There’s an excellent analysis of the last time the port of Odessa was impeded, resulting in a wheat shortage, by Nicholas Lambert at the U. S. Naval Institute which sounds remarkably similar to what’s happening now. Here are the conclusions he draws from it:

First, doing nothing in the face of rising grain prices may not be an option, but the risks of action should be understood and acknowledged. Sending in the Navy, for escort duties or mine-sweeping, would be a protracted and high-risk operation with serious danger of escalation.

and

The second lesson is that the United States should check before agreeing to support any operation premised on assertions that Ukrainian wheat is available for export from Odessa and more is on the way. It seems clear that some Ukrainian wheat is sitting in ports—but are the handling facilities working? Are the quays clear? And has the rail infrastructure, normally used to move wheat from farm to port, survived the Russian onslaught (which has targeted transportation networks)? The pump may be primed, but will the engine fire? The grain in ports is only one part of the supply chain—a concept we have heard a great deal about in other contexts, but very little about in this one.

He concludes that it is more likely that we will repeat the mistakes of 1915 rather than taking the lessons that might be learned to heart.

Speaking of tactical requirements Dimitri K. Simes makes a point at The National Interest:

NATO can undoubtedly strengthen Ukraine’s position by providing more arms and military training, enabling Kyiv to achieve limited tactical successes. But should these successes—contrary to current conventional wisdom—go beyond territories conquered by Russia after February 24 and start to look like a humiliating defeat for the Putin government, Moscow is more than capable of significant escalation, both through military mobilization and putting the economy on a war footing. Such a development might well force the United States to choose between suffering a major military setback in Ukraine or moving up the escalation ladder—closer and closer to the nuclear threshold. Those who dismiss Moscow’s ability to improve its military situation forget that Russia today is fighting not just a “special military operation” but indeed a limited war, one quite different from a full-scale war where Moscow would deploy all the resources it could muster—military, economic, and political—if absolutely necessary for the protection of the regime.

I’ve been questioning whether the tactics being proposed are actually logistically possible but Mr. Simes raises another point: do the tactics produce a good strategic outcome?

And some of the points made in his conclusion may sound familiar to you:

It is one thing to argue that there should be no settlement without the Ukrainian government’s involvement and agreement, but it is another thing entirely to outsource negotiations with another nuclear power to Kyiv. The most fundamental responsibility of the Biden administration is to assure the survival of the republic. The Ukrainians are entitled to wield veto power over any territorial arrangement with Russia, but they cannot—and should not—exercise a veto power over U.S. decisionmaking, including the types and quantities of weapons the United States provides to Ukraine, and even more so, what kind of general relationship (sanctions included) Washington chooses to adopt with the only other nation capable of destroying the United States. Putin has demonstrated that he is willing and able to make ruthless and daring military decisions. His strategic vision notwithstanding, he is also the product of a different political culture and has his own narrative of what has transpired between Russia and the West. That narrative is quite different from the one that prevails in Washington and can bring Putin to reach different conclusions than those widely held in the West. Assuming that Moscow will act upon American definitions of caution could lead to a fatal miscalculation.

Unless you believe that Ukraine’s tactics do not change in response to our actions, something I find incredible, we might want to consider that Ukraine’s strategic objectives are not synonymous with ours.

Glen Loury and John McWhorter’s most recent conversation is about the consequences of present diversity, equity, and inclusion policies for black Americans. I’m not sure they arrive at any conclusion other than that there’s a lot we don’t know. Here are some snippets from their conversation.

After remarking on some of the cultural underpinnings of the strong performance in certain activities of young Asians:

But just to say, there are behavioral and cultural foundations for these differences in in group performance.

Another:

We’ve created a regime where the message that we send out to students of color is, you can be okay but not absolutely great, and you still can have a pretty good chance of getting admitted to our program. The idea that that would not affect people’s behavior, I think, is just contrary to common sense. How much is a question that would have to be studied, but the incentives here are not entirely healthy.

Another:

Just this final point. It’s not equality when you create a special dispensation for blacks and then look the other way at their relatively poor performance after admission. That’s condescension. That’s not really equality.

Another:

Shelby Steele has a passage in one of his books where he says something along the lines of, “We exempt black students from serious competition and then wonder why they’re never qualified for it.” And that’s exactly it. They never seem to hit the highest note, but then again, they’re not required to.

Another:

But yeah, it’s a kind of condescension, and all of it is where you get Carol Kelley. It’s where you get Ibram Kendi. All of these people who are very comfortable with the idea of saying that if black kids aren’t good at it, it’s racist, and therefore let’s get rid of it, even for other students. And when you fight against this ideology, you’re told that you’re a racist, you’re an Uncle Tom, that you just don’t get it. But what is the “it” to get? And the society that these people want to create is one that I really would not be interested in participating in. I worry about my children going out into this society. I’m just waiting for them to start being treated as these tokens of diversity. And it’s not the way things should go. Ugh.

There’s one matter they don’t touch on. There are presently roughly 2 million black sub-Saharan African immigrants to the U. S. and another couple of million black Haitian and Jamaican immigrants. Most are working age. On average they have higher levels of educational attainment than native-born blacks.

Employers preferentially hire sub-Saharan Africans and Caribbean black immigrants over native-born blacks for educational and cultural reasons. They don’t have the baggage that the group that the late sociologist Charles Moskos called “Afro-Americans”, i.e. native-born black Americans, the descendants of slaves, do. Consequently, the net effect of DEI programs is to subsidize the importation of sub-Saharan and Caribbean workers while consigning Afro-Americans to hopelessness in crime-ridden inner cities. It’s a perverse policy.

In a similar vein Seth Cropsey has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he proposes to allow Ukrainian grain shipments to leave Odessa by using a “coalition of the willing” to convoy them:

The obvious solution is to free up Ukrainian grain exports, relieving pressure on the global food supply and mitigating inflation. This would require an extensive demining and escort mission to create a corridor from Odessa to the eastern Mediterranean. It would demand a naval force large enough to deter Russian interruption.

An escort mission worked in similar circumstances during the Iran-Iraq war under Operation Earnest Will. Iran and Iraq, like Russia and Ukraine, had settled into a long-term fight. Iraq lost its port access after Iranian offensives. It turned to Kuwait to export Iraqi oil, but Iran attacked Kuwaiti ships. The U.S. responded by deploying a major naval task force to escort Kuwaiti oil tankers and conducting a handful of demonstrations of military power to deter continued Iranian pressure.

In the case of Ukraine, American deployment must be more aggressive. A nuclear-armed Russia, with clear incentives to deter greater U.S. participation in the war, may attack escorting warships. Washington can head off this possibility by employing an overwhelming naval task force consisting of small and large surface combatants with submarine and air support. Russia would be loath to intervene.

The U.S. shouldn’t conduct this mission through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. France, Italy and Germany likely would veto it. America should instead act with an ad hoc coalition—likely Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly the Baltic States, Sweden and Finland—to mitigate NATO divisions.

To his credit and unlike most pundits recommending similar actions, although he doesn’t mention the Montreux Convention directly he does nod to it:

Turkey need not participate actively. But it must allow this coalition force to operate in the Black Sea. It is therefore imperative that the Biden administration gain Turkish consent. Ideally Washington would offer to allow Turkey’s participation in the F-35 program and purchase of F-16s, the greatest point of tension between the U.S. and Turkey and the best, low-cost way to ensure Turkish acquiescence.

It would be interesting to see if Turkey rises to the bait. For one thing I think they can strike a harder bargain than that. How badly do we actually want Sweden and Finland to join NATO?

Nonetheless my previous question remains. Do we actually have the ability to accomplish the mission he proposes? The Black Sea and the Persian Gulf are roughly equivalent in terms of ease of navigation but neither has the ease of the Indian Ocean. The Persian Gulf is too shallow for submarines; I presume he meant submarine operations in the Indian Ocean.

Odessa is up there in the “less than 200 meters” depth area. I’m not sure that submarines would be particularly useful.

William A. Galston’s latest Wall Street Journal column is essentially a plea for the United States to start building a lot more heavy weaponry. I want to focus on this passage:

It is above all the artillery imbalance between Russia and Ukraine that is driving current results on the battlefield, and Kyiv is urgently asking Europe and the U.S. to expand and accelerate its deliveries of heavy weapons. Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, has said that the country needs 300 multiple rocket-launch systems and 1,000 howitzers to combat the Russians, far more than its allies have considered providing.

1,000 howitzers is more than the United Kingdom, France, and Germany possess in aggregate. It is approximately half the number possessed by the United States. The enormity of the Ukrainian ask is among the reasons I have been skeptical of the Western confidence in the outcome of the war since the start. And what of the logistical and training requirements?

This will take time, and so will deploying modern NATO artillery and missile launchers. The problem is not only providing equipment, but also training troops to use them, which can take several months. American instructors are trying to shorten this cycle, but even in the best case it will be a long time (if ever) before Ukraine can attain parity in artillery and missiles.

Are we actually willing or able to supply Ukraine for the sort of war that is emerging in Ukraine? That’s a question. I don’t know the answer. We can’t wave the equipment the Ukrainians are requesting into existence. How long would it take us to build it?

I am still attempting to make sense out of this story, reported by William Boston at the Wall Street Journal via MarketWatch:

BERLIN—Germany will restart coal-fired power plants and offer incentives for companies to curb natural gas consumption, marking a new step in the economic war between Europe and Russia.

Berlin unveiled the measures Sunday after Russia cut gas supplies to Europe last week as it punched back against European sanctions and military support for Ukraine.

The steps, part of a broader strategy initiated after the invasion of Ukraine, aim to reduce gas consumption and divert gas deliveries to storage facilities to ensure that the country has enough reserves to get through the winter.

Russia’s gradual cutting of gas supplies has raised the specter of a potential fuel shortage if Europe goes into winter with less-than-full stowages. It has also raised prices, putting additional pressure on economies that are already struggling with high inflation and rising borrowing costs and face the prospect of a recession.

Why am I puzzled? Germany imports all of the coal it uses for energy production, half of it from Russia. So if Russia cuts back on its shipments of gas or oil to Germany, the Germans plan to replace it with Russian coal?

I don’t see how that makes any sense at all. It doesn’t make sense from a carbon emissions standpoint. It would mean that Germany continues to finance Russia’s war against Ukraine so it doesn’t make any sense from an opposition to the war standpoint. The price of coal rose after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, too, so it doesn’t make a great deal of economic sense. It’s just barely possible it makes sense from an arbitrage standpoint since the prices of oil, gas, and coal don’t rise in perfect lockstep but that’s pretty cynical. Could that be the plan?

Do they have more confidence in their ability to import all of the coal they need from the United States and Australia? Cue President Biden’s announcement of the end of coal-mining.

Or does it just not make any sense?

I was amazed at how closely Holman Jenkins’s assessment of Donald Trump in his Wall Street Journal column aligns with mine:

In 2016, asked whether he would accept the outcome of his first race, he quipped, “If I win.” Later, his attorney general would tell the Jan. 6 committee that Mr. Trump was “detached from reality if he really believes this stuff” about the 2020 race.

Exactly. Mr. Trump didn’t believe it or it didn’t matter if he did. He was attached to a different reality, 40 years of brand discipline: Mr. Trump doesn’t lose. Gold sprouts from his fingertips except when foiled by nefarious cheaters and corrupt incompetents.

Mr. Trump’s authentic anger was reserved for White House underlings who forgot their job was servicing the Trump brand. His legal theory, its own originator told him, was bound to lose 9-0 before the Supreme Court. When has Mr. Trump ever won any lawsuit he was involved in? When was that even the purpose?

I’ve found it hard to excuse Trump supporters who didn’t realize from day one “stop the steal” was a bucket-shop scam—had they understood nothing about the man they were so devoted to?

Ditto, I thought the media coverage after the election should be a good deal more eye-rolling. Trump was being Trump (and also was being Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton—he hardly invented the “I wuz robbed” shtick as a means to keep oneself the center of attention after Election Day).

Mr. Trump was the most known, understood, advertised personality ever to be elected president, a four-decade American prodigy of Barnumesque branding. The true wonderment was the Trump voter. Yes, some were ignoramuses, but many knew exactly what they were getting (and let me know they did).

That was obvious to me from before the point at which Mr. Trump announced his candidacy.

Something else that was obvious: Trump is a symptom of a larger problem as well as a contributing factor to it. Don’t expect that getting shed of Trump for good and all will solve the larger problem.

And it’s the same problem that Mr. Macron is seeing in France or at least a very closely related problem. It can only be resolved by genuine competence or upheaval.

Update

I’m afraid we’re about to learn whether the apothegm of the Abbe Correa still holds true.

Perry Bacon devotes his Washington Post column to a consideration of the policy differences between states whose governments are dominated by Republicans and those dominated by Democrats:

The political divisions in the United States increasingly aren’t coming from Washington. America has divided starkly into states dominated by Republicans with a shared agenda and states dominated by Democrats with an alternative one. Much of America’s uncivil war, as President Biden has described it, stems from states adopting these divergent policies.

About 45 percent of Americans live in the 25 GOP-dominated states, and about 40 percent in the 16 Democratic ones. In effect, we have two Americas of policy — and only a small fraction of Americans live in a place where one vision or the other isn’t on the march.

But these two Americas are not parallel. Republicans have been more effective at implementing a unified, national agenda through state legislatures and governors. They are also using state power in a more extreme way than Democrats — for instance, changing election laws and limiting abortion rights so aggressively that these state-level policies have become the center of national political fights.

He focuses a lot on the moves of the legislatures to limit teaching of “some ideas” about race and gender as well as access to abortion:

In states where Republicans dominate government, they are passing policies that include limits on the teaching of some ideas about race and identity, as well as restrictions on people who identify as transgender. Meanwhile, Democrats are protecting existing abortion rights or even extending them.

What I found conspicuous by its absence was any consideration of net domestic migration. According to the Census Bureau four of the states experiencing the highest rates of net domestic outmigration are “Blue” states (New York, Illinois, California, Hawaii) while only one “Red” state is (North Dakota). Of the ten states with the highest rates of net domestic outmigration only two are “Red” states. Conversely, four of the five states with the highest rates of net domestic inmigration are “Red” states. Of the ten states with the highest rates of net domestic inmigration only two (Delaware and Maine) are “Blue” states. And the total outmigration of just the worst three “Blue” states is two orders of magnitude higher than the total inmigration of those two states.

As somebody once said you can tell a lot by which way the canoes are paddling. Whatever you think of the social policies of Red and Blue, it is clear that the Red States are doing something right while the Blue States are doing something wrong. Said another way just better grassroots-level organization won’t be enough to stem the outflow. There needs to be a change in policies other than social policies. Race, identity, and access to abortion are only a very small amount of what state and local governments do. More important are public safety, general education, zoning, corporate regulations, and tax policies.

Consider Illinois and its neighboring state, Indiana. Demographically, geographically, and in terms of climate the two states are quite similar. Illinois has the worst credit rating of any state but Indiana one of the best. Illinois is the most politically corrupt state in the Union, vying only with Louisiana for the crown. Indiana does not have similar issues. Illinois’s tax burden is one of the highest in the country; Indiana’s is in the middle of the pack. Illinois has a high rate of domestic outmigration; Indiana has net domestic inmigration, much of it probably from Illinois.

I don’t know which way the causality runs but there’s clearly something going on and I doubt that better messaging or local political organization are the issues.

The editors of the Washington Post have some proposals for dealing with the baby formula shortage in a more organic fashion:

First, we need to keep the imports coming. The FDA claims its heavy-handed import controls are about safety, but formula could come from Europe, Australia and Singapore, which are places that have equally good — if not better — health outcomes for kids.

Second, Congress should seriously consider whether it’s time to ditch WIC state monopolies, which would also require additional funding to WIC, at least for a few years, to ease the transition. At a minimum, Congress could make it easier for companies to compete for WIC contracts by passing the bipartisan WIC Healthy Beginnings Act.

Third, the FDA needs to improve its food safety oversight, especially for domestic baby formula.

It’s a bit difficult to ferret out the reasons that the primary contractor monopoly system that is used by the Special Supplemental Nutritional Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) was adopted in the first place. Originally, it was a cost-containment system put in place through act of Congress from 1987 and fully implemented by 1994. It has been known for twenty years that the program had the perverse impact of increasing the price of baby formula, cf. here. See also here. The TL;DR version is that

• The program has always been opposed by small retailers and producers.
• It has always been supported by large producers.
• The increase in the price of baby formula is not related to the cost of its components.
• It is in fact a consequence of the WIC program itself.

or, shorter, we’re subsidizing the price of baby formula so we get higher prices.

It’s not the only well-intentioned but perverse program that has contributed to the price increases. We are subsidizing the immigration of poor people to the United States so we get more of them (yes, illegal immigrants are eligible for WIC). We are subsidizing the children of the poor so we get more of them than might otherwise be the case.

Additionally, the plan is easier to administer than a more competitive system would be so, naturally, it is favored by bureaucrats. Lawmakers tend to prefer grand, sweeping solutions to complex problems rather than constantly revisiting them and adjusting them. That explains why nothing has been done to fix the program even though its problems have been recognized for a generation. You don’t want to have starving babies, do you?

There is no perfect solution and, indeed, there is no single solution. At the very least we need to be phasing out the perverse drivers of increasing cost and reduced availability of baby formula. We should also stop thinking about solving problems once and for all and more about risk mitigation.