I wanted to call attention to one sentence in Walter Russell Mead’s latest Wall Street Journal column:

If Ukraine had depended on Europe alone for help, the Russian flag would be flying over the ruins of Kharkiv, Kyiv and Odessa.

If one thing emerged from the wargames to which I have repeatedly referred it is how vital European preparedness is.

Dr. Mead refers to the frailty of European triumphalism about the Ukraine war. IMO that’s understating it. Any “triumphalism” is fantastical but it’s part and parcel of how the Europeans, the Germans in particular, have been behaving lately. They’ve been treating posturing and position statements as though they were accomplishments.

The editors of the Washington Post chide President Biden for his mishandling of classified documents. Both he and President Trump did the wrong things. Leaving aside the bickering over who was wrong-er, their conclusion is about right:

But none of that lets Mr. Biden off the hook. It is important that authority figures try to follow the rules and own up to their mistakes when they make them. Justice Department guidelines mean that no sitting president will be indicted. But maximum allowable transparency is vital. Mr. Biden needs to ditch the defensiveness. Acknowledging that he has grounds for regret would be a good start.

Eventually, perhaps the Congress will come around to the realization that a process for the change from one administration to the next needs to be codified into law, even amending the Constitution in the process if necessary. We have now had at least two consecutive administrations in which the process was bungled (from Obama to Trump leaving classified documents in Joe Biden’s possession, from Trump to Biden leaving classified documents in Trump’s possession). I suspect that the transition has been bungled much more frequently than that.

Absent that the bickering only serves political actors.

Many of the readers here are probably not familiar with the Korea JoongAng Daily. It’s a South Korean daily. I wanted to pass along this editorial:

The world’s most populous country saw its population decrease by 850,000 last year to total 1,411,750,000 for the first time since the Great Chinese Famine in 1961. The fall in population and working population will translate into that much of a decline in consumption and output. The phenomenon is a loss not just for the country but the world economy. South Korea relies heavily on external trade, especially with China. Exports to China made up 22.8 percent of total outbound shipments last year. Our 2,000 import items in raw materials and others rely on China for more than 80 percent. Outbound and inbound trade must brace for risks from China.

The economy must wean away from China. Government and corporate efforts must accelerate. Korea must pivot more aggressively towards India, rising as the next China, and Vietnam which was the largest surplus maker for Korea last year, as well as other Asean countries and the Middle East.

I found the editorial baffling. I simply don’t see a direct causal connection between a decline in China’s population and a decline in its trade with South Korea. If anything it might be the other way around.

South Korea runs a trade surplus with China. It doesn’t sell much in the way of consumer goods to China—most of its sales to China are integrated circuits, machinery, and refined petroleum. Even with a declining population it’s hard for me to imagine China’s demand for refined petroleum products declining in the near to medium term. If anything I expect China’s demand for ICs and machinery to rise. Just because it has fewer people doesn’t mean it will stop manufacturing for export.

In a piece at Military.com Geoff LaMear expresses a view that is contrary to the prevailing wisdom. According to him sending Patriot missiles to Ukraine is an “expensive blunder:”:

The truth is Patriot systems are as likely to stop the drone threat as a water balloon is to stop a forest fire. The mismatch is too great. And Washington’s persistence despite that reality is a blunder that will prove costly.

Air defenses rely on radars that scan for threats in a specific area. For Patriot systems, these areas are small and meant to be pinpoint locations like a military base or power plant. A single Patriot system would not alter the inherent vulnerability that Ukraine experiences in the air, given its vast front of fighting against Russian troops. It might protect a few nodes that Kyiv prizes, but Russian air attacks can counter these missile systems.

He has an additional criticism:

Ukraine is also not equipped to use Patriots. American personnel spend months studying what is a complex and highly technical system. That time is dedicated by military planners despite U.S. troops typically facing no language barrier in doctrinal or technical documents, having access to experts with years of experience, and support from the contractors who design the systems.

Ukraine will still need extensive support to operate and maintain the equipment even after training. To employ Patriots effectively would require embedding U.S. personnel with these missile batteries. Doing so risks U.S. casualties and a direct U.S.-Russia confrontation that could easily escalate.

and here’s his peroration:

The knee-jerk dosomethingism in Washington doesn’t help. It may produce warm and fuzzy feelings, but this doesn’t translate into a peace that will bring a return to normalcy for Ukraine’s people. What’s more important, the pretense of moral superiority or an end to the carnage?

Washington absolutists may say that principle trumps pragmatism. But how many thousands will have to die before the inevitable negotiations bring about the war’s end? Tactically questionable weapon shipments won’t change the outcome. They may delay it. And ordinary Ukrainians and Russians, oftentimes conscripted into a war not of their choosing, will continue to bleed until that reality is acknowledged.

Sadly, I think that ensuring that Russia loses the war resoundingly has overwhelmed any desire to “end the carnage”.

I don’t honestly know whether sending Patriots to Ukraine is right, wrong, or irrelevant. I have to take the word of those with more knowledge than I. While the expense is certainly a consideration, I’m actually more worried about the time and lives that will be used in learning that it’s the wrong use for that weapons system. And unlike many Americans, I’m a lot more interested in seeing that Russia doesn’t win outright than in ensuring that they lose.

I will only repeat what I have said before:

1. We classify too many documents.
2. There should be a regular, mandatory process under which exiting administrations turn over all classified documents with searches performed by some competent third party or pseudo-third party agency.

IMO putting such a procedure in place should be one of the new Congress’s highest priorities. Among its many other urgently high priorities.

I found this lament for Japan by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes at BBC touching. The TL;DR version of the piece is

• Forty years ago Japan was the richest country in the world on a per capita basis
• Now it’s lagging behind many developed countries including Germany, the United Kingdom, and United States
• He attributes the decline to Japan’s demographic collapse
• Japan’s population is unlikely to recover through immigration

Here’s a snippet:

In front of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, the skyline was dominated by the glass towers of the country’s corporate titans – Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Hitachi, Sony. From New York to Sydney, ambitious parents were imploring their offspring to “learn Japanese”. I had wondered whether I’d made a mistake plumping for Chinese.

Japan had emerged from the destruction of World War Two and conquered global manufacturing. The money poured back into the country, driving a property boom where people bought anything they could get their hands on, even chunks of forest. By the mid-1980s, the joke was that the grounds of the imperial palace in Tokyo were worth the same as all of California. The Japanese call it the “Baburu Jidai” or the bubble era.

Then in 1991 the bubble burst. The Tokyo stock market collapsed. Property prices fell off a cliff. They are yet to recover.

A factor Mr. Wingfield-Hayes does not consider in his calculus is public debt:

Japan has the highest debt to GDP ratio of any major developed country—right around 230%. As I have mentioned before debt overhang is known to be a drag on GDP growth.

As to immigration as a solution to Japan’s problems, let’s make a comparison. I do not believe that Germany can spur its economy by importing illiterate non-German speakers from Africa and such “workers” will inevitably become a drag on German public services. In many cases migrants are making their way to Germany expressly for the purpose of availing themselves of public services. It’s not a winning formula.

I note that the cause of the blasts that shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in September 2022 remains unknown or at least unpublicized. That’s no insignificant matter having as serious implications for war and peace as it does.

Sweden, Denmark, and Russia have all claimed that the explosions were deliberate sabotage.

I’m skeptical that Russia sabotaged the pipeline. It has nothing obvious to gain from shutting it down. In the absence of any specific evidence I would consider blaming Russia for the explosions as part of the “5D chess theory” of Russian behavior—that the Russians are playing a very, very long game with moves incomprehensible to normal people. I see no evidence for that theory which has been around for a very long time.

The Russians have blamed the United Kingdom which of course denies any involvement. Not only does the UK have the ability to carry out that sabotage it meets the cui bono standard given that the UK has been one of Ukraine’s most outspoken supporters during the war. The Poles have attributed the explosions to the United States.

I find it outrageous that the Western media are so incurious about this matter. It’s basically been consigned to the memory hole.

Update

Here’s an interesting little quote from a piece by John Psaropoulos at AlJazeera:

Mike Myrianthis, a Greek oil industry veteran, believes that whoever bombed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline opened a can of worms.

“The Nord Stream sabotage destroyed the Russian-German energy relationship,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Strikes on infrastructure have become something of a fashion and set a dangerous precedent.”

or, said another way, I’m not the only one who thinks the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline is of some larger significance. The article is about mysterious acts of sabotage being carried out in Western Europe which the article attributes to Russian agents. There may be something to Emmanuel Todd’s assertion that World War II has already begun.

Coming soon to civilian infrastructure year you?

Campbell’s Tomato Soup was first produced in 1898. It continues to be the company’s second biggest seller—right after Chicken Noodle Soup. Over the 120 years of its existence it has been sold in cans of the same size. Political Calculations remarks:

Political Calculations has tracked the price history of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup over the past 126 years because of its remarkable consistency as an identifiable product over time. In fact, if you had a time machine and could travel to nearly any point in time from January 1898 to the present, you could likely find a 10.75 ounce size (Number 1) can of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup stocked for sale in American grocery stores.

That long-running consistency makes Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup an ideal product to follow to understand how inflation has affected American consumers through its history. Today, we’re updating our chart visualizing that history from January 1898 through January 2023.

The same product sold over the same period in the same sized container provides a nearly unique way of gauging inflation.

On a related subject one headline-grabbing statement emerged from the Chicago mayoral candidates’ debate. Craig Wall remarks at ABC 7 Chicago:

During the ABC7 debate Wednesday night, the candidates pointed to safety concerns time and time again, with one candidate in the hot seat over his “tough on crime” comment.

The candidates talked a lot about crime with different ideas and approaches for how to tackle it. But it was Willie Wilson who raised some eyebrows and some ire with his comments about criminals needing to be hunted down like animals.

Wilson in his closing statement during the debate said if elected mayor he’ll remove the handcuffs on police officers so they are empowered to catch suspects fleeing to avoid arrest.

“Somebody run, chase somebody by foot or car, that police officer should be able to chase them down, and hunt them down like a rabbit, okay,” Wilson said.

Mayor Lightfoot pounced on the statement in a characteristic fashion:

“For a candidate for mayor to say that we ought to take the handcuffs off police and let them hunt down human beings like rabbits is an extraordinary thing,” Lightfoot said. “I fully and utterly condemn it.”

Meanwhile Mr. Wilson’s response to the mayor’s criticism was mild:

Wilson, who lost a 20-year-old son to murder, doubled down on his comment by accusing Mayor Lightfoot of trying to make something out of nothing.

“So I think the mayor done lost her mind. I really do. I think she’s out of touch,” Wilson said. “You know, if she wasn’t out of touch she would know she has to protect the people at all costs.”

Willie Wilson received a plurality of the votes of Chicago’s black voters in the last set of mayoral primaries three years ago. His popularity has only grown since then, spurred in part no just by frank statements but by his giving away free gas to people living on the South and West sides.

Maybe I’m reading the tealeaves wrong on this but I doubt Wilson will pay a penalty for saying what probably 80% of Chicagoans are thinking.

My own view is that more active policing is necessary but not sufficient. What is most necessary is for law enforcement, City Hall, the City Council, prosecutors, and the judiciary to all be rowing in the same direction. That will take some work and some time.