for NATO’s countries: if you will not have enough children to preserve your country, why should the US make up your deficit?
Update, 28 Feb., 
Spanish women between 18-49 reportedly had an average of 1.3 children in 2015 - below the European Union’s (EU) figure of 1.58. Spain’s birthrate has fallen by 18 percent since 2008, according to figures from Eurostat.

And between 1977 and 2015, the number of childless couples tripled from 1.5 to 4.4 million... .
All NATO members agreed many years ago to spend at least two percent of the GDPs on defense. Today, only five nations do:  the UK, Poland, Estonia, Greece and the United States. The other countries are all significantly below that benchmark, many very steeply below (Canada spend less than one percent).

Bluntly, NATO countries won't bear enough children to defend their countries in the 2020s and even less so in the decades following, and they won't spend enough on their military to equip them anyway. I said nine years ago,
I think the United States should reassess whether the NATO alliance really is serving American interests. I don't think it is, and I don't think it will do better in years to come.
It certainly has not since then. I cannot think of a reason not to kiss NATO goodbye right now.

Update, 28 Feb: See also, "Europe has simply given up," with an up-to-date look at European nations' birth rates and their implications.

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Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Sheer ineptitude? Yep.

By Donald Sensing

David French nails it when discussing President Trump's executive order on entry visas and refugees. French makes five main points but saves the most penetrating for last:

Myth Five: It’s the ideas that matter — execution can always be fixed. The incompetence of the executive order’s rollout truly staggers the imagination. Indeed, it was so bad that one wonders if Steve Bannon was simply being malicious — if his alleged decision to shut the door on green-card holders was an effort to signal exactly who was large and in charge. Wrap your mind around this truth, Republicans: Terrible execution can completely discredit even the best of ideas.

During the campaign, Trump vowed that he’d surround himself with the best people. During the rollout of an executive order that he knew would likely be the most controversial act yet taken by his new administration, solid reporting from multiple sources indicates that he shut out his best people — men like Jim Mattis and John Kelly — in favor of his worst.


Do you want to discredit solid immigration reform for another decade? Put malicious, incompetent people in charge of its implementation. If you’re an American who wants Trump to govern wisely, it’s vital that you not circle the wagons reflexively around Trump and his team, in this case or any other. It is already clear that there are members of his inner circle who have to get better or get gone.
The first four are pretty good also:

Myth One: The executive order will “Make America Safe Again.” 

Myth Two: The executive order will make America more dangerous.

Myth Three: The goal of American foreign policy is to “help people.” 

Myth Four: Terrorism is our only concern when evaluating prospective immigrants from the Middle East.

Read the whole thing


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Friday, January 6, 2017

Foreign Policy on Obama's Legacy

By Donald Sensing

Foreign Policy is pretty much the trade journal of the Establishment diplomatic corps and professors of the field. And when this is its consensus assessment, it really means it's much worse than they are letting on: Obama's hesitant approach to foreign policy resulted in the biggest stain on his legacy

The link is to a reprint at Business Insider, since access to FP is firewalled.

Then there is this, too:



What exactly is the legal authorization of the United States dropping bombs on Syria, Libya, Somalia or Yemen? Can anyone point to a Congressional authorization?

And remember that in 2011, Obama imperially declared war on Libya without a syllable of Congressional authorization. Congress did in response what Congress has proven it does best: rolled over and played dead. It certainly did not protect its own exclusive Constitutional authority or attempt to reclaim it later. That's not even including that the administration did not even have a rudimentary plan for what it said it wanted to do. Now Libya is a failed state.

As I said in 2014:




Tuesday, December 27, 2016

The Washington Post finally gets a clue

By Donald Sensing

Or at least its staff writer Richard Cohen finally, and much too late, realizes the truth about President Obama and foreign policy:

He is a 21st-century man who never quite appreciated the lessons of the 20th. He has been all too happy to preside over the loss of American influence. Aleppo, Syria, now a pile of rubble, is where countless died — as did American influence. ...

He waved a droopy flag. He did not want to make America great again. It was great enough for him already. ...

That coolness, that no-drama Obama, cost lives in Syria. Instead of rallying the United States to a worthy cause — intervening to save lives and avoid a refugee crisis that is still destabilizing Europe — he threw in the towel. The banner he flew was one of American diminishment. ...

Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world’s policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.
When then-candidate Obama said in the '08 campaign that he would "fundamentally transform" the US, what did people think he meant if not this?



In 2014, when China was on the verge of passing the US as an economic power, I pointed for the Left, that would be a feature, not a bug:
In Leftist mindset, America is the main cause (if not the only cause) of the misery of the rest of the world. The world has been literally suffering from a United States that is too rich, too militarily powerful and too capitalist for the health of the world. And this is exactly the world view of our president and all his top operatives. For the United States to be displaced from its "perch" is not merely laudatory, in their view it is positively desirable.
As one commentator wrote, this president thinks that the United States casts too much a shadow on the rest of the world, but failed to understand that it's either that or have Russia and China cast shadows on us.

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Thursday, November 3, 2016

"The fate of the world is teetering."

By Donald Sensing

So saith President Obama on the stakes of next week's election.

"We don't win this election, potentially, if we don't win North Carolina," he said during a campaign rally for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. "I hate to put a little pressure on you, but the fate of the republic rests on your shoulders. The fate of the world is teetering."
Well, Green Party candidate Jill Stein would certainly agree. She said a few weeks ago that a President Hillary Clinton will just continue to attack and bomb other countries: " Under Hillary Clinton, we could slide into nuclear war very quickly from her declared policy in Syria."

Even the UK's The Independent chimed in"Could Hillary Clinton start a World War? Sure as [snip] she could – and here’s how."

And then there is this: "Don't trust Clinton to avoid stupid wars: The world she had a big hand in making as secretary of State doesn't look very peaceful."
The world today, which Clinton as Obama’s secretary of state had a big hand in making,  doesn't look very peaceful. In 2010, things in Iraq were so peaceful that Joe Biden was bragging that the administration’s Iraq policy would be “one of the great achievements of this administration.” In 2012, with Clinton still serving as secretary of State, President Obama bragged about “ending” the war in Iraq, which would be news to the thousands of U.S. troops fighting there today.

Then there’s Libya. According to The New York Times, Clinton played a "critical” role in persuading Obama to topple Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi. This led to what The Atlantic''s Conor Friedersdorf calls her ”failed war in Libya.” Despite her pronouncement that "We came, we saw, he died” after Gadhafi's death, the Libya intervention has been a debacle, and one that Clinton has refused to acknowledge as such.
The fate of the world may indeed be teetering, just as Obama says, but it is teetering all the more because of the last eight years of his administration and very much because of Hillary Clinton's role in it.

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Monday, October 3, 2016

"So Obama let Syria burn"

By Donald Sensing


Obama's New Middle East:
So Obama let Syria burn. He let Iran and Hezbollah transform the country into their colony. And he let Putin transform the Mediterranean into a Russian lake. Obama enabled the ethnic cleansing of Syria’s Sunni majority, and in turn facilitated the refugee crisis that is changing the face not only of the Middle East but of Europe as well.

And as it turns out, the deal with Iran that Obama willingly sacrificed US control of the Mediterranean to achieve has not ushered in a new era of regional moderation and stability through appeasement as Obama foresaw.
"Unexpectedly," as they say.

It will not do to say again that Obama has zero strategic understanding or strategic sense and has surrounded himself with worldview-endorsing sycophants who have none, either (sadly including these guys, though one hopes to a lesser level). No, the reason Obama is letting Syria burn is the same reason he abandoned Iraq rather than lean on Malaki for the agreement for US troops to remain. (Obama was very happy to use Malaki's stubbornness as his excuse to declare the end of the Iraq war and pull all troops out. He needed it as a talking point for the 2012 election, consequences be damned. And today there are almost 10,000 US troops in Iraq anyway, with no agreement anyway. "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," of course.)

The reason is simple: Obama, raised from his mother's milk to abhor American power, prowess, wealth and influence, believes in the marrow of his bones that anything America does in the rest of the world is worse than America's inaction would be. There is nothing he can envision this country doing in Syria that would be better than doing nothing because everywhere around the world the United States has acted, it has always been for the worse, not the better.

So what if the Russians become the predominant power in the Middle East? That's not worse than the United States formerly occupying that position.

So what if Aleppo is reduced to a parking lot and its people suffer horrors beyond description? That's not worse than what would happen if the United States had become engaged earlier in the war to bring it to a close.

So what if the non-Islamist, anti-Assad rebels are destroyed by Assad, by ISIS and by the Russians? That's not worse than if the United States had taken effective steps to empower them.

It goes on and on.

And of course, this is an underlying part of it, too: "Why Liberals Don’t Care About Consequences," by David Goldman (short answer is because liberalism is about liberals, not the rest of the country).

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Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Within 10 feet of World War 3

By Donald Sensing

Two drudge teaser today (not co-located):

Russian fighter comes within 10 feet of US Navy plane...

 WWIII closer than any time in 60 years...
The first story:
A Russian fighter jet carried out an intercept of US spy plane flying over the Black Sea, according to US Defense officials, cited by the Reuters news agency.

A Russian fighter jet intercepted a US spy plane flying over the Black Sea, according to US Defense officials cited by the Reuters news agency.  The officials said that there were multiple interactions between two aircraft and called the intercept by the Russian jet "unsafe and unprofessional."

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the incident lasted about 19 minutes and the Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter came within 10 feet of the US Navy P-8 surveillance plane.
The second:
THE world is closer to a catastrophic and bloody World War III than at any other point in the past 60 years, experts have warned.

Russia and China, both of which are pumping vast amounts of money into their militaries, could soon rival the US in terms of power and prestige.
Potential WWIII triggers are located in Poland, Syria and the South China Sea
And this is not at all unrelated:
Car packed with gas cylinders found outside Notre Dame cathedral...
A radicalised French woman who wanted to run away and join ISIS is in custody in Paris today after abandoning a car packed with gas cylinders close to Notre Dame Cathedral.

The suspect - who is 29 and on a terror watch list - disappeared with her boyfriend, aged 34, early on Sunday morning.

This was when her Peugeot 607 was found with its lights flashing in a no-parking zone in Paris's Rue du Petit-Point, across the River Seine from Notre Dame, at 7.30am.
Now, think back to 2008, and the looming Good Times to Come, the Dawn of the Era of Hope and Change. Did you think then it would turn out to be "one prolonged act of suicide"?
If anyone had said that Obama would manage to alienate Israel and the Philippines, lose Turkey, pay Iran a hundred billion dollars, preside over the loss of a won war in Afghanistan, lose billions of dollars in military equipment to ISIS, watch a consulate burn, restart the Cold War with Russia, cause Japan to re-arm and go the knife's edge with China would you have believed it? If someone had told you in 2008 millions of refugees would be heading for Europe and that the UK would leave the EU after Obama went there to campaign for them to remain would you not have laughed?
Britain’s Admiral Lord West: "Basically none of us know what is going to happen but we are in a more dangerous, chaotic and unpredictable time than any other in my 50 years in the force."

And it is not going to get better. For years, if then.

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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Nobel peace prize update

By Donald Sensing

Nobel Peace prize laureate Barack Obama opens military arms sales to Vietnam.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Iran's tanker problem

By Donald Sensing

Iran Is Ready To Flood The World With Oil

Iran reportedly has about 50 million barrels of oil floating off its coast in Iran-owned tankers, about half of which departed for Asian ports this month.


The problem for Iran is that it has no more than 60 tankers in its fleet. About half of them are parked for storage and another 20 or so are not seaworthy, at least not for sailing the open oceans. So all Iran has to do is rent foreign-flagged tankers, right?
There is just one problem: nobody wants to give their spare tanker capacity to Iran.

According to Reuters ship owners, who are not short of business in a booming tanker market, are unwilling to take Iranian cargoes.

One stumbling block is residual U.S. restrictions on Tehran which are still in place and prohibit any trade in dollars or the involvement of U.S. firms including banks – a major hurdle for the oil and tanker trades, which are priced in dollars.

As a result only eight foreign tankers, carrying a total of around 8 million barrels of oil, have shipped Iranian crude to European destinations since sanctions were lifted in January, according to data from the tanker-tracking source and ship brokers.
I beg you to pardon me for a moment while I break down and cry that Iran can't make more billions of dollars to pay terrorists.

Furthermore, tanker companies are not standing in line waiting for Iranian bids.
Whether it is due to politics or simple business precautions, Paddy Rodgers, chief executive of leading international oil tanker company Euronav, said at present there was “no great urgency to do business in Iran”.

“There is not a premium to do business in Iran and there is plenty of other business – the markets are busy, rates are good. So there is no stress on wanting to do it,” he told Reuters. “I don’t really want to set up a euro bank account in Dubai in order to trade with Iran – that would crazy.”

Michele White, general counsel with Intertanko , an association which represents the majority of the world’s tanker fleet, said: “We have witnessed a reluctance by our members generally to return to Iranian trade given the prohibition on use of the U.S. financial system – essentially no U.S. dollars.”

One can almost smell Saudi intervention here, which we first described two weeks ago when we reported that not only has Saudi Arabia banned Iran from sailing in its territorial waters, but has taken proactive steps to slow Iran’s efforts at increasing oil exports, interfering with third parties and making Iran’s procurement of vessels virtually impossible.
And then they told me that Iran can't ship their oil anywhere!
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Thursday, September 11, 2014

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

By Donald Sensing


Make sure to listen to the whole thing -- it's only one minute.

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Sunday, August 3, 2014

"A world gone mad"

By Donald Sensing





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Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Community organizing as foreign policy

By Donald Sensing

How fallen is the formerly mighty United States:

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Our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families. It's time to . -mo

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Putin's March Madness brackets

By Donald Sensing



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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Did Kerry just get fired?

By Donald Sensing

In effect if not in fact, it seems:


Posted originally by the incomparable Gerard Vanderleun.

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