Michael and Leonard Hochberg have posted the third installment in their series at RealClearDefense. In this installment they consider yet another strategic option: “bleed Russia dry through a long war”. Here’s a snippet:

There are advantages to be gained by such a cynical maneuver. Although Russia is largely self-sufficient in food and energy, a long war would drive Russian political and economic isolation. It is reasonable to expect that the sectors of their economy that depend on advanced technology–especially computer chips–made in the West would collapse. Key sectors, like domestic civilian aviation, are already in the early stages of collapse due to lack of spare parts.

Although I suspect this will be the strategic option selected by default, it has a couple of serious downsides to be considered.

First, they may be underestimating Russia’s resources. More importantly, it’s the “fight the war to the last Ukrainian” strategy. Will Russia run out of weapons before Ukraine runs out of people?

But they’re right. It’s an extremely “cynical maneuver”. In one sense the entire Russia-Ukraine War becomes a protracted commercial for U. S. arms and munitions.

I encourage you to read Roman Popadiuk’s post at RealClearPolitics on why Ukraine matters. In it he sounds a number of the notes I have sounded here and which people seem so reluctant to take seriously. Perhaps they’ll believe them from a source other than myself. Mr. Popadiuk was our first ambassador to Ukraine. Here’s the meat of his argument:

U.S. backsliding on Ukraine will also embolden China to pursue its expansionist goals in Asia and help intensify Beijing’s actions against Taiwan, including a possible invasion. The latter would test the U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” whereby the U.S. does not make clear whether or not we will defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression. There is the possibility, therefore, that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could bring the U.S. into direct conflict with China. It seems wise to stop this train of events by standing firm against the Russian aggression in Ukraine, thereby sending China a clear signal that U.S. resolve is strong.

How the U.S. acts in Ukraine will also send signals to the world on whether or not the U.S. can be depended upon for political, diplomatic, and economic support. Any weakening of the U.S. stance on Ukraine can lead countries to make accommodations with China, as well as Russia, and hasten greater China-Russia cooperation to undermine U.S. positions and standing in the world. China is already challenging U.S. and Western interests with its Belt and Road Initiative, an economic development program which has provided China with political and economic inroads in various countries.

I have precisely two quibbles with the piece. They’re quibbles not objections. First, why oh why is our Eastern European foreign policy so heavily influenced if not completely crafted by Poles and Ukrainians? And second, although I do believe we should be providing support to Ukraine and it should be more open-ended than it appears to be at present I also think we should be giving it much more oversight than we are at present. We have interests other than Ukraine. Using taxpayer money (not to mention borrowed money) wisely and carefully is one of those interests. So is ensuring that our aid to Ukraine is actually used to bolster Ukraine rather than bolstering American arms manufacturers or Ukrainian oligarchs.

I was going to write a post about the loss of confidence in a significant number of institutions, e.g. the Federal Reserve, the Supreme Court, the Catholic Church. When I started I realized that I struggled to think of any institutions in which we retained substantial confidence.

That has been developing for quite a number of years. Gone are the days in which a newscaster is the most trusted person in America. I have two questions.

First, is there widespread (and well-deserved) confidence in any institutions these days? And second is it merely as Mme. de Cornuel put it more than 200 years ago that “no man is a hero to his valet”, i.e. when you know enough about anybody it tends to lower your confidence in them, or is there something new at work?

In his column in the Washington Post Greg Sargent laments the failure of the bipartisan compromise bill on immigration:

For a fleeting moment this month, a deal to protect 2 million “dreamers” and rationalize our asylum system appeared within reach. Two senators with a history of bipartisan compromises were earnestly haggling over details. Much of the bill text was written. The talks were endorsed by influential right-leaning opinion-makers, and even encouraged by the conservative Border Patrol union.

But now the framework that Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) were negotiating appears dead. Democratic leaders have privately informed numerous stakeholders that it isn’t going to happen in the current Congress because of Republican opposition, according to sources familiar with the discussions. At least one GOP leader has declared the same.

I don’t know precisely why the bill failed. One of the things I’ve heard is that the bill included language that would have effectively normalized the immigration status of not just Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA AKA “Dreamers”) but of their parents and others here illegally, generally characterized as “amnesty”.

I firmly believe in the provisions of the DREAM Act applied to those brought here as children. I also believe in enforcing whatever provisions are imposed in such legislation, which is something of a sticking point, too. I suspect that were a bill to be drafted that applied solely to “Dreamers” it could pass. Trying to grab more is simply too much.

I’m starting to see pleas for a reinstatement of requirements to wear facemasks in public places. As I see it the different reactions are:

• This is long overdue. Maybe it should be permanent.
• Hell, no. Masks are useless.
• Whatever

My own view is that masks, whether ordinary surgical-style masks, KN95s, or N95s have a marginal effect in reducing the spread of viruses in general COVID-19 in particular. They aren’t forcefields. If the margin is small enough and wearing masks leads people to doing things they wouldn’t have done without them, mask mandates could be counterproductive.

I wear a mask indoors in almost all public places. That’s my call. I don’t think it will prevent me from contracting COVID-19. I think that its effectiveness is marginal and small. Even if marginal it’s something and don’t imagine that it will do more.

While I found this post by Paul Greenberg at Hakai Magazine about the excavation of a Bronze Age Cretan site interesting, it did bring up a pet peeve of mine. I really wonder if people who recommend the “Mediterranean diet” really know what people who live there eat? They eat an enormous amount of bread. I once saw a photo of a typical Sicilian family’s weekly diet. The table was piled high with bread. Yes, there was other stuff but the main component of the diet was bread. “Staff of live”, indeed. It’s no wonder that the Romans gave land to their soldiers—they needed it to grow wheat.

I think that what most advocates of the “Mediterranean diet” mean is eat more fish and vegetables. That’s all well and good but I suspect it’s a lot less like the real Mediterranean diet than the advocates realize.

At the Washington Post Megan McArdle is elated:

This is a long way from the dream of nuclear power that is safe (no worries about what to do with spent fuel rods!) and so abundant that it will be “too cheap to meter.” Scientists have been chasing this dream since the 1950s, so long that it has become a mordant joke: “Fusion is the energy of the future … and always will be.” For now, that old saw remains true; the reaction would have to generate hundreds or thousands of times more energy than went into it to begin to be an economical source of power. The hurdles to get there are enormous, possibly the most complicated engineering project humanity has ever undertaken.

So it’s probably premature for anyone to dance around the house in their bathrobe, singing “Clean, green energy for everyone!,” but … nope, actually, going to do the happy dance anyway. Scientists have accomplished a net energy gain from a fusion reaction. This is potentially the biggest news of the decade.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal are more reserved:

The news Tuesday that U.S. scientists have performed the world’s first controlled nuclear fusion reaction that generates a net energy gain is a refutation of American declinism. But don’t believe the hype that a fossil-fuel free world is near if only the government spends more.

Scientists have spent decades studying how to replicate in labs the nuclear fusion reactions that power the sun and stars. The fission reactions that power today’s nuclear plants involve splitting atoms and result in radioactive waste. Fusion entails combining atoms and theoretically could provide abundant, clean energy with no hazardous waste.

Hydrogen, fusion’s input, is the most abundant element in the universe, and no country dominates its supply, unlike some minerals used in lithium-ion batteries and wind turbines. The reactions also don’t generate CO2. But a stumbling block has long been figuring out how to generate more energy from the fusion reactions than is used to ignite them.

In the experiment that resulted in Tuesday’s breakthrough, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used 192 lasers to heat and compress hydrogen atoms at more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit. The reaction released 3.15 megajoules of energy for every 2.05 megajoules of input—with some major caveats.

The lasers are less than 1% efficient and used about 300 megajoules. As Lawrence Livermore director Kim Budil put it: “300 megajoules at the wall [socket], two megajoules at the laser.” Generating electricity from fusion would require such reactions to be performed every second of the day, a vast increase in laser efficiency and reduction in their size.

There’s good reason to be excited about the breakthrough, but the Biden Administration is overselling its immediate impact. “This milestone moves us one significant step closer to the possibility of zero-carbon abundant fusion energy powering our society,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

What the experiment proved is that scientists can recreate the physical reactions in stars. But scaling the technology and making it commercially viable by most scientists’ accounts will likely take another few decades.

while at Big Think Ethan Siegel is even more negative:

For the first time in history, that milestone has now been achieved. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) has reached ignition, a tremendous step towards commercial nuclear fusion. But that doesn’t mean we’ve solved our energy needs; far from it. Here’s the truth of how it’s truly a remarkable achievement, but there’s still a long way to go.

[…]

There are a myriad of takeaway points from this new developments, but here’s what I think everyone should remember about nuclear fusion as we move forward into the future.

• We really have passed the breakeven point: where the energy incident on a target — the key energy that triggers a fusion reaction — is less than the energy we get out of the reaction itself.
• That threshold is just over 2.0 megajoules of incident laser energy, far less than many who asserted 3.5, 4, or even 5 megajoules would be required to achieve the breakeven point.
• A new facility, one with lenses and apparatuses designed to withstand these new energies, must be constructed.
• A prototype energy-generation plant will need to leverage still-developing technologies: safely chargeable capacitor banks, large systems of lenses so that successive fusion-generating shots can be fired with a new set of lenses while the recently used set can be “healed,” the ability to harness and convert the released energy into electrical energy, energy storage systems that can hold and distribute the energy over time, including during the time between successive shots, etc.
• And the dream of a home fusion plant that lives in your backyard will have to be relegated to the far future; residential homes cannot handle megajoules of energy being pulsed through them, and the needed capacitor banks would create a substantial fire/explosion hazard. It won’t be in your backyard or anyone’s backyard; these fusion generating endeavors belong in a dedicated, carefully monitored facility.

Even with this undoubted breakthrough I doubt we’ll see practical fusion in my lifetime. It’s still on the horizon. The horizon is a little closer now but it’s still on the horizon.

I find discussing trade with libertarian free traders frustrating. I believe in free trade. I also believe in the virgin birth. Belief is not enough when you’re talking about the economy. You’ve got to take practical considerations into account as well.

Referring to Don Boudreaux’s piece at AEIR, I wouldn’t accuse him of “naïve globalism”. I would accuse him of not understanding what David Ricardo actually wrote and how what he did write doesn’t apply to our present circumstances.

I have probably understood Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage for longer than Don Boudreaux has been alive. In addition I have actually read what Ricardo wrote and Mr. Boudreaux would be the exceptional commentator if he had. Practically everyone relies on what other say about comparative advantage rather than what Ricardo said.

I think there are several reasons that Ricardo’s theory does not apply to our present circumstances. For one thing “free trade” doesn’t just mean the absence of tariffs. It means the absence of any barriers or restrictions on trade in any form. That includes patents, copyrights, occupational licensing, and any other barrier to trade.

For another I have yet to encounter any manager who engages in the sort of arbitrage that Ricardo imagines. I have met lots who understand absolute advantage. They buy from the lowest cost sources. IMO Ricardo imagined trade that was completely controlled by some authority, e.g. “the Sovereign”, who did engage in the sort of arbitrage described by Ricardo.

A third reason is that unlike in Ricardo’s day the most important factor of production, capital, is highly portable from one country to another. Under such circumstances comparative advantage doesn’t mean much but absolute advantage does.

We are presently in a world in which absolute advantage is king and there are multiple non-tariff barriers that constrain trade.

I look forward to Mr. Boudreaux’s demonstration that even in the presence of those non-tariff barriers and other countries imposed all sorts of barriers on our goods and services the people of the United States would still benefit from that limited sort of free trade. I have never seen such a proof. Maybe it’s possible to construct one but I doubt it.

I think that what would happen is pretty much what is happening. People working the protected sectors, e.g. healthcare, finance, government, would benefit and everyone else would find it much harder to get alone. There would be lots of cheaper goods but the unemployed couldn’t afford them.

What was a rumor yesterday is today’s news. Lawrence Livermore has successfully produced a fusion reaction which actually produces more energy than is used in the reaction, i.e. has “net gain”. That’s a major breakthrough. Here’s a report from KSBW:

WASHINGTON —
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced a “major scientific breakthrough” Tuesday in the decades-long quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars.

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain, the Energy Department said.

The achievement will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power, Granholm and other officials said.

“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” Granholm said at a news conference in Washington. The fusion breakthrough “will go down in the history books,” she said.

For my entire adult life practical fusion has been “just around the corner”. Not to diminish the importance of this breakthrough but fusion remains just around the corner. We might have a practical fusion reactor in a year, ten years, or a century.

So, let’s rejoice in this accomplishment while understanding the practical hurdles that remain.