While our attention is focused on impeachment inquiries, Brexit, and the withdrawal of U. S. forces from Syria, portentous events are taking place much closer at hand. Consider this report from Reuters:

CULIACAN, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico sent in special forces troops on Monday to patrol a northern city in the wake of a cartel assault that freed Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s son in a hail of bullets, and also won a U.S. promise to help stop gun-smuggling at their shared border.

More than 400 soldiers turned up in Culiacan over the weekend after gunmen from the Sinaloa cartel briefly took control of the city and forced security forces to free the drug lord’s son from a botched arrest attempt last week.

“We are going to protect the citizens, that is our mission,” said General Carlos Ramon Carrillo de Villar, who oversaw formations of soldiers marching at a media event. “We are fighting insecurity.”

The convoys of army trucks with mounted machine guns rumbling through Culiacan’s streets were meant to instill confidence. However, a national poll on Monday showed two thirds of respondents believe drug lords and mobsters are more powerful than the government after the gunbattles last week that forced an army retreat.

Sinaloa public safety director Cristobal Castaneda told news anchor Joaquin Lopez Doriga that 13 people were killed during the disturbances that ran late into Thursday night.

That doesn’t really cover the seriousness of the situation. What happened is that cartel forces armed with military weapons and equipment defeated Mexican regulars in a pitched battle and took control of a regional capital, displaying better training, morale, and force cohesion that the regulars did. That the Mexican government needed to send in “elite” forces to retake the city is not a good sign.

That is not merely organized crime. It is a genuine civil war and a destabilized Mexico is terrible news for us. Not only could it bring a resurgence of Mexican migrants fleeing the violence but a weakened Mexico is less able to staunch the flow of migrants from Central America. An uncontrolled border with a part of Mexico that is ungoverned or under the control of criminal cartels does not sound like a benign development to me.

It has always been obvious that our situation, with weak, passive aggressive neighbors on the north and south and fish on the east and west, would not persist indefinitely. I have always thought that our considered strategy of weak neighbors has been an error. What we should have sought was something much more challenging to achieve: strong, friendly neighbors.

But the situation is what it is and developments in Mexico certainly sound dire.

If you think the furor over leaving Syria and outrage over “abandoning the Kurds” is something, wait until we leave Afghanistan. In a piece at Foreign Affairs Carter Malkasian contemplates that eventuality:

A Taliban advance would likely follow a U.S. withdrawal. The events of the years 2014 to 2016 offer a cautionary tale. During those years, the United States minimized airstrikes, because it believed that doing so could allow the Afghans to learn to fight on their own. Instead, the Taliban all but captured several provinces, including Kunduz and Helmand. Heavy casualties and desertions thinned the ranks of the Afghan military and police. In 2016, the United States went back to permitting airstrikes and thus stemmed the Taliban advance.

If the president decides, whether in 2021 or before, to fully withdraw from Afghanistan, those airstrikes would cease. The United States would close all its bases and stop conducting surveillance in support of Afghan forces. All U.S. drones and troops would depart, including special operations forces and advisers. U.S. allies and coalition partners would undoubtedly pull out their 8,700 troops, too. Washington could continue to provide funding to the Afghan military at a reduced level, but Congress would be sorely tempted to eliminate such support once U.S. troops were out of harm’s way. Just how long a withdrawal would take is a matter of debate: the Obama administration once planned for a timeline of 30 months, but some have called for one that is even shorter.

Toward the end of the withdrawal process, the balance of military force within the country would tip. The Taliban’s leader, Mawlawi Haibatullah, would probably attack provincial centers such as Kunduz and Lashkar Gah. The Afghan army and police would not be able to defend these cities without U.S. air support. The following year, Haibatullah could escalate, striking big cities such as Kandahar and Jalalabad. Afghan special operations forces, the National Directorate of Security, and certain hard-bitten tribal leaders would fight tooth and nail. But chances are good that a significant number of soldiers and police would flee, leaving the Taliban tide to overwhelm the big provincial cities’ defenses.

Kabul itself could then spontaneously fall. Once tribal leaders, police, soldiers, and farmers sense which way the wind is blowing, the whole edifice of the Afghan state could collapse. Such was the sequence of events in 2001 and many times before, as Professor Thomas Barfield writes in Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History: “The war did not have any decisive battles. Just as the Taliban had come to power by persuading people that they were winners without fighting . . . they lost the war in a reverse process.”

But Kabul also stands a decent chance of surviving. Afghanistan’s army might concentrate on defending the capital, and Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara warlords—who once made up the Northern Alliance—could mobilize militias to help. Outside powers could oppose the Taliban: Russia, in defense of long-standing Uzbek and Tajik friends; Iran, to protect the Shiite Hazaras; and India, in order to contain Pakistani influence. None of these countries can be assumed to step in fully behind the government, but a total Taliban victory would be in none of their interests.

Regardless of Kabul’s fate, however, the Taliban would control at least half the country, including several cities, fertile croplands, and mineral deposits. Under such circumstances, al Qaeda, ISIS, and like-minded groups would gain access to territory and resources. Other foreign terrorists would join them in Afghanistan, where a perceived Taliban victory over the United States would serve as a beacon to foreign extremists.

I do not believe there is any way to “win” in Afghanistan. The Afghan military and government have demonstrated no ability to stand on their own against the Taliban. We cannot eliminate the Taliban without antagonizing Pakistan and supporting our military efforts within Afghanistan would be prohibitively expensive without Pakistan’s cooperation. Consequently in order to “win” we would not only need to eliminate the Taliban within Afghanistan but pursue them into adjacent parts of Pakistan against Pakistani opposition and be prepared to fight the Pakistanis as well as the Taliban. And Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

If winning and successful counter-insurgency are beyond our reach, what’s left in Afghanistan? As I see it there are two viable alternatives. We could just leave, to massive domestic opposition of which the present opposition to withdrawing from Syria is a mild foretaste.

Or we could prepare to remain forever, keeping what has been characterized as a “small, lethal force” in Afghanistan on an indefinite basis with a strategy of counter-terrorism to prevent the contingency mentioned by Mr. Malkasian:

Under such circumstances, al Qaeda, ISIS, and like-minded groups would gain access to territory and resources. Other foreign terrorists would join them in Afghanistan, where a perceived Taliban victory over the United States would serve as a beacon to foreign extremists.

That essentially mimics Alexander’s strategy more than two millennia ago and he was the most successful invader of Afghanistan in history. If such a strategy were adopted, I think there would be a moral not to mention political necessity of selling it to the American people. IMO a significant fraction of Americans would just as soon obliterate Afghanistan utterly as remain there.

California’s increases in its taxes on income have, presumably, had the desired effect. High earners are leaving the state. The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark:

Stanford economists Joshua Rauh and Ryan Shyu analyzed how high earners responded to a 2012 referendum (Prop. 30) backed by Democrats that raised the top marginal rate on taxpayers with more than $1 million of income to 13.3% from 10.3%. The top rates on individuals earning more than $250,000 also rose between one and two percentage points.

First, the researchers examined whether higher taxes caused top earners to leave the state by measuring migration before and after Prop. 30 took effect. They noted a large uptick in the departure rate of taxpayers with more than $5 million in income following the tax hike—from 1.5% to 2.125%—and a commensurate outflow for taxpayers earning between $2 million and $5 million.

This essentially means that the likelihood of a wealthy resident moving out of California increased by about 40% after Prop. 30. Notably, the federal top marginal rate also rose in 2013, which the authors say softened the impact because the deductibility of state taxes also increased. After the GOP tax reform, state and local taxes are no longer fully deductible so the incentive to move is now greater.

Next, the economists examined how incomes changed in response to the tax hike by comparing filings from in-state high earners to non-residents. They found that “California top-earners on average report $522,000 less in taxable income than their counterfactuals in 2012, $357,000 less in 2013, and $599,000 less in 2014.”

Non-investment income accounted for most of the decline in earnings. The economists don’t give a reason, but it may be that high earners have responded to the tax hike by working less—for instance, logging fewer billable hours—or deferring compensation.

In sum, the study estimates that outward migration and taxpayer behavioral responses erased 45.2% of the expected revenue gains from the tax hike on top earners. This is especially relevant since liberal economists argue that the rich don’t care about marginal tax rates and raising the top income rate to 70% won’t affect revenue or incentives to work.

They’re certainly not moving to Illinois. They’re moving to Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, and Washington. If California can’t raise taxes and retain its high earners, what chance is there for Illinois?

This has all been played out before. High earners left the UK for France and the United States until the UK lowered its income taxes in self-defense. With transportation and communications as they are I expect people to start moving to places with no income tax, e.g. Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, or places with low taxes like Belize. Those are all English-speaking and just a quick plane trip from the United States.

At an article at War on the Rocks on the lost art of exiting a war, Adam Wunische opens with a pair of sentences that warm the cockles of my elderly heart:

The best way to ensure a speedy exit from a war is to have never intervened in the first place. The second-best option is to have an exit strategy.

For the last thirty years we had presidents that didn’t do exits and now we have one that doesn’t do planning. Isn’t there another alternative?

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass remarks on Hunter Biden’s remarkable ability to garner cash from countries in which his father had responsibility for the foreign policy:

It was categorically wrong for then-Vice President Biden — as the Obama administration point man to Ukraine and China — to have his son Hunter cashing in on business deals in both countries, including $50,000 a month from Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

I don’t know if it was a crime, but it was a clear conflict of interest. The legendary Chicago boss Richard J. Daley leveraged his clout to help his sons. When asked about it, Daley told reporters to kiss his mistletoe. But Daley didn’t say mistletoe.

The reason the late Mayor Daley could be so blunt is that he was much more confident he would be elected than Joe Biden is.

VP Biden is reduced to scaling the Big Rock Candy Mountain with the other Democratic aspirants.

An article at USA Today warns that people are leaving San Francisco because they can’t afford it:

SAN FRANCISCO — Social media influencer Sarah Tripp and her husband, Robbie Tripp, moved to San Francisco in 2016 brimming with optimism.

“We thought, here’s a city full of opportunities and connections where you go to work hard and succeed,” says Tripp, 27, founder of the lifestyle blog Sassy Red Lipstick.

But after a year-long hunt for suitable housing in San Francisco only turned up “places for $1 million that looked like rundown shacks and needed a remodel,” the couple packed up and moved to Phoenix.

They went from paying San Francisco rents of $2,500 for a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment that was far from shopping and other amenities, to purchasing a newly constructed 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bathroom home where they’ll raise their newly arrived baby boy.

“It was cool to be living near all those high-tech startups,” Tripp says of her Bay Area years. “But you quickly saw that if you weren’t part of that, you’d be pushed out. It’s just sad.”

They should be careful. There will be an assumption that if you aren’t in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, or Seattle, you’re third rate. If you’re so smart, why aren’t you in San Francisco? Not being there will not only make it harder to be seen as credible, it will make it harder for you to get financial backing should you need it.

In his Wall Street Journal column Andy Kessler remarks on the amusing and self-destructive impulse for all companies to become tech companies:

Does technology provide a competitive advantage? Companies are counting on it. In March McDonald’s spent $300 million buying an Israeli artificial-intelligence startup to personalize menus based on weather and trending items. Now they’re considering license-plate recognition systems for drive-through lanes. Based on your history they might offer to supersize your order, or just hand you your usual Happy Meal. CEO Steve Easterbrook says, “Technology is a critical element of our Velocity Growth Plan.”

The problem is that adopting a useful technology doesn’t mean your advantage will last. I’ve long been amused by a succession of Harvard Business Review pieces that demonstrate this point. In 1985 Michael E. Porter wrote “How Information Gives You Competitive Advantage,” then in 1990 came Max Hopper’s “Rattling SABRE—New Ways to Compete on Information,” and finally in 2013 we got Rita Gunther McGrath’s “The End of Competitive Advantage.” Each of these takes describes a different stage in the life cycle of corporate tech.

concluding

Today every company wants to reinvent itself as a tech firm, but they should be careful what they wish for. The surefire approach is using data to capture and keep customers, even for Big Macs. Once a company steps on the technology treadmill by investing in a new system, it better run fast. Tech investing used to be about chips and software, but as it becomes more about using technology more innovatively than your competitor, more companies are vulnerable to the Hopper syndrome of remaster or die.

Just because you’re able to use a smartphone does not mean you’re able to design one. It takes a certain culture to be technology-driven and, once they reach a certain size, even notionally technology companies tend to lose it. We already seen an object lesson in Boeing. Keeping costs low while increasing the high tech content of their products may have cost them the company. The fallout of their folly hasn’t ended yet.

IMO auto companies should make the best, best-selling, and most cost-effective cars they can, entertainment companies should make the best content they can, and so on rather than trying to refashion themselves as tech companies. Leave technology to startups. There is no such thing as a permanent advantage.

The editors of the Washington Post wonder why Democrats don’t enact a carbon tax:

If governments recycled the revenue back to low-income and vulnerable people, and cut economically inefficient taxes — such as income taxes — a $50-per-ton carbon tax would feel to the economy more like $20 per ton. The plan would help low-income households and place a higher burden on the upper-income bracket. There could also be money for essential research and development to aid the energy transition.

I think there are many reasons and they vary from legislator to legislator. Politicians tend to operate in the immediate—at best they address the problems of the here and now. They don’t handle long term problems well. Even with the measure the editors propose carbon taxes will be regressive. The only question is how regressive. They don’t want to irritate their donors, either.

However structured a carbon tax will inflict economic pain. That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s a risk that the Congressional Democrats would just as soon not take, especially not alone.

There are some who would rather have the issue to run against the Republicans on or don’t want to go on the record about something they’re pretty sure the Republicans will vote against. And there are probably some who don’t really believe there’s a crisis but know a good issue when they see it.

My own view is that a carbon tax however implemented will be disappointing. That was the experience in Europe where they mostly served as vehicles for rent-seeking. Note, too, that the results in Europe tended to be reckoned by measuring inputs and assuming outputs which isn’t necessarily an effective way of going about it. And even assuming a crisis and that a high enough carbon tax could be effective, I don’t believe that legislators have the guts to impose a tax high enough to be effective, preferring a painless system that doesn’t work over a complicated, painful one that does. That’s why I emphasize nuclear power and carbon capture in the solutions I propose.

Reuters reports that Angela Merkel has realized the that multiculturalism has failed in Germany:

POTSDAM, Germany (Reuters) – Germany’s attempt to create a multicultural society has “utterly failed,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday, adding fuel to a debate over immigration and Islam polarizing her conservative camp.

Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims.

“This (multicultural) approach has failed, utterly failed,” Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, south of Berlin.

Merkel faces pressure from within her CDU to take a tougher line on immigrants who don’t show a willingness to adapt to German society and her comments appeared intended to pacify her critics.

She said too little had been required of immigrants in the past and repeated her usual line that they should learn German in order to get by in school and have opportunities on the labor market.

It’s too bad that it took her this long to learn that lesson. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has taken a harder stance, warning that Hungary would use force to repel immigrants from the Middle East.

So, multiple cultures living amicably side by side has failed. France’s policy of cultural assimilation has failed. What’s left for the ethnic states of Europe?