At the Eurasia Daily Monitor Hlib Parfonov takes note of something I pointed out some time ago. Ukraine is running low on personnel for its campaign against the Russians.

According to classified and partially open-source data, as of January 1, 2022, the population of Ukraine was 31 million, while the State Statistics Service of Ukraine reports 34 million, though there are problems with the methodology used to arrive at this number (RBK, September 16, 2022). The population dropping from 48 million to 31 million in 20 years is normal, especially as Ukraine has experienced multiple crises and outmigration waves during that period. According to Eurostat, approximately 4.9 million Ukrainians received residence permits in the European Union alone between 2014 and 2022 (Ec.europa.eu, accessed July 25) and approximately 3 million did so in Russia (Ukrinform, April 23, 2018). Subtracting from this figure the number of Ukrainians in the occupied territories (approximately 2 million), as well as those who left the country, the current estimate for Ukraine’s population comes to around 20 million.

and

Considering that Ukraine has a population of about 20 million citizens, and given that the most recent data on the number of people mobilized into the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was last announced more than a year ago (at the time, it was reported that more than 1 million people had been mobilized), some estimates can be made based on how many new brigades have been created, the approximate number of those wounded and the calculations of the Ukrainian Ministry of Veterans Affairs regarding the potential number of combatants (up to 4 million) (Forbes.ua, July 8, 2022; Mva.gov.ua, May 23). Keeping in mind that Ukraine’s mobilization is permanent and that many have been wounded, the estimated number of mobilized Ukrainians totals about 2 million.

What does this mean for Ukraine? It means that 10 percent of the population is now involved with the armed forces, signifying that Ukraine’s mobilization reserve is rather small, with those pensioners who did not leave the country accounting for 10.7 million people (Pfu.gov.ua, July 12). All this means that Ukraine has approached a critical threshold with its personnel needs.

During the Vietnam War, in the South Vietnamese army, the percentage of conscripts to the population was 11.7 percent (Jcs.mil, accessed July 25). And this ratio was a painful blow to the state economy, and in general, almost all of it was sponsored by the United States. During World War II, Finland began to experience significant domestic problems when the number of conscripts reached between 14 and 15 percent of the general population. As a result, personnel shortages grew in certain professions, which led to significant consequences for the Finnish economy (Kinnunen and Kivimäkib, Finland in World War II: History, Memory, Interpretations, 2012). Similarly, in Ukraine, members of the Verkhovna Rada claim that there is a shortage of personnel in the energy, industrial and military sectors due to the mobilization of workers (Antikor.com, July 18).

At least in theory munitions can be replaced fairly readily. In practice it’s actually harder than that at least in part because we don’t have as much heavy industry as we used to. What you can’t replace nearly as readily is people.

Contrary to what was suggested in comments not long ago what most Americans believe about immigration doesn’t matter. That is clear from both the findings of Gallup and Pew Research is that there is actually a consensus in the United States on immigration. It approximates what I’ve enunciated here. In general immigration is good for the United States. Legal immigration might even be increased but the situation at our southern border needs to be brought under control.

That the situation at our southern border is in fact out of control is pretty obvious. Since President Biden assumed office around a million “gotaways” have entered the United States, more than a half million in 2022 alone. “Gotaway” is the terminology the Border Patrol uses for individuals observed crossing the border who were not apprehended.

Why do the positions held by our political parties not reflect those priorities? My interpretation is that both parties are under the control of the most extreme quarter of their membership.

In the Democratic Party that’s the progressives. Nancy Pelosi was a founding member of the House Progressive Caucus. Hakeem Jeffries was a member in good standing of the caucus. Each left the caucus when they assumed a leadership role. Among the Republicans it’s the Trump supporters.

If you have an alternative explanation for why neither the Congress nor the White House follows policies consistent with the views of most Americans on immigration, I would be interested in seeing it.

The video I have embedded is a debate on the question

Resolved: The U.S. should have free immigration except for those who pose a security threat or have a serious contagious disease.

The affirmative, argued by Alex Nowrasteh of Cato, made a strictly libertarian argument that exceeded the actual resolution, arguing that the U. S. should have free immigration full stop. That was supported by a combination of reversing the burden of proof, the “no true Scotsman” fallacy (no true libertarian could oppose this), and an appeal to emotion.

The negative, represented by Francis Merton, made the Jeffersonian argument that our economy and systems of government are actually pretty fragile and would rapidly cease to exist with the massive immigration supported by the affirmative. Congressional apportionment is a key issue. In other words rather than becoming the libertarian paradise suggested by the affirmative it would become Venezuela or something very much like it.

My own view, as I have said any number of times, is that if our economy, society, government, and circumstances were today what they were in 1883, I would support the free, open immigration supported by the affirmative but they are not and that cannot practically be undone. Although I favor more legal immigration and accepting more true refugees, the present large amount of illegal immigration harms blacks and the most recent cohort of immigrants while imposing significant costs on the rest of us that we are required by law to bear and which cannot be avoided.

At Foreign Affairs Oren Cass and Gabriela Rodriguez argue for the U. S. making a “hard break” from China:

When welcomed into the international community in the late 1990s, China was still a developing nation. Its GDP was roughly one-tenth of the United States’ GDP, and in 1999, it was still one of the world’s poorest countries per capita, ranked between Sri Lanka and Guyana. U.S. leaders across the political spectrum were confident that by encouraging China’s integration into the global economy, they could ensure that the country would become a constructive participant in a U.S.-led world order. U.S. President Bill Clinton spoke for many when he declared that China’s accession to the World Trade Organization was about “more than our economic interests; it is clearly in our larger national interest.”

It has not turned out that way. Instead, China has rapidly become—by some measures— the world’s largest economy and a powerful counterweight to U.S. influence. Its state-controlled economy and increasingly authoritarian leadership have subverted U.S. investment, supply chains, and institutions. Beijing’s efforts to use global integration to enhance Chinese power and harm U.S. interests have proliferated. The Chinese government has leveraged market access to force technology transfers from U.S. firms including Westinghouse, General Electric, and Microsoft. It has dominated global markets by flooding them with subsidized goods, including solar panels, and it has forced the National Basketball Association and its players into humiliating silence on Chinese human rights abuses.

The fundamental problem is that the United States’ free-market economy is incompatible with a Chinese state-controlled one. U.S. liberty and democracy are antithetical to the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party. The United States must break from China or else become irrevocably corrupted by it.

Here’s what they mean by “hard break”:

U.S. law must, then, address the challenge of preventing CCP control over U.S. investors in China and investments in the United States. Washington should prohibit capital flows, technologies transfers, and economic partnerships between the United States and China by default.

and the balance of the article details the changes in law required to accomplish that.

The only real criticism of their plan I would raise is that I don’t think that the authors understand what is meant by “reserve currency”. That explains much of the discrepancy in the balance of trade between the two countries.

You might think that those of us who’ve been arguing for the last 50 years that a close relationship between the United States and China did not serve the national interests of the United States and that the steps we were taking would not produce the results their proponents anticipated would find a change of view on the part of those who not so long ago were making conventional free trade agreements in favor of all of those steps gratifying but, sadly, that’s not the case.

At this point I think that the repercussions of the “hard break” they describe would have effects they, once again, do not anticipate. What I think we have before us are some hard decisions.

For example, do we really believe that one country should not invade another? There are few clearer examples than China’s 60 year occupation of Tibet. Should we not be supporting the Tibetans overthrowing Chinese rule in Tibet?

And how about Chinese threatening of its neighbors? Should we not be taking more kinetic steps to oppose those?

Do we actually believe in environmental, safety, and labor standards? If so we should impose Pigouvian taxes in the amount of the competitive advantage that Chinese products have due not just to differences between their laws and ours but between Chinese enforcement of their laws. China actually has tougher environmental standards than we do. They just don’t necessarily enforce them. They don’t have an independent judiciary.

As I’ve said before I am more concerned about us than about the Chinese. I think we need to start doing what is actually in the U. S. national interest. That will be the hardest decision of all.

I found this article at the Wall Street Journal by Austen Hufford, about Bath & Body Works’s (not to be confused with the moribund retailer Bed, Bath, and Beyond) approach to shortening its supply chains very interesting:

NEW ALBANY, Ohio—A $7.95 bottle of Bath & Body Works foaming hand soap used to take three months to put together. The pieces had to travel more than 13,000 miles from China, Canada and Virginia to the company’s Ohio distribution center.

Bath & Body Works decided it needed to get new products to market more quickly. The result was a production initiative with little parallel in corporate America.

Now every step of production occurs at plants just feet from each other on the company’s dedicated “beauty park” on the outskirts of Columbus. One factory makes the foaming pump and mechanism. Another makes the bottle itself, a third makes the label, a fourth makes the soap, fills the bottle, attaches the label and screws on the top. A fifth packages it. Getting a bottle to distribution is down to 21 days and a few miles. A majority of Bath & Body Works products, which are sold in its own stores, are made on site.

The effort, which started in 2008, required a lot of negotiation with sometimes skeptical suppliers. The campus includes 10 manufacturers and millions of square feet of production and warehouse spaces, with 5,000 employees working there during peak production. Bath & Body Works had sales of $7.56 billion last year, increasing annual revenue by more than $2 billion since 2019.

“I look at BBW as a composer and a conductor of a symphony,” said Bath & Body Works supply-chain executive Susanna Zhu.

Bringing production closer to home has become a priority for many companies. Disruptions from Covid-19, severe weather, trade wars, geopolitical tensions and stuck ships left consumers without the couches and hot tubs they wanted. The Biden administration is spending hundreds of billions of dollars aimed at boosting the domestic presence of industries deemed strategic, including electric cars, batteries and semiconductors.

You might find BBW’s description of their “Beauty Park” interesting, too. Although the company emphasizes supply chain risk mitigation as a primary motivation for the park, it has other implications as well including making a customization, a key aspect of modern retailing, more practical. It also has environmental implications.

From a business organization standpoint note that the “Beauty Park” doesn’t consist of plants wholly owned by BBW but is a group of independent companies sharing facilities on the same campus. As Ms. Zhu notes, it’s like conducting a symphony.

I like a lot of what economist David R. Henderson has written. I’ve been reading his stuff for years and I’ve liked a lot of it. However, when I read his post at the American Institute of Economic Research, “The Surprising Beneficiaries of American Slavery”, I’m sorry to say that I think it strongly suggests that he just doesn’t get it.

Take this, for example:

Who gained nothing from slavery? Except for the rare person who inherited an estate that slavery enriched, every contemporary non-black American gained nothing from slavery.

That is simply untrue, at least unless you hold a very narrow definition of “enriched”. Rather than lean on “enrichment”, I would rather just ask who owned slaves? The answer to that question is 20% of white Southerners owned slaves. Why own slaves if you don’t benefit from it?

Furthermore, you didn’t need to own slaves to benefit from it. For example, some of the wealthiest Northern families, e.g. the Bushes, founded their wealth on the slave trade.

And then there’s this which is thornier:

Who suffered from slavery? The slaves themselves. They were brought from Africa against their will, and they were forced to work without receiving the full value of their labor.

The slaves themselves were not the only ones harmed by slavery. It may not be intuitive but poor whites were harmed by slavery, too. Poor whites were in competition with slaves. Slavery lowered the prevailing wage as well as changing what got done.

And this which is thornier yet:

Who gained from slavery? Americans of African descent.

The late economist Walter E. Williams said that slavery was the worst thing ever to happen to his ancestors, but the best thing ever to happen to him. Why? Because instead of growing up in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Senegal, Mali, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, he enjoyed the opportunities, wealth, health, security, and freedom of the United States.

The descendants of slaves, such as Williams, received the bounty of being born in America, where the average per capita annual income for blacks is $24,509. While the enslaved people came from a variety of African countries, the five mentioned above have an average annual income of $1,650. Over a hypothetical 40-year career, the difference is hundreds of thousands of dollars.

You might think the descendants of slaves suffered a financial loss because contemporary blacks have an annual income that is $17,600 below that of whites. But that’s an unrealistic comparison. If it weren’t for the forced relocations of the slave trade, those who would be getting reparations today would be Bissau-Guinean, Angolan, Senegalese, Malian, or Congolese, not American.

He bases his calculation on an error. Relatively few black Americans have 100% African ancestry. Most have at least 25% European ancestry and some as much as 95% European ancestry. If their ancestors had not been brought as slaves from Africa to the colonies, they wouldn’t be earning $1,650 a year. They wouldn’t exist at all.

Where I agree with him is that reparations for slavery for present day black Americans are unjust. They’re not just unjust but foolish, divisive, even malicious.

In his Washington Post column David Ignatius says there’s a lot to be encouraged about in the way the war in Ukraine is progressing:

Considering the failure of Russia’s conventional forces, there’s an obvious danger that Putin might turn to the domain in which Russia remains a superpower: nuclear weapons. But that would be even riskier for Russia than for the West. Any demonstration of Russia’s battlefield nuclear weapons would draw a devastating U.S. conventional military response — and probably cause the loss of China as an ally.

Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.

The phrase “other than for the Ukrainians” is a telling one. I have heard such wildly conflicting reports on what has happened in Ukraine that I have no idea how to assess that. For example, the estimates I have read of the number of people who have left Ukraine vary from 6 million to 30 million. The estimates of Ukrainian soldiers killed or wounded vary even more dramatically—anything from 20,000 to 700,000. What the actual figures are matter a lot.

I don’t see the solidarity that Mr. Ignatius does, either within NATO or in the world. Ten times as many people live in countries that aren’t aligned with the NATO view than in countries that do. Has the war isolated Russia or has it isolated the U. S.? And how do we know? I do think our European allies are united in not wanting to commit their own soldiers to the conflict but would be delighted if we did.

Based on recent reports it actually looks like Russia plans to foreclose Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.

And at Responsible Statecraft Daniel L. Davis, who has been skeptical of Ukrainian victory all along, writes that Ukraine can’t win:

Trying to put a good face on the situation, Western officials and analysts told the Washington Post on Tuesday that “Ukraine’s military has so far embraced an attrition-based approach aimed largely at creating vulnerabilities in Russian lines.” That is not accurate. The UAF haven’t “embraced” an attrition-based approach, they have changed tactics to leading with small groups of dismounted infantry to try and penetrate Russia’s leading trench lines out of sheer necessity. Leading with armor simply won’t work, and if Ukraine had persisted in trying large armored assaults, they would have continued dying in large numbers.

The problem for Kyiv is that this “approach” is virtually certain to fail. The military geography of this entire region of Ukraine is characterized by open, flat terrain, interspersed with thin forest strips. Because Russia owns the skies and has considerable drone capacity, any time the Ukrainian soldiers move in the open, they are immediately subjected to artillery or mortar fire. If any armored vehicles move in the open, they are likewise quickly destroyed. The best the UAF can do is infiltrate small numbers of infantrymen into trenches where Russian forces are located.

It’s not that Zelensky’s forces are “going slowly” forward, it’s that they aren’t attaining any of their initial tactical objectives on the way to the Azov coast and it’s precisely because the combat fundamentals necessary to win are largely (and in some cases entirely) absent. They flatly don’t have the human resources or physical infrastructure necessary to succeed.

Now, it is always possible that Russia could suffer sudden political collapse, such as what happened in 1917, and Ukraine could still emerge successful. That, however, is extremely unlikely and Kyiv would be unwise to base their future hopes upon such an event.

I find lots of the reports puzzling. For example, although considerable glee was expressed at the Ukrainians’ latest attack on the Kerch bridge in the Western media, all of the damage reports I could find including the Ukrainian suggested considerably less damage than the first attack on that bridge.

In Foreign Affairs Max Bergmann argues for “regime change” in Russia:

Such a speech from Biden would assert that the obstacle to the West’s positive relations with Russia is Putin. Biden could remind Russians that when he entered office, he sought to engage and work with Putin, holding a summit in June 2021 with him in Geneva. Months later, Putin launched his unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine. He has demonstrated to Western leaders that he cannot be trusted and therefore cannot broker a lasting peace. He has lost all credibility. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for him for alleged war crimes. As long as Putin leads Russia, the United States and Russia will be adversaries and U.S. sanctions will remain in place.

adding an argument that Putin’s replacement could be no worse:

The prevailing assumption is that a Russian hard-line nationalist would be most likely to replace Putin. But Putin is already a hard-line nationalist.

I find many things in the piece puzzling. He confuses replacing a man with regime change, common in the Western press. If Putin were to be replaced it is very unlikely to be constitute regime change any more than electing Joe Biden president did.

Another is his assessment of Putin. He isn’t a “hard-line nationalist” but more of a centrist from a Russian perspective. Poll after poll has shown strong support of the war by Russians. Indeed, it appears to be the case that more think that Putin has been too lenient than that he has been too harsh.

I also find his account of the Prigozhin episode puzzling. Okay, what happened two weeks ago and how do you know? I’ve read explanations going every which way including that Prigozhin’s march towards Moscow was at President Putin’s behest to provide a pretext for removing military leaders who were inconvenient. I have no idea what happened and don’t honestly know how anyone else does, either. It remains mysterious.

What qualifies Mr. Bergmann to make such sweeping pronouncements? I’ve read his CV and to my eye it looks like that of a typical apparatchik.