Early thoughts on the election

There is an old Jewish saying, “Don’t pray for a new king. He might be worse than the old one.” I think of that as I watch this election season. Donald Trump has certainly done some things I approve of, such as trying to do something about China’s egregious violations of fair trade rules, trying to engage North Korea in some constructive dialogue, and trying to do something about the growing problem at the border. One can’t overlook the fact that the economy has thrived, wages are up, and unemployment is at a historic low (though Trump’s critics will give him no credit for any of it). And I am happy he has reversed the naïve neoliberal policy of trying to spread American-style democracy, sometimes at the point of a gun, to nations who have no interest in it. Whether his attempts will work only time will tell, but he is at least trying to do something about these issues, which is more than previous administration have done.  Nonetheless, I am certainly less than happy with his personal behavior, and would love to see a more stable and predictable President take his place.

But looking at the performance of the 20+ Democratic candidates on display in the recent debates, I think I may prefer the king we have, despite all his many obvious faults, to the wildly unrealistic and potentially destructive policies that this “woke” bunch seems to subscribe to.

Medicare for all? And just who will pay the estimated $32 TRILLION (Urban Institute estimate) to $36 TRILLION (The Center for Health and Economy estimate) cost over the next 10 years?  That is approximately the same amount as the entire federal budget over those ten years. This is a meaningless proposal which would never get through Congress, and if it did would decimate the economy.

Open borders? Anyone  anywhere who doesn’t like where they are can claim asylum and move to the US? Get real. As soon as that policy is in place we would be swamped even worse than we are now.  Remember the 2014 deluge of unaccompanied children that appeared at the border when Obama loosened the restrictions? We certainly need immigrants, but not unlimited numbers of them. This is another policy which would never get through Congress, and is therefore just meaningless “virtue signaling” to the costal elites who think this is a great idea as long as all those immigrant don’t move into their gated community or take their jobs.

Free college for all? Naïve! Kalamazoo Michigan has tried this for the last decade and discovered that it makes very little difference in the long run. The main obstacle to a college education is not cost, but inadequate preparation before kids reach college, lack of interest or ability in academic study, and overwhelming personal demands (think three jobs or single mother).

Forgive all student loans? There was $1.3 TRILLION in student debt in 2016. Just where is the money coming from to forgive those loans - $1.3 trillion is almost three times more than the federal government already borrows each year.  Or perhaps these candidates propose to just stiff the banks who made the loans, and therefore all of us who have money in the banks.  Another idea that is meaningless because it would never fly.  

I could go on, but you see the idea. Either these candidates are clueless about the real world and incapable of doing simple arithmetic, or they know perfectly well that these are just meaningless promises but figure they can con the rubes (us voters) long enough to get elected, after which they can quietly drop these dumb ideas. Either way – ignorant or con job - I don’t want such people running the country.  Trump at least was honest in his campaign about what he wanted to do, whether we liked his ideas or not, and has in fact tried to follow through on all his promises, which is unusual in politics and rather refreshing.

My assessment is, as it has been for the past couple of years, that this drift of the Democratic party to the far left is not healthy for the party.  It certainly won’t attract independents like me, despite my distaste for Trump, and I suspect Democratic voters as a whole will not be happy with it, and while they may not vote for Trump many may well just stay home on election day.

A politician’s short handbook on the military

Based on what American politicians have done and not done in the past, it seems likely that a short introduction to the realities of military power would be useful for new and aspiring politicians, to help them as they think about budget appropriations and authorizations. Here in condensed form are 15 basic principles any competent politician ought to be aware of. Most may seem self-evident, but the history of the past few decades would suggest that some politicians did not find them so obvious.

Principle 1: The military is a deterrent

The primary function of a nation’s military, at least for nations not harboring expansionist hopes, is to act as a deterrent. It is very expensive to maintain a strong military, but it is far more expensive and riskier to have to fight a war, especially with a peer or near-peer opponent, and incalculably more expensive to lose such a war. So in the long run the cheapest and safest of the alternatives is to have a strong enough military that opponents will estimate that they could not win, or at least that the cost of fighting a war with us is more than the gains they might make.

There are always those who think a military is unnecessary, a waste of money. That is an elite delusion that can only be sustained by people wealthy enough to live in safety, well away from the bad people in the world and well protected by the local police (the local equivalent of a military). Just as there will always be playground bullies that need to be restrained by adults and  thugs that need to be restrained by police, there will always be ambitious tyrants who are willing to go to war to increase their power and wealth and need to be deterred.  

As Plato said and many other have repeated since, “if you want peace prepare for war” (Si vis pacem, para bellum). History has certainly reinforced this wisdom.

Principle 2: To be an effective deterrent, a military must not only actually be strong and effective, it must be SEEN to be strong and effective.

Obviously a deterrent only works if opponents know it exists, and believe it is strong enough to make an attack not worthwhile. So a strong military needs to be seen in action, and effective and successful, from time to time. There are usually enough nasty police actions required around the world to provide opportunities for exercising the military and demonstrating its potential, so long as we don’t pick open-ended situations such as the ones we picked in the Middle East. General Colin Powell’s dictum that we ought not to get into any conflict until we understand the exit strategy is a good one.

It is expensive to be the world’s policeman, but it has advantages beyond just maintaining world stability and order, though that alone would justify the investment. It produces a steady supply of military personnel and commanders with actual combat experience, which would be important in the opening phases of any major conflict. And it provides real-world testing of new tactics, doctrine and weapons to flush out the inevitable flaws.

Principle 3: Soft power (negotiation) is always preferable to using hard power (military action), but it is the very existence of hard power that gives soft power its effectiveness.

In 1935 the French approached Stalin to ask that he ease up on the Catholic Church in Russia, in hopes that would help bolster French defenses against the growing power of Germany. Stalin is reported to have sneered “The pope! How many divisions has he got?” If the answer had been 50, the French appeal might have gotten a better response. There is a profound lesson there.

Principle 4: To be an effective deterrent, opponents must believe that the nation’s leaders would use the military if they were provoked.

These first four principles are partly a matter of shaping the opponent’s mindset, and it is the opponent’s mindset that often determines whether there will be a war or not. The first Gulf War occurred in part because Saddam Hussain believed, perhaps on the basis of some ambiguous statements from our ambassador, that the US would not oppose his invasion of Kuwait, and perhaps in part because he overestimated the strength of his armies relative to the US and allied military. Had we succeeded in shaping a different mindset in Saddam, we might have avoided the massive expense and loss of lives in both Iraq wars, and Iraq might still be counterbalancing  the Iranian ambitions in the Middle East.

Principle 5: For a military to actually be strong and effective it must train continuously under realistic conditions.

In past times wars were relatively slow-moving affairs. Troops walked or moved by horse. There was time to mobilize troops, and even to train them a bit before reaching combat. Today wars can come into being in hours, and any military that isn’t fully prepared, fully trained and fully equipped and ready to respond in hours will lose.

In addition today’s military is highly technological and requires highly skilled people who have to work constantly to keep their skills sharpened. That requires constant training under realistic conditions, which wears out equipment, which then must be continually replaced. This is expensive, but necessary. There is no way around it. If the military is not actually fully trained and ready to fight and fight effectively when it is activated, then all the money spent on it is just wasted and one might as well not have a military at all.

Principle 6: For a military to actually be strong and effective, logistics matters as much, or perhaps even more, than weapons.

There is a saying that “amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.” Wars today consume truly enormous volumes of supplies; munitions, fuel, spare parts, food and water, etc. etc. Without them the whole machinery of war – tanks, ships, airplanes, trucks, and fighters all grind to a halt. So not only does an effective military need good weapons, it needs a massive logistics chain – warehouses to store supplies, an effective inventory system to get the right supplies to the right places in time, and ships, trucks and cargo planes to forward those supplies to the battlefield fast enough to keep up with the consumption rate. There is no point in investing in expensive new weapons without investing an adequate amount in the logistics chain needed to keep them fighting.

Principle 7: Maintaining the industrial base for military weapons is an essential part of the logistics chain.

In World War II we were able to convert civilian factories to military production relatively quickly, because the weapons were not very sophisticated. Building today’s highly sophisticated weapons - ships, submarines, airplanes, tanks, munitions, missiles, etc – requires tens of thousands of highly skilled and experienced trades and highly specialized factories, not only in the main factories but in the extensive chain of smaller suppliers that feed the main factories.  Close those factories and lay off those experienced workers and it might take decades to recover that industrial capacity, and especially to rebuild the pool of skilled and experienced workers and the essential chain of secondary suppliers.

Therefore an essential part of military readiness is the maintenance of at least low-rate production of weapons, so as to maintain the facilities and experience that would otherwise be lost. But of course Principle 5 above in any case will produce a steady need to replace weapons and weapon systems as they wear out at least from training if not from actual combat.

Principle 8: Weapons systems sales to allies is an important part of Principle 7 above.

Weapons systems sales to allies helps keep the industrial base intact and operating, and amortizes the development and production cost of weapons across more nations, making the whole effort more affordable for everyone. It also makes military alliances more effective, since if allies are using the same weapons systems and munitions we are, it makes it easier to provide replacements, supplies and spares where they are needed in time of war, and it makes it easier to manage joint operations.

And by the way, agreements for production of US weapons in allied countries under license is an effective way of providing redundancy of facilities and experienced workers in the industrial base, which would be important in any major war. It also encourages allies to purchase US weapons, since local production helps their economy.

Principle 9: Allies are essential for more than the obvious reasons.

Obviously allies provide more weapons and fighters, and help share the costs of any conflict. But alliances also serve subtler purposes; they are force multipliers in other ways as well. Depending on where they are situated, allies can provide geographic advantages we wouldn’t otherwise enjoy.  For example, during the Cold War, it was important that Greenland, Iceland and the UK were allies, because it allowed the alliance to control the gap between them, which was the path any Soviet Northern Fleet ship or submarine needed to traverse to reach the Atlantic. Allies also allow for the establishment of forward bases and forward intelligence installations that might not otherwise be possible.

Principle 10: Weapons, doctrine and tactics must constantly be improved, so substantial continuous investment in research and development is essential.

Build a better tank and opponents will build a better tank-killing weapon, requiring that we build an even better tank, etc, etc. The measures-countermeasures war is continuous. We always need weapons and tactics at least as good as any major opponent, and preferably better, in support of Principles 2, 3 and 5. And to support Principle 8; why would allies ever buy weapons that were inferior to their likely opponent’s? But any serious opponents will be trying to develop weapons and tactics that neutralize any advantage we might have, so we need always to be pushing ahead.

Principle 11: Weapons research and development, and weapons procurement, must be managed over the long term.

The inconsistencies and disruptions and political changes in directions inherent in year-to-year funding and authorizations are disruptive of the necessary planning processes, and make weapons procurement more expensive than it needs to be and research and development less effective than it can be.

Principle 12: Military service profoundly shapes – usually for the better - the culture.

Historically military service has been the salvation of many people, giving them education, saleable skills, a sense of community missing in their previous civilian lives, a sense of purpose also missing in their civilian lives, instilling valuable habits, and engendering a commitment to the principles of American democracy often missing among civilians.

I was never in the military, but I spent decades working among ex-Marines and active Air Force people, and I was always impressed by the can-do mission-oriented attitude of these people. One time, when our project had made a really big mistake, the general in charge came to a “come-to-Jesus” meeting. I’ll never forget what his opening words were: “I don’t give a damn whose fault it was – just tell me how to fix it”. How often does one hear that in corporate or political settings?

It is hard to quantify this, but it is important to maintaining a healthy and vital culture. There is much to be said for universal military service.

Principle 13: General Powell was right. His principles ought to be followed.

What were his principles? We ought never to go to war unless we can answer “yes” to all eight of the following questions:

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?
4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
7. Is the action supported by the American people?
8. Do we have genuine broad international support?

Principle 14: The cost of war include the costs – both monetary and cultural – of the psychological damage done to our combatants.

Typically politicians and historian tally up the dead and wounded of a war, but they seldom if ever consider the number of combatants unharmed physically but traumatized by the experience.  This is a heavy load on the culture, not only from the medical costs but in terms of suicides, broken marriages, unemployable people, and even homelessness. War may at times be necessary, but the potential psychological damage to the general population has to be included in considering point 3 of Powell’s principles above.

Principle 15: Wars are won when, and only when, we convince the opponent to stop fighting.

People sometimes think body counts matter, or territory gained matters, or some other measurable consequence of fighting matters. But in conflict, as we have seen recently in Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq, the only thing that really matters is the opponent’s state of mind. When we convince an opponent that nothing is to be gained by continuing the fight, the battle ends. Otherwise the battle continues. In that sense both the prevention of wars and the winning of wars are fundamentally psychological matters, in which the only real function of military might is to shape the opponent’s state of mind.

The first round of Democratic debates

I supposed it is pretty hard to get anything meaningful out of debates with 10 people on a stage, as just happened with the two Democratic candidate debates that just occurred this week. Mostly they just parroted the latest politically correct (from a liberal perspective) proposals and attacked each other for their past mistakes. And the moderators didn't help much, mostly lofting softball questions at them.

It certainly was noticeable that no one was asked, for example:

- How would you handle the China problem, and if you don't like the way Trump is doing it, how would you do it differently?

- How would you handle the Iran problem, and if you don't like the way Trump is doing it, how would you do it differently?

- How would you handle the Russian problem, and if you don't like the way Trump is doing it, how would you do it differently?

- How would you handle our Middle East wars, and if you don't like the way Trump is doing it, how would you do it differently?

- How would you handle the growing influx of refugees at the border, and if you don't like the way Trump is doing it, how would you do it differently?

- What is your view on the massive federal deficit and federal debt, and what, if anything, would you do about it?

- The economy is stronger now than it has been in a decade, and unemployment is at a historic low and working class wages have been climbing. What would you do to keep these trends going and to keep the economy healthy?


It seems to me these are the sort of questions that really matter.  One hopes they will eventually be asked in future debates, perhaps when the field has narrowed down some.

Media bias

I suppose it is by now obvious to most people that the media has ceased to simply report straight news and become partisan activists for one side of the other. Still, sometimes it really is blatant.

The Supreme Court just refused to rule on the gerrymandering of Congressional districts by state legislatures. Their reasoning, which I agree with, is that they have no Constitutional power to intervene - the forming of Congressional districts is a power specifically delegated to the states and there is no legal basis for the federal courts to intervene. The written ruling, however, states explicitly that the court "does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering".

Nevertheless, the headline on several news sources today is " US top court upholds partisan gerrymandering".  They did no such thing; they just said it was not within their power under the Constitution to intervene - something entirely different. This twisting of the headlines, and the subsequent stories, is rampant these days. It's no wonder polls show so few people trust the news media anymore.

Recommended: The Hundred-year Marathon

Dr Michael Pillsbury is currently the American Director of the Center on Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute. Over his career he has served in the Pentagon under two administrations, at the RAND Corporation, and on the staffs of four Senate committees, and he is without doubt one of America’s foremost China experts. His 2015 book The Hundred-year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America As the Global Superpower draws on a great deal of material, public and classified, to argue that China is pursuing a long-term grand strategy to replace America as the global superpower within another 40 years while keeping America not only complacent and unaware of the threat, but in fact using American technology and education and finance to do so.  

This is an important book to read to try to understand why people like U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer and national security advisor John Bolton have been leading the effort to stem the worst of China’s trade abuses. As Pillbury points out, American leaders have a long history of completely misreading China, though Chinese leaders seem to understand us, and our weak points, pretty well. This book might help to redress the balance.

Those who would prefer a YouTube video summary can get a pretty good one here. It runs about 18 minutes. 

China and tariffs

From the outside it looks like President Trump is just tariff happy and prone to apply tariffs on a whim. But I think there is a consistent strategy behind all of this, a strategy supported by far more than just Trump. Trump himself may just be working on gut instinct, but there are trade experts in the background whom I suspect have a well thought out and consistent strategy. Whether that strategy will work or not only time will tell, but if I have interpreted that strategy correctly it is not an unreasonable thing to try.

First some history. The second Bush administration and the Obama administration thought that by allowing China to join the World Trade Organization in 2001 they would encourage China to become a more democratic nation and to follow the common trade rules of the rest of the world. That was consistent with the prevalent belief at the time among the American foreign policy elite that with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet system democracy had won and would soon spread to almost all the world (see, for example, Francis Fukuyama's 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man). In the event that has proved to be a naïve view. In fact both Russia and China have reverted to authoritarian regimes which, if not (yet) quite as repressive as the old Soviet and Maoist regimes were, are certainly headed that way.

In the case of China, it set about using its membership in the WTO to bootstrap itself as fast as possible into first world status. It did this in a number of subtle and largely illegal (according to WTO rules) ways. It engaged in massive technology theft.  It required companies that wanted to do business in China to share trade secrets as a price of admission. It restricted imports in key fields by a number of non-tariff means, like abstruse and arbitrary health and safety regulation. And it provided state subsidies, both openly and secretly, to key industries to allow them to capture market share in the world markets. It has been a highly successful strategy. Huawei, the telecom company now in the news, was only formed in 1987, and grew from a small one-room operation to the world’s largest telecom company in just 30 years, among other means by stealing from Cisco and Ericcson and Nokia (Some of Huawei’s manuals are word for word copies of competitor’s manuals, including typos, and some of their printed circuit boards are exact copies of competitor’s boards).

I think the administration, probably led by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and supported by advisors like Michael Pillsbury (who wrote the book The Hundred Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower), has looked at China’s growing power and assertiveness and decided that right now, with the US economy strong and China’s economy in a difficult place, is as good a time as we will ever get to try to change their behavior. And the major weapon we have is tariffs.  As I have mentioned before, tariffs themselves are only part of the threat, since in fact they can get turned off in a day. The real threat is that tariffs, if they stay on long enough, will force companies all around the world to relocate their supply chains and manufacturing from China to places like Taiwan or South Korea or Vietnam – permanent losses to China’s long term economy.

The main reason tariffs might work is the massive imbalance between US and Chinese exports. China depends on world markets, especially the US market, to absorb its output and keep its employment high. The US, on the other hand, exports relatively little to China.  So our tariffs hurt them much more than theirs hurt us.

And by the way, the tariffs on things like steel that Trump put on Canada and Mexico are related to this – they are attempts to close “back doors” by which China could continue to sell subsidized steel to keep its steel plants going (and workers employed) despite massive overcapacity.

China has few retaliatory options. It can, for example, cut off exports of critical rare earths, for which it has been the world’s primary supplier. But it is the primary supplier only because, with cheap labor and few environmental or health regulations, it could produce them cheaper than anyone else. As soon as they cut off the supply new mines will open elsewhere (including here in the US) and they will lose their market.

This strategy, if I have interpreted it correctly, seems to me not unreasonable. The question I have is whether the Chinese government can afford to make the sort of changes we are demanding without losing its hold on the nation. President Xi is walking a tightrope. He knows China is badly over-leveraged, and he knows he has serious tensions between the wealthy coastal cities and the impoverished inland areas, and he is concerned that any serious unemployment will drive the sort of unrest that could get out of hand and destroy the Communist Party’s grip on the nation (the Tiananmen Square protests still scare the Chinese rulers, even 30 years later). China’s economy is slowing,  unemployment is rising, and they are facing some serious food issues, like the current devastation of their pork industry by African Swine Fever. Can he afford to have China play by the rules, or does he need to cheat to keep his populace employed and relatively content?

I suspect that China thinks they can simply wait out Trump and that eventually, perhaps as early as 2020, they will get a new administration that like Obama won’t have the belly to continue to play hardball (in fact, if one of the far left candidates wins, the new administration may not  understand or even be interested in trade issues).  And they may be right. The American public these days seems to have a very short memory and a low tolerance for near-term sacrifice, even to gain long-term improvements.

F-15EX fighters vs F-35 fighters

The American military is on track to procure about 2,443 of the new Lockheed-Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter planes to make it the main American fighter aircraft for the next few decades. About 355 have been delivered thus far, with more delivered to some of our allies.  If you haven't been following the debate, there has been a proposal to also buy more F-15 fighters, a new advanced F-15EX version, to replace aging F-15C fighters in some National Guard units.

This has sparked an emotional battle in Congress and among some in the Air Force between those who think it would be a good idea and those who fear it will draw funds away from F-35 procurement. The opponents argue that the F-15, first produced in 1972, is an obsolete, non-stealth design that could never survive in today's highly contested battlefields. The supporters argue that the upgraded F-15EX, which can carry a much larger and more varied ordinance/sensor load than the F-35, would be a good supporting aircraft in F-35 missions, and for air and ground support mission in less contested airspaces.

If this debate interests you, let me suggest an excellent article by Mike Benitez entitled F-15EX: The Strategic Blind Spot in the Air Force's Debate. Besides being an excellent review of the issue, Benitez makes some important points about how to think about military strategy. As he points out, one good measure of whether a proposed military procurement is worthwhile or not is to ask if Russia or China would care; if it is sufficiently disruptive that it would complicate their attack/defense plans. If they wouldn't care than it probably isn't worth pursuing. If they would care than it probably has some strategic value. And there are other similar strategic points worth thinking about in the article.

Recommended: China's Great Wall of Debt

There is much media fuss about China these days and whether it will emerge to be a serious competitor to the US. And of course Chinese media and officials try to put the best face on their situation and project a confidence in China’s growing economic and military power – propaganda which is especially effective applied to America’s fairly gullible press and public, always looking for a sensational story.

For those who might want a more balanced view of the reality, let me suggest Dinny McMahoin’s 2018 book China's Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of the Chinese Miracle. McMahoin is a journalist and scholar fluent in Mandarin who has spent more than a decade covering China’s economic and financial systems for the Wall Street Journal and for the Dow Jones News service, and he knows what he is talking about.

One of the myths of the American public is that authoritarian regimes like Russia and China have a tight grip on the entire country. That might have been true under Stalin and Mao, but it certainly isn’t true under Putin and Xi. In fact, Putin often complains about his frustration that his instructions don’t get followed at the local level, complaints that don’t often get reported in the American press. Similarly, China’s president Xi is clearly fully aware of the fiscal time bomb he is sitting on, but he has trouble controlling local authorities, who in China‘s corrupt system have every incentive to ignore his instructions and follow their own agendas.

For those who would prefer a visual introduction to this problem to reading a book, there are a number of good videos about this subject on YouTube. One good one is a 25 minute video by Al Jazeera (in English) which can be found here. (The End of China, Inc?)

China faces a number of serious demographic, economic and social problems all at once, and Trump and his trade representative Robert Lighthizer are well aware of this, which is no doubt why they think tariffs right now will put serious pressure on China. Note that the real threat of tariffs is not the tariffs themselves, which after all can be removed in a day, but the fact that tariffs, if they remain in place very long, will incentivize companies to relocate their supply chains permanently from China to other Asian nations like Taiwan or Vietnam, which is a long-term loss to China’s economy.