Cromwell

The Economist acknowledges the danger of climate change and wants to do something about it. That something, of course, is a carbon tax. It constantly criticizes Biden and the Democrats for supporting and approving a system of massive green subsidies which it considers to be wasteful and protectionist.

The criticism is logically correct and totally beside the point. Biden chose subsidies because a carbon tax is politically impossible. It is politically impossible because the GOP is adamantly opposed to any kind of new taxes (except tariffs, of course).

Who are the leaders of the GOP? Why, the kind of people who read The Economist. If the editors of the magazine want to do something useful, they will try to persuade their readers instead of attacking Biden for using the one avenue that is legally and politically available to him to avert climate disaster.

The Economist is a strong supporter of liberal democracy around the world, and it is fully aware of the military threat posed by China in its backyard. On the other hand, it was created over a century ago for the purpose of promoting free trade, so American efforts to limit our exposure to, and dependence on, Chinese exports are naturally viewed with suspicion. As a result, we have seen a series of articles and special sections over the last few months to the effect that de-risking is impossible, or unnecessary, or is already failing. Do these positions have merit?

Here are my reactions to some of these articles:

1. On the one hand, we have been told that the American effort to diversify supply chains away from China are a miserable failure, because the Chinese are manufacturing and selling critical components to companies in countries like Vietnam. On the other hand, the numbers indicate that China’s overall trade surplus has dropped significantly. How can this be, if the diversification process has been such a disaster?
2. The series on the weaknesses of the Chinese military was based on a faulty premise–that the biggest threat was an invasion of Taiwan. For reasons I have laid out on several occasions, an amphibious assault on Taiwan would be far too risky; the Chinese will rely on missiles and an air and sea blockade instead. Any holes in China’s ability to pull off an invasion are consequently of little importance.
3. One cannot logically argue concurrently that de-risking is impossible and that it is unnecessary due to the ability of the American private sector to adapt quickly to supply chain problems.

Like The Economist, I would like to see an end to Trump’s stupid Chinese tariffs, but the Biden approach to tech exports with national security applications makes perfect sense.

Javier Milei certainly looks and sounds like a right-wing populist. He has the swagger, the anger, and the reactionary views on social issues to fit the bill. But Milei is operating in an environment in which populist economics are the status quo. As a result, he ran as a radical deregulator. Think of Paul Ryan’s head on Trump’s body.

This unusual combination of CL and Reactionary, reminiscent of the Tea Party, probably won’t work in the end, because CL economic measures are the very antithesis of populism. They promise long-term gain in exchange for intense short-term pain that is typically intolerable for a reasonably prosperous democratic electorate. They can only work if the country as a whole is so fed up with the existing system, it feels it has nothing to lose (Poland and the Baltic states) or if the government is willing and able to use force to impose them (Pinochet). Milei is not in a position to do the latter, and it is doubtful that Argentina as a whole is ready for the former.

The real irony here, of course, is that Trump is a Peronist at heart. The success of his Argentinian right-wing counterpart and the economic failures of the previous government should operate as a warning to him. Not that they will.

Joe Biden initially ran in 2020 as a moderate who could work with Republicans, get things done, and beat Trump. When the pandemic completely changed the political landscape, he turned into a wannabe FDR who would transform the dollar store economy into something more equitable for workers. In office, he had some successes, but the FDR phase died at the hands of inflation, Manchin, and Sinema. So how will he run in 2024? Will he try to inspire the public with leftist rhetoric, or will he be the Great Triangulator?

I think we will see some of both, but mostly B. The fear of Trump in office is still his strongest card, and there is no realistic possibility of the Democrats winning a large enough majority in the Senate to ram through an ambitious agenda. In fact, the likelihood is that they won’t have a majority at all after 2024.

In 2016, if you weren’t paying attention, it was just possible to believe that Donald Trump was a brilliant outsider businessman who would make America great again by upsetting a turgid status quo and making inspired deals with politicians on both sides of the aisle. Millions of people voted for him for that very reason. We all know how that turned out. It was an illusion.

In 2024, if Trump wins, it will probably be because millions of Americans think he will bring back the economy of 2019, and that all of the authoritarian talk is just empty noise. That is also an illusion. The truth is that Trump has no idea how to bring back 2019, but he now knows very well how to make himself a strongman, and he is grimly determined to do so. This time, take him both seriously and literally.

Irsay, an incredibly rich white guy whose family is best known for spiriting the Colts out of Baltimore in the middle of the night, claims he was arrested for DUI in 2014 because he is a white billionaire. To be sure, that puts a completely different spin on the concept of the offense of DWB.

What can we learn from this? First of all, the idea that the law only applies to little people isn’t limited to Donald Trump. Second, Irsay is either so caught up in the right-wing culture of victimization that he has actually started to believe it, or he’s so cynical that he thinks there is a large audience for it. Either way, it’s not a pretty sight.

Putin apparently told representatives of the G20 yesterday that the Ukraine war was a “tragedy,” making it sound like an earthquake or a hurricane. The war was a choice–his choice. It wasn’t imposed on him. He can stop it any time he likes.

The Ukrainians, the civilians in Gaza, and hundreds of millions of other people around the world have precious little reason to be thankful today. Americans are not in that group, regardless of what Trump and his friends will tell you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s always a mistake to pay ransoms, according to the leadership of the GOP. As a matter of principle, we should never deal with terrorists. In addition, it just encourages more hostage taking. Democrats who make deals for hostages are just unprincipled wimps who don’t have the guts to stand up for what’s right.

Of course, Bibi makes deals for hostages. Is the GOP outraged? Have you heard, say, Tom Cotton talk about what wimps the Israelis are?

Silence. That rule only applies to Democrats.

Vladimir Putin is meeting with his defense minister to talk about the war.

P: We need to start making some progress on the war. I have some ideas to bounce off you.

DM: OK. Shoot. Not literally, of course.

P: We could expand the draft and overwhelm the Ukrainians with our manpower advantage. We can’t possibly lose a war of attrition with them, and Russian lives are cheap.

DM: There would be a huge public outcry. Anyway, we don’t have enough ammunition for the troops we already have. What good would it do?

P: We can increase our ammunition purchases from Iran and North Korea.

DM: They’re pretty well tapped out, and they have their own issues to deal with.

P: We can request more aid from China.

DM: They have too much to lose by giving it to us.

P: We can open a new front by attacking Odesa.

DM: Our ships have to stay too far from shore to permit any kind of amphibious assault.

P: We can stop their grain shipments.

DM: We tried that. They created new trade routes and protected them. We can’t do anything more than what we’re doing now without putting the Black Sea fleet at risk.

P: We can use oil and gas as a weapon against NATO.

DM: That hasn’t worked, either. Europe has adapted. They have adequate stocks for the winter.

P: We can get more diplomatic support from the Third World, based on issues with food supplies.

DM: Food prices have stabilized. Some of those countries vaguely support us, but they won’t really do anything to help us.

P: We could bring Belarus into the war.

DM: Lukashenko will never agree to that. He relies on the military to stay in power. If he sends them outside the country, who is going to protect him from the public?

P: Well, we could open a new front from Belarus.

DM: We don’t have the resources to do that.

P: We can use disinformation to divide NATO.

DM: We’ve been doing that from the beginning, with minimal success.

P: Well, if all else fails, we can support Donald Trump. If he wins the 2024 election, all of our problems will be solved.

DM: That sounds like a plan to me.

So far, the GOP has had a good Gaza war. The right, with a few notable antisemitic exceptions, has been united in favor of Israel’s right to bounce the rubble; the left, on the other hand, is divided, mostly along generational lines. For the left, Gaza is a wedge issue, just as abortion is for the right. It represents a problem that needs to be fixed before the 2024 election.

And in time, it probably will be. Biden embraced the Israeli cause as long as it revolved around getting rid of Hamas, but the focus of the struggle is about to change to what happens next. Every indication we have suggests that Bibi sees an indefinite occupation as the least worst alternative. Biden isn’t going to agree with that, and his rhetoric about political initiatives is going to sound more and more pro-Palestinian. That will help unite the left, while the right will continue talking about bouncing the rubble and ignoring Arab opinion during the campaign.

In short, the generational issue on the left won’t go away, but it should be possible to put a patch on it.

Europeans would love to have the American economy. Inflation and unemployment are much lower here than in Europe. American voters, however, aren’t giving Biden any credit for this. Why?

Because, for American voters, the baseline isn’t Europe; it’s the economy of 2019, with both low unemployment and inflation rates. As far as they’re concerned, the pandemic was just a temporary obstacle that should have been in our rear view mirror over a year ago. They hate inflation, because they haven’t experienced it in 30 years. They blame Biden for all of this.

The fact that this makes no sense, and that Trump would only make things worse with his tariffs, doesn’t seem to matter right now. Will it in November? We’ll see.

People rarely notice the absence of something, so it may have escaped your attention that the war hasn’t widened yet. Why? For the reasons I set out a few days ago, and because Biden has wisely kept his responses in proportion to the actions from the Iranian proxies.

If Hezbollah or Iran were going to do something meaningful in retaliation, it surely would have happened by now. The absence of such escalation is good news for the whole world.

Now, if we can just get the Israelis to offer some reason for the poor people of Gaza to find hope for their future . . .

The Israeli right is fond of arguing that Iran and its proxies individually and collectively represent an existential threat to their country. Are they correct?

Hamas is just a terrorist group. It doesn’t have the manpower, the resources, or the expertise to destroy Israel. It accomplished about all it was capable of last month, and is currently paying the price for it. It is in no way an existential threat.

Hezbollah has professional soldiers and much better weapons than Hamas. It has its hands full operating a state within a state in Lebanon, however. It doesn’t have much of an offensive capability, and it doesn’t have an answer for Iron Dome. It will continue to represent a threat to Israel for the foreseeable future, as the cost of eliminating it through offensive action would be unacceptably high, but it is not an existential threat.

An Iran armed with nukes would appear to jeopardize Israel’s very existence. Thanks to the decision by Trump, spurred on by Netanyahu, to withdraw from the nuclear deal, the Iranians are closer to getting the bomb than ever before. Given that Israel is certainly covered under America’s nuclear umbrella, and probably has the ability to deliver a deadly second strike even after a reasonably successful first strike, for Iran to attack the Jewish state would be an act of suicide. The existential threat argument, therefore, doesn’t even apply to Iran.

But would Putin say that Iran is protected by Russia’s nuclear umbrella, and if he did, would his statement be credible? That would never have occurred prior to 2022, but it is a reasonable possibility now. It would put the ability of America and Israel to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike in question. Let’s hope we never find out.

If there is one thing on which all of the GOP presidential candidates can agree, it is the cure for inflation: drill, baby, drill! If we put an end to the onerous Biden restrictions on drilling, the price of gas will drop immediately, and the overall inflation rate will follow. It’s a sure winner!

Leaving aside the ghastly environmental consequences of this approach, here are the pertinent facts:

1. As everyone knows, the price of gas is not currently soaring into the stratosphere. In fact, in spite of unfavorable geopolitical developments, it is actually falling at the present time.
2. Notwithstanding that, the record shows that gas is more expensive today than at most times during the past decade, including just before the beginning of the pandemic, when GDP growth was similar to what it is today.
3. But the notion that restrictions imposed by Biden on drilling have reduced domestic production is not borne out by the facts. American oil production has recently hit record highs.

The bottom line here is that gas prices rise and fall for a variety of reasons that have little to do with Biden or any other president. It is stupid to either give him credit for falling prices or to blame him for price increases. That won’t stop the GOP from trying, of course.

The brutality of the Hamas attack on Israel persuaded Biden to tolerate a large number of Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza City so long as the Israelis made reasonable efforts to segregate civilians from militants and provide them with humanitarian aid. The initial phase of the war is reaching its conclusion, however, and the agreement between America and Israel is probably going to end, based on the signals coming out of the Israeli government.

In light of world opinion and simple human decency, Biden needs to make it clear that America will provide neither material aid nor diplomatic cover for either an Israeli occupation of indefinite duration or a large-scale assault on the supposedly safe areas in the southern part of Gaza. As far as we’re concerned, the point of the invasion was not to annihilate the population nor to oppress it in perpetuity; it was to replace a group of terrorists with a regime that could co-exist with Israel and make Gaza flourish.