At Foreign Policy Douglas London wonders whether the unrest observed in Russia, China, and Iran is due to luck or skill?

In recent weeks, there have been major street protests in China and Iran, two of the United States’ main adversaries, and a mass exodus of fighting-age men amid an economic and military meltdown in Russia. Is it luck? Coincidence? Is CIA Director William Burns a total genius? Or is it the result of painstaking preparations to bring about a moment like this to bolster U.S. policy preferences? The answer is complicated—as are the options for U.S. officials when it comes to exploiting the circumstances.

I do not believe that we should be meddling in the internal affairs of other countries at all, whether they’re rivals, adversaries, or allies. Destabilization has a way of coming back to bite you in the butt.

For my part, although I’m sure that Mr. Burns would be delighted to take the credit for it (if that’s the right word), I strongly suspect that the correct answer is that neither luck nor skill but something else is the primary culprit and I would point to COVID-19. Stressors have ways of causing events to turn in peculiar and unpredictable ways.

BTW IMO the CIA should be abolished, its covert operations turned over to the military. Today it’s redundant. There are plenty of other agencies analyzing intelligence.

The Labor Department reported a very minor uptick in the number of jobless claims last month, illustrated in the graph above. As you can see the number is pretty stable and close to pre-pandemic numbers. At the Wall Street Journal Austen Hufford reports:

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, rose by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 230,000 last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was near the 2019 weekly average of around 218,000 when the labor market was also robust.

Continuing claims, which reflect the number of people seeking ongoing unemployment benefits, rose to their highest level since late February, though they also remain historically low. Continuing claims increased by 62,000 to 1.67 million in the week ended Nov. 26.

Jesse Wheeler, an economic analyst at Morning Consult, said the slow rise in continuing unemployment claims is an indication workers are remaining on unemployment insurance for longer instead of immediately finding a new position.

“People who are losing their jobs are finding it more difficult to find a new job,” he said.

The latest report comes as the labor market remains tight, with continued job growth and low unemployment. Still, several major companies have laid off workers or stopped hiring in recent months.

So, unemployment is pretty stable, the job market is robust, gas prices are falling, and the rate of inflation is decreasing.

Here’s my question. Why doesn’t Joe Biden get the credit he deserves? Americans continue to have negative views of Biden and the economy. If you think it’s bad media coverage, please prove it. I don’t see it. That doesn’t mean individual stories or even an individual network—it means the preponderance of coverage.

I think it’s because when they go to the grocery store or gas station Americans see higher prices; they don’t look at the inflation rate—that’s a first derivative phenomenon. The stories they’re hearing are of layoffs by some of the biggest employers in the country. Changes in the rate of inflation are a second derivative phenomenon. Not something to which people tend to react.

And, as has been said (at least by men’s clothing manufacturers), you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Normally, I wouldn’t have mentioned the aborted coup attempt in Germany but, since it touches on one of my pet peeves, I thought I’d mention that angle. I sincerely wish that Americans wouldn’t project their own politics and political differences onto the politics of other countries about which they generally know next to nothing. “Right” and “Left” mean different things in different countries and just because you consider yourself left-leaning doesn’t mean that a left-leaning party in another country holds your ideological brethren.

To take the simplest, most proximate example, American conservatives have practically nothing in common with British Tories and only the most extreme American progressives would find their views aligned with those of British Labour. Most similarities are superficial and, I presume to both of their horrors, more Democrats are like Tories than Republicans are.

The coverage of the German coup attempt has been very clear. In much of Europe “extreme right-wing” means royalist and that is what this coup attempt was. Some extremists wanted to install a distant inheritant of the German throne as head of state.

In the United States, although there has been some growth in would-be monarchists over the last dozen years, “extreme right-wing” tends to be radical libertarianism. The only point of contact between the extreme right in Germany and that here is that both tend to be nationalist but it should go without saying that German nationalism and American nationalism are incompatible. We’ve participated in two major wars to oppose German nationalism. Now is no time to think that it’s a good thing.

My recommendation is for American to focus on U. S. politics and avoid meddling in the internal politics of other countries. Leave commenting on the internal politics of other countries to those with more expertise. We barely understand our own society and politics.

CDR Salamander, certainly not anti-German, is critical of the present stance of the German government:

The final part of the Merkle administration was problematic, but under the present SDP government led by Olaf Scholz – the Cold War socialist and Soviet apologist, Germany’s irresponsible stance in the face of European and NATO security requirements cannot go without consequences. The present, “Just do enough in security to look like we’re doing something, but not too much…” should be called out for exactly what it is.

Germany, even more than France, is the keystone to Europe. Too many nations look to her for leadership culturally, economically, and security. Poland is an emerging leader, but she does not have the population or GDP power to match Germany.

Here’s his proposal for changing things:

In NATO, General and Flag Officer billets are distributed amongst nations in a rather complicated way, but this formula is controlled by NATO – and as such – can be changed.

Entering argument: take the present formula for “fair distribution” and multiply by .75 any nation that spends 1.5% to 1.99% GDP on defense. Multiply by .5 any nation that spends between 1.25% to 1.499%. Multiply by .25 1.0% to 1.240%. If you fall below 1%, you get nothing and your OF5 (Col./Capt) billets are halved.

1.25x for 2.01%-2.25%. 1.5X for 2.26%-2.75%; 1.75x for 2.76% -3.0%. 2x for +3.01%.

IMO the situation is actually somewhat worse than he realizes. The greater threat to most European countries, other than those that actually border Russia, is not Russia but German banks. I also don’t agree that the Germans chose the wrong leader at the wrong time. I think they chose a leader who reflects Germany’s conflicted nature. They don’t want to pay for their own defense and they don’t want the Americans to think of them as an impediment or liability. So they try to straddle.

I found this “deep dive” into the Tesla Semi at The EV Universe pretty interesting. If the range and charging time are as claimed, a driver could cross the entire country from coast to coast on just six charges which would translate into a total of three hours of charging time. The price tag also appears to be roughly in line with ICE semis.

My wife’s dad and uncles serviced in the Navy during World War II. My mom’s uncle was one of the lucky few who were called up for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He apparently had skills that were in demand. Perhaps it’s natural that we should notice that the “day that will live in infamy” is fading from memory. Only 167,000 some-odd veterans who served remain alive today and they’re very old.

Here’s something that should be remembered. Back in 1941 Americans were actually angry and frightened. It had been almost 150 years since the last time the United States had actually been attacked and we didn’t know how things were going to turn out. For all we knew a Japanese invasion of the West Coast or a German invasion of the East Coast was immanent. The Man in the High Castle is fiction but just barely.

The drought of opinion pieces continues. Let’s talk about Ralph Warnock’s successfully defending his Senate seat in Georgia, shall we? As usual I’m disinterested in the local politics aspect of it since I don’t live in Georgia but it does have national implications.

What good is one additional Senate seat to the Democrats? I think they’d claim a mandate for whatever they cared to do anyway just as the Republicans would in their shoes. I can’t see a chastened Chuck Schumer looking to forge a more bipartisan path for legislation in any event.

Enacting legislation will be difficult with a Republican majority in the House, even a narrow one. Especially funding bills viz. Article I Section 7 of the Constitution:

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Where I think the additional vote will help is in committee seats. They won’t need to play nice with the Senate minority. That in turn has implications for judicial, ambassadorial, and cabinet level appointments.

I agree with Carl Schramm’s point in his piece at City Journal: the CDC is in need of reform. IMO the matter needs to be considered a long-term project rather than the master stroke, one and done approach that Congress seems to prefer. I doubt that just increasing funding, Congress’s typical approach, will provide results other than increasing the pay of present people working at the CDC.

I’m not sure he realizes it but in this piece at RealClearPolitics John R. Lott, Jr. is making the case for the increasing importance of a if not new previously pretty rare form of terrorist: the eco-fascist:

Of the 82 mass public shootings from January 1998 to May 2021, 9% have known or alleged ties to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or anti-immigrant views. But many of those, such as the Buffalo murderer, are environmentalist authoritarians.

Another 9% of mass public shootings are carried out by people of middle eastern origin, despite them making up only 0.4% of the US population. Whites and Hispanics are underrepresented as a share of the population. Blacks, Asians, and American Indians commit these attacks at a slightly higher rate than their share of the population.

Seventy-one percent of mass public shooters have no identifiable political views.

Even violence against pro-life people and organizations this year has been over 22 times more frequent that violence against pro-choice groups.

We’ve had a few homegrown “eco-fascists” over the years. They’ve been pretty prominent in Germany.

Here nobody closer to the mainstream wants to claim them. They consider themselves to be on the left but many Democrats are pretty quick to label them as “right-wing”. Has anyone seen any mainstream Republicans side with them, even to the extent of suggesting that they have a point?