I can see many reasons why European countries should focus more attention on Africa. I can’t see many why the U. S. should, as Philippe Benoit urges at The Hill:

As I wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill immediately following the U.S.-Africa December Summit: “To achieve [a] strong partnership, the U.S. will need to demonstrate that it is interested in Africa because the continent itself matters, not merely to address other U.S. international objectives.”

The recent events in Sudan, however, serve as a reminder that it is also important for Washington to vigorously engage Africa precisely to support American geopolitical interests globally.

Over the last several months, the fighting by Russia to take Bakhmut in Ukraine has been spearheaded by the Wagner Group, a paramilitary Russian group of mercenaries. The battle for Bakhmut has become a strategic focus of the war as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine extends into a second year.

While fighting raged in Bakhmut, several thousand miles to the south in Khartoum, Sudan, fighting broke out between two rival generals for control of the city and, by extension, the country. Once again, the Wagner Group is present. As reported by NBC, “The Russian mercenary outfit Wagner Group is sending surface-to-air missiles to one of the sides in Sudan’s war, fueling the conflict and destabilizing the region, the Treasury Department said this week.” Wagner’s strategy in Africa is closely linked to the war in Ukraine as it is “profiting off African countries’ mining wealth, with the proceeds helping to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

Yet, as U.S. geopolitical competitors in Moscow and Beijing have already recognized, Africa matters for its own sake, independent of the Ukraine situation. Wagner, for example, has worked to establish itself across the continent in a campaign that predates Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by many years. From the Central African Republic to Mali to Sudan and more, Wagner has implanted itself, gaining influence and generating massive revenues by exploiting Africa’s rich mineral resources. Notably, from a geopolitical perspective, experts interviewed by NBC said: “Wagner’s role in Sudan is part of a growing presence in Africa aimed at undercutting U.S. and French influence,” and its “aim has been to bolster Moscow’s influence in Africa.”

My own view is that the U. S. should focus significantly more attention on Central and South America while the Europeans devote more attention to Africa. Nearly every argument Mr. Benoit makes about Africa is also true of Latin America. For example, the Wagner Group has a toehold in Venezuela, too.

At UnHerd Kevin Ryan argues that Russian President Vladimir Putin will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine sooner rather than later:

For much of the last 80 years, Russia’s security has rested on two pillars whose relative strength has waxed and waned — its conventional ground forces and its nuclear weapons. The conventional forces have been used to influence, bully and force Russia’s neighbours and adversaries to bend to its will. The nuclear forces were intended to deter the United States and the West from interfering militarily in Russia and its perceived zone of influence. Since the end of the Cold War, however, Russia’s conventional forces have at times struggled with their share of the task. To compensate, Russian leaders have had to rely on their nuclear forces to do both: strategic nuclear weapons to deter the West and tactical nuclear weapons to threaten neighbours.

Today, a single nuclear strike in Ukraine could thwart a Ukrainian counterattack with little loss of Russian lives.

and

None of this is to say that we in the West should pressure Ukraine to forgo its goal to liberate all seized territory. But it does mean that we should anticipate a nuclear attack and develop possible responses. As soon as Russia uses a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, the fallout will start to spread. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians will be dead, suffering or dealing with the effects of the explosion. Hundreds of millions of Europeans will be bracing for war. But 7 billion others around the globe will go about their business, alarmed but physically unaffected.

I have no idea whether his reasoning is sound or not. I suspect he’s overestimating how many of its military resources Russia has already deployed against Ukraine. For example, I don’t believe that Russia has deployed any of the 300,000 troops it called up several months ago against Ukraine.

Said another way the issue may be whether we’re talking about a first resort or a last resort.

I think that Fareed Zakharia is operating under a misconception in his latest Washington Post column:

As I was following Turkey’s recent general election, I was stunned to hear one of the country’s top officials, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, speaking to a crowd from a balcony. Jubilant, he promised that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would “wipe away whoever causes trouble” for Turkey “and that includes the American military.” Earlier, Soylu declared that those who “pursue a pro-American approach will be considered traitors.” Keep in mind that Turkey has been a member of NATO (with U.S. bases in the country) for about 70 years.

Erdogan often uses stridently anti-Western rhetoric himself. About a week before the election’s first round, he tweeted that his opponent “won’t say what he promised to the baby-killing terrorists or to the Western countries.”

Erdogan might be one of the most extreme representatives of this attitude, but he is not alone. As many commentators have noted, most of the world’s population is not aligned with the West in its struggle against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. And the war itself has only highlighted a broader phenomenon: Many of the largest and most powerful countries in the developing world are growing increasingly anti-Western and anti-American.

and

What is going on? Why is the United States having so much trouble with so many of the world’s largest developing nations? These attitudes are rooted in a phenomenon that I described in 2008 as the “rise of the rest.” Over the past two decades, a huge shift in the international system has taken place. Countries that were once populous but poor have moved from the margins to center stage. Once representing a negligible share of the global economy, the “emerging markets” now make up fully half of it. It would be fair to say they have emerged.

As these countries have become economically strong, politically stable and culturally proud, they have also become more nationalist, and their nationalism is often defined in opposition to the countries that dominate the international system — meaning the West. Many of these nations were once colonized by Western nations, and so they retain an instinctive aversion to Western efforts to corral them into an alliance or grouping.

Actually, I suspect it’s more than one misconception.

The first misconception is that present day Turkey is an ally of the United States in anything but a technical sense on paper. It hasn’t been for the last thirty years.

The second is that the views of the “non-aligned countries”, e.g. Brazil or India, have changed. They haven’t. They go back more than two millennia, cf. Thucydides famous maxim: “The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must”. Turkey and Brazil will always distrust the United States; Poland and Czechia will always distrust Russia.

The third is that there’s something we can do about it. If there ever was it’s too late now. Weaker countries will never trust strong countries with histories of interventionism, e.g. the United States and Russia. China benefits by its long adherence to a policy of noninterventionism. As that erodes not the least under the influence of “wolf warrior diplomacy”, China will lose whatever trust it had.

The only thing we can actually do is remain strong.

I want to commend to your attention what I think is a very good article by Akhil Thadani and Gregory C. Allen at the Center for Strategic and International Studies which they describe as a “map” of the semiconductor supply chain. Here’s their conclusion:

As it stands, technological and economic limitations have evolved a semiconductor supply chain that is incredibly complex and specialized. Despite consistent efforts, no government has been able to achieve true self-sufficiency in semiconductor manufacturing to date. To successfully fortify the United States’ position along the supply chain and mitigate risk, U.S. policy should aim to grow a healthy and resilient semiconductor ecosystem in which allies and partners continue to play a key role. The Department of Commerce has already stated that this is a key prong of the CHIPS Act implementation strategy. Carried out by the CHIPS office in the Department of Commerce, coordinating investment and incentive programs, promoting knowledge exchanges and collaboration, and facilitating cross-border commerce are all high-priority objectives for CHIPS Act implementation.[44] Continued dialogue with key allies, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, is important to minimize duplicative investments, grow the comparative strengths of each country’s domestic industry, and de-risk key dependencies.

In my view it would be prudent for the U. S. to rely a lot more on Canada and Mexico and a lot less on Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on what transpired here in Chicago over the weekend:

The shootings occurred even as the mayor visited neighborhoods with a plea to keep the city safe. He favors what he calls a “holistic” approach to fighting crime, which means funding community groups. “Poverty didn’t go away over the weekend,” Mr. Johnson said. “Communities have been disinvested in and traumatized” and “you are seeing the manifestation of that trauma.”

Yes, he actually said that, which goes a long way to explaining why gunmen patrol the streets with impunity. Does the mayor have a date when he thinks poverty will vanish, the “trauma” will ease, and the shootings stop? Is the July 4 weekend too soon, or will it be Labor Day?

His comments reflect the other-worldly nature of Chicago progressives, for whom Mr. Johnson is now the chief spokesman. He campaigned on hiring 200 new police detectives, but in the city’s current state he’ll need 2,000 and a revival of tough anti-crime policies to stop the carnage in the streets. Morale at the Chicago Police Department is flagging and there’s no permanent superintendent.

Then again, Chicagoans elected Mr. Johnson in April knowing all this. Crime was the biggest issue, and voters apparently opted for “holistic” crime fighting as opposed to actually fighting crime. How do you like it?

A couple of observations. First, “disinvestment” is a consequence of crime as well as, per the mayor, a cause of it. Contrary to the mayor, I happen to think it is mostly a consequence. I would add that small businesses have been driven from Chicago, presumably with the best of intentions, as Chicago tried to attract major retailers. Every Walmart store displaces scores of small, individually owned and operated stores. Then when Walmart leaves because “shrinkage” (as it’s called in the trade) is eating up any prospective profits, that leaves a desert. Another factor is that by simply crossing the street you can pay less. That’s what happens when you have the highest sales tax in the state. I suspect that the mayor will find attracting new small businesses with ties to the community a greater challenge than dealing with the forces that are pushing them out.

Second, I think he’s trying to shoehorn the emiseration thesis out of the situation on the South and West Sides. Lots of luck with that. The empirical evidence is in the opposite direction.

Third, he might want to consider the possibility that young people on the South and West Sides are killing each other a) because they can and b) because they don’t believe there will be consequences for whatever they do.

Finally, 18% of Chicago’s registered voters voted for Mr. Johnson. Don’t blame the rest of us.

In his Washington Post column Mark Thiessen presents what he refers to as an “America First” case for U. S. support for the Ukraine in its war with Russia. Here are his ten points:

1. Russian victory would embolden our enemies
2. A Ukrainian victory will help deter China
3. Defeating Putin would weaken the Sino-Russian partnership
4. Support for Ukraine will restore the Reagan Doctrine
5. Victory will save the U.S. billions
6. A proving ground for new weapons
7. Arming Ukraine is revitalizing our defense industrial base
8. The Russian invasion has strengthened U.S. alliances
9. Victory helps prevent nuclear proliferation
10. Victory in Ukraine is achievable

I’m not his target audience—Republicans are. However, to understand my issues with his argument, let’s first define our terms. “Victory for Ukraine”, as defined by the Ukrainian government and augmented by me to add the obvious, means:

1. Withdrawal of Russia from all Ukrainian territory as defined by its pre-2014 borders.
2. Cessation of hostilities within those borders including by Russian ethnic separatists and Ukrainian nationalists.
3. Enough of the Ukrainian population remains within those borders to maintain civil society.

while “victory for Russia”, as defined by the Russian government, means that Russia continues to hold Crimea and the Donbas and Ukraine does not join NATO.

I would submit that victory for Ukraine is not achievable and I don’t honestly know whether victory for Russia is, either. At least 20% and possibly as much as 30% of Ukraine’s population has already left the country. Frankly, I doubt that most will return. The total numbers of those killed are at least .3% of the population and continue to mount. I don’t know what percentage of the population must die before Ukraine loses cohesion.

The question then becomes is preventing Russia from outright victory an objective sufficient for U. S. interests? I don’t think so but I cannot speak for the audience Mr. Thiessen is addressing.

On his other bullet points I think that the likely outcome in which neither Ukraine nor Russia actually prevails in their own terms fails to satisfy any of his points 1-9.

These three articles provide such contrasting views of events I thought I should link to all of them.

First, there’s Walter Russell Mead’s column in the Wall Street Journal. In his view Russia’s war in Ukraine provides the United States with an opportunity:

Helping Ukraine is not a charity project to be undertaken out of sentiment. Nor is it a strategic distraction that weakens our hand in the Indo-Pacific. In his blindness and folly, Vladimir Putin has handed the U.S. a golden opportunity. We should seize it with both hands.

Next up is Marwan Bishara’s take at Al Jazeera which, as you will note, is in sharp contrast with Dr. Mead’s:

As the war drags on with no end in sight, it is important to address US President Joe Biden’s – and his Western allies’ – miscalculations in Ukraine as well. These, unsurprisingly, mirror Russia’s own failures, as both leaders prove incapable of learning the lessons of imperial hubris.

From the start, Biden took the moral high ground, framing the conflict in Ukraine as a global one between democracy and autocracy, between respect for international law and national sovereignty and the scourge of Russian aggression. Yet, he pleaded with world autocrats to join the crusade and disregarded America’s own illegal wars.

He underestimated the power of Russian nationalism and rejected Moscow’s fears of NATO expansion towards its borders as baseless excuses for Russian imperialism.

In the months leading up to the war, Biden undermined efforts to implement the Minsk agreements signed in 2014 and 2015 to end the conflict in the Donbas region. They were meant to pave the way for the creation of two autonomous Russian areas in eastern Ukraine and stave off the expansion of Russian intervention in the country.

Both Ukraine and Russia had signed on, but France and Germany, which helped conclude and refine these agreements, failed to push hard enough for their implementation. Despite having much to lose from a devastating European war, European powers did little to stop the escalation.

Biden also underestimated Russia’s military endurance, betting on Ukrainians defeating it just as the Afghans defeated the Soviet Union with help from the United States.

But for Moscow, Ukraine is far more important and strategic than Afghanistan, considering its shared history and geographic proximity. From Putin’s perspective, Ukraine is vital for Russia’s national security and his regime’s survival. Clearly, he would rather have it destroyed than see it join a Western alliance.

Finally, there’s Daniel Davis’s piece at 19FortyFive:

Put simply, Ukraine doesn’t have the personnel or industrial capacity to replace their lost men and equipment in comparison to the Russians. Moreover, Russia has been learning from its many tactical mistakes and evidence suggests they are improving tactically while simultaneously expanding their industrial capacity. Even bigger than the dearth of ammunition and equipment for Ukraine, however, is the number of trained and experienced personnel they’ve lost. Many of those skilled troops and leaders simply cannot be replaced in the span of mere months.

Ukraine is now faced with a world-class dilemma: should they use their last offensive capacity in a last gasp of hoping they inflict a grave wound on the Russians defending in the occupied territories or preserve them in case Russia launches a summer offensive of their own? There are serious risks with either course of action. I assess there is currently no likely path for Ukraine to achieve a military victory. Continuing to fight in that hope may perversely result in them losing even more territory.

I have no idea of which of these views if any to believe. Ukraine cannot be an asset for the U. S. as Dr. Mead avers if it is defeated on the battlefield. Simple as that. Indeed, rather than being an asset Ukraine could become a permanent liability.

The reports of drone and missile attacks by Russia and Ukraine do little to clear things up.

Last night’s dinner turned out particularly well so I thought I’d put a picture of it here.

Smoked baby back ribs
Sea island red peas
Rice
Green salad

I started smoking the ribs when I rose yesterday morning at 6:00am and they were done by 4:30pm. I kept them warm in the oven until we were ready for dinner. The sea island red peas were very good—they were sweeter than I expected them to be.

After more than 20 years posting at The Glittering Eye, I’ve expressed pretty much all of my thoughts about Memorial Day. I think that Monday holidays dilute the meaning of national holidays, reducing their role in incorporating the actual events they were originally intended to commemorate into the common culture. As you must surely know, Memorial Day originally was a day of remembrance of the Civil War dead, particularly those who died serving the Union Army.

The last members of my direct line of ancestors to have served in war served in the Union Army during the Civil War. My great-great-grandfather Wagner participated in some of the fiercest actions in the war. He survived the war but he died young of tuberculosis which I suspect he contracted while serving.

My great-great-grandfather Flanagan also served in the Union Army during the Civil War as did my great-great-grandfather McCoy. I’m not sure about my great-great-grandfather Schneider. He, too, died young of tuberculosis but I don’t know whether he served in the war or not. My great-great-grandfather Schuler did not arrive from Switzerland until shortly after the war.

My mom’s Uncle Ed was one of the lucky few who served in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. He had a specialty the Navy greatly needed. My wife’s father and uncles served in the Navy in World War II. All survived the war.

The single thing we can do to honor those died in the service of our country most is to ensure that no more American soldiers are killed or maimed in wars that do not make us a bit safer or more secure. We’ve had a lot of those lately: Iraq, Afghanistan after about 2002, and Libya, just to name a few.