Category: Politics

No doubt my well-informed friends have kept up with the news of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. The major media sources have done a fair-to-good job of reporting on this conflict, which has involved more public information than any previous conflict to date. I’ve refrained from blogging about it (except in passing), but perhaps it’s time to visit it with an eye to what’s really going on on the ground, and what it all means.

I must admit to some professional regret about this war, or as Putin calls it, his “special military operation.” I began my short military career facing off along the Iron Curtain in (then-West) Germany, and specialized in analyzing first the Red Army and second Soviet military doctrine. So I spent undue hours reading what the Soviets wrote, watching their military exercises, and preparing how to defeat them. Alas, I was blessed to not have to use my skills and expertise in actual war, the Soviet Union climbed aboard the dust-heap of history, and I moved on to other things.

What I learned about the Soviet Army remains true about today’s Russian Army. First, they are excellent theorists. In the 1960s, when computers weren’t really a thing yet, Russian military thinkers devised a concept called the reconnaissance-strike complex: an integrated set of command, sensors, and weapons which would enable immediate, accurate fire on any target. They were spot on, but never had the technology or leadership to attempt it. They were planning to employ the concept against Ukraine.

Second, when the Russians had tried to emulate the concept by discarding their mostly conscript force, they did it on the cheap, and kept the brutal discipline, lack of initiative, and willingness to suffer casualties which were their hallmark. There were signs that nothing had changed (Chechnya, for example), but there were successful campaigns, too, like those in Syria and later in Crimea. In the end, you can’t just add some technology to a rotten force and expect miracles.

The real wild card in the war was (and remains) the Ukrainian military. Now it evolved from the same Soviet sources, with similar equipment and doctrine. But in the most recent years, it had been acquiring western military equipment and training. How much had changed? How willing would they be to die (everybody is willing to fight; what matters is who is willing to die)? Most observers (myself included) didn’t give them much of a chance. All I can say is “Slava Ukraini!“

The result? Russia sought a coup de main (in current US military parlance, a “thunder run“): a bold, lightning-fast strike at Kyiv, which would paralyze the Ukrainian forces, decapitate the government, and result in the enemy’s collapse. It sounds great, if it works. Instead, the Ukrainians fought, the Russians diddled, and it resulted in a slug-fest continuing still a year on.

The facts? Russia controls most of the Ukrainian territory where people consider themselves ethnically Russian or speak primarily Russian. This includes most of the Black Sea coast and a land corridor to Crimea (which Russia previously annexed: more on that later). The Ukrainians not only defeated the initial strike on Kyiv, they pushed several of the routes of advance back to the Russian border, but progress in the main battle area near the Don river is measured in meters, not miles. Both sides have settled into a grinding war of attrition using artillery and small infantry tactics. Which is to Russia’s advantage in the long run.

And this war will be a long run. In fact, I would argue it’s wrong to call it a war. It’s really a long, single campaign in what I would call Putin’s Infinity War. Putin began this war twenty years ago after speaking and writing about NATO’s betrayal of Russia. He was fundamentally wrong: NATO owed Russia nothing, and nothing NATO ever did threatened post cold-war Russia. But Putin could not stand the loss of Russian prestige which resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union (he called it the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”), and he seized upon that to seek multiple opportunities to re-assert Russia’s prerogatives. Putin violently put down separatist movements and threatened neighboring Georgia. He sent military forces to prop up client states in Central Asia and Syria, support an ethnic Russian nationalist uprising in the Donbas (a region in Ukraine), and occupy the Crimea. The West never noticed, or when it did, it responded with desultory political moves. Putin told the Russian people that NATO was waging war against Russia, and now he has used NATO support for Ukraine as proof for his lie.

It is a lie, but it is a useful one. Putin acted the bully and when the West refused to respond to his provocations, they became worse (shades of Hitler, 1938). Putin sensed weakness in Western leaders: Germany’s Angela Merkel sought Russia’s gas via the Nordstream pipeline. France’s Macron wanted to negotiate Ukraine’s future. Joe Biden was Vice President to President Obama when Putin occupied Crimea and nothing happened. Putin misjudged Western resolve: Biden has done very well pulling NATO together, the Germans have done a verbal about-face (although they have yet to begin rearming), and even the French are staying in line.

Does the US have a vital national interest in a free-and-independent Ukraine? Yes. There is nothing wrong with questioning “why?”, “for how long?”, or even “with what?” about our support, but the answers are still convincing. America built an international system with a series of rules that served to keep the world largely free of interstate conflict during the very tense Cold War. This worked to our national advantage: fewer deaths, more development, better quality of life. Putin has directly challenged that system, and if his challenge stands, we return to a world where China thinks it can invade Taiwan, North Korea thinks it can invade the South, Iran thinks it can attack Israel. All of which would cost American blood and treasure. It’s our system, and we must be the leader in defending it.

I was very critical of President Biden’s initial policy regarding the invasion, as I saw it as too timid, and I believed it would only grow more lukewarm over time. During a long Washington career, Biden had the unique standing of having been wrong time-and-again on foreign policy: he was against the raid that killed Bin Laden (“better to wait”), he was against the first Gulf War (“What vital interests of the United States justify sending Americans to their deaths in the sands of Saudi Arabia?”), and he was for the second (“taking this son of a bitch down was the only way.”). I had ample evidence, but I was wrong. He has consistently responded with appropriate, increasing support, while deftly handling the NATO accession of Finland and Sweden, and not providing Putin the provocation he desires.

As to the sanctions, they are responsible, targeted, and meaningful . . . but not decisive. The shock which destabilized the Ruble has subsided. While the vast majority of UN member states vote with the US and against Russia on this issue, most of the world does not abide by the sanctions. China ignores them, as does India, North Korea, Iran, much of Africa and South America, even Mexico. They will hurt Russia, but in the end neither the Russian Army nor the Putin regime will fail because of sanctions.

Putin has been fighting us for twenty years; only last year did we realize it. Putin’s entire reputation as a strong leader is based on his continuing to enlarge the Russian sphere of influence, not whether he keeps McDonald’s in Moscow or even minimizes casualty lists. He has no fall-back plan: it is victory or death (for him literally, for Russia figuratively). He can pause, negotiate, even reduce his immediate goals, but only for a short time. The challenge is that NATO will never enter the conflict formally, so the actual battle for Ukraine is between Moscow and Kyiv. Ukraine will run out of ammunition, soldiers, and money before Russia does, even when including all the support the West has given Ukraine. That would not be the case if all current trends continue. But at some point, the costs (real and imagined) will begin to outweigh the benefits. If you doubt this, remember that the US withdrew from Afghanistan after twenty years, knowing what would inevitably happen (although we were surprised at how fast), and all because of military casualty totals which were less than the number of servicemen and women we lose annually to training accidents. National will is a fickle thing.

Where does that leave us? Russia’s current human-wave assault on Bakhmut has stalled, and now we await Ukraine’s promised counterattack. Whether they have the equipment, training, and manpower for a major attack is simply beyond telling right now. They proved resourceful by surprising the Russians last year, and they’ll need to do it again. They have fewer options now: the front line has settled along the Russian-Ukrainian border in some places, and do the Ukrainians dare attack across it? Elsewhere, the Russians have learned one lesson from last year and prepared defensive lines and belts behind their forward troops, to assist in repelling any Ukrainian incursions. Attacks are generally more costly for the attackers, and exploiting initial success requires even more forces. I would expect some tactical victories, but no major operational ones for Ukraine this year.

My prognosis? Remember, this war started years ago, and it will continue for years to come. Ukraine is not strong enough to end it, and Putin can’t and won’t. Putin still believes he has time on his side: Moscow is calm, the economy still functions, and there is no shortage of draftees, contrary to some reports. He was certainly surprised by the strength and resolve of NATO, but he still believes it will wane. Putin only needs a decline in NATO support, not a collapse. Ukraine requires complete commitment. Will Ukraine end up being like South Korea, where America (and the UN) still stay the course seventy-three years later? Or Afghanistan, where a mere twenty years was sufficient to cause a loss of affection (despite the certainty of the evil which would and did prevail)? I don’t know, but Putin certainly is not mad to believe it is the latter case.

Finally, what to make of Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling? Much of this is for show, intended to scare the Western public (and thereby freeze NATO) more than anything else. But as I noted earlier, Putin’s Infinity War is an existential one for him. If the Russian army were to collapse, I would not put it past Putin to use some tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. If his government looked set to fall, I would not rule out his lobbing a nuclear armed missile or two at the West (Berlin and New York, for the record). In his eyes, smoldering rubble would salvage a draw in the contest between East and West.

Twenty years back, I was involved in the Washington, DC, policy process. This was in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the ongoing sanctions aimed at containing Saddam Hussein, and the controversy over Iraq’s (imagined) weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Yesterday the New York Times published a series of retrospective articles, including one entitled “20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade?” It is not bad as far as it goes, but fails to review where-we-were-when the decisions were made, so it repeats certain myths. For example:

• Certain GOP neoconservatives saw the US as the sole remaining superpower, free to remake the world as it willed
• Others imagined a nefarious link between Saddam and al Qaeda
• President Bush knew there were no WMD, but insisted there were as an excuse to invade Iraq (hence the progressive pop chant “Bush lied, people died!”)
• Sanctions successfully contained Saddam, so there was no need for an invasion
• American leaders expected the Iraqis to welcome the US military as liberators and were surprised by Iraqi antagonism
• and most ridiculously, the US invaded to control Iraq’s oil. I won’t dignify this charge with any further comment. There never was any evidence to this theory.

Like all good myths, there is an element of truth to the rest of these. But they miss the point when asked to explain “why we invaded?” and they hide other far more important points.

Let’s set the way-back machine to early September 2001, years before the invasion but just days after the terror attacks. No one, not even the most neo-conservative conservative, saw the US as so powerful it could do as it pleased. Perhaps on September 10th they did, but America was a wounded animal on the 12th, angry and suspicious and hurt.

Some (including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) immediately suspected that Iraq was behind 9/11 somehow, as it was widely believed no ragtag group of terrorists could have mounted such coordinated attacks. But al Qaeda did, and while some policy-types continued to suggest Iraq was involved, they never succeeded in convincing any of the senior policy-makers. What they did succeed in doing was raising suspicions: even if Iraq was not involved, would Saddam be willing to share his WMD with al Qaeda now that they were a proven threat to the West? People forget how justifiably paranoid America was after 9/11, and it was no stretch to assume Saddam might do something as dangerous as pass along WMD. After all, he has used chemical weapons against both Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq war, and against Kurdish civilians during a revolt! In retrospect, this all seems outlandish, because we know now that Saddam had no WMD. But we didn’t know that then: not the United Nations, not the Five Eyes Intelligence Services, and not President Bush.

Bush ’43 was an avid consumer of intelligence analysis and reporting, and he had a great deal of trust in the US intelligence community. He inherited that relationship from his father, Bush ’41, who had led the CIA and was perhaps the most knowledgeable intelligence consumer ever to sit behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. For the variety of reasons well-studied and explained in the Select Committee Report On Iraqi WMD, everyone (and I mean everyone) assumed Saddam had WMD when in fact he did not. It’s easy to forget that now, and to reason as if everyone should have known he did not have WMD.

Which is not to say the imaginary WMD did not play an important role. Because everyone thought he had them, and yet Saddam refused to admit to it, WMD became the best argument for removing him from power. And Bush ’43 didn’t need much of an excuse. He had explicitly campaigned on a promise to remove Saddam. Why? Because Saddam’s continued rule had frozen US Middle East policy in an untenable position. We had stationed protective US military forces in Saudi Arabia–the Muslim holy land. Radical clerics like Osama bin Laden had always pointed out the hypocrisy and corruption of the House of Saud, but now they had direct evidence of apostasy: inviting the hated crusaders into the land of Mecca and Medina. What once seemed like a lunatic raving from a cave now seemed more like a prophet to thousands of Saudi believers, especially nineteen who agreed to do something about it on September 11th, 2001.

The problem of US troops on the Saudi peninsula was well understood in policy circles. We did everything we could (build bases, preposition equipment, give the Saudis advanced weapons and training) to prepare if the US needed to fight a war there, but we always avoided sending troops, because all the experts agreed it would be a casus belli for jihad. Bush ’41 finally sent troops to evict Saddam from Kuwait, but he thought the Kurds and Shi’ites would revolt and overthrow Saddam after the First Gulf War back in 1991. It didn’t happen. Saddam’s longevity despite revolts and sanctions left the US with a decades-long troop presence in the one place they couldn’t be: Saudi Arabia.

The other forgotten element is that sanctions were not working, they were dying. The French had publicly called to end them in 1999. The Russians were circumventing them. The Oil-for-Food program undercut the other sanctions. Finally, well-meaning humanitarian organizations around the world cited bogus statistics provided by Saddam about the effects of sanctions on the poor people of Iraq. It was only after the war ended and Saddam was gone that authoritative studies showed that Saddam had simply made up the claim that half a million Iraqi babies died due to sanctions. So sanctions were in the process of ending, not succeeding.

Did the US expect to be welcomed with open arms? While they did not expect the degree of hostility which resulted, few thought the US troops would be universally welcomed. For starters, there were thousands of committed Ba’athists (Saddam’s party) who had everything to lose. Iran was glad to see Saddam neutralized, and welcomed the chance to incite Iraqi Shi’ites (coreligionists) to rise up and kill Americans. Average Iraqis had a wait-and-see attitude which quickly soured on the American occupation. Only the Kurds really wanted us there, even though we had left them to their fate once before, and would do so again.

Did the occupation have to go as poorly as it did? No. The factors I just listed could have been neutralized if the US (1) did a proper job of de-Ba’athification, (2) and deployed sufficient forces for occupation duty. The American government had great examples of how to run the occupation, rebuilding, and construction of an enemy territory. We literally wrote volumes of books on it based on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Both were far more destroyed and far more hostile to the American occupation than Iraq ever could be, and yet modern Germany and Japan stand as grand testimony to doing things right.

What our experience told us was we needed to distinguish between those Ba’athists who were truly evil people and the larger majority who simply went-along-to-get-along (the same problem we faced with the Germans and the Nazi Party). It also told us we needed a sufficiently large occupation force to ensure people felt under the control of the occupying power: a visible presence in the streets, re-assuring the populace that they were safe while intimidating anyone thinking of rising up against it.

We ignored our own experience. Partly this was based on the notion we had to get US troops out of the area quickly (a real issue, but after twenty years, one that should have been more carefully considered.) Unfortunately, some senior Defense Department officials had bought into the US Air Force’s notion of a “Shock & Awe” campaign. This theory, which had been put forward in different terms by air-power enthusiasts since the dawn of human flight, suggested that Iraq could be conquered by a short, unrelenting and precise campaign of aerial bombardment that would kill Saddam and his sons, paralyze their military and lead the Iraqis to quit resisting. Air power had never accomplished this before (not in World War II, nor in Korea, nor Vietnam), but it had come close in the First Gulf War, and all it needed was another chance with the proper emphasis and the improved technology the US now had. Not only that, but a Shock and Awe campaign solved the occupation problem: no need for massive amounts of troops. The US could raid Iraq like a store-front smash-n-grab: smash the army, kill Hussein, and be off in an instant, with no lingering troop commitment. Voices like Secretary of State Colin Powell, a distinguished Army General who said “you break it (Iraq), you fix it” were ignored.

So the US government went in with a light military ground force, capable of defeating and ousting Saddam but not occupying Iraq. They accomplished the military mission quickly and efficiently, but chaos soon reigned as all the forces I mentioned earlier came out to play. Meanwhile, the political officials sent over to stabilize the situation issued a blanket de-Bat’athification order, making anyone associated with the movement ineligible for further government service and eliminating the Iraqi army, removing any reason for them to cooperate, and overnight turning them into the biggest insurgent force in the country. Finally, back in Washington, policy officials who were still angry about the many countries (including US allies) who refused to support the invasion made the intemperate decision to restrict Iraqi rebuilding (and its profits) to those nations who participated in the invasion. There was a moment there when Russia, China, France and many other countries could have been enticed to participate in the occupation, if given the chance to benefit from the reconstruction. Instead, we shut them out, guaranteeing it was all on us, just as Secretary Powell had warned.

So, why did the US invade Iraq? Because “containing” Saddam required US military forces in Saudi Arabia, which had brought about a worse situation in the form of a popular Islamic Jihad we still face today, twenty years later. Sanctions had restrained him, but international will to continue those sanctions was greatly weakening. Saddam’s WMD proved a useful excuse to the world, but in the end, was the ultimate MacGuffin. Was the US involvement destined to fail? It succeeded in the near term and accomplished its military objectives. The US ignored its own successful experiences in favor of an unproven theory, then compounded the error with bad political decisions regarding both the Iraqis and reconstruction. Even with all that, American casualties had stabilized at a low level by 2008.

We’ll never know the counterfactual case if Saddam had not been hanged, had outlasted sanctions and rebuilt his WMD (he absolutely admitted his intent to do so). Certainly we would still have tens of thousands more US troops in Saudi Arabia, and the threat of what Saddam might do next. To my mind, it was the right policy decision, poorly executed, rather than a lie, a hoax, or a colossal failure.

It’s rare that a so-called national security event provides so much grist for humor. From beginning to end, the Chinese Spy Balloon Saga has been on a steady trajectory from the sublime to the ridiculous, with politicians and news media playing a leading role. I can’t wait to see what Dave Barry does with it next January!

This crisis, if one wants to call it that, launched with bureaucratic stupidity. It climbed with partisan hype and bald-faced diplomatic lies. It escalated further with the media seeking headlines but failing to ascertain facts. It reached a crescendo with a military over-reaction of stunning proportions. It finally came crashing down with a series of inane government comments and a Presidential non-address. During all of this, I experienced some grins, a few chortles, a belly-laugh or two, and of course near-continuous ROTFLMAO.

Let me share!

So What did Just Happen? The Chinese launched a balloon from Hainan island, from where they previously launched balloons to float over the Pacific to places like Guam and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where the US Navy likes to port. Except this balloon caught some waves from a Polar Vortex (hey, wait, can we blame climate change for bringing us to the edge of World War III?) and swept north to the Aleutians, then down across Canada, Montana, Kansas, and eventually North Carolina. Where the US military shot it down. Oh, and it was a spy balloon.

Blinding Flash of the Obvious (BFO #1): China spies on the United States, every day, every way it can. As we do against China. There are very few exceptions to who-spies-on-whom rule, but suffice it to say China in the skies with balloons is not one of them. China has satellites over the US continuously. They mine things like TikTok for data. They task Chinese students and academics to find specific information. They ask Chinese visitors to gather information. They establish Chinese “police” stations in the US (and other countries) which keep track of Chinese expats and no doubt facilitate intelligence collection. Heck, they even stole the entire human resources holdings of the US Office or Personnel Management a few years back (Note to China: update your records, I’m in Mexico now!).

This balloon does not represent a significant escalation in spying, or any kind of breakthrough. You don’t send a new or novel collection platform gently floating, attached to a giant balloon, over your opponent. What it does represent is Chinese bureaucratic incompetence. They have sent these balloons before. They know Chinese-American relations are tense these days. Yet some fool in charge of the balloon program launched one a week or so before the US Secretary of State was due to visit and patch things up. Nobody in his chain-of-command thought to say “wait.” Nobody in the balloon operations team asked, “Hey, where’s the jet-stream taking our balloons now?” That’s some prime bureaucratic incompetence there. I wonder if the guy in charge is making iPhones in Xinjiang now. And we’re off!

So the balloon drifts off course, and what? It’s too high to affect commercial air traffic. Who cares? Nobody. We’re tracking it, but only because it’s huge. BFO#2, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD, a joint US- Canadian military structure) constantly watches the skies for large, fast-moving objects like missiles (which are bad) and planes (which might be bad). They are most famous for their annual tracking of Santa Claus, who apparently is large and fast-moving enough for them to identify. They generally don’t look for small or slow things, of which there are many. How many? Nobody knows, since nobody cares. One estimate is almost a thousand on any given day. They can be weather balloons (the National Weather Service launches 180 high altitude balloons every day!), model rockets, high school science projects, or a guy in a lawn chair. But in this case, the balloon is so large it gets spotted from the ground by regular people. Well, not really regular people, because who sits around all day staring at the sky? And even if you did, who makes a big deal if they see a balloon? But somebody did, and away we go!

Now it’s a public issue, so the Chinese Foreign Ministry bureaucrat opened the file labelled “what to say in case our spy balloon is noticed over the US.” and read it out, including the part that says “start lying here” and “stop lying here.” Of course it’s a weather balloon, he reassures us. Which only confirms the fact that (1) it is not a weather balloon, (2) the Chinese are lying, and (3) somebody in the US must take the political blame. Some Conservatives and Progressives in the US are outraged, OUTRAGED, about Chinese spying (see BFO #1), and why are we permitting it to continue?

Which leads to the utterly ridiculous government response that we can’t shoot it down over Montana because it might fall and hit someone. Now space junk (man-made and natural) falls to earth every day, and when some piece becomes famous because it is large–or radioactive–the government reassures us that the chance of it hitting anyone are infinitesimally low. Nothing to worry about. The government can’t even tell what hemisphere is going to be hit until the day before it enters the atmosphere. But a big balloon with a multi bus-sized object attached, which we can exactly determine its location, can’t be shot down because it represents a threat? Pull-eaze. My guess is we waited for the ocean because the balloon payload would better withstand crashing in water than the ground. As it stands, that explanation was nonsense.

But it gets better. We send an F22 Raptor up and shoot the balloon down with a Sidewinder air-to-air missile. That’s about $400,000 of hardware we spent. Why didn’t the F22 just use its gun, which would ably destroy a balloon? The Sidewinder explodes near the target, shredding it with shrapnel. I hope they didn’t destroy the parts we intended to salvage and exploit. Please someone tell me the Air Force had a good reason for using a missile rather than a few cheap bullets.

And thus Our Democracy was saved. Except now partisans were asking why the President let the Chinese fly their balloon over our sensitive sites and collect against them. The balloon mostly uses the wind patterns to navigate, although it appeared to have some type of motor and a rudder to make small path adjustments. Here’s a map of sensitive US intelligence sites, from the Washington Post circa 2002:

BFO #3, there’s a lot of them, everywhere. That map doesn’t include some military facilities and critical national infrastructure. I think a great new virtual reality game would involve flying a spy balloon over the United States and NOT flying over sensitive sites! Probably can’t be done.

Faced by the inquisitive press, a public demanding answers, and partisans complaining, the government issued a strong statement defusing the burgeoning crisis. Of course they didn’t; instead they clammed up. Meanwhile, NORAD “opened the aperture on their radars” to catch slow and small things, quickly demonstrating why this was a bad idea. The Air Force began a live-fire game of Space Invaders. Over the course of a few days, NORAD sighted new “objects” over Alaska, the Yukon, and Michigan. Off went the jets, away went the missiles, and down went the objects.

Wait, wasn’t it dangerous shooting things down over. . . . nevermind. The Air Force managed to use up more expensive missiles, and an Air National Guard pilot even managed to miss a balloon with a missile. We all felt better immediately, until White House Spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre helpfully explained that (1) we don’t know what the objects were, but (2) they pose no threat, and (3) they certainly weren’t from outer space. There used to be a simple rule for government officials appearing before the public: under no circumstances are you to refer to extra-terrestrials, space aliens, or UFOs, because (BFO#4) every time the government mentions them, more people believe in them. I don’t know what was more terrifying: the fact no one in the White House noticed that statements (1), (2), and (3) are logically inconsistent, or the fact the US government was announcing it was shooting off missiles at anything moving in the sky, for no apparent reason.

“Wait!” you say, “aren’t balloons a threat to civil aviation?” Well, they’re more of a risk than a threat. Over the decades since thousands of weather balloons and aircraft have taken flight, there does not exist a single documented case of one hitting the other. There are some, rare plane-strikes of other balloons, which result in a destroyed balloon and a pilot making a routine report upon landing. See, civil aviation is a little more resilient than it appears. That extra large Chinese Spy Balloon actually could have damaged a plane, but, you know, we can’t shoot things down over land, until we can.

Suddenly, somebody in the US National Security leadership sobered up. NORAD must have re-tuned their radars, since they stopped reporting on every piece of floating mylar, the Air Force put away its missiles, and calm returned. The President went before the Press to say, “Get a Grip, man” which may have been his best moment at the podium, ever. He said all the right things about China, danced around the unidentified aerial object phenomenon, and walked off when the press went ballistic.

Hardly a “day which will live in infamy” Presidential moment. What might a competent response looked like? For starters, China needs to get its act together, since it all began with them, accidentally or not. First Covid, now balloons; what next? Next, the American government had a choice. Option one was to ignore the balloon, as it had in the past. When it became public knowledge, they could have asked China for an explanation, and when China provided the lame weather balloon excuse, the White House could have publicly offered President Xi an account with the National Weather Service and a streaming subscription to the Weather Channel. Privately, they should have called the Chinese explanation BS and told them to knock it off. I would call this the “Mature Superpower Response Option.” Now if the partisan political heat got too much for the White House, they could have chosen option two: publicly denounce the balloon as an unacceptable breech of sovereignty unfit for a nation which constantly harps on it. Shoot it down immediately, then offer to return it after processing for the illegal importation of items into the United States. Take the damn thing apart down to the last nut and bolt, exploit it, then send the box of trash to the Chinese embassy in DC, along with two more things: a bill for the cost of importing and analyzing the illegal product, and a live carrier pigeon in a box with a note saying (in Mandarin) “try this next time, pendejos.” That’s the “Welcome to the big leagues” approach. The Biden administration seemed confused or frozen, depending on the moment.

What did we learn? Well, if you were unaware of BFOs 1-4, maybe that was educational. Otherwise, not much. I do think that someday the balloon (eventually) shot down over Lake Huron will wash ashore. It will be an exceedingly large piece of brightly colored mylar still bearing traces of helium. And on its side will be the words “Welcome to Chuck E. Cheese’s, Kalamazoo!”

The impending United States Government Debt Ceiling Default Crisis raises an interesting question: is this more like the Y2K crisis or like the bank run leading to the Great Depression. It all depends upon who you think Uncle Sam is.

Let me explain, first off: the debt ceiling is a legislative fiction; it is not real. It is imposed by the government on itself, and so the government can just as easily undo it. For example, the Congress can pass and the President can sign an increase in the authorized debt, or even a law that simply suspends enforcement. The Treasury can finagle revenues coming in and payments going out to extend when the debt ceiling is exceeded. Some have even suggested the Treasury could mint a so-called trillion dollar coin, in effect a non-negotiable trick to say, “here’s the money, so we don’t have any debt.” That last one is arguable, but serves to make the point how artificial this crisis is.

Second, the Democrats and Republicans have driven wildly toward the debt ceiling cliff many times, and always find a way to swerve or hit the breaks in the end. One time it may be different, but there is much history supporting more of the same.

No one knows exactly what the consequences of a debt limit default would be. The real inability to pay off debt–for a country or a person–is a serious thing. But the debt ceiling is not that. Most agree the stock markets would drop, as they fear uncertainty, and just the fact that the political parties didn’t avoid a technical default is a higher degree of uncertainty. But the markets are a difficult sign to read. Some investors believe the government will service their bonds first, so they will continue to get paid (as revenues come in). Others are short-selling, predicting a big market correction from which they would make millions.

But none of that is permanent. Would it send the economy into a recession, since all the other fundamentals don’t change? Would it change the willingness of Saudi Arabia, Japan, and China to buy US government debt? Remember, it’s a technical default: the US government and the Gross Domestic Product remain the same, and the US dollar is still the world’s reserve currency. So no one knows how it will play out. Am I worried? No, but I am prepared. Why? If a technical default occurs, I am sure things like federal pay and pensions will be among the first things that don’t get paid; social security, medicare, and military pay will all come first, although even those will be at risk. There simply isn’t enough revenue coming in monthly to pay the bonds and the entitlements and everything else.

Let’s use a personal metaphor. Imagine Elon Musk, he of an enormous fortune, is sailing on his yacht in the remote South Pacific when he hits a perfect storm, his boat sinks, and he washes ashore on a remote island as the sole survivor. Being incredibly lucky, this island has a small, non-cannibalistic population, and the first thing Elon sees is a small palapa with a “restaurant” sign! He wanders in, sits down, and waves to the waiter. The waiter, a vaguely Samoan-looking character who appears as if he could play nose tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals, takes one look at the soaking-wet, disheveled man and thinks “not another drunk tourist!?!?” but hands him a menu. Elon slams down several glasses of water, then some fresh fish, all the while amazed at his good luck. The waiter brings the check, and Elon realizes his wallet and his credit card holder are gone. He finds his iPhone in a special secured pocket, but it’s a sodden paperweight. He starts to explain about who he is, why he is there, but the waiter, certain it’s time to launch another drunk, is having none of it: he doesn’t know an “Elon Musk” from a “Musk Ox.” As he drags Mr. Musk by the collar towards the door (the palapa may have no walls, but it does have a door!), a woman, the restaurant owner, walks in and does a double take. “Elon Musk? Really?” she stammers. It seems Mr. Musk’s good luck has returned. The waiter re-deposits him at his table, and Elon recounts his story to the owner. He offers to invest in her restaurant, gives her an IOU for $50,000 dollars, and agrees to do a selfie for her to post on social media.

Fun story, what? But what does this have to do with the debt ceiling crisis? Elon Musk is Uncle Sam: fabulously wealthy, but out of available cash at the moment. The waiter is the market, which isn’t sure about anyone or anything, hates uncertainty, looks at the immediate situation and starts to react. The restaurant owner is the rest of the investing world. They see the situation in front of them, but they also recognize the larger implications, and they react differently. Which is why you shouldn’t worry (too much) about the debt ceiling crisis.

Imagine our shipwreck scenario again, only the survivor is Donald Trump. He of at least four bankruptcies, a tendency to overstate his wealth and litigate any debt. If you’re the restaurant owner, do you give him a pass? That’s the US if it ignores the debt (not debt ceiling) problem. Maybe they all decide enough is enough, and the global economy crashes. We don’t know whether we’re Elon Musk or Donald Trump in the eyes of the world’s investors. Which is a reason to worry.

The real problem is not the debt ceiling, but rather the debt itself. The US government owes tons of money. . . literally. It owes $31T as in Trillion dollars: 31,000,000,000,000. That’s over 34,ooo tons of dollar bills. Is that a lot? Well, just like for a person, it only matters if they can’t pay it.

The US Gross Domestic Product (GDP, a measure of the total resources available to the country) is over $25T, so we’re a little over-leveraged. Of course the all the debt never comes due at once, but the government can’t access all the GDP, either.

Add in to that the credit history of the United States: from the original debt of the 13 colonies, through the Union (not Confederate) Civil War debt and the enormous federal expansion during World War II, then the Cold War and creation of the New Deal social welfare state, the US Government has always, ALWAYS, paid off its debt on time and in full. And as any creditor will tell you, that counts for a lot.

Finally, in addition to its tangible assets, like the ability to raise revenue and print money, the US government has intangible but important assets, like the world’s greatest military. What’s it worth? When you need it, priceless!

So far the debt monster is undeniably large, but seems manageable. Now let’s look at how the US Government finances that debt. The US can run large annual deficits (the difference between revenues coming in and payments going out) because it issues bonds: federal IOUs that pay interest, which are bought by investors. These IOUs are highly sought after, because of America’s stability (we don’t devalue our currency, we don’t nationalize other people’s assets) and payment history. When you have cash and you want to it to grow while being protected, nothing works like US bonds. Which is why China, and Japan, and Saudi Arabia hold so much of this debt. It’s not necessarily a bad thing being “in hock” to foreign governments. We took their dollars and gave them paper, which is only worth something as long as the US is around. Yes, they could try selling it all at once to harm the US, but that would involve destroying all their investments at the same time. It’s mutually beneficial, so it works. Banks, investment firms, insurance companies, pension plans and private investors all buy US debt, too, for all the same reasons.

Another big holder of US debt is (wait for it) the US government. What? The two largest government holders of government debt are the Federal Reserve (aka the Fed) and the Social Security Trust Fund. The Fed started large-scale buying of debt during the 2008 financial crisis. It didn’t have to, but it bought up federal debt from banks and others to keep the markets liquid (flowing) and prevent a depression. In effect, it “created money” just like the Treasury does, except the Treasury prints it while the Fed just creates it digitally. The Fed can decide when to sell those bonds and is starting to do so gradually, so as not to upset the markets.

All that money they take out of your paycheck under the heading OASDI (Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance)? That’s your input into Social Security. The Social Security Trust Fund takes the extra left-over after paying out benefits and buys US government bonds. So the Trust Fund is full of IOUs, not dollars. But that’s not a problem, because the US government always pays off its IOUs on time. Right now, the amount the Trust fund pays out is about the same as it takes in, but as the baby boomers continue to retire, and there are fewer workers out there paying OASDI, the Trust Fund will need to cash in its IOUs. Current estimates (and they change annually) say that the IOUs will be all used up by 2034. At that point, most of the Social Security payments will have to be appropriated, since the Trust Fund can’t send you (as a social security recipient) a government IOU, what you want is a dollar.

Which is not to say Social Security is the problem. There are other entitlements (which for God’s sake, don’t ever complain about this word, as it means it is a legally required payment, not optional, and it has nothing to do with being “entitled” in popular usage) like Medicare and Medicaid which have similar issues, not to mention our federal tax code which is larded with tax breaks for corporations, wealthy investors, and homeowners. It is never one thing, it is always every thing, together.

As you already know, the larger circle is expenditures, the smaller is revenues, meaning the US once again ran a deficit. The administration points out the deficit was reduced last year, and I guess in these extraordinary times, that’s something. But it’s like a drunk telling you he only drinks half-a-bottle-of-whisky-a-day now: relevant, but not addressing the fundamental problem. Look again at Social Security, Medicare, Income Security, and Net Interest; these are mandatory budget items, requiring no Congressional approval. Most of these programs increase every year. For example, we still have ten more years of ten-thousand baby-boomers retiring every day, and as they apply for Social Security, that expenditure will steadily increase. Only about a third of the federal budget is discretionary spending, and it includes things like defense and education spending. Eventually (like in a decade or two), the entire federal revenue stream will be eaten up by mandatory spending if nothing changes.

What does it matter if institutional investors (countries and firms and people) will keep buying US issued debt? It doesn’t. The US can keep going on running an annual deficit, selling bonds to finance the debt, and nothing changes. But that willingness to buy US debt is built on a fragile, psychological base: the US is a stable, growing, responsible payer of debt. As we get to the point where we can’t pass a budget without huge increases in taxes or drastic reductions in spending (including benefits), who will continue to believe that? And once that trust is gone, it’s very difficult to reacquire.

The thing is, a series of small changes could place the US federal budget on a firmer path for many decades. Simply removing the cap on Social Security taxes (they stop collecting the tax above $160,000 income), means-testing payments for the very wealthy, and delaying the retirement age to 70 help a great deal. Creating a sovereign wealth fund to invest in market securities and help pay for entitlements is another great idea, or allowing the Social Security Trust Fund greater leeway in investments is another. A national sales tax is another good idea. And before you clutch your pearls (I’m thinking of the White House here), if it’s so regressive how come nearly all the progressive social democracies use it? Plus, the government could exempt groceries, for example (under a certain limit; we don’t need to have tax-free foie gras, as much as I like it!). Perhaps a separate value-added tax on items costing over $100k and a small financial transactions tax on securities would be nice additions. I’m open to any suggestions on consolidating (not cutting) federal welfare programs, where any savings would come from eliminating bureaucracies, not reducing benefits.

As things stand now, Republicans are for cutting entitlements and taxes, while Democrats appear to want to raise both. Neither approach will resolve our growing debt problem. When the two sides do compromise, like during a recent debt ceiling crisis in the Obama administration, they mostly compromise on revenue-neutral provisions, which don’t add to the deficit, but don’t reduce it either. That also fails the test, because soon we still run out of discretionary spending.

If you would like to play around with fixing the deficit/debt yourself, check out this website where you can tweak the variables and see how you do. I got within $50B (chump change with respect to the federal budget) of stabilizing the debt at 90% of GDP. It’s actually not that hard, if you try. The larger point is we don’t need to produce a balanced budget (which is practically impossible at this point), we only need to show we’re willing to reduce spending and raise revenue.

In the meantime, our political leaders (both sides) seem content to posture and pretend there is no problem, other than the opposing party. One side or the other will claim to “win” the debt ceiling default crisis. If the President agrees to cuts, the GOP will crow; if the Speaker agrees to raise or suspend the ceiling without cuts, the Democrats will do so. But nobody wins here, because the day after this ends, the debt still looms. It won’t really be a problem until it is, and then it will be too late.

Ernest Hemingway, when asked “how did you go bankrupt?” said, “gradually, then suddenly.”

The partisan hype machine geared up after the Trump, then Biden, now Pence “Oops I forgot I had classified documents” scandals. I fully expected some partisans to get whiplash as they excused, then excoriated, then well, what do you do after you’ve already taken every contradictory position on an issue? Stay quiet? Never!

But the steady drip of revelations also brought out another tired old set of talking heads: the “there’s too much classified information” group. Some of these are so-called democracy promoters who claim secrets are antithetical to democratic government, or we should spend much more de-classifying than we do now. Some are journalists who crave access and hate the fact they can’t have it, or small-government advocates who see an easy target in the always-growing national security establishment, one which often does not respond publicly to criticism. Some are politicians who are looking for a scapegoat. Let’s tackle these objections, shall we?

First, all forms of government have secrets, and even Western democracies (and I hate that term, but permit me) all have intelligence organizations. George Washington personally ran spies as a General. Benjamin Franklin, as Post-Master General, oversaw secret communications and intercepted enemy ones. Part of the consent of the governed is to accept that there are reasons to withhold information. Why? To protect lives and avoid wasting resources. Classified information sometimes contains names of people (“sources”) who provided it, and should they become public, bad things would ensue. Wonder why some government files about the Kennedy assassination are still redacted or classified? In it are names or descriptions of people who provided information, and those people or their immediate families are still alive. What do you think happens in Cuba when somebody’s family name appears in a CIA file? You think Havana forgets or forgives what granddad did?

Likewise, classified information may include clues as to the technical way it was collected (“methods”). Let’s say there is a super-secret satellite which can detect and analyze someone’s breath, allowing us to track individuals and determine their health and activities. Even a document which simply states “Kim Jong-Il is out drinking again” as its bottom line would reveal we have a real-time ability to monitor this situation. If released, the other side can begin researching how we do it, and ways to defeat our capability. And billions of dollars in research, production, and operations would go down the drain, not to mention we’d be totally surprised the next time Kim showed up drunk!

This “sources and methods” problem is like a web, where every document must be scrutinized for how its release could jeopardize national security. The original decision to classify something is easy (more on this later): there are rules any analyst, collector, or official can consult and apply. When agencies are asked to de-classify something, it’s much harder. How does one determine whether all of a source’s relatives are dead or safe? How much of a give-away about the technical method is too much? What if the document has multiple references from multiple agencies? Each must consider and rule on it.

Most agencies treat de-classification as an additional duty for employees, and it is one widely hated by the workforce. Why? It’s hard, time-consuming and nobody gets a bonus for a record number of de-classifications, but woe-be-it to you if you release something that should not have been released. Like being a gate-guard, there is no upside for being lenient. So we’ll never spend much on de-classifying, plus, what’s the relative benefit to the American public? Documents which have high classifications based on sources and methods often have an analytic line that is simple or even obvious. De-classification results in a “so-what?”

The second complaint comes from journalists, and you can see a prime example here from Fareed Zakaria, who should know better. He cites the amount of classified, when he knows this is a canard, and even throws out the old ‘information classified because it is embarrassing’ idea which is specifically prohibited under Executive Order 12356. Let’s focus on the amount of classified. 99.9% of classified information exists not as documents or photos, but as digits in a secure classified computer system. It is physically inside vaults and SCIFs (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities) which are monitored and secured. The computer systems themselves are encrypted and monitored both by systems and people. How much classified is there? Nobody knows, any more than you can say how much info is in your cloud storage right now. The government generates enormous amounts every day. Take the breath-sensing satellite I made up: it circles the globe, taking sensings, and every unique sense of a location is classified, because if you had it, you might be able to figure out what the capability was. So the sensing over your favorite bar is just as classified as the one over the Kremlin, not because of the target, but because of the capability. And the gigabytes of sensings are stored in the classified system. How much are they and is it too much?

It’s only count-able when you produce it as a document, photo or other “thing.” 99.9% of such classified “things” are produced and kept in those same vaults and SCIFs, and only leave them when people properly trained and authorized to do so take them out to show them to whomever needs to see them (sometimes senior officials), but more often that not other intelligence personnel. So the overwhelming majority of classified info exists and is secure, regardless of how much there is. The problem is not the amount, it’s that people get involved.

So does the US government keep spending more all the time for this classified information? Yes. We get better at collecting and using it, and we acquire more. Does it cost a lot? Depends. As any info tech geek will tell you, storage is the cheap part. The government even eventually realized that and outsourced some of its classified holdings to cloud-storage firms like Amazon and Google, because they can operate at extreme orders of magnitude. The expensive part is acquiring the data, and do you want the national security system working with more and better, or less and worse, data?

The third complaint comes from those looking for a scapegoat: someone else to blame. Politicians have a love-hate relationship with classified information. They love it when a secret gives them an advantage in a negotiation, or prevents a crisis, or helps win a war. They hate it when they are told what they can and cannot say in public, for obvious reasons, or when they have to turn in their classified documents before leaving for the day. They also dislike being subjected to background investigations (as do we all). A security clearance is not a right, it is a privilege, so one can be denied for a host of reasons for which a politician might not feel they should be penalized: extramarital affairs, suspicious foreign links (business or family), past drug use, lewd and lascivious conduct, lying (this one scares them the most), bankruptcy. The standard is not a legal one; it’s whether you have weaknesses or vulnerabilities which would make you an opportune target or desperate enough to trade classified info.

Things get especially sticky when it comes to Congress. Remember that most classification comes from Executive branch guidelines, so it does not apply to the co-equal Legislative branch. Congress Members (both House and Senate) have security clearances by virtue of being elected! Their staff must submit to background checks. Furthermore, Members like to go before the cameras and opine, but if you access classified info, there may be things you can’t say publicly. In general, Congress Members and staffs are more rigorous about handling classified, since they in effect must police themselves. Watch carefully the reactions of Democratic Senators to news that classified documents (more than 14 years old) from Senator Biden’s service were found in his home. The degree of shock and concern was much greater than the original case.

Congress created two committees (the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI or “Sissy”, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI or “Hipsy”). Both were originally quite bipartisan and worked primarily to provide oversight on secret matters, especially as intelligence budgets climbed during the Cold War. Afterwards, the HPSCI became very partisan and worse so over time. The most important role these committees have (in my opinion) was to control the flow of classified info in the Congress. There was no need for every Member to see everything; the rest of the Members in effect gave the committees a proxy to tell them “it’s ok.” Which the committees did. Everything revealed by now-Russian citizen Snowden was briefed to and authorized by the committees. It pains me (and many others) when they ran from responsibility with a “What? Gambling in this establishment? I’m shocked!” response.

(brief aside: I had to chuckle when someone was defending Rep. Swalwell–and whether he should be on the HPSCI–by saying “he hasn’t been charged with anything!” Gosh, that’s a great thing. No, he just exhibited horrendously bad judgment by having a relationship with a woman who turned out to be a Chinese agent. Who knows what she has about him? He should have been turned out of the HPSCI by Speaker Pelosi. In the good ol’ days, both parties policed their own when it came to the intelligence committees.)

As to the current cases, Trump can’t really use a scapegoat defense, since he claimed the documents are his and he de-classfied them. No one saw President Biden with the documents, so it’s possible an assistant put the documents where they didn’t belong. But that means it was multiple assistants putting multiple things in multiple wrong places over a decade and a half. Or just Joe. Apply Occam’s Razor here. Finally, Pence has the strongest scapegoat argument, as he denied having documents, he probably did not box them up himself and send them to his home, and they were unopened. But we’ll see. Every politician wants a scapegoat; it’s their favorite pet.

There is no dichotomy between secrets and accountable government of the democratic or other sort. There are more secrets than ever, because there is more information available than ever. No, you and I can’t see them, and there are good reasons for that. Yes, the Congress can see them, and does with great regularity. Yes, senior government officials of both the executive and legislative branches misbehave and mishandle classified information. And everybody should own a scapegoat.

Bear with me if I meander a little today.

I have watched with some amusement the recent accusations of mishandling classified documents leveled against the sitting and former Presidents. My amusement stems not from the possible charges themselves: classified information is a serious thing, and anyone mishandling it should be dealt with accordingly. No, my amusement comes from the way the incidents are portrayed by partisans on both sides and the media (both sides). These people are digging deep into law and regulation to either confirm the similarities or deny the differences. What’s really quite clear to me is the cost not to national security, but to our national sanity.

Classified information, even of the highest nomenclature, is mishandled every day. That is not because, as some suggest, too much is classified. It is because there are very strict rules for who can see what, where they can see or keep it, how it can be transmitted or carried, how it is to be referenced, maintained, and stored. I’ve heard there are a million people with security clearances, and probably a terabyte (10¹²) of classified information: you do the math, it means somebody is breaking the rules every day.

When that happens, there is an investigation, determining “was it espionage?”, then “was it intentional?”, “was it repeated?”, “who might have accessed it?” and finally “what is the effect of a possible compromise?” In the classic case of someone accidentally leaving a briefcase of classified material in their car parked on a secure compound for a few hours, the answers are all “no/none” and the culprit gets a harsh tongue-lashing. Any answers of “yes” incur ever-increasing punishment, up to and including prison.

Depending, of course, on who the culprit is. See a Marine Lieutenant who leaves a classified document in his car at the Base Exchange is probably looking at a career-ending Article 15 or worse. A CIA Director who releases reams of classified info to his paramour might see a $100k fine, probation, and resign. A Secretary of State who directs her staff to pass classified info over an unsecured server gets a stern rebuke in the middle of a Presidential campaign. And a President? Well, the President is the ultimate classification authority, the “god” of classification, so one can hardly charge a sitting President with misuse of that which he alone controls.

Why the disparate treatment? The punishments are harsher for the more junior personnel because they are designed to keep the legions of lower ranking security clearance holders from making ANY mistakes. When someone junior starts thinking classified material is no big deal, or worse yet someone like Reality Winner or Edward Snowden starts thinking it’s their job to correct US national security policy, very bad things happen. But for very senior people in each administration, it IS their job to do so, so they are handled differently. Frankly, if we treated everyone the same, we would run out of senior personnel pretty fast. No, it’s not fair, but it is the system as it exists, and everybody who is “in” the system knows it.

So former President Trump either took (or directed to be taken) many classified documents which were then stored at Mar-a-lago. He has claimed he declassified them, which is possible, but for which he has produced no proof. What if, as he claims, he could just “think” to make them declassified? Perhaps, but why not follow up and complete the process? And they were still Presidential Records, and thus would still be a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Note that there is no criminal penalty for violating same. So what do we have here, in light of my earlier questions to be answered when there is a mishandling of classified info? There is no public evidence he was trying to sell or give the documents away (we await the FBI report). He seems to have admitted it was intentional, since his “declassified” argument suggests so. It was one, albeit very large, incident. While his storage area at Mar-a-lago was not appropriate for classified documents, it was not generally open to the public and there is little chance anyone accessed them (again, we’ll wait for the FBI report). What this demonstrates is former President Trump’s legendary disdain for the rules, an intentional, highly inappropriate, and casual handling of serious material.

As for the sitting President, much less can be authoritatively said. His personal lawyers found classified documents (from his time as Vice President) when clearing his office at the Penn-Biden Center, a think tank. This raises three questions: Why were his lawyers (lawyers, not gophers) clearing his office six years after he left it, why were there classified documents there at all, and who had access to the empty office? The additional classified material (also allegedly from his time as Vice President) at his home in Delaware presents the same last two questions (the first being answered by the point the FBI agreed to have the President’s lawyers conduct that search). No one knows if then-Mr. Biden brought the documents to either location, or ever had them in his possession. The President has expressed only surprise at the fact of, and the discovery of, the classified information. There is little chance the information was accessed by anyone. What this case demonstrates is classified information was left unsecured at two locations for six years, which is negligence, gross or otherwise. We don’t know who committed it, yet.

Trump-partisans are braying at the hypocrisy of treating the cases differently, but there are differences, most notably, the intentionality of Trump’s case and the willingness to cooperate of Biden’s case. But the very nature of the comparison is what I want to highlight (I know, you’re thinking “Pat, you took me through all that, and NOW you’re getting to your point? Who do you think you are, Arlo Guthrie?”).

I read the Washington Post and the New York Times daily. I watch ABC Nightly News and FoxNews with Bret Baier. I get feeds from the Economist, the Atlantic, the New Republic, the Federalist, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. It is rare to read a report about the recently-discovered Biden case that does not give equal time to the Trump case. Oftentimes, more on Trump and the differences than on the news about Biden itself.

Why? Why compare them? If there is a grizzly murder, does the judge compare it to yesterday’s murders? “My bank robbery netted much less than the one last week, your honor” will never be heard in a courtroom. The events stand on their own, and should be judged that way. In my mind, and with only the facts on hand, Mr. Trump deserves a stiff fine and a public admonishment. Somebody (still to be determined) but possibly President Biden, deserves the same. Why? They both sat atop the classification hierarchy and did not respect it. In neither case is there likely to be damage to national security. One case is short, intentional and adversarial, the other accidental and cooperative but negligently long.

Of course the MAGA hat-wearers are claiming “foul.” Why give them their due? Why diminish in any way the seriousness of the latter Biden case, if it proves to be serious, because Trump is so much more offensive? This has been the case from the beginning with the Trump candidacy, then presidency, and even now once again as a candidate. The investigations, the impeachments, the need to respond to every Trump tweet. At one point in the campaign, I recall candidate Kamala Harris saying “if Donald Trump says to take (the vaccine), I’m not taking it.” Hyperbole, yes, but since it’s Trump, well, ok. Apologies to my MAGA friends and Trump haters everywhere, but everything does not need to be about, or compared to, Trump.

President Biden even set himself up, taking the bait in a 60 Minutes interview when asked what he thought about former President Trump’s stash of secret documents at Mar-a-lago:

This aired in September, but why would the President say such a thing? Why even comment on an open DOJ investigation? Because it’s Trump. So one just has to notice it, be offended by it, comment on it, and denounce it.

Trump is famous for breaking not only the rules, but also the norms of civilized behavior. But here’s a little secret: the first person to ignore a norm does not destroy it. The norm only falls when everyone else says “well he did it, so now . . . “. The reflexive need to put everything into a Trump context ratifies his behavior as the new norm. Which means our norms (like a President taking care of classified material even if he can’t be charged with anything) get replaced with “was it fewer documents than Trump had?”, “were they less classified?”, “did we cooperate more?”, and “were we antagonistic?” Which are lousy norms. Think I’m exagerating? Yesterday, the President of the United States said he has “no regrets” about the classified documents found after being unsecured for six years. None. Zero. Nada. That’s a breathtaking assertion, but hey, it’s not as bad as Trump, right?

Neither of these cases look good for the alleged offenders. Both are serious, but neither (probably) resulted in any damage to national security. Trump is attacking the investigation, belittling the process, and making outlandish claims: par for the course. It appears to me that President Biden will employ a version of the “doddering grandfather” defense (“what? documents? where? huh!”), which would be dismissed as typecasting in Hollywood. We should treat them separately, based on how a former President or Vice President should act with respect to classified information. That is all. Our norms need a rest.

In my last post, I covered the various aspects that make immigration a problem for the United States. It shouldn’t be a problem, it should be an opportunity. We have a great historical record with immigration, and still have the largest number (over fifty million) of immigrants of any country in the world. Almost one-fourth of all immigrants on the planet are in America. America accepts about one million legal immigrants every year, and somewhere around one- to two-million illegal immigrants, too (the second number is difficult to pin down for obvious reasons). None of these numbers are overwhelming to a land as vast and populated (>330 million) as America. And America remains the top desired location among global immigrants, even those who have no chance of going there. To borrow a sports analogy, the US could conduct an expansion draft of the world’s people, choosing just who we want and need, every year. Instead, US immigration policies are a twisted mix of hysteria, lunacy, and laissez-faire. What might work better? Well, almost anything, but I would like to propose a series of compromises emphasizing a combination of tightening illegal entry and loosening legal immigration.

Why a compromise? Because while immigration is overall a net positive for the US, it has complications in real life. It upends families, it changes neighborhoods and towns, it challenges local schools and governments. It makes people uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean we refuse all these people who want to partake of the American dream; it just means we control how it happens. Which, you’ll recall from my last post, is the first duty of a national government. For starters, the US should:

• Adopt an immigration point system favoring skills and education, with each applicant getting a score. Allow businesses, charities, and family members to sponsor applicants, giving them extra points. Set and enforce strict time limits for disaster refugees, letting them know they’re expected to return home, and only allowing them to apply (with a point bonus if they did well while here) after they return to home countries.
• Set a target of three million legal immigrants per year in the near term. Clear the family list in two years, which currently has almost four million people already approved, but kept out, because of quotas. Then scrap the family list altogether: having family in the US gets you extra points, not a special status list.
• Allow states to compete for immigrants and receive extra federal funding for establishing programs to accept and integrate them. If a state doesn’t want to participate, it doesn’t have to. Of course no state can refuse to accept immigrants, since immigrants would have the same right to live where they want as all Americans. But no state would be forced to welcome them; they would be insane not to, but that’s a position each state will have to determine.
• Aggressively negotiate “safe third country” agreements with Mexico and all Central America. These agreements (under international law) make asylees stop in the first safe country they arrive in, rather than continuing along to the final destination of their choice. Transit countries don’t want to be stuck with refugees, but the goal here is not to stick them with anyone, but rather to decrease the dangerous, unregulated mass movement of people. Why would Mexico or anyone else agree to this change? The US must tie development and trade assistance to national acceptance, as well as quotas for a renewed guest worker program. The US had a successful guest worker agreement (the Bracero program) with Mexico, which enabled tens of thousands of Mexican workers to come north to do seasonal farm work and other manual labor. These workers neither wanted nor sought to be American citizens; they just wanted to work and send money home. It ended back in the Kennedy administration; we should re-create the program. Finally, the US should propose an amendment to international law favoring asylum resettlement in nearby and culturally-appropriate nations. Mass migration is an international phenomenon, and the US should exercise leadership in resolving it.
• On a more controversial note, end birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship (if you’re born here, you’re a citizen regardless of why you’re here) is a legacy of colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It exists because the newly independent nations of the New World wanted to encourage immigration, so they made it easy to have children who were citizens. It makes little difference in most countries, but it does complicate things in the US. So-called “anchor babies” (pregnant women travelling to the US just to have “instant-American citizens”) are rarely a thing, but why do we allow it to be a thing at all? Meanwhile, end all the unnecessary drama and legalize all the “Dreamers,” children who know nothing of their original home country and were brought to America illegally by their parents. Again, this should never have required more than a minute of discussion to fix.
• Finish the border with a combination of high-tech/virtual and real barriers, and beef up enforcement. The US- Mexican border is never going to be the DMZ, nor should it be, but we can make it much more likely you’ll get caught if you try to cross illegally. And that is where the next point becomes essential:
• Enforce biometric verification on all illegal border crossers along with a new “three-strikes-and-your-out” policy. Everybody apprehended will have biometric data taken. The first time you are caught, we say “shame on you!” and deport them. The second time we use harsh language (see the movie clip) and a severe warning of what is to come. The third time, they get a mandatory prison sentence followed by deportation and a lifetime ban on ever being allowed to enter the US under any circumstances. We don’t even need a name; we can tell who’s who by the biometric data.

• In conjunction with that, we must address the main source of illegal entry, which are visa-overstays. Right now, more people are coming to the US on legal visitor visas (and then simply staying after the visa expires) than crossing the border illegally. Extend the biometric verification concept to this crowd; when they apply for a visa, they must provide the data. But make it a two-strike rule; why? Most border-crossers are poor and desperate; most visa-overstays are wealthier and by-choice. First strike, you get a huge fine and a waiting period before you can re-enter; second strike, a massive fine and a ban. When people visit, it is their responsibility to check out (at the departure point) with US immigration (this happens all over the world, except the US). Yes, we’ll need some new commercial-friendly policies which enable the easy travel of business people; so be it.
• Speaking of visas, tie the visa application by nation to cooperation with US immigration policy and identification of challenges (terrorists, criminals, spies, etc). If a nation cooperates, make it easier for that nation’s people to travel to the US; if they resist, make it hard. If they simply fail, prohibit them from coming. Of course we can make exceptions for people fleeing political persecution.
• And just to be especially controversial, target the open-borders crowd. These are the pro-immigration advocates who go abroad to encourage illegal migration to the US. They are promoting the violation of US law, and they do so with impunity today; end that. Charge them, try them, convict them. If they operate as groups, go after them with the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes to seize everything they have. Expect our foreign partners to support our efforts.

Finally, just to clear the possibility of courts overturning all these delicate compromises, Congress and the President can enact a change which limits Supreme Court review of immigration and border policies. This is very edgy, I admit, but the courts have participated in the unraveling of our border and immigration policies, and a grand political compromise requires both sides agreeing not to use the courts to undermine it.

What do I foresee from this compromise? Greatly reduced border crossing. Increased legal immigration. A more welcoming atmosphere. Fewer bizarre cases like anchor babies, Dreamers, or repeat border-crossing offenders. What we have now is ridiculous: cities and states declaring themselves “sanctuaries;” politicians bussing people around; border towns overwhelmed; and while some of these measure have an increased cost, we’re spending plenty now for no tangible results. Money well spent in my mind!

Is all this hard? No, it isn’t. There’s a way forward and its pretty obvious. You may not agree with everything (anything?) I wrote, but you can’t deny it would change the dynamic at the border for the better! As for me, like Hyman Roth, “I’m just a retired investor living on a pension.” What do I know?

Yet another occasional series to inform, provoke, and perhaps even illuminate. In this edition, I’ll spend an initial post describing an issue in terms of what the problem is, and then in a subsequent post posit a solution. Why? Because the one lesson I learned in all the engineering courses West Point foisted on me was: First, Define the Problem. If you get the problem wrong, you’ll get the solution wrong, too. So often, people skip problem definition and jump to solutions. Or they assume everybody agrees with what they think the problem is, then they are amazed when others question their preferred solution.

Our first challenge? Immigration, specifically the unapproved movement of large numbers of people across the southwest US-Mexican border. Why is it a problem? According to international law, the first prerequisite for being a state–that is, to be recognized by other states as an equal–is to control one’s territory. This in turn requires demarcating a border and controlling it. If you can’t control some defined territory, you’re not a state. There are various ways to control territory and demarcate a border, from putting up barbed wire and laying mines to just drawing a virtual line: it all depends upon whether someone is contesting the boundary. No one doubts where North Korea is; you’ll get shot if you try to cross in either direction. If you’ve visited Rome, you doubtlessly crossed the line between Italy and the Vatican City (a different, sovereign state under international law) many times without knowing it. No one contests that line (certainly not the Pope nor the Italian government) so it’s not even drawn on the ground, but it still works. On the other hand, many thousands of people contest the southern US border every day by crossing it without permission. So that is a problem.

But how big a problem is it? By historical standards, you might think it’s not much of a problem.

Looking at the blue line, we currently have a 15% immigrant share of the population, much as we did in the distant past, when the country’s population was much smaller. After all, we are “a nation of immigrants” as some are fond of saying. But look closely: no American alive today has experienced this level of immigration. You have to go back to 1910 to find equal data. So everyone is experiencing a steadily growing immigrant share of the population. But is that a problem? Depends upon where the trends are headed.

It is always dangerous to simply draw out existing trends, but note that the immigrant population even grew during the Trump administration. Right now, it is soaring, and there is no policy in place to change that. But don’t we need immigrants to keep our population growing, since Americans are having so few children?

It’s true that many US entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are predicated on the notion of an ever-growing population. This was the case when the programs were created (Social Security in 1935, Medicare in 1965), and it was a reasonable assumption. Some critics call these programs “ponzi schemes,” which is incorrect: a ponzi scheme makes the creator rich at the expense of everyone else. Social Security and Medicare transfer money from working-age adults to assist the elderly and infirm. The problem is, the math requires a high population growth rate, which isn’t the case any more. And the immigration numbers are nowhere near large enough to offset the aging of the baby-boomer generation. Demographers agree the US would need to double or triple its immigration numbers to make a dent in the funding problem; those are numbers beyond the ken of even the most fervent open-borders advocate.

Finally, in all immigration discussions, one must consider the “who” of immigration: what is the profile of the people entering the country? Many countries use a point system to evaluate immigrants as more or less beneficial as prospective citizens. Most countries accept some number of refugees or asylum seekers; the idea here is to mitigate natural disasters or political upheaval for some period of time as a humanitarian response. And all countries accept some (usually small) level of desired immigration: people permitted to enter simply because they want to.

Except the United States of America. Due to haphazard legislation, judicial rulings, and a general lack of consensus on whether there is a problem and what it might be, the US has no effective policy on who crosses our southern border, how long they stay, or what to do when they arrive here. How incoherent is it?

• Under the Trump administration, border agents were forcible separating families at the border, in an (publicly-admitted, immoral, yet effective) attempt to dissuade migrants from arriving. Now, in the Biden administration, border agents are directed to admit unaccompanied children (also publicly admitted, just as immoral, more ineffective), so of course, families are sending their children to the border in hopes it all turns out well on the other side.
• Until the end of the Obama administration, Cubans who arrived on dry land in the US were automatically admitted, but those who attempted to land via boat were returned to Cuba. This policy (in effect for decades) was known as the “wet foot/dry foot” policy to keep Cubans from piling into rickety boats and attempting to cross the dangerous Florida Straits. Now, Venezuelans who arrive at a land border are told to stay in Mexico, but those that apply online and fly into the US are admitted.
• Migration proponents sponsor educational programs throughout Latin America, explaining how to exploit one interpretation of international law in order to gain asylum status in the United States. Worse still, the numbers of such asylum requests have sky-rocketed, swamping the courts which have a multi-year backlog of cases. Nearly all asylum refugees show up for the hearing; almost 80% are disapproved, but almost none show up for the subsequent deportation hearing. The end result is an elaborate judicial charade with no effect on who enters the country.
• Refugees are often admitted to the US as a result of natural disaster or political upheaval. Unlike other countries, the refugees are usually grandfathered into some sort of permanent status, and the children they have in the US automatically become US citizens, further complicating the problem. While these numbers are small, the UN estimates the number of climate emergencies will greatly increase in the coming years, increasing the demands for developed states to accept greater numbers of such refugees.

Finally, there are some aspects of the immigration problem that are not, in fact, relevant to the problem at all. These need to be summarily discussed and dismissed, if only to clear the table for the real challenges:

• The link between drug-smugglers and refugees. This is a wild tangent that should be ignored. Drug smuggling is a multi-billion dollar operation that handles large volumes and evades the government. Refugees carry the clothes on their backs and, due to the ridiculous nature of existing US policies, try to find a border officer to whom to surrender. Sure, somewhere there is a refugee carrying a brick of cocaine, but that’s not the problem. Drug smugglers sometimes use their capabilities to smuggle people, either for human-trafficking or just for refugees who can pay. But it’s a side business at best, and does not affect the overall flow of drugs or people across the border.
• Terrorists crossing the border. You’ll see some news outlets stating “100 people on the terror watch list were caught crossing the border.” Stop and ask yourself: if we caught 100 terrorists at the border, where are the prosecutions? Certainly DHS or the FBI would be trumpeting this success! There are no prosecutions, because there are no apprehensions of terrorists at the border, because there are no terrorists at the border. There are over two million names in the Terrorist Screening Data Base (TSDB), the master list the US government uses to screen people. The list includes aliases, fictional characters, dead people, any name which has been associated with someone who was a terrorist. Osama Bin Laden is still in the TSDB, because some new terrorist might decide to claim his name in his honor. So what those news reports are really saying is “one hundred people who have names like ones in the TSDB were caught at the border.” And since none of them were prosecuted, we know that the appropriate government agents looked at the individual, and the list, and said “nope, not the guy or gal we’re looking for.” End of story.
• Refugees are the result of US meddling in other countries. There are a small number of cases where you can tie US involvement directly to refugee status: Vietnamese and Cambodians after the war in Southeast Asia, and Afghanistanis today, for example. But the overwhelming number of refugees have absolutely no (or a tenuous at best) connection to “US meddling.” We’re dealing with Venezuelans and Nigerians and Mexicans, Cubans, Brazilians, Ecuadorans and Romanians. Even the people from the “golden triangle” (Guatemalans and Hondurans and Salvadorans) are refugees from violent, crime-riddled societies that America last politically cared about forty years ago. This argument doesn’t hold up.
• The US has a moral obligation to accept the world’s refugees, regardless of why they might be refugees. You might see this as an outlandish exaggeration (a straw-man argument, if you will), but I include it since there are very real pro-immigration groups who believe it and profess it. It would seem irresponsible (if not immoral) to me to encourage desperate people to begin the perilous journey to our southern border, to send their children alone across that border, or to place themselves in the hands of coyotes to do so. Yet it happens, all the time. People making this argument do so primarily not to the American public, who would decisively reject it, but they make it to the most vulnerable people in the world. Shame on them.
• “Chain migration,” the sponsoring of relatives by existing green card/naturalized citizens, is a major problem. This policy, which has been around for over fifty years, was once considered a no-brainer. New would-be immigrants who already had family in the US were considered to be stronger candidates for successful integration, so they were favored. Unfounded stories of distant “cousins” given green-card status caused some to question it, but the statistics say otherwise. The list of relatives is limited, as is the overall number for any year (or from any country). In some cases, the list of potential applicants is decades-long! The policy has a sound basis, and it isn’t a major source of immigration.

After all that, I conclude there is an immigration problem. It is not the relative size of the immigration flow, but its uncontrolled nature. The US does not encourage immigrants that it should, nor discourage others in a coherent way. Our policies make a mockery of the rule of law (always a bad thing), are expensive, and have little effect. External factors (like the pandemic, or the health of the Mexican economy) are far more important determinants of US immigration than US immigration policies.

Next post? Immigration solutions based on this problem definition.