Cold War II

Contemplating Cold War II—————————–

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                World War II ended in 1945 and was followed shortly thereafter by Cold War I as the USSR occupied most of Eastern Europe.  It ended in December of 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. That collapse was precipitated by President Ronald Reagan’s massive defense buildup which helped convince the Soviet leaders that they could not match America’s ability to finance and maintain a superior military capability. It demonstrated the principle that a strong offensive capability backed by a strong economy is the best defense and the United States became the world’s sole superpower.

 

Those of us old enough to remember that Cold War, recall the fear and uncertainty that prevailed, knowing that a military incident or miscalculation could spin out of control and cause a devastating nuclear war. The concept of assured mutual destruction prevented that but not the fear and uncertainty or the close encounters such as the Cuban missile crisis.

 

Today, we seem to be careening toward another cold war. The Trump Administration, accused repeatedly by the left and mainstream media of cozying up to the Russians, has acted in a way that seems anything but cozy during its first two years. It recently announced that it will withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia, which bans nuclear missiles with a range between 500 to 5,500 kilometers, because of repeated Russian violations extending over the past decade. U.S. officials claim that Russia now has four battalions of the banned weapons, up from an earlier estimate of three, which has led to over 30 U.S. complaints according to our State Department.

 

Our Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, said in November that these weapons were “designed to target critical European military and economic infrastructure and thereby be in (a) position to coerce (our) NATO allies”. NATO said in a statement that its members fully support the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty but that apparently wasn’t enough for Senate Democrats, ten of whom, including presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, introduced legislation to force the U.S. to continue honoring the treaty anyway. But treaties, to be worth the paper they are written on, must be honored by all parties to it. Why should the United States unilaterally honor a treaty which limits its ability to defend itself and its allies when the other side has been cheating for ten years?

 

This is typical of the reasoning of many liberals who argue that America occupies the high road by adhering to agreements, whether dealing with arms control, climate control or trade, even though the other party or parties may be cheating or, indeed, may  have demonstrated repeatedly by past performance that they cannot be trusted to comply with the terms they have agreed to. North Korea, Iran, China and Russia come to mind. We do not occupy the moral high ground when we ignore arms control treaty violations that put our nation or our allies at risk.

 

Democrat senator Jeff Merkly acknowledged that there is no doubt that Russia is violating the INF Treaty. “But the right path,” he said, “is to seek to bring them back into compliance.” Good luck with that approach after 30 formal attempts to do so. Russia took advantage of U.S. compliance with INF while they themselves developed weapons prohibited by the treaty, putting the U.S. at a significant disadvantage should this be the start of a new weapons race. It is bad enough to be victimized by trade or climate treaties but treaties that establish arms control are a different matter. Arms control treaties may make liberals feel good even if we are the only party complying but if the other party cannot be trusted and continues to cheat even after being caught at it, they are worse that worthless; they put us at risk and there is nothing morally uplifting about that.

February 17, 2019

Trump Shifts to Re-election Mode

Shifting Focus from Walls to Re-election———-

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

In his presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump promised to end Obamacare and replace it with something better. He also promised to build a big, beautiful wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. He promised a good deal more, but these were the signature promises that motivated his core supporters and drew enthusiastic cheers at his rallies. Republican attempts to end the Affordable Care Act failed, of course, but at least the individual mandate was ended. Meanwhile, the effort to get funding for additional border barrier is still technically alive but on life support.

 

President Donald Trump played a game of chicken with a seasoned pol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, over funding for his wall and suffered an embarrassing defeat. He shut down part of the government for over a month and even volunteered to take the blame for it. A majority of the public promptly obliged, blaming him for the plight of hundreds of thousands of government workers, including Coast Guard, Border Patrol and FBI personnel working without pay. Trump, the amateur politician, lost to Pelosi, the professional, and hopefully learned that in spite of what presidential candidates promise, Congress still controls the purse strings and it takes control of both houses of Congress to get much of anything done.

 

Mr. Trump has threatened to re-impose a partial government shutdown again if the supposedly-bipartisan House-Senate conference committee fails to come up with a compromise proposal that includes money for more physical barrier on the border, an unlikely outcome given Pelosi’s unrelenting opposition to anything Trump wants and her power over her caucus. An alternate strategy that the president has threatened to employ is declaring a national emergency and ordering the Department of Defense to fund and build more border barrier, thus by-passing Congress altogether. Legal challenges would likely doom that strategy as well. Welcome back to divided government.

 

In the wake of these failures to deliver on two major campaign promises, the presidential focus will now shift to the 2020 campaign which has already begun with a flock of Democrat candidates competing to show who can offer the voters the most in entitlements. California’s junior senator, Kamala Harris and Massachusetts liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren, along with other wannabes, will join the usual suspects like Sen. Bernie Sanders and former VP Joe Biden and perhaps billionaires like former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who would do the GOP an enormous favor by running as an independent, thus dividing the liberal vote.

 

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, will campaign on his accomplishments thus far in his tumultuous term which have been considerable, at least in the view of most Republicans. He has not only succeeded in assuring a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for years, perhaps decades, to come by his appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, but he has also appointed many conservative judges to the circuit courts. He has pushed through tax reforms and eliminated countless onerous regulations adversely affecting business, leading to robust growth in the economy and greatly reduced unemployment, including among minorities. He will have the advantage, if he runs, of being the incumbent president with a record of accomplishment that will likely overshadow his policy defeats on Obamacare and border security.

 

The new crop of Democrat candidates reflects a dramatic shift to the left even as a majority of Americans still identify as moderates. When they propose the expansion of entitlements including Medicare and free tuition for all, Republicans can respond by telling voters that if they think that medical care and college tuition are expensive now, just wait until they’re free. And as our porous southern border and unrealistically-liberal immigration and asylum policies continue to contribute to security and health problems, Trump can blame Democrats for opposing border security measures, including border barriers, that they only recently themselves favored and which were urgently recommended by the experts who patrol the border, including physical barriers where needed.

February 11, 2019

Trump Blinks; Pelosi Prevails

Democrats Decline DACA Deal, Trump Caves———–

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                After waiting in Washington for Democrats to offer some proposal that would include at least something for more wall or physical barrier to add to that which already exists on portions of the border, President Donald Trump took the initiative. He offered a compromise that would have ended the partial shutdown and given each side something of what they wanted. It would have provided at least three years of protection from deportation for some of the so-called dreamers, or immigrants brought here illegally as children. Mr. Trump had previously attempted to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

 

The president’s compromise offer would also have provided the dreamers access to work permits, provided $800 million for additional humanitarian assistance for immigrants, $805 million for additional drug detection technology, funding for 2,750 additional Border Patrol agents and funding for an additional seventy-five immigration judges and associated staffs. He also specified that he did not envision a concrete wall but rather a barrier of see-through steel slats along portions of the border where needed. In citing the need for additional humanitarian aid and drug detection technology, Mr. Trump said that one in three immigrant women are assaulted in the dangerous journey to reach the border and that drugs kill 70,000 Americans a year. He added that 90% of the heroin that enters the United States is smuggled across the southern border.

 

The proposal, said Mr. Trump, was by no means a complete solution but it would help. Additional changes to our Immigration and asylum policies are needed, he said, and he promised to work on a bi-partisan solution. He warned, however, that he would never compromise border security to appease left wing open- border and unrestrained- immigration activists. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to bring such legislation to the Senate floor swiftly which he did.

 

Reaction from Democrat leaders was prompt and predictable. There would be no negotiations until the government shutdown was ended and, even when it was ended, there would be nothing for a physical barrier, a barrier which, until Trump asked for it, most of them had favored. In other words, it was their way or no way. They would agree to nothing that could be construed as giving Trump even a partial victory. This is pure politics and it’s this sort of thing that makes Washington the swamp that it has become and what Trump was elected to clean up.

 

It was also disingenuous. Democrats knew full well that refusing to approve funding for the Department of Homeland Security unless it included some money for the physical barrier that he promised voters is the only trump card that the president could play and he was too deeply committed to back down without losing the support of much of his base, already upset by the DACA offer which they regard, wrongly, as amnesty.

 

But back down he did. Trump blinked and Pelosi prevailed. He agreed to a deal that temporarily ended the partial shutdown while both sides renegotiated differences in border security funding. He obtained nothing for a wall, fence or other physical barrier but threatened to shut down part of the government again after three weeks or declare a national emergency and build the wall without going through Congress if Democrats didn’t provide some funding for it.

 

As we used to say back east, fuhgedaboudit. Speaker Pelosi has made it clear that there will be no money for a wall, period, and she was already taking a victory lap, cheered on by her chief admirer, Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, who gloated that the president underestimated the power of Pelosi. He’s right. When it comes to politics, Mr. Trump is an amateur compared to her and this was pure politics, not an honest debate over the nation’s border security. Aren’t you proud of our political leaders?

 

At least Mr. Trump could claim he acted as the only adult in the playroom by ending the partial shutdown. Hundreds of thousands of government workers were suffering without paychecks while our political leaders collected theirs for not doing their jobs. Pelosi could have ended it quickly by agreeing to something for the physical barrier that the experts on the border say they need. Instead, she chose to play politics and deny Trump a partial victory. If Americans ever want to gain control of their southern border, they need to elect a lot more Republicans in 2020.

February 6, 2019