Given the outrage over Russia’s hacking of the DNC, I’m surprised at how muted the reaction has been to the incident of China’s seizing a U. S. drone. The New York Times reports:

BEIJING — Only a day before a small Chinese boat sidled up to a United States Navy research vessel in waters off the Philippines and audaciously seized an underwater drone from American sailors, the commander of United States military operations in the region told an audience in Australia that America had a winning military formula.

“Capability times resolve times signaling equals deterrence,” Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. told a blue-chip crowd of diplomats and analysts at the prestigious Lowy Institute in Sydney, the leading city in America’s closest ally in the region.

In the eyes of America’s friends in Asia, the brazen maneuver to launch an operation against an American Navy vessel in international waters in the South China Sea about 50 miles from the Philippines, another close American ally, has raised questions about one of the admiral’s crucial words. It was also seen by some as a taunt to President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has challenged the One China policy on Taiwan and has vowed to deal forcefully with Beijing in trade and other issues.

“The weak link is the resolve, and the Chinese are testing that, as well as baiting Trump,” said Euan Graham, the director of international security at the Lowy Institute. “Capability, yes. Signaling, yes, with sending F-22 fighter jets to Australia. But the very muted response means the equation falls down on resolve.”

The administration has certainly not handled the situation as I would have, proof positive that you wouldn’t want me as president.

I can’t help but wonder if the action wasn’t China’s response to Donald Trump’s accepting the congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s president.

Update

For more background on the incident see this piece by Gordon Chang at the Daily Beast:

The seizure is only the latest act in a course of belligerent conduct spanning this century. The most notorious incident involved the clipping of the wing of a U.S. Navy EP-3 over the South China Sea on April 1, 2001 by a reckless Chinese pilot. After the stricken American plane landed on the Chinese island of Hainan, Beijing imprisoned the crew for 11 days and stripped the plane of its sensitive electronic equipment. Chinese leaders, for no apparent reason, required the craft to be chopped up so that it could not be flown away.
In September 2002, China’s media claimed a Chinese fishing boat intentionally rammed the Bowditch in the Yellow Sea to disable its sonar. The incident—there may have been no ramming but there was dangerous harassment of the Bowditch—occurred in international water.
In March 2009, Chinese craft tried to sever the towed sonar array from the USNS Impeccable in international water in the South China Sea. The Victorious, Impeccable’s sister ship, was subject to extreme harassment in March and May 2009.

Mr. Chang is more belligerent about the incident than I am if anything.

Update 2

The editors of the Wall Street Journal echo the observation I made above about the incident:

Some think the theft is a response to Donald Trump’s decision to take a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s President. But the People’s Liberation Army has pulled these stunts before. In April 2001, a PLA pilot tried a dangerous intercept with a U.S. spy plane in international airspace. He misjudged the distance, losing his own life and causing the U.S. plane to make an emergency landing in China. Beijing released the crew and plane after a 10-day standoff.

but see it as part of China’s ongoing testing of American resolve:

China’s behavior shows its intention to intimidate its neighbors and establish hegemony in East Asia. In recent weeks the PLA air force has flown practice bombing missions, with fighter escorts, near the Japanese island of Okinawa and around Taiwan. The Japanese air force scrambled to intercept Chinese planes 571 times last year, up from 96 in 2010. Recently China has deployed military forces on disputed shoals in the South China Sea, contradicting President Xi Jinping’s promise to Mr. Obama.

China objects to U.S. Navy and Air Force transits near these shoals. The Obama Administration promised to carry out such missions regularly but then restricted the Pentagon to a handful. That sent a message that the U.S. can be intimidated from exercising its rights.

The incident in 2001 was transparently intended to test President Bush. I’m generally wary of the “resolve” argument as applied to foreign policy. I don’t think there is such a thing as abstracted resolve. There are, however, specific responses to specific developments. From my vantage point criticizing a lack of resolve relies on the fantasy that if we were only just determined enough, darn it, all of our foreign policy problems would evaporate, ultimately just another word for militarism.

My general impression is that for whatever reason the Chinese military does not particularly respect the United States or the U. S. military. We haven’t really given them any reason to do so. China’s foreign policy objectives clearly include asserting its imagined rightful place in the world and tweaking the U. S. is their way of puffing themselves up.

When I read the headline on this New York Times story, “Preaching the Gospel of Diversity, but Not Following It”, I clicked over to see whether it was about the Republicans or the Democrats. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be about the New York Times:

ONLY two of the 20-plus reporters who covered the presidential campaign for The New York Times were black. None were Latino or Asian. That’s less diversity than you’ll find in Donald Trump’s cabinet thus far. Of The Times’s newly named White House team, all six are white, as is most everyone in the Washington bureau.

Traveling to other departments, Metro has only three Latinos among its 42 reporters, in a city with the second largest Hispanic population in the country. Sports has one Asian man, two Hispanics and no African-Americans among its 21 reporters, yet blacks are plentiful among the teams they cover and the audience they serve. In the Styles section, every writer is white, while American culture is anything but.

The executive editor, Dean Baquet, is African-American. The other editors on his masthead are white. The staff with the most diversity? The news assistants, who mostly do administrative jobs and get paid the least.

I wish the story had more about the backgrounds of the people who were hired by the NYT. My guess is that the pool of candidates from which the NYT draws its reporters, editors, etc. is a pretty rarified one. I’m guessing they don’t recruit a lot of cub reporters from Central Park East High School.

In August my erstwhile employer “cut me loose” to use the euphemism they employed. It didn’t make sense. I had generated a considerable amount of net revenue for my employer during my tenure. I had excelled at everything I did. I had been something of a rainmaker. I was well-liked. I attribute my termination to a combination of bad management, company politics, and bigotry (not mine).

After a week I updated my resume and uploaded it to a variety of job sites. Then I enrolled in and took a couple of courses, got a couple of new credentials. Updated my resume accordingly and began to field job offers.

This month I’ve begun working part time and will begin working full-time after the first of the year. Now that I know how the game is played these days, I’ll continue to update my resume and interview for new positions.

I went without work for about four months, the longest such period of my adult life. It was stressful and nerve-wracking.

For me being unemployed wasn’t a complete disaster. I save ferociously and assuming I remained in good health I could continue without a reduction in lifestyle for years.

I can only imagine what people who are in more difficult straits or have been unemployed longer are going through. Keep that in mind.

In his column in the Washington Post summarizing how U. S. policy has failed in Syria, David Ignatius remarks:

In the annals of covert warfare, the CIA’s support for the Syrian opposition deserves a special, dark chapter. The effort began late — nearly two years into the war — after extremists had already begun to dominate the fight against President Bashar al-Assad. It was a hodgepodge of regional states and their pet fighters — nominally coordinated from operations centers in Jordan and Turkey but in reality controlled by more than 80 local militias whose commanders were often corrupt and proto-jihadists themselves.

The CIA and its partners were never willing to give the opposition the weapons — especially the shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles — that could have won the battle. The agency did provide anti-tank weapons that were potent enough that Assad was rocked in the summer of 2015, and analysts began to worry about “catastrophic success,” with the regime collapsing and jihadists filling a power vacuum in Damascus. Soon after that, Russia intervened.

The CIA’s biggest problem was that its allies couldn’t stop the dominance of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra. The “vetted” opposition groups might pretend otherwise, but they were fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra, which rebranded itself this year as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. The extremists attracted the other opposition groups for a simple reason: Their fighters were the most willing to die for the cause.

U. S. policy in the conflict has been to oppose the Assad regime and support the rebels against him with money, equipment, training, and U. S. advisors.

What should U. S. policy with respect to Syria have been?

1. Butt out.
2. Publicly, butt out. Privately, discourage our allies in the region from helping the rebels and maintain negative reciprocity with the Russians.
3. Support the Assad regime against the rebels.
4. U. S. policy in the Syrian conflict has been perfect in every way.
5. Do everything we’ve done plus establish a “no-fly” zone.
6. Do more of everything we’ve done.
7. Do more of everything we’ve done plus establish a “no-fly” zone.
8. Full scale direct military intervention.

I am inclined to (B) with (A) my second preference and (C) a distant third. I believe that Mr. Ignatius’s preference was (G). Or maybe (H).

The mechanics of the meetings of the members of the Electoral College aren’t spelled out in the Constitution but in Chapter 1 of Title 3, United States Code:

§ 7. The electors of President and Vice President of each State shall meet and give their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment at such place in each State as the legislature of such State shall direct.

For those of you who have been playing at home, tomorrow is the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December and where they meet depends on your state’s laws. In Illinois that’s governed by 10 ILCS 5/21-4:

Sec. 21-4. Presidential electors; meeting; allowance. The electors, elected under this Article, shall meet at the office of the Secretary of State in a room to be designated by the Secretary in the Capitol at Springfield in this State, at the time appointed by the laws of the United States at the hour of ten o’clock in the forenoon of that day, and give their votes for President and for Vice-President of the United States, in the manner provided in this Article, and perform such duties as are or may be required by law.

Typically, the voting of the electors is pretty quotidian. Like everything else in this highly contentious presidential cycle tomorrow’s proceedings may not be, at least in some states. Here in Illinois, of course, all of our electors will vote for Hillary Clinton.

At Outside the Beltway Steven L. Taylor has helpfully outlined the possible scenarios that might unfold:

1. The electors act as messengers, delivering to their state capitals the electoral votes corresponding to the candidate who won the given state (as per the above, with 306 going to Trump and 232 to Clinton).
2. The same as the above, but with a handful of faithless electors who wish to make a political point, but with nowhere close to enough to threaten the 270 Trump needs to win.
3. Thirty-seven, or more, electors could defect from Trump to vote for neither Clinton nor Trump, but instead for Candidate X (or splitting the 37 votes for X, Y, Z, etc.). This would throw the election to the House of Representatives (with the top three vote-getters as the choices for the chamber).
4. Thirty-seven Trump electors could vote for Clinton, tying the contest at 269-269, which would throw the election to the House of Representatives.
5. Thirty-eight, or more, Trump electors could defect to Clinton. If she could hold her 232 in that case she would have the 270 needed to be elected president.
6. Two-hundred and seventy electors defect and choose Candidate X.

“Faithless elector” is the term applied to electors who vote for a candidate other than as prescribed under state law. The largest number of faithless electors in any presidential cycle was in 1872 when all 63 Democratic electors voted for a candidate other than the Democratic candidate. That candidate, Horace Greeley, had been inconsiderate enough to die shortly after the election.

Entire state delegations, e.g. Pennsylvania’s in 1832, have defected, but all in all faithless electors have been rare.

Of the scenarios outlined by Dr. Taylor above, I think that #2 is by far the most likely which means that the Electoral College will have elected Donald Trump to the presidency. In my estimation a distant second most likely is #3 in which case anything goes.

Don’t be lulled into believing that the controversy will end with the voting of the electors. I feel confident in predicting that the next four years will be as filled with controversy as any presidential term in American history.

I am a bit disappointed. Back in the first week of October I sent around 50 home movies, several hundred slides, some dating from the 1930s, and one videotape out for digitization. I had hoped I would have received them by now.

The original length of time the process was supposed to have taken was eight weeks. That would have meant I would have had them in hand around the first week of December. They’re likely to be at least three weeks late.

The lesson here is plan ahead. Way ahead.

At The Week Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry makes his case in favor of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State:

But I see Tillerson as an excellent, very inspired pick. Let me explain.

The objections come down to mainly two things: Tillerson’s qualifications, and his seemingly friendly ties to Vladimir Putin, who (now infamously) awarded Tillerson Russia’s Order of Friendship. Let’s take those gripes one by one.

Dealing with governments is an integral part of running a major oil company. Governments play key roles in any energy deals, and dealing with those governments is part of the job. An in-depth feature by Politico’s Hounshell describes Tillerson’s rise through the ranks at ExxonMobil as driven at least in part by his skill — and toughness — in dealing with governments, including trouble spot governments.

In other words, there’s no question that Tillerson is intimately familiar with the geopolitics, politics, and characters involved in many of the trouble spots that are key for American policy, including places like Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East, West Africa, and Venezuela. Before being assigned to Russia, Tillerson spent three weeks in the Library of Congress reading books about Russian history and politics. He’s no dummy.

Just because he didn’t take part in international negotiations and geostrategic thinking as a State Department diplomat or member of a Senate committee doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to do those things; in fact, he has done them throughout his career, and pretty successfully as far as we can tell. That makes him exceptionally qualified.

I don’t have strong feelings one way or another about this appointment. As I repeatedly said about President Obama’s cabinet appointments, I think that the president deserves substantial deference when it comes to picking his own team.

Additionally, I’m not sure I can distinguish among principled opposition, partisan opposition, just plain opposition, and turf war. I sense some of each in what I’ve read on Mr. Tillerson’s appointment.

The graphic above illustrates the history of attempts at modernizing, streamlining, and evading the standard military procurement system over the period of the last 20 years. It comes from this post at the Center for a New American Security proposing ways of exploiting our technological superiority for strategic advantage which I encourage you to read.

A major problem is that really harnessing modern technology means decentralizing and that will be opposed bitterly by people whose livelihoods and futures depend on centralization.

The United States has subsidized sugar for 82 years. Like most federal subsidies our programs subsidize producers rather than consumers—the specific objective of the programs have been to raise sugar prices and it’s been effective. Americans pay $300 million per year to support the program. For more information on U. S. sugar subsidies see here.

Our sugar subsidies have had a number of consequences. For example, they have encouraged the development of the Everglades for sugar production with serious environmental consequences. They have made artificial sweeteners and corn syrup more competitive with sugar than would otherwise have been the case and there is some evidence that artificial sweeteners and high fructose corn syrup actually cause cravings for sweets. Ironically, recent studies have found that artificial sweeteners, specifically aspartame, may be counter-productive in weight loss.

The case for maintaining the sugar subsidies is quite weak. But they have new allies—people who want to raise the price of sugar for health reasons. The Washington Post remarks:

Soda taxes have become a weapon of choice among public-health advocates: In the past year alone, six U.S. cities and counties have begun targeting sugar intake by taxing sugary beverages.

But while there’s evidence that these measures reduce soda consumption, economists say there is a very simple way to more effectively reduce sugar and sweetener intake. In a nutshell, don’t tax the soda — tax the sugar it contains.

According to a new research report by the Urban Institute, such an approach would reduce both sugar consumption and consumer burden more than the volume taxes — which tax beverages by the fluid ounce — that are favored by cities and counties across the United States. What’s more, they might also encourage manufacturers to reformulate some high-sugar beverages.

“The whole point is this:” said Donald Marron, who directs economic policy initiatives at the Urban Institute. “If you’re going to have taxes on soda, and if those taxes are motivated by sugar, then the tax should be on the amount of sugar.”

This is a wonderful example of conflicting objectives in public policies. My instinct is that the sugar subsidies should be abolished. But that would have the effect of lowering the prices of sugar and products that contain sugar.

If you’re going to tax sugar, again my instinct is that you shouldn’t favor fructose over sucrose or any other sweetener, natural or artificial. But that will rally considerably more opposition to enacting the tax.

And, of course, a tax on sweeteners would hurt consumers, intentionally so. It’s the mechanism that makes them an effective means of reducing consumption.

That’s why there’s a quandary about sugar.