I found this piece by Julia Friedlander at Politico on the potential consequences of the financial war the U. S. and European Union are waging on Russia interesting and commend it to your attention. I’ll quote some passages I found particularly telling.

Western leaders have chosen to match the severity of Russia’s war of choice with severe financial pressure, dwarfing the “maximum pressure” campaigns of the Trump era.

But the West’s response is no longer just pressure — it’s financial war. As opposed to previous sanctions campaigns, which sought to use pressure over time to bring a country to the table or prompt a longer-term behavior change, the goal of these Russia sanctions is to change military strategy in a war that is already happening.

Can financial pressure force a leader bent on war to alter battle plans — a decision that would need to play out in days, not months or years? Can the U.S. and its partners wreak enough havoc on the Russian economy in time to make war unsustainable? No one can answer that.

Note her point: Russia’s war on Ukraine is an issue rather than a risk.

President Joe Biden’s team initially saw their predecessors’ aggressive use of sanctions as ineffective and potentially counterproductive. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen promised a review of U.S. sanctions practices during her confirmation hearings. What resulted was a carefully drafted but none-too-daring policy document, promising to coordinate with allies and consider how the overuse of U.S. financial pressure could over time unwind the primacy of the U.S. dollar and erode U.S. legitimacy.

But observers rightly noted that whether this restraint would stick depended on the churn of international events. First came Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko’s brutal repression in Belarus and a coup in Myanmar. Then came Ukraine. The Treasury’s principled reframe faded quickly. Despite its intentions to do the opposite, the Biden administration took financial pressure to a level unprecedented in the history of U.S. sanctions. The idea that we had already seen “maximum” pressure was blown to bits.

Although Ms. Friedlander couches the use of sanctions as a risk (what if it fails?) I see it more as potentially debunking the notion of sanctions as an effective tool which I would consider a positive risk if anything.

Economists are only able to speculate what the rapid collapse of a G-20 country means for the rest of us. Energy prices may rise to unaffordable levels despite the release of strategic reserves. Soaring commodity prices could send developing countries reliant on Russian and Ukrainian grain into even deeper debt after Covid. Financial and debt contagion could pop up in unforeseen places, revealing new corners of interconnectedness and dependencies in a globalized economy. This is likely to begin in Central Asia, where economies are closely bound by finance and trade to Russia, and potentially extend to North Africa and even areas of Europe, where Russian subsidiaries have filed for bankruptcy.

Actually, I’m more concerned about the risks of prospective policies put in place in reaction to the consequences in Ms. Friedlander’s litany above. But what sort of risks would that litany pose?

Debt crises, inflation and human need are known to spur confrontation, most famously through the economic instability in Germany that led to the rise of Nazism, but also the bread riots in Egypt during the 1970s and the breakdown of the antebellum economy in America. None of this is fated to happen, but the collateral damage of the current strategy could be larger than we know.

She concludes:

It’s arguably the biggest geopolitical objective economic measures have been tasked with achieving, certainly in the shortest amount of time. If the campaign has serious impact on regional or even global economies but still prevents future aggression against eastern Europe, that is a consolation prize worth winning. But if the West impoverishes Russia as an unhindered, unhinged Putin flattens his neighbor, no one can say the gamble was won. And it will be hard to see how governments can keep their faith in sanctions.

Read the whole thing.

Given a recent comment here, I found James Freeman’s latest Wall Street Journal column amusing. It asks the question what would Reagan do about Ukraine?

Let’s hope for the best from Team Biden and let’s also be grateful that Alexander Vindman, one of the country’s foremost experts in the field of undermining presidential authority, is no longer in the government. Mr. Vindman was on CNN today dismissing “irrational fears” that escalating military assistance to Ukraine could lead to a direct U.S. confrontation with Russia. What’s irrational is to pretend that such risks do not exist.

Thank goodness that Mr. Vindman did not staff Ronald Reagan, who managed to take down the Soviet empire without ever having to fight it directly. The basic idea was to use the economic, technological and moral force of the United States and its democratic allies to break the repressive Soviet Union and its backward economy. Reagan fought and won a cold war because even a successful hot war might have resulted in the annihilation of a significant portion of our population.

The balance of the column is devoted more to President Reagan’s aspirations and what he tried than what he actually succeeded in accomplishing.

If I may make a modest observation, in order to “use the economic, technological and moral force of the United States”, don’t we need the economic, technological, and moral upper hand to do so? We’ve been sacrificing all three of those for the last twenty-odd years. Perhaps thinking about why and how we’ve done that might be helpful.

The editors of the Washington Post have been thinking about the fix we’re in:

In the short term, President Biden has little choice but to turn to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela for more heavy crude oil. The United States stopped importing Venezuelan oil in 2019 in response to widespread human rights abuses under President Nicolás Maduro. In wartime, Mr. Biden must make hard choices. If he can get some political concessions from the regime, it could be worth lifting the ban on U.S. purchases from Venezuela and adding the 600,000 additional barrels per day it might be capable of producing to the global supply. Mr. Biden has already sent envoys to Venezuela, and Mr. Maduro has freed two American prisoners.

I wonder if the editors have considered that none of those countries has joined the U. S., Europe, etc. in imposing economic sanctions on Russia. They are either, as is the case with Venezuela, allied with the Russians or trying to hedge their bets, avoiding taking sides. Not pumping more oil is a strategy for doing just that. Besides with the price of oil rising rapidly, they’re actually better off leaving the oil in the ground than selling it. Tomorrow’s oil is worth more than today’s. That’s why neither the Saudis nor the Emiratis are taking President Biden’s calls.

Higher gas prices typically cause Americans to drive and consume less. Mr. Biden should call on U.S. producers to step up. Analysts say there’s a potential for 760,000 more domestic barrels by the end of the year. Congress should also start considering gas vouchers for low-income families and waiving, at least temporarily, the Jones Act to make it easier to ship oil from Texas to Hawaii and the coasts. Every bit helps. If China buys some of the Russian oil, that would also free up supplies from elsewhere.

You will notice their mention of the Jones Act which I mentioned the other day. While I recognize that the reflex of the Biden Administration will be something along the lines of the “gas voucher for low-income families” the editors propose, that’s just about the opposite of what the administration should do. Subsidizing demand will push prices up even farther. What they should do is encourage more “low-income families” to use public transportation. Some of the ways of doing that is better security in the inner city neighborhoods in which they live and more frequent service.

In the medium term, we need more U.S. production of oil and natural gas, changes to U.S. refineries so they can handle more shale oil, and an ongoing push to be more energy-efficient.

I doubt they’ll do much on that until after the midterms. De-motivating their more progressive supporters is probably the last thing they want to do.

Conspicuous by its absence is any reflection on why we’re in the fix we’re in. It’s pretty obvious we’ve been pursuing some counter-productive policies. Recognizing what they were and why they were short-sighted would be a good way to avoid doing it again. Blaming it on Putin is pretty short-sighted, too. Maybe some bad assumptions were being made about the nature of the world we live in and how people behave.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Michael O’Hanlon responds to those in the media who assert confidently that Russian President Putin is crazy:

Has Vladimir Putin lost his mind? Almost certainly not. He appears to have miscalculated badly in his invasion of Ukraine. But history is laden with aggressors who thought wars would be much easier than they turned out to be. It’s a natural human tendency, especially in dictatorships or juntas. Think of the kaiser and World War I, the Tojo regime leading into World War II, Kim Il Sung in Korea, the Soviets in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein against Iran and Kuwait.

The U.S. has done it too. Before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, some officials predicted that two-thirds of our invading forces would be home by fall and that the war would cost no more than $100 billion. We wound up deploying 130,000 to 170,000 U.S. troops for roughly seven more years. The war ultimately cost well over $1 trillion and the lives of 4,500 brave Americans.

Mr. Putin appears to have looked at the numbers in Ukraine and sensed an easy win. He expected to enter the country from multiple directions, execute a form of “shock and awe” against its political and military leadership, establish battlefield dominance over a weaker and smaller foe, and bring new technologies to the fight that would add unexpected dimensions to his attack plan.

He should have known better. He had long mocked the U.S. for its quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. He himself experienced the Chechen wars that Russia fought on its own land in the 1990s. But then again, after Vietnam, in some ways the U.S. should have known better, too.

I think we’re being inundated by an enormous amount of propaganda, some disinformation from Russia to be sure but a lot from our own media as well. Let me, as they say on Jeopardy put some things “in the form of a question”:

1. Is Putin crazy?
2. Is Russia losing in Ukraine?
3. Have the Ukrainians put up strong resistance?
4. Are the Russians committing war crimes and atrocities?
5. Are the economic sanctions hurting Russia?
6. Will the Russians defeat the Ukrainian military?
7. Will the Russians remove the present Ukrainian military?
8. Will the Russians annex Ukraine?

to which my answers are 1. almost certainly not; 2. No; 3. almost certainly yes; 4. I don’t know—likely yes; 5. I don’t know—likely not; 6. Unless a negotiated settlement is reached before that happens yes; 7. Unless a negotiated settlement is reached before that happens yes; 8. not if they’re smart. I think that lots of Americans think the opposite on many of those questions.

I’ll conclude by quoting Sun Tzu: he who knows neither his enemy nor himself will be defeated in every battle.

The purpose of this post is to explain some terminology so I might refer to it in future posts.

A risk is something that has not yet happened but might. Risks can be negative (bad things) or positive (good things).

An issue is something that has already happened. I have never heard anyone referring to a positive risk that has happened as an issue.

Negative risks should be mitigated; issues aren’t mitigated—they’re either corrected, compensated for, or otherwise dealt with.

I think there are many, many negative risks being treated as though they were issues.

Today I saw a poster with the caption: “Defund police; fund schools”.

Per the Urban Institute state and local governments spend $123 billion on police including police, sheriffs, state highway patrols, etc; $82 billion on corrections; and $50 billion on courts.

In contrast per the Department of Education the federal, state, and local governments spend $762 billion on public elementary and secondary schools. Spending on private education contributed an additional $70 billion.

It should also be noted that the nationwide on-time high school graduation rate is 86%. In essence the dropout rate is 14%. It should go without saying that increasing the amount spent on education beyond its present $800 billion some-odd will do little for those who’ve dropped out of school. At least unless other things change than just how much money is spent.

I don’t oppose spending more on education as long as we get value for what we’re spending. I don’t believe that’s happening now.

Here’s my point. Any notion that schools are being shortchanged and the money is being spent on policing is a fantasy. If total police budgets were reduced to zero, it would be a drop in the bucket of education—a roughly 14% increase. And, of course, were public police budgets cut to zero, poor minorities would suffer the most.

In his latest Wall Street Journal column Jason L. Riley muses about what sort of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will be:

Judge Jackson’s résumé is impressive by any objective standard. She attended top-ranked schools, where she excelled in her studies, and later clerked for the justice she has been nominated to succeed. Her professional career would probably be even more impressive if she hadn’t taken less-demanding jobs while raising young children, which is something that shouldn’t be held against any working parent.

Nevertheless, some Republicans are in payback mode. They remember the spectacle that Democrats made of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. They recall Mr. Biden’s prominent role in blocking the appellate court nominations of Janice Rogers Brown (a black judge) and Miguel Estrada (a Hispanic lawyer), both of whom were on President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court short list. And Republicans certainly haven’t forgotten what Mr. Biden put Justice Thomas through three decades ago. Nor should they.

That history notwithstanding, questioning Judge Jackson’s judicial philosophy would be far more constructive than questioning her qualifications. It’s also a more principled reason to oppose her nomination. Judge Jackson is the preferred choice of progressives primarily because she served as vice chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and has advocated for more-lenient punishment of convicted criminals. Like many on the social-justice left, she seems to have more sympathy for criminals than for their victims, even though low-income blacks and Hispanics are more likely than other groups to be targets of violent crime.

As we know from experience past performance is no indication of future results when it comes to Supreme Court justices but I suspect we can expect Judge Jackson’s interests to remain the same when she is confirmed. I do think she should be confirmed—I believe that absent serious disqualifying facts coming to light a president’s appointments should be confirmed. I also don’t think confirmation hearings are something you’d want to be conducting when the mid-term campaigns begin in earnest. Perhaps the Republicans in the Senate see it differently.

I presume you’ve heard that Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance has been found. If you haven’t seen them already, the videos are really fascinating. The cold water of the Antarctic has preserved the ship these 107 years.

There’s an interesting article at Sandboxx by Tory Rich throwing cold water on the claims that Ukraine’s and Taiwan’s situations are just alike. Similarities include:

• Both are threatened (in Ukraine’s case invaded) by a much larger neighbor
• Just as Russia has has been conducting military exercises near Ukraine’s border, so has China staged mock invasions of Taiwan
• Neither is a member of NATO
• U. S. support is ambiguous, both for Taiwan and Ukraine

but the differences are even more striking:

• Taiwan has a substantial natural advantage
• Taiwan has been resistant, even hostile to China going right back to the origins of modern Taiwan
• China’s military is not yet prepared for an invasion of Taiwan

to which I would add:

• Russia’s per capita GDP is more than twice that in Ukraine; the situation is reversed with respect to China and Taiwan—Taiwan’s per capita GDP is almost three times that in China.
• The U. S. has actual interests in Taiwan. Our interest in Ukraine is one of principle.