Walter Russell Mead does quite a bit of throat-clearing before finally getting to the point of his most recent Wall Street Journal column:

The Middle East is on fire today because the Biden administration’s core regional strategy—to reach some kind of détente with Iran—has catastrophically failed. Iran, closer every day to nuclear weapons, is at the point of upending the regional balance of power even as its Houthi proxies have largely blocked trade through the Red Sea. Meanwhile, the Taliban’s humiliation of the U.S. in Afghanistan, the shock of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and the success of jihadist movements across much of Africa have combined to breathe new energy into global terror networks.

The past 50 years teach that strategic failure in the Middle East destroys presidencies. As the White House scrambles to respond to Iran’s latest attack on American forces, let’s hope it recognizes how high the stakes have become.

I don’t believe that any strategy or any negotiation with any country can be successful without taking several things into account:

• We have interests
• They have interests
• Those interests are inconsistent
• We cannot simply dismiss Iran’s interests even when they’re in conflict with ours

What are Iran’s interests? It has nationalistic interests, of course. The mullahs wish to preserve their authority and they want to exert influence in the Muslim world, the Middle East in particular.

What are our interests? I think nearly all of our interests in negotiating with Iran simply dismiss Iran’s interests.

At Responsible Statecraft Paul R. Pillar calls for the U. S. to withdraw its troops from Iraq and Syria:

The drone attack on Sunday that killed three U.S. service members at an outpost in Jordan near the Syria border is more likely to increase rather than decrease U.S. military involvement in the region.

This is unfortunate, and doubly so coming at a time when the Biden administration was showing signs of considering a withdrawal of the 900 U.S. troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq. Just last week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin intimated that a joint U.S.-Iraqi review might lead to a drawdown of at least some of the troops in Iraq. Other reporting points to discussions within the administration about possibly removing the troops now in Syria.

It is unclear why the administration chose this time to consider what was already a long-overdue withdrawal of these troops. The answer probably involves the upsurge in regional violence stemming from Israel’s devastating assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and associated anger against the United States for its backing of Israel. Since the Israeli assault began, U.S. military installations in Iraq have been attacked more than 60 times and those in Syria more than 90 times.

The attacks underscore how much these residual U.S. deployments have entailed costs and risks far out of proportion to any positive gains they can achieve. They have been sitting-duck targets within easy reach of militias and other elements wishing to make a violent anti-U.S. statement. Even without deaths, U.S. service members have paid a price, such as in the form of traumatic brain injuries from missile attacks.

concluding:

Combating ISIS is a shared interest of Iran and the United States, as illustrated by the United States reportedly sharing — quite properly, in conformity with the duty to warn — information about the planned ISIS attack in Kerman. It would be in U.S. interests to have Iran continue to do the heavy lifting in holding down ISIS — and to have Iran, not the United States, risk any resulting terrorist reprisals.

But I don’t think I agree with him entirely. First, I think we should distinguish between the troops we have in Iraq and those we have in Syria. Those we have in Iraq are there at the request of the Iraqi government. Those in Syria are not there at the invitation of the Syrian government. IMO their presence in Syria other than in hot pursuit from Iraq is illegal and unjustified. Those troops should be withdrawn.

I think that the troops we have in Iraq should be retained there as long as a) the Iraq government wants them there and b) they are accomplishing worthwhile, measurable objectives. I’m not sure that condition b is there but I could be convinced. I don’t think our troops should be left in Iraq to be there.

In the wake of the SCOTUS decision finding that President Biden had the authority to direct federal officers to remove the barriers the State of Texas had installed on its border with Mexico, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s letter to President Biden (PDF), demanding that he enforce the border is pretty chilling. It opens with:

The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them. The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration.

and closes with:

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.

I do not believe that Gov. Abbott is entirely right but I don’t believe he’s entirely wrong, either. In particular I think that relying on the argument that these are asylum seekers rings hollow. Most are not asylum seekers.

Arguing that it’s all just politics rings hollow as well.

In particular does presidential discretion extend to ignoring his Constitutional responsibilities?

To my ear that sounds closer to a threat of rebellion than anything I have heard recently.

How is Gov. Abbott right and how it he wrong?

Update

Fully supporting my concern all Republican governors appear to be backing Gov. Abbott.

Several Democrats have called for President Biden to nationalize the Texas National Guard enforce the SCOTUS stay. I think that nationalizing the Texas National Guard would be a very, very bad idea. He’d be better off nationalizing the Illinois National Guard and deploying them to Texas.

A quote of JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon by John L. Dorman at Yahoo!Finance caught my eye:

JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon said that former President Donald Trump was “kind of right” about NATO and immigration and urged Democrats to “be a little more respectful” of voters who are backing the ex-president’s 2024 campaign.

During a CNBC “Squawk Box” interview conducted in Davos, the site of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, Dimon on Wednesday said that Americans who adhere to the Make America Great Again movement were fond of Trump’s policies and not necessarily backing the former president’s personal conduct as they head into ballot booths.

“When people say MAGA, they’re actually looking at people voting for Trump, and they think they’re voting — they’re basically scapegoating them, that you are like him. But I don’t think they’re voting for Trump because of his family values,” Dimon said.

“He’s kind of right about NATO. Kind of right about immigration,” the chief executive continued. “He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.”

Trump during his presidency was highly critical of NATO; last year, Congress passed a Pentagon funding bill that effectively bars any president from unilaterally leaving the intergovernmental military alliance.

Dimon, similar to comments he made in November 2023, reiterated that he wanted to see Democrats “think a little more carefully” when they speak about MAGA and again pointed to his belief that Trump has been correct on a range of issues.

That has some resonance with this observation of Minnesota Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips:

And I’ve got to tell you guys, I went to a Donald Trump rally a couple nights ago. Never been to one. I had an event across the street. I saw the line of people waiting in the cold for hours and I thought, what the heck, you know, I’m going to be a leader who actually invites people, doesn’t condemn them, Met probably 50 Trump people waiting in line. Every single one of them, thoughtful, hospitable, friendly, all of them so frustrated that they feel nobody’s listening to them but Donald Trump. A diverse crowd. People who had never been to a Trump event before. My party is completely delusional right now, and somebody had to wake us up. And if that’s my job, so be it.

I wonder if President Biden understands the risks of the “democracy is in the balance” campaign he’s been running. There are several two of which are mentioned above—it says nothing about policy and it may alienate the very people you want to vote for you. Here’s another. When your claims are that the other guy is a fascist, a would-be dictator, and you want to preserve democracy it means you’ve got to not be a fascist or would-be dictator and you must be democratic. Nothing says “democracy” like the steps, for example, the the State of Illinois’s Democratic Party has taken to keep anyone not named “Joe Biden” off the list of Democratic candidates for president here.

I wanted to make a few comments about the nominations for Academy Awards this week. IMO in an atmosphere in which we are inundated with awards shows and the Academy Awards are becoming irrelevant I found them banal, bland, and remarkably predictable. I was reminded of Louis’s repeated line in Casablanca: “Round up the usual suspects”.

There were a few surprises and I’ll focus on those. I was a bit surprised that Greta Gerwig was not nominated for direction but it isn’t entirely surprising since it’s completely consistent with the Academy’s recent practice of avoiding pictures that actually succeeded at the box office. Barbie received a number of nominations and Margot Robbie got the nomination that counts for picture as a producer. If the Academy of today had been making the nominations for 1939 or 1959 both Gone With the Wind and Ben Hur would have been snubbed.

I was disappointed Japan didn’t nominate Godzilla Minus One for Best International Film. It might well have won. A matter of timing, perhaps? As it is it only got one technical nomination.

To my eye the most interesting nomination to follow will be Best Actress. I believe it’s between Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon and Emma Stone for Poor Things. The results might well depend on how hungry for a Standing Ovation Moment which Ms. Gladstone’s winning certainly would be the Academy is.

On Friday evening I developed a cough. When I awoke in the morning I had a sore throat, body aches, and was running a slight fever. I took a COVID test. It was positive. I reached out to my primary care provider and after a bit received a prescription for Paxlovid. I have been taking that for several days now and feel considerably better.

I don’t expect to be fully recovered for weeks but at least I shouldn’t be contagious in a bit.

I’ll post as I recover but not as frequently as typical.

I had been unaware of the existence of the woolly dog let alone that they had become extinct about 150 years ago. My wife on the other hand knew of them.

That’s why I was so interested in this piece in the Smithsonian Magazine by Alicia Ault about them:

For thousands of years, the Coast Salish people of the Pacific Northwest had what might have seemed a curious tradition to outsiders: They kept and periodically sheared fluffy white dogs, generating wool to weave into spiritually important blankets and ceremonial garments. The woolly dogs, which resembled current-day Samoyeds, were not pets. The Coast Salish people considered them to be close relatives, on par with humans, and believed they had wisdom to share. The keepers—mostly women—had a certain wealth and status. They gave the dogs a special diet that included salmon and other marine life, and they protected the animals from breeding with village dogs.

Yet, by the late 19th or early 20th century, the woolly dogs were extinct.

If you scroll down to the artist’s reconstruction of the beast. What struck me is that I am living with the extinct woolly dog. If nothing else convinces you that the people in the Pacific Northwest and their animals arrived here from Asia, that should do it. For all the world it looks like a small Samoyed.

At FreightWaves Greg Miller reports that container costs have reached their highest rates ever post-pandemic:

It’s now crystal clear that container ships will not return to the Red Sea anytime soon. Lengthy detours around the Cape of Good Hope have already pushed spot container rates far above pre-COVID levels, and rates continue to climb.

Yet another commercial ship was hit by Houthi rebels on Wednesday, the bulk carrier Genco Picardy, owned by New York-based Genco Shipping & Trading (NYSE: GNK). This was followed by another barrage of coalition airstrikes in Yemen, then more Houthi attacks on shipping on Thursday.

The Drewry World Container Index (WCI) Global Composite jumped to $3,777 per forty-foot equivalent unit for the week ended Thursday. It’s now up 173% year to date.

With the exception of the COVID boom period in December 2020 through October 2022, this week’s global spot-rate reading is the highest on record since the WCI debuted in June 2011.

And here’s what the trend looks like for shipping from Asia to the West Coast:

I think there are several things to consider about that graph. First, costs skyrocketed throughout 2021 but had returned to the previous trend just about a year ago. Second, those are Asia to West Coast costs. Any effects from depradations on Red Sea shipping are run-on effects.

But the real point I wanted to make is that the greatest effect on such volatile shipping costs will be on low cost low margin goods. iPhones are shipped by air not by sea. Effects on air transport would be run-on effects on run-on effects. When the world is stable and predictable shipping raw materials across the Pacific to import them back in the form of inexpensive goods makes a bizarre sort of sense as long as the cost of maintaining that stability and predictability are not passed along to importers or consumers.

I would have thought that the pandemic might have taught us that extremely long extremely fragile supply lines are risky but perhaps not.

U. S. forces have been asked to leave Iraq. Michael R. Gordon, David S. Cloud, and Elena Cherney report in the Wall Street Journal:

Iraq’s prime minister said the U.S.-led military coalition that has been helping his country fight Islamic State militants is no longer needed, though he still wants strong ties with Washington.

“We believe the justifications for the international coalition have ended,” Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani told The Wall Street Journal, as the war in Gaza frays Iraqi relations with Washington.

I have no way of knowing, of course, but I can’t help but suspect that U. S. forces attacking Houthi positions directly has brought the “fraying” of relations between the U. S. and Iraq to the tipping point.

Iran has the largest number of its citizens professing Shi’a Islam of any country in the world. In the Arab world the largest number are in Iraq and Shi’ite Muslims comprise a majority of the population there. After Iraq is Yemen.

The fracture between Sunni Islam and Shi’a Islam goes back almost to the very beginnings of the religion, i.e. it’s nearly 1,400 years old. Our disagreements with Iraq, followed by our support for the Saud family’s war against Yemen, and now our direct attacks on Houthis has inserted the United States into a more than millennia old religious conflict.

My own view is that it is imprudent of us to take a side in that conflict but we have done so willy-nilly. That decision may well have run-on effects and this may be one of them.