I encourage you to read Joseph Nye’s remarks on the Russia-Ukraine War at The Strategist. After four months of war he draws the following conclusions:

1. nuclear deterrence works
2. economic interdependence doesn’t prevent war
3. uneven economic interdependence can be weaponised by the less dependent party
4. while sanctions can raise the costs for aggressors, they don’t determine outcomes
5. information warfare makes a difference
6. both hard and soft power matter
7. cyber capability isn’t a silver bullet
8. war is unpredictable

All of those observations are more nuanced than I’m making them appear (which is why I encourage you to read the post).

The only observation of my own I can add is that economic sanctions are more likely to work the more motivated by economic factors a country and its leaders are.

In the late 19th/early 20th century journalist Finley Peter Dunne, writing in the voice of his fictitious character Mr. Dooley, gave politics many of its most famous aphormisms. Mr. Dooley’s wisdom can be difficult to read nowadays—Dunne wrote in a broad and made up Irish dialect. Here’s an example of one of his most famous, widely used and misunderstood by journalists, observations:

Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward. They ain’t annything it don’t turn its hand to fr’m explainin’ th’ docthrine iv thransubstantiation to composin’ saleratus biskit. Ye can get anny kind iv information ye want to in ye’er fav’rite newspaper about ye’ersilf or annywan else. What th’ Czar whispered to th’ Imp’ror Willum whin they were alone, how to make a silk hat out iv a wire matthress, how to settle th’ coal sthrike, who to marry, how to get on with ye’er wife whin ye’re married, what to feed th’ babies, what doctor to call whin ye’ve fed thim as directed—all iv that ye’ll find in th’ pa-apers.

The emphasis is mine. Despite the writing style being obsolete, somehow Mr. Dooley’s wisdom never seems obsolete. One of his truest and most famous remarks was “Politics ain’t beanbag” meaning that it is not a child’s game but played rough and played for keeps.

That’s what’s occurred to me when I read Karl Rove’s complaints in the Wall Street Journal about Democrats interfering in Republican primaries. It caught my eye because of his taking note of the Illinois race for Republican nominee for governor. In the run-up to the primary we are presently being deluged with political advertising either for or against Richard Irvin, present mayor of Aurora, or Darren Bailey, a downstate state senator. To my eye the overwhelming preponderance of anti-Irvin and pro-Bailey spots are sponsored by Democrats, either J. B. Pritzker or the Democratic Governor’s Association. The basic concept is

1. Run ads in favor of the most radical Republican candidate
2. Run ads against the Republican candidate most likely to be a difficult opponent in the general election
3. When the radical candidate (whose campaign you financed) wins the primary, run ads against Republican extremism in the general election.

Here are some of Mr. Rove’s comments:

Democrats are betting the same tactic will deny University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl the GOP gubernatorial nomination. The only statewide elected Republican—she won in 2016 when Mr. Trump lost Colorado—Ms. Ganahl faces former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez in the primary, whom she’s outraised 8 to 1. Yet another Democrat-backed ad blitz—funneled through a political action committee bankrolled by another PAC that’s backed with $1.5 million from the DGA—is attacking Mr. Lopez’s opposition to abortion and gay marriage, calling him—drum roll, please—“too conservative for Colorado.”

These ploys don’t always work. Democrat interference in earlier Republican contests had mixed results. Sheriff Joe Lombardo of Clark County, Nev., won Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary despite the DGA’s spending $2.1 million portraying him as soft on crime. In California’s June 7 primaries Democrats tried to boost extremist challengers to GOP Reps. Young Kim and David Valadao, both of whom still made it to the November ballot.

But Democrats did help controversial Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano win the GOP gubernatorial nomination. The Democratic nominee, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, ran ads saying, “If Mastriano wins, it’s a win for what Donald Trump stands for.” Pundits downgraded Republicans’ chances of a pickup after Mr. Mastriano’s victory.

The inventor of this strategy is former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), who effectively deployed it in 2012. During the primaries, she spent $1.7 million attacking her weakest Republican opponent, Rep. Todd Akin, as “too conservative.” He was wiped out in November, even though Missouri is a red state.

Ms. McCaskill boasts that she “successfully manipulated” the GOP primary to get the opponent she “was most likely to beat.” That tactic often works, but at the cost of pushing America’s political parties to their extremes and weakening general-election competition. Still, when the opposition meddles in primaries, it’s up to voters to stop themselves from being played for suckers. Republicans shouldn’t vote in ways that make Democrats jump for joy.

If you’re wondering how our politics became as screwed up as it is, this strategy should be Exhibit A and Mr. Rove’s response, “strategic voting”, should be Exhibit B. I don’t know that I’ll be able to vote for any candidate in the general election in good conscience.

Oh, for a modern Mr. Dooley! The closest we have is Titania McGrath. Stephen Colbert began as something of the sort but he’s too sardonic.

Josh Kraushaar makes some points worthy of consideration in a piece at National Journal. The TL;DR version is that

1. Republicans are pretty likely to hold the majority of seats in the House in 2023 and
2. A net gain of 35 seats or more is pretty unlikely.

Here’s his conclusion:

Just how dismal could things get for Democrats? That’s where measuring the wave the right way is important. It’s not the number of House seats that Republicans pick up that’s the relevant measure, but the overall number of seats won. So mark the number 248 (or +35 net) on your scorecards as a sign of a true political tsunami. Simply winning 242 seats (+29 net) would match the GOP’s 2010 standing. And anything at 233 or higher (+20 net) would give Kevin McCarthy enough breathing room to manage his caucus effectively, without having to fear the most extreme House Republicans would disrupt his best-laid plans.

Given that Republicans are very close to a majority now (Democrats 220; Republicans 208; vacant 7), by historical standards they’re likely to pick up seats in the midterm, the president’s approval rating is quite low, gaining a majority should not be unexpected. All of Larry Sabato’s updates in the national standings over the last several months have been in the Republicans’ favor. The Cook Political Report’s House ratings show Republicans with 209 seats Safe, Likely, or Lean and Democrats with 188 seats Safe, Likely, or Lean, and 32 toss-ups. IMO the more President Biden’s RCAP spread goes below -15, the more of those toss-up seats are likely to be captured by the Republicans. As things stand Democrats need to hold onto nearly two-thirds of those toss-ups to retain their House majority. If they split even, Republicans have that 233 or higher majority Mr. Kraushaar mentions.

The golden thread connecting not just the three articles to which I’ve linked today but also to Afghanistan, Iraq, the January 6 committee hearings and any number of other undoubtedly important matters is that they’re all trying to accomplish the wrong things in the wrong way. They remind me of the old wisecrack dating from the earliest days of the popularization of golf, variously attributed incorrectly to Winston Churchill and Woodrow Wilson: golf is a game in which the object is to insert a small ball into a small hole using implements singularly unsuited to the task.

Take Afghanistan. What was the objective? A reasonable objective would have been to uproot Al Qaeda from the country and punish it. Another completely reasonable objective would have been to render Afghanistan incapable of hosting Al Qaeda in the future. How did that transmogrify into turning Afghanistan into a modern secularized country with a modern military? And what sense did it make to use our military to accomplish that objective? None as far as I can tell.

Completely reasonable objectives for the January 6 committee hearings would have been to inform the American people about what happened on that day and prevent the Capitol from being breached again. That has rather clearly been twisted into battlespace preparation for the 2024 presidential election—preventing Donald Trump from running again and any amount of exaggeration, misquoting, and misrepresentation is clearly seen as worth the cost. The cost is threatening those two reasonable and legitimate objectives in favor of a partisan gain. As I see it the truth is bad enough but it puts the partisan objectives of the hearings at risk.

Let’s consider Jason L. Riley’s column through that lens. Providing a workforce for American businesses is a legitimate objective. Having a juster, kinder, more effective system of immigration is a legitimate objective. Conjoining the two is only legitimate to the extent that the one solves the other but that isn’t the case. Our problem is that we’re trying to do the wrong things in the wrong ways. Millions of fast food and other low- or no-skill jobs are a consequence of a large and reliable supply of workers willing to take such jobs. The way to solve the problem is by changing what we’re looking for not bringing in more workers who can only command minimum wage. Maybe fast food restaurants need to use more automation. Maybe fast food restaurants occupied a niche in the economy that is impractical to maintain.

Which brings up another factor. You can build a pyramid with thousands of sweating peasants using their muscles or you can build it using power tools, earthmoving equipment, etc. Should we really be building pyramids at all? And if we must build pyramids should we be building them with thousands of sweating peasants using their muscles?

Let’s consider the Russia-Ukraine War from the same perspectives. What are our objectives? Not the Ukrainian objectives, our objectives. What I hear frequently is something along the lines of “We can’t let Putin win!” How can we prevent that outcome? I don’t believe it is within our power or, at least, we can’t accomplish it without risking starting a thermonuclear war.

Speaking of prescriptions in his Wall Street Journal column Jason L. Riley has a prescription for addressing the need of American businesses for workers:

If President Biden and the Democrats who control Congress want to do something constructive about the labor shortage and its impact on inflation, they might turn their attention to our broken immigration system. Unauthorized immigration takes up most of the oxygen in this debate, but our system for admitting legal foreign workers is also in need of repair. A recent labor-market analysis by Goldman Sachs details the extent to which lower levels of legal immigration in recent years—stemming both from Covid and from the Trump administration’s more restrictive policies prior to the pandemic—have reduced the number of available workers.

“From 2010 to 2018, foreign-born workers accounted for nearly 60% of the growth in the U.S. labor force, but growth in the foreign-born population slowed to around 100k/yr between 2019 and 2021, leaving the U.S. population around 2 million smaller than it otherwise would have been, and the labor force around 1.6 million smaller,” the report finds.

Let’s just consider that last number (2 million).

According to that graph more than 3 million prospective workers are just on the sidelines. Where are they? According to this they aren’t in school. The fulltime enrollment in institutions of higher education has actually decreased by a third of a million so that’s no explanation.

In addition I think this is an instance of the “lump of labor” fallacy. I’ll get to that in my next post.

One last point. As of this writing we have the highest proportion of immigrant population in the last century—more than 1/7th of the population. IMO our society has a carrying capacity for immigrants and we reached it some time ago. Consequently, if you plan to import a workforce, you’ve got to start excluding some people from the country. I’m extremely skeptical that the migrants who are crossing our southern border every day are the workforce that we need or that Mr. Riley has in mind.

In his Washington Post column David Ignatius provides his take on what needs to be done to help Ukraine against Russia. Here’s his assessment:

Ukrainian officials have argued that they need more heavy weapons, fast, to hold the line against the Russian offensive in Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in the east. To take just one example, Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior Ukrainian official, tweeted this week that his country needs 300 multiple-launch rocket systems, or MLRS — nearly 30 times what’s on the way.

The example illustrates a weapons-supply problem that worries many American experts. Just four MLRS rocket launchers have actually been delivered, officials say, with eight more arriving soon. “Twelve is not enough. Not even close,” counters retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who commanded U.S. Army troops in Europe. “It seems like we keep pulling our punches, and all that does is prolong the war.”

And this is his prescription:

Administration officials are right that this isn’t a time for panic about Ukraine. But President Biden needs to demonstrate, in a way that gets attention in Kyiv and Moscow, that he is truly prepared to deliver on his promise to give Ukraine “the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression,” as he put it in his May 31 op-ed in the New York Times. He can underline that statement by providing Ukraine with more weapons, more quickly, as it battles a brutal Russian offensive.

Is it my imagination or does that smack of the “Green Lantern theory” of the presidency? That the president can do anything if he or she has the will to do it?

There are several questions Mr. Ignatius does not address. How many weapons are the Ukrainians capable of handling? Is the barrier to providing more weapons to the Ukrainians our will or our ability to produce them? Do we actually have the ability to ship more weapons to the Ukrainians or will we just be providing targets for the Russians? And what about our European allies, Germany in particular? Is Mr. Ignatius’s view that we should stand up so they can stand down? Or doesn’t he trust them?

There is a common thread joining all of the posts and articles that caught my eye this morning. More about that later. But let’s turn to the first of those articles, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens’s terse analysis of the present state of Russia’s war against Ukraine:

The Russians are running out of precision-guided weapons. The Ukrainians are running out of Soviet-era munitions. The world is running out of patience for the war. The Biden administration is running out of ideas for how to wage it. And the Chinese are watching.

He goes on to explain the implications of each of those sentences and they’re not nice. Here’s his prescription:

What more can the Biden administration do? It needs to take two calculated risks, based on one conceptual breakthrough.

The calculated risks: First, as retired Adm. James Stavridis has proposed, the U.S. should be prepared to challenge the Russian maritime blockade of Odesa by escorting cargo ships to and from the port.

That will first mean getting Turkey to allow NATO warships to transit the Turkish straits to the Black Sea, which could entail some uncomfortable diplomatic concessions to Ankara. More dangerously, it could result in close encounters between NATO and Russian warships. But Russia has no legal right to blockade Ukraine’s last major port, no moral right to keep Ukrainian farm products from reaching global markets, and not enough maritime might to take on the U.S. Navy.

Second, the U.S. should seize the estimated $300 billion in Russian central bank assets held abroad to fund Ukraine’s military and reconstruction needs.

What are the risks of those calculations? The calculation in the first case is that Putin is willing to lose the war rather than confront the U. S. directly in the first case. Not to mention that it’s a violation of President Biden’s commitment not to engage Russia directly or the risk of thermonuclear war. The calculation in the second case is the risk is that no other country will retaliate in kind. Need I point out that the U. S. is far more exposed to that risk than any other country?

I’m not as confident as Mr. Stephens is in our ability to accomplish the first calculated risk or in Mr. Putin’s hesitancy. And I don’t believe he has actually assessed the risks of his second calculated risk at all. Basically, it’s risking a complete collapse in global trade.

In a piece at Science Meredith Wackman makes two good points. First, there’s actually a financial incentive not to declare that the COVID-19 pandemic is over:

Moderna has pledged not to enforce patents on its messenger RNA vaccine until the pandemic ends, although a company spokesperson declined to say this week how it will identify that moment. Pfizer has not made a similar vaccine pledge, but it and Merck have agreed to allow generic drugmakers to make their drugs targeting SARS-CoV-2 until WHO declares the PHEIC is over. Dozens of companies have now signed up to make Merck’s molnupiravir and Pfizer’s Paxlovid for a long list of mostly low- and lower-middle-income countries.

Ending the PHEIC will also impact major pandemic-related programs such as the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility and its parent, the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator—cooperative global networks that aim to acquire and distribute affordable drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines. “The emergency operations of COVAX and ACT-A will go away—it’s hard to keep that up,” says Seth Berkley, CEO of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, which is integrally involved with both efforts. “The hope is that the core innovations—the ways of working all of that—will be kept warm” for the future.

If we were to follow the WHO’s published criteria for a pandemic strictly, the pandemic is over. But the definition is actually a bit fuzzy:

But Osterholm is making no predictions. “If there was ever a time for humility among scientists and policymakers with this virus, it’s now,” he says. “We are in totally uncharted territory from the perspective of understanding what a pandemic is, how it starts, how it unfolds, and how it ends.”

To my layman’s eye here in Illinois the pandemic is actually over and COVID-19 is now endemic, like flu. There’s also an argument that has been true for some time. One thing I notice is that there appears to be a correlation between increases in the number of cases reported and the outside temperature being very hot or very cold. If that bears out, Illinois should have at least a minor uptick in cases starting in a week to ten days.

You can check out Daniel L. Davis’s explanation in his post at 1945 for yourself but here’s his conclusion:

It would be a near-impossible feat for the West to provide enough heavy weaponry to Ukraine – and the massive volumes of large-caliber artillery ammunition the howitzers need – that would bring back into balance the major disadvantage Ukraine has in firepower. Even the modern rocket launchers the U.S. and UK recently committed will not materially change the negative balance for Kyiv.

Zelensky and the Ukrainian people will soon come face-to-face with the ugly prospect that continuing to fight will only bring more death and destruction to its people, cities, and armed forces – but be insufficient to stave off defeat. The truth is, military fundamentals and simple capacity are in Moscow’s favor. It is unlikely those factors change in time to avoid defeat for Kyiv and its brave people. That is the ugly, bitter reality of war.

Don’t confuse such observations with being pro-Russian. Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s merely a steely-eyed assessment of the realities. Also, we should bear in mind that we (including the Biden Administration) have been receiving propaganda from Ukraine and that the economic sanctions imposed on Russia to date have been nearly as effective as was hoped.