I wanted to share some reactions to the “fiery exchange” between Presidents Trump and Zelensky today. First, I don’t believe that either of these men should be president of any country. One is a real estate developer and reality show host and the other a stand-up comic. There are issues of temperament and protocol involved. It was a mess.

Second, and in this case I’m speaking as someone who has meetings including people with as many as six different mother tongues every darned day, at one point President Trump was speaking colloquially (“hold the cards”) and President Zelensky clearly did not understand what was being said.

President Zelensky did not do any good for his cause.

Ethan Siegel has a post at Big Think that might interest you:

In every civilized society around the world, there’s a trade-off that must be made. The protection of individual freedoms, on one hand, enable the people living there to pursue their own goals, dreams, and ideals, whatever they may be. But those pursuits must not infringe on the rights?—?including the health, safety, and general welfare?—?of others. When it comes to issues like the health, safety, and long-term prosperity of our society, there is no greater tool or resource we have to assess them accurately than science.

It might seem like, at the start of 2025, we’re headed in absolutely the wrong direction. Mass firings and layoffs at the NIH, the NSF, the CDC and more, coupled with the installation of a number of prominent anti-science cabinet members, the first deadly measles outbreak among children in a decade, and the USA’s withdrawal (again) from the Paris Climate Agreement all signal a national move away from science.

But this is not new. The fact is that Americans have been resistant to heeding the scientific consensus on matters of public policy for many decades, preferring stances that agree with their ideological preferences instead. This was highlighted in 2020 and beyond, as many refused to mask, vaccinate, or isolate at even the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. This disregard for scientific facts extends even to the vilification of the scientists that find them, resulting in policies that recklessly endanger not only the health and safety of Americans today, but provide new generations with long-term challenges that they’ll need to either reckon with or face the consequences.But hope remains, as we’re just four key steps away from putting America back on the right track. Here’s what we can do.

His “four steps” are

1. Put an end to the “false equivalence” game
2. Make “reckless endangerment” illegal.
3. Value society’s right to benefit from humanity’s accumulated knowledge.
4. Fund science—including basic, fundamental research?—?as a national priority.

Although I agree with his point in the abstract I’m not sure that his “four steps” will accomplish anything.

There are several points I don’t think he recognizes. First, the history of science is littered with cases in which the “scientific consensus” was wrong. At one point or other the scientific consensus was that the sun revolved around the earth; that species could not become extinct; that the shapes and locations of the continents were immutable; that the material world was composed of fire, water, earth, and air; that bad air was the primary cause of disease (the “miasma theory”), and so on. My conclusion from that is that science and scientists are not the same thing.

Related to that is that is impossible to “fund science”. We can only fund scientists and considerable effort is required to ensure that we are not encouraging people to provide grants to their friends or pursuing something other than science rather than to advancing science. Furthermore, no amount of research would have proven the existence of the ether. That’s why I favor funding mass engineering projects over funding basic research. Basically, we’ve gotten better results in basic science from mass engineering programs than we have from funding basic scientific research directly.

I also found this passage amusing:

We have the means, the knowledge, the resources, and the capability of:

• making every municipal water supply in the country safe to drink
• practically eradicating preventable diseases that have resurged (such as measles) in recent years
• supplying 100% of our energy needs with green (nuclear, solar, wind, or other renewable) sources by 2050 or sooner
• drastically curtailing the spread of respiratory diseases, including the flu and COVID-19, in the American population

This:

supplying 100% of our energy needs with green (nuclear, solar, wind, or other renewable) sources by 2050 or sooner

is something I might agree with but I cannot think of a single politician who believes that or, at least, has articulated it in public. Additionally, I think that it is equally true that we could supply 100% of our energy needs with nuclear power but NOT with solar, wind, or other renewable sources. The reasons that an “all of the above” strategy makes sense are cost and expense.

Also, wouldn’t it require vaccinating 100% of the population against, say, measles which I believe is an unachievable goal, to eradicate measles as long as we are admitting unvaccinated individuals from other countries into the United States? To the best of my knowledge only five countries have actually eradicated measles: Bhutan, North Korea, Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Timor-Leste. Two of those are isolated and the other three relatively small islands. Consequently, I’m skeptical we can eradicate them but we might be able to “drastically curtail them”.

At any rate read the whole thing. You’ll find things you agree with and things you’ll disagree with.

China perma-hawk Gordon Chang has been predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese economy for decades. That was what I was prepared for when I read his most recent offering at Newsweek. However, I was somewhat surprised when what I read made a certain amount of sense:

In 2008, China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao decided they would not allow the economy to suffer, so they embarked on perhaps the biggest stimulus program in history.

The result was historic overbuilding, and the country now has too much of almost everything. For instance, He Keng, a former senior statistics official, in 2023 publicly revealed that China had enough vacant apartments to house the entire population of 1.4 billion people. He noted that some believed that empty homes could hold three billion.

To deal with the severe imbalance, some Chinese localities are demolishing newly completed but vacant apartment buildings. Yet this is only a temporary fix. After all, destroyed buildings cannot produce revenue to pay for their construction and demolition.

“Without paying for the bad investments—largely real estate—the economy can’t grow,” says Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital Research, author of Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy. “And it definitely can’t pay for the bad investments. At least within the next decade.”

The crisis will almost certainly last a long time. “China has grown almost entirely through capital investment,” notes Stevenson-Yang. “Because there isn’t enough to invest in, a lot of good money chases bad, and they have reached a limit. The Chinese economy is having a heart seizure.”

The seizure looks fatal. China’s total-country-debt-to-GDP ratio is extraordinarily high. After taking into account so-called “hidden debt” and adjusting for inflated GDP claims—the country did not grow anywhere near the reported 5.0 percent pace last year—the ratio could be, according to my estimate, 375 percent. Higher figures are also plausible.

That dovetails with what I’ve been saying literally for decades. I should interject that Ken Rogoff’s and Carmen Reinhart’s empirical findings remain controversial but unrefuted: debt overhang impedes economic growth (please take note, Trump Administration).

In the 1990s and early Aughts, China invested in productive capacity. That resulted, for example, in having enough excess capacity in automobile production to supply all global demand for cars and trucks for the foreseeable future. That is now the case for a vast array of goods. Then they turned their attention to real estate and built enough apartment buildings for their entire population if China’s population had continued to grow which it did not.

The U. S. economic system has certain weaknesses but one of the strengths of our semi-market system is that it tends to wring out excess productive capacity. China’s semi-market system suffers from an inability to do that.

Decades ago I observed that China needs to consume more and import more. To date the CCP has been reluctant to let that happen, preferring to build excess capacity despite chronic over-building. The difference between now and twenty years ago is that 20 years ago keeping China’s economy sustainable depended on consuming and importing more. Now the global economy does.

There’s an interesting post at Geopolitical Futures by Kamran Bokhari on the reactions of Poland, Turkey, and Azerbaijan to the “new reality” in U. S.-Russian relations:

Though still in its early stages, forged U.S.-Russia diplomacy has compelled several nations on Russia’s periphery to rethink some of their strategic positions. Poland, Turkey and Azerbaijan, for example, are preparing for a reality in which Washington and Moscow reach some kind of accommodation, as all three, to varying degrees, face uncertainty in their respective strategic environments. Each can be expected to act unconventionally in the hopes of making it through this major emerging shift.

The reactions of the three countries appear to differ slightly but they have something in common: all appear to be seizing the opportunity.

My own view is that I think it’s too early to tell what is actually going on. I’m not as convinced that an actual rapprochement between Russia and the U. S. is actually under way as Dr. Bohkari seems to be.

Ruy Teixeira has an interesting observation:

Take a look at this graphic from the recent New York Times/Ipsos poll. Quick quiz: what is the intersection of the two sets “most important issues for themselves personally” and “most important issues for the Democratic Party”?

Here’s the table to which he draws attention:

He continues:

That right: it’s health care! There’s no other overlap between the two sets. Health care is the #2 issue for the public and at least makes the leaderboard—at #5—on what respondents think is most important to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party, on other hand, is viewed as sharing three of the public’s top five priorities—the economy, immigration, and taxes—but not health care.

You may see where I’m going with this. High salience issues on which Democrats have a clear advantage are thin on the ground these days—but health care definitely qualifies and has stood out as a robust Democratic advantage for quite some time.

The majority of Americans want the healthcare system to remain private but, paradoxically, believe that ensuring that people can obtain some form of healthcare insurance is the responsibility of the federal government. However, a whopping 72% of Democrats would prefer a single-payer healthcare system.

For my part I see no way of squaring that circle. How would a single-payer system be sustainable without controlling costs? Or how would the federal government ensure that people had access to healthcare insurance without controlling costs.

That’s the difference between the U. S. and the UK or, say, France. The French and Brits are willing to control healthcare costs. We aren’t.

Another post that caught my eye this morning was this one by Andrew Latham at RealClearDefense:

Although I am not an across-the-board supporter of Trump—I have strong reservations about much of his domestic agenda and political style—I am a passionate advocate for a grand strategy of restraint. Not because Trump champions it, but because restraint is the only approach consistent with the post-unipolar, multipolar world we now inhabit.

Restraint should never be mistaken for isolationism. The critics’ lazy conflation of the two is a disservice to strategic debate. Restraint does not mean withdrawing from the world or abandoning allies. Rather, it requires strategic discipline – prioritizing vital interests, especially in the Western Hemisphere and key regions of Eurasia, while avoiding costly, unnecessary interventions. The Western Hemisphere, in particular, deserves renewed focus as the bedrock of U.S. security. Strengthening regional ties, stabilizing fragile states, and preventing external interference in the Americas would ensure a secure backyard from which the U.S. can project power when essential. Yet, this hemispheric emphasis does not mean ignoring revisionist powers in other regions. Balancing and blunting threats elsewhere remains crucial when regional hegemony would jeopardize core U.S. interests. As multipolarity replaces the fleeting moment of unipolarity, the reality is clear: the United States cannot – and should not – attempt to sustain a unipolar moment that has long since passed.

and

Some critics point to Trump’s so-called softness on Russia as proof of dangerous isolationism. This, too, misses the mark. As The Wall Street Journal recently noted, Trump’s approach to Russia is hardly unprecedented. Previous administrations, including Obama’s, sought pragmatic engagement with Moscow when U.S. interests aligned. Restraint here does not mean appeasement; it means realism. Recognizing that antagonizing Russia on its doorstep risks unnecessary confrontation is strategic wisdom, not weakness. Europe is economically and technologically equipped to handle its own security. Overcommitting U.S. resources in Europe, especially when strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific and hemispheric challenges loom large, is shortsighted.

As should be apparent I am a “restrainer” rather than a “primacist”. One quibble I have with Dr. Latham’s thesis is in this passage:

…it requires strategic discipline – prioritizing vital interests, especially in the Western Hemisphere and key regions of Eurasia, while avoiding costly, unnecessary interventions.

because it unnecessarily elides the distinct between restraint and primacy. What are our “vital interests”? How do you determine what is “unnecessary”? IMO that is the essential distinction between restraint and seeking primacy. For primacists retaining primacy is a vital interest and anything that furthers it is necessary.

My view to the contrary is that which preserves American peace, freedom, and prosperity in the near term is vital and necessary. Such a view is bound to alarm optimistic internationalists.

Most of the editorials and opinion pieces that have caught my eye recently have been devoted to the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I’m going to cite, quote, and comment on several of them here. The first is from former U. S. Ambassador and former US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker at the Center for European Policy Analysis:

As Ukraine enters its fourth year of defending against a full-scale Russian invasion, there is a feeling of change in the air — hope that 2025 might bring an end to the fighting, but deep concern that a high price might be paid for a fleeting and unjust peace.

Russia is at its weakest since February 2022: economically, militarily and politically. Inflation is running rampant, interest rates are pegged at a staggering 21%, there is both a manpower shortage for the army and a labor shortage in the civilian economy, the state budget is in deficit, and without access to global financial markets, it is burning through its remaining foreign exchange reserves. It is reliant on North Korea for ammunition and manpower, and Iran for drones.

Within six months to a year, Russia will need a pause in the war. But until then, the Kremlin’s overnight bombing offensive and front-line assaults continue.

Ukraine is also feeling the strains of war. The population is tired. Even though the casualty ratio is roughly 3:1 in Ukraine’s favor, the Ukrainians care more about that one soldier than Russia does for dozens of its own troops. The front line has scarcely moved in two years, but the costs to Ukraine are high.

He sees the four pillars of the present U. S. approach as:

• ceasefire
• reciprocity
• deterrence
• burden-sharing

which is thornier than it may sound. Somewhat contrary to that are the remarks of Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth at The Hill:

Since Team Trump is set more on a deal benefiting the U.S. than on a fair and equitable solution that concludes the war, Zelensky should make this a quid pro quo arrangement — also known as a conditions-based contract, especially since NATO and the EU are hopelessly stuck in bureaucratic inroads.

This would put skin in the game for Team Trump.

So, let’s make a deal.

In exchange for a minerals contract with the U.S. to reimburse its investment in Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression, the U.S. sets conditions for the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all of Ukraine, including Crimea. Those conditions, diplomatic or kinetic, depend on the Kremlin.

Call it what it is: diplomatic shock and awe, but it is long overdue. As Vice President JD Vance has stated, “there’s a new sheriff in town.” Only now the phrase is properly directed at the adversary — Moscow.

which sounds notably like what have been referred to as “Ukraine’s maximalist objectives”. Here are the observations of the editors of the Wall Street Journal:

Monday marks the third anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the Kremlin marked the weekend with the largest drone attack of the war. President Trump says Vladimir Putin wants “peace,” but Ukrainians have hard experience about what such a promise means in practice. The anniversary is a good moment to recall the post-Cold War history of Russia’s broken promises.

They began with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 amid the illusion of the “end of history.” Ukraine yielded its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S., U.K. and Russia. Moscow explicitly promised to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and refrain from economic coercion. So much for that, and here’s a trail of Russia’s other broken commitments…

One of the things notable about the commentary is that many of the parties want to start the clock, start history at different points. Some in February 2022. Some in December 2021. Some in 2014. Some, like the WSJ, in 1994. Some in 1991. Some in 1954, the 1930s, 1919, or even in the 18th or even 17th century.

Quite contrary to most of the above are the remarks of David P. Goldman at Asia Times:

From the howling in the war camp, you’d think it was the end of the world. But it’s not the end of the world: It’s just the end of them. Nothing fails like failure, and the twenty-year campaign to launch regime change in Russia from Ukraine failed miserably, as the Russian Federation built more weapons than the whole of NATO combined. Relentless Russian gains hollowed out the Ukraine Army.

The war party’s only hope is to blame their failure on Trump, and to spin out the conflict until it becomes a permanent state of war.

Somewhere in between is the lament of Marcus Stanley at Responsible Statecraft:

Today marks the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With the war entering its fourth year and serious diplomatic moves toward peace finally underway, it’s an appropriate time to look back on the U.S. approach to the conflict.

The Ukraine war is the most devastating European conflict since WW2. While accurate casualty figures are difficult to come by, in September 2024, The Wall Street Journal estimated that the war had already resulted in more than one million casualties, with more than 250,000 dead and some 800,000 wounded.

The carnage has only increased since then. Estimates are that the war has caused some $1 trillion in damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure and capital stock. Even before the war Ukraine was already one of the poorest countries in Europe. As of late 2024, the U.S. government had allocated some $175 billion in military and non-military aid to support Ukraine’s war effort.

The early months of the war saw astounding Ukrainian success in resisting Russian aggression, as Ukraine mobilized to drive Russian forces back from the Kyiv region and the Black Sea coast. After an additional offensive in September 2022 gained some further ground, the war settled into a grinding stalemate in Ukraine’s Eastern regions.

Since the end of 2022, the front lines in Ukraine have barely moved, with Russia holding 18% of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territories in December 2022 and 18.6% of those territories today. But the costs of war continued to mount, with hundreds of thousands of additional dead and wounded and continued assaults on Ukraine’s infrastructure.

The military stalemate in Ukraine was predictable.

Not only was it predictable but it was predicted.

I don’t believe that either Russia is on the verge of economic, political, or strategic collapse. Indeed, I think it’s in a somewhat stronger position than it was in December 2021, IMO a perverse outcome. I also don’t believe that the Ukrainian government is on the brink of collapse, especially not if the U. S. continues to supply and fund it. I see no way the “maximalist objectives” AKA “not letting Putin win” can be accomplished without nuclear war. I also believe that U. S. repute in the world was entirely based on U. S. economic power, at least since our withdrawal in defeat from Vietnam.

I would suggest that we view the conflict strictly based on how we prioritize several values:

• hatred of Russia
• love of Ukraine
• love of the United States
• abstract principles like the rule of law in the international arena, spreading democracy, etc.

For me the highest priority among those above is love of the United States and those “abstract principles”. I don’t hate Russia and I don’t love Ukraine. I recognize that for some hatred of Russia or love of Ukraine are actual priorities and that making a buck is subsumed under “love of the United States”.

The results of the German election are coming in and as of this writing late Sunday afternoon Central Time they are represented by the graphic at the top of this post. Reuters reports:

For the first time since the Second World War, a far-right party has come second in a German national election.

All other parties have refused to build a coalition with it, under a ‘firewall’ pact against the far right, but the AfD could prove a fearsome opponent.

“The vote is clear. Germans want political change and they want a coalition between blue (AfD) and black (conservative),” party leader Alice Weidel told a televised debate between party leaders after first poll projections.

“The CDU conservatives copied our manifesto almost entirely, they can do that, but they can’t put it into practice with leftist parties. That is why our hand is stretched out. We can speak to each other. Herr Merz doesn’t want to do that, perhaps others from the CDU will.”

She predicted if the CDU builds a coalition with the SPD and Greens, it would be an unstable government that won’t last four years.

As of this writing it is unclear whether the CDU/CSU coalition will be able to form a government with just the Social Democrats (SPD) or whether they’ll need to invite the Greens to join their government as well. As noted above that is likely to be unwieldy, like herding cats. Whether the coalition will require two or more partners depends on the final results.

One of the things that is interesting about the results is how dependent on older voters the CDU/CSU are (see the link for a breakdown).

I can’t speculate on whether the Germans are voting for change. I can see how they might want change but whether that’s what they’re signaling is beyond my ken. I think that Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) is high on their own supply if they actually think they’ll be invited to form a coalition with the CDU/CSU and that a coalition of the CDU/CSU and SPD is very unlikely to produce change.

Just as I’m complaining how much of what we’re hearing about the war in Ukraine is propaganda, the Institute for the Study of War produces a useful factsheet on the war. Here’s a sample:

Key Takeaways

• Zelensky does not imminently risk losing all of Ukraine.
• Most Ukrainian cities have not been destroyed.
• Ukrainian law prohibits holding elections in wartime (unlike the US Constitution which requires it).
• Ukraine has not suffered millions of losses.
• Europe provides about as much direct aid to Ukraine as the US.
• European loans to Ukraine are backed by income from frozen Russian assets, not Ukraine.
• Ukraine did not misuse or lose half of the aid the United States has provided.
• Ukraine repeatedly invited Putin to negotiate in early 2022.

It is extensively footnoted which I appreciate.

In many ways it’s a very coy document—it is very carefully phrased. I’ll leave it to the reader to discern the ways in which that is the case.

One of the areas in which I have particular interest (bullet point seven) includes this passage from the document referenced in the footnote:

Despite the changes made to EEUM inventory processes and the improvement of delinquency rates in Ukraine since February 2022, the DoD did not fully comply with EEUM program requirements for defense article accountability in a hostile environment.

and

The DoD did not fully comply with EEUM program requirements in a hostile environment to ensure defense articles transferred to Ukraine are being stored, secured, and used in accordance with the terms and conditions of the relevant transfer agreements and Chapter 8 of the SAMM.

Consequently, a more objective phrasing of the bullet point might be that Ukraine did not misuse or lose half of the aid the United States has provided directly to Ukraine as far as we know.

Still it’s a very handy summary as far as it goes.