Panama Canal

 

In all the talk about infrastructure and supply chair shortages, nobody mentions the Panama Canal, which was a major infrastructure project and could help solve supply chain problems if could accept the large container ships used today.  

The many container ships anchored off the California coast are too big to go through the Panama Canal.  Since they are coming from Asia, any goods destined for the east coast or the mid-west have to be shipped across the country by rail or truck.  It would be more efficient and demand less transit within the US if the ships could reach New York or Baltimore on the east coast, but there is no easy way, whether via the Suez Canal, around Cape Horn or around the Cape of Good Hope. 

The Panama Canal was an amazing construction project which greatly facilitated shipping, but it has become dated and too small for the ships that carry most of the cargo today.  President Biden often talks about Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal; he should also recognize Teddy Roosevelt and his contribution to east-west commerce by overseeing the construction of the Panama Canal. 

Putin and Ukraine

 

Two recent articles on the Foreign Affairs website deal with the question of what Putin plans to do about Ukraine.  Will he invade or not?

·       Russia Won’t Let Ukraine Go Without a Fight

·       Ukraine in the Crosshairs

I think the first ignores the history of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, while the second tends to downplay the importance of the history.  The second article refers to an essay by Putin on the history of the relationship, calling it “revanchist drivel.” 

There are several matters that may be prompting Putin to threaten to invade Ukraine. 

·       Putin see Ukraine as a historical part of Russia and does not want to see it move further toward the West. He may try to keep it physically under Russian control.   

·       Lukashenko, the Putin-supported president of Belarus is being challenged by a popular movement in Belarus. Putin may fear losing his proxy in Belarus as he did in Ukraine. 

·       Putin’s popularity and support are sinking in Russia as he faces opposition from Navalny and other challengers.  He may think a foreign success will strengthen his support within Russia. 

Ukraine and Russia

For the last thousand years, Ukraine has been an ethnic and geographical region, but not an independent country.  Kiev, founded around 500 A.D., was in many ways the first capital of Russia, before Moscow, founded around 1150, or St. Petersburg (1700). 

In his article, Putin says:

Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes across the vast territory – from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov – were bound together by one language (which we now refer to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, still largely determines our affinity today.

The throne of Kiev held a dominant position in Ancient Rus. This had been the custom since the late 9th century. The Tale of Bygone Years captured for posterity the words of Oleg the Prophet about Kiev, ”Let it be the mother of all Russian cities.“

 

Over the years, as Russia or Poland became more or less powerful and expanded or contracted, parts of Ukraine became more Russian or more Polish.  The western Polish parts tended to be Roman Catholic, while the eastern Russian parts were Orthodox Catholic.  After World Wars I and II, Ukraine became more fully Russian.  The Russian Communists made the Ukraine SSR one of the Socialist Republics which was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  In 1954, the Crimea region was transferred from the Russian SSR to the Ukrainian SSR, probably to advance the career or Nikita Khrushchev, who was the party official responsible for Ukraine.  Thus, when the USSR disintegrated in 1991, Ukraine, including Crimea, automatically became a separate country for the first time. 

For the first few years of independent Ukraine continued as largely a satellite of the Russian Republic.  In 2004, however, a disputed election resulted in the Ukrainian supreme court overturning the election of Putin’s candidate, Yanukovich.  The opposition to Yanukovich created the Orange Revolution, which brought in opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko as the new president.   Yanukovich, however, returned to power as prime minister in 2006, and after a hiatus, again in 2010. 

Mounting opposition to Yanukovich was expressed in the Euromaidan protests in 2014 resulting in new elections and the election of Petro Poroshenko.  The ousting of Yanukovich, however, prompted Putin to annex Crimea, and return it to Russian rule.  American, Russian, and European political strategists have been involved in the various campaigns for president, including Paul Manafort, who was Donald Trump’s campaign manager for a while.  Manafort worked for the pro-Russian candidates.  In 2019 Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president, replacing Poroshenko.

In addition to annexing Crimea, Putin has used more or less covert military means to bring the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine back into the Russian orbit.  Pro-Russian Ukrainians, supported by covert Russian military, have fought against Ukrainian soldiers.  Reuters reported on November 23 that Russian-controlled forces in Donbas were increasing readiness and hold exercises.   The Atlantic Council reports that on November 15, Putin issued a decree removing trade barriers between Russia and the Donbas region, but not with the pro-Western parts of Ukraine.       

Belarus

Alexander Lukashenko has been Russia’s strongman in Belarus since Belarus became independent in 1994.  He had managed to keep politics relatively quiet until the 2020 election, when protests erupted, somewhat like those in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014. The protests have been led by a blogger, Sergei Tikhanovsky, and presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.  Lukashenko cracked down hard on the protesters with beatings, arrests, and torture.   Lukashenko remains in control, but his 2020 election is not recognized by the UK, the EU, or the US because of election fraud. 

The opposition to Lukashenko, may have Putin worried that he is in danger of losing his man in Minsk, like he lost his man in Kyiv/Kiev.  He may think that some kind of military showing in Ukraine will make the Belarussians think twice about following the Ukrainian example. 

 

Putin’s Hold on Russia

Putin still has a strong hold on Russia, but opposition to him is growing, or at least becoming more visible.  His poisoning and imprisonment of Alexei Navalny and the crackdown on the opposition Navalny led indicate that he is worried.  He may think that an exercise showing Russian military strength in Ukraine would help cement his leadership position in Russia.  Putin would see it as a restoration of Russian greatness, and he would expect nationalist Russians to see it that way as well. 

 

 

Carbon Trading at COP26

 

The carbon trading plan set up by COP26 seems to be vague.  In the reports of it, I don’t see any numbers about how it would work in detail.  The main issue seems to have been how much money would be given to poor countries as part of the arrangement.  The new UN-backed trading system would coordinate with existing carbon trading arrangements, but with no accounting standards that I see described. 

There does not appear to be any enforcement mechanism.  It is basically an undertaking by the governments to “do good” by trading carbon emissions for carbon reductions.  I suppose this is nice, but what we really need is a carbon tax.  We need an agreement that emitting a ton of carbon dioxide will cost x agreed dollars paid into a fund with some kind of agreed distribution system.  Alternatively, the emitter could do something that would absorb the ton of CO2 he emitted, such as plant trees.  It sounds like some countries and localities have trading/tax plans like this, but they are not widespread, and so far, not very effective. 

From my point of view a carbon tax is necessary because it makes it more economically feasible to develop nuclear energy to reduce carbon emissions.  Nuclear power plants are expensive and not competitive with old-style coal and gas power plants, but a real carbon tax would make it more expensive to burn fossil fuels, and would make nuclear more competitive.  The more EVs get their power from nuclear, the less global warming gas is released.  Of course, this true if they are powered by solar or wind, but so far solar and wind are unable to meet the demand. 

Of course, most environmentalists hate nuclear power, but they must decide if they are willing to bring about global warming by running their EVs on coal and gas.  I think that nuclear energy can produce electricity safely, and the environmentalists’ fear of it is not based on science, but prejudice and ignorance. 

Ice Ages and Climate Change

 Earth has experienced a number of cooling and warming cycles in the last few billion years.  According to Wikipedia, there have been at least five major ice ages in Earth’s history, the first starting about three billion years ago.  The most severe occurred about 300 million years ago.  Earth is currently in an interglacial period, with the last glacial period having ended about 12,000 years ago. 

Scientists posit a number of causes for the cycles of heating and cooling of the Earth, although none seem to be definitive.  Over this period continents and seas have moved.  Land has been covered more by vegetation (darker and heat absorbing) or more by ice (reflecting heat away from Earth).  Many other factors have played roles.  But the main takeaway is that Earth has heated or cooled due to natural cycles for billions of years.  Certainly, the huge increase of manmade carbon dioxide will be important to what happens in the next cycle, but so will natural causes.  Earth has not had a fixed average temperature over its lifetime.  Some scientists think that at one time Earth may have been a “snowball” completely covered in ice. 

In an opposite process from ice ages, is the creation of fossil fuels under what is now desert.  Fossil fuels are remains of dead plants, often found now in places were few plants grow today.  The biggest oil fossil fuel reserves are in Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, and Iran.  The largest coal reserves are in the US, Russia, China, Australia, and India.  The vegetation that became these fossil fuels grew in lush, swampy forests, which no longer exist in those locations. 

Although the issue does not come up often in discussions of climate change, we are depleting our deposits of fossil fuels very quickly in relation to the millions of years that it took to create them. 

The other non-renewable source of energy is uranium.  The World Nuclear Association estimates that uranium should be available as a fuel for centuries to come.  It is the 51^st most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, about the same as tin.  A lot of processing is necessary to turn uranium into reactor fuel, but a lot of processing is also necessary to turn petroleum from the ground into usable fuel.   

Climate will change.  We have limited control over how it will change.  We should certainly devote our efforts to getting it to change in a good direction.  Mankind can adapt, but we are used to living within a relatively small temperature range.  It would be more pleasant to continue to live within that same temperature range. 

Gas Prices and Climate Change

It is ironic that right after COP26, the big climate change conference, the US media is obsessed with the high price of gasoline.  The main goal of COP26 was to reign in use of fossil fuels like gasoline.  One of the best ways to reduce its use is to raise its price, but instead of praising the price increase as a way to reduce its use, the press is criticizing the price increase as a component of inflation.  If America were serious about phasing out fossil fuels, it would raise the price of gasoline (and other fossil fuels) even higher. 

Meanwhile, the American stock market has gone bonkers over electric vehicles (EVs) like Tesla.  No one highlights the fact that most EVs run on electricity from the national power grid, which is a mix of energy sources, including coal.  A relatively small share of electricity comes from renewable sources like wind and solar.  Currently the energy mix is approximately 20% coal, 20% renewables, 20% nuclear, and 40% natural gas.  So, about 60% of the fuel in your Tesla comes from fossil sources.  Nuclear energy contributes about as much toward saving the climate as renewable sources, although most nuclear plants are more than 40 years old.  To date, they have done more to control global warming than all the windmills and solar panels ever made. 

Sen. Fulbright on Vietnam

This post of an excerpt by the Abbeville Institute from William Fulbright’s book The Arrogance of Power reminds us that not all Southerners are idiots as the New York Times and Washington Post would have us believe.  The people who got us into Afghanistan and Iraq would have done well to read Fulbright’s book.  Fulbright wrote:

The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission. The dilemmas involved are preeminently American dilemmas, not because America has weaknesses that others do not have but because America is powerful as no nation has ever been before and the discrepancy between its power and the power of others appears to be increasing….

We are now engaged in a war to “defend freedom” in South Vietnam. Unlike the Republic of Korea, South Vietnam has an army which [is] without notable success and a weak, dictatorial government which does not command the loyalty of the South Vietnamese people. The official war aims of the United States Government, as I understand them, are to defeat what is regarded as North Vietnamese aggression, to demonstrate the futility of what the communists call “wars of national liberation,” and to create conditions under which the South Vietnamese people will be able freely to determine their own future. I have not the slightest doubt of the sincerity of the President and the Vice President and the Secretaries of State and Defense in propounding these aims. What I do doubt and doubt very much_is the ability of the United States to achieve these aims by the means being used. I do not question the power of our weapons and the efficiency of our logistics; I cannot say these things delight me as the y seem to delight some of our officials, but they are certainly impressive. What I do question is the ability of the United States, or France or any other Western nation, to go into a small, alien, undeveloped Asian nation and create stability where there is chaos, the will to fight where there is defeatism, democracy racy where there is no tradition of it and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life. Our handicap is well expressed in the pungent Chinese proverb: “In shallow waters dragons become the sport of shrimps.”

Early last month demonstrators in Saigon burned American jeeps, tried to assault American soldiers, and marched through the streets shouting “Down with the American imperialists,” while one of the Buddhist leaders made a speech equating the United States with the communists as a threat to South Vietnamese independence. Most Americans are understandably shocked ant angered to encounter such hostility from people who by now would be under the rule of the Viet Cong but for the sacrifice of American lives and money. Why, we may ask, are they so shockingly ungrateful? Surely they must know that their very right to parade and protest and demonstrate depends on the Americans who are defending them.

The answer, I think, is that “fatal impact” of the rich and strong on the poor and weak. Dependent on it though the Vietnamese are, our very strength is a reproach to their weakness, our wealth a mockery of their poverty, our success a reminder of their failures. What they resent is the disruptive effect of our strong culture upon their fragile one, an effect which we can no more avoid than a man can help being bigger than a child. What they fear, I think rightly, is that traditional Vietnamese society cannot survive the American economic and cultural impact….

The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends. We are still acting like boy scouts dragging reluctant old ladies across the streets they do not want to cross. We are trying to remake Vietnamese society, a task which certainly cannot be accomplished by force and which probably cannot be accomplished by any means available to outsiders. The objective may b e desirable, but it is not feasible….

If America has a service to perform in the world_and I believe it has_it is in large part the service of its own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest. This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said!
“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.” . . .

There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the all- around advantages of minding one’s own business in our relations with everybody. Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example o f democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all” but “the champion and vindicator only of her own.” . …

If we can bring ourselves so to act, we will have overcome the dangers of the arrogance of power. It will involve, no doubt, the loss of certain glories, but that seems a price worth paying for the probable rewards, which are the happiness of America and the peace of the world.

From J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (Random House, 1967).

 

Use Nuclear Power to Fight Global Warming

 The Economist magazine has an excellent article on the importance of nuclear power in fighting global warming. It says:

Because nuclear power is expensive in ways that show up in profits, whereas damage to the climate is not priced into burning fossil fuels, this would be unsurprising even if it were popular with environmentalists—which, by and large, it is not. But it is still too bad. The paradigm-shifting drop in the cost of renewable electricity in the past decade is central to the decarbonisation pathway the world is fitfully following. But a clean-energy system requires redundancy and reliability in its electricity grids that are hard to achieve with renewables alone. It will probably also require lots of hydrogen for, say, powering aircraft and making steel and chemicals, which reactors could provide.

Nuclear power has its drawbacks, as do all energy sources. But when well-regulated it is reliable and, despite its reputation, extremely safe. That is why it is foolish to close down perfectly good nuclear power stations such as Diablo Canyon, in California, because of little more than prejudice. It is why some countries, most notably China, are building out their nuclear fleets. It helps explain why others—including, as it happens, Saudi Arabia—are getting into the game for the first time. And it is why approaches to reducing nuclear energy’s cost penalty are at last coming into their own.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/11/13/the-discreet-charm-of-nuclear-power

Nuclear Energy at COP26

 

Time Magazine reports that nuclear energy is having a mixed reception at COP26,  One group sees it as a source of energy that does not contribute to global warming, but another sees it as just another source of pollution.  Natural gas faces an equally mixed reception, since it contributes less to global warming than coal, but it still releases carbon dioxde.  France and Russia are champions of nuclear power, with US support, but Germany, Belgium, New Zealand, and Austria oppose including nuclear as a green power source. 

One argument against nuclear plants is that they take a long time to build and are expensive.  But that may be an argument to get started soon if we are going to need them. 

 

Biden's Plan vs the New Deal

 

Biden has often compared what he wants to do with his Build Back Better plan to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  When Roosevelt was elected during the Great Depression, unemployment was a huge problem.  People needed money, and there was no work.  Roosevelt created a number of programs to put people to work.  These included the Civilian Conservation Corp, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration.  

Unemployment was a big problem only at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.  It soon developed that many office workers could work from home over the Internet.  Many of those who couldn’t work from home continued to work in their service jobs at grocery stores, farms, etc.  Those who lost their jobs, mainly lost them because many travel-related businesses closed or became much smaller, hotels, restaurants, airlines, etc. Thee was a huge spike in unemployment, but it did not last long. 

Covid meant that a jobs program like the CCC was inappropriate because of fears about infection from concentrations of workers.  Thus the government just gave money to citizens to support them while they had to stay home.  There were some relief programs like this under the New Deal – the Federal Emergency Relief Act and the Social Security Act – but relatively few compare to jobs programs. 

Now, as the threat of Covid is reduced and people can go back to work, they don’t want to.  There are many jobs that cannot be filled, as more people drop out of the labor force.  Whether they will return for higher salaries remains to be seen.  What effect the higher salaries will have on the national economy remains to be seen.  It is not clear that there will be enough skilled workers to build Biden’s infrastructure projects.  Workers may have to come from other countries. 

In addition to paying people to stay home, the government reduced interest rates to almost zero in order to spur the economy.  The worked almost immediately.  After a big loss, the stock market recovered robustly, making many people rich in the process.  The government response had the perverse effect of increasing the gap between the rich and the poor in America.  While it prevented the poor from starving, it made the upper classes much wealthier, so that the pandemic was the best thing that had happened to them in a generation. 

The New Deal probably made some people rich, but not nearly as many as the pandemic did. It was quickly followed by World War II, which put everyone to work, but also used up all the nation’s resources, so that almost everything was rationed, for rich and poor. People made sacrifices for the Depression and for World War II, but nobody has made any sacrifices to deal with the pandemic, except for some doctors, nurses, and other service employees like grocery workers and meatpackers.    

Carbon Trading at COP26

 

COP26 is having a hard time developing a carbon trading market structure, which is bad news for nuclear power. Nuclear power is more expensive than some forms of fossil fueled power plants, but it would be more competitive if there were a real carbon tax on the greenhouse gases emitted by the fossil fuels.  No carbon tax encourages continued release of greenhouse gases. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Brazil has been receptive to carbon trading proposals at COP26.  However, Bloomberg reports that poorer countries want more money from trading to pay for their costs to adapt to climate change, and the EU objects to giving them part of the funds from carbon credit exchanges between countries. 

There are also efforts to develop carbon trading markets outside of COP26, but a worldwide regime would be a big boost.  Identifying a cost for emitting CO2 seems like one of the best ways to limit it.  Of course, like all laws and markets, enforcement would be a problem. 

Hypersonic Hype

 Foreign Policy magazine has weighed in on the hype about hypersonic missiles. It falls somewhere between my view that hypersonic missile developments are important, and Fareed Zakaria’s view that they are not.

What’s with all the hypersonic hype? “Ballistic missiles already fly at hypersonic speeds, so what makes these weapons so special?” a knowledgeable and nerdy SitRep reader might ask. The key difference is that ballistic missiles follow a nice, easy-to-track trajectory to their target.

But, missile defense systems be warned, hypersonic missiles can change trajectory and maneuver en route to their final targets, making them significantly more difficult to track. Hypersonic missiles are nothing new, but the pace at which both Moscow and Beijing are investing in these programs definitely is. Hypersonic missiles can also travel at five times the speed of sound. 

Two other big issues. Keep in mind: First, both Russia and China reportedly have designs to put nuclear warheads on their hypersonic missiles, unlike the United States. Second, there is currently no international agreement or treaty dedicated to limiting or monitoring hypersonic missiles, meaning absent a new campaign of international arms control diplomacy, we have the perfect recipe for a new three-way arms race.

Polling Is Worthless

 John Heilman looked like an out of touch idiot on “Morning Joe” this morning, as did most of his Democratic diehard colleagues sitting around the table.  The polls on the Virginia governor’s race were off, but the polls on the New Jersey governor’s race had no resemblance to reality.  Whether the Democrat Murphy wins or loses, the polls about the election that had him winning easily were wrong. 

Polling companies in America appear to be corrupt, bought by the Democrats who cite the fake polls everyday in the political punditry.  Based on polls, Hillary Clinton prepared a big fireworks display to mark her victory over Donald Trump in the 2018 presidential election.  Polling data seems to be strongly biased in favor of Democratic candidates, and the Democrats seem to cite polling more than Republicans, since the polling favors them. 

Unfortunately it makes the media and election campaigns look corrupt and undermines public faith in elections and democracy.  Joe Scarborough, John Heilman and the other Democrats are leading efforts against free and fair elections that are as damaging as Donald Trump’s.  America is becoming a third-world country, at least in part due to the Democrats plan to bring in as many third-world immigrants as possible to stuff the ballots for the Democrats. 

Youngkin’s victory, however, shows that there is hope for future elections, despite the Democratic pundits’ efforts to control them.  

Energy Crisis

In his October 21  Washington Post column and his CNN GPS broadcast, Fareed Zakaria discussed how renewable energy sources are failing to completely replace fossil fuels.  His failure to examine the role of nuclear power reactors is a serious oversight.  His only mention of nuclear is to note that Germany eliminated coal, gas and nuclear power sources before it was ready to replace their production. 

Merkel’s decision to get rid of nuclear power in Germany in 2011 because of its bad reputation after the Fukushima nuclear accident, but before she was ready to replace it, illustrates the irrational opposition of environmentalists to nuclear power. 

The New York Times 2011 article reporting on Merkel’s decision reported on the response from German energy companies:

Another factor is the likelihood that Germany, which already gets more than one third of its natural gas from Russia, will grow more dependent. 

The government acknowledges that natural gas and coal-fired power plants will continue to play a big role. They are, after all, able to provide large chunks of power at any time — unlike solar or wind energy, at least with current storage technology. 

Today in 2021 Germany is facing an energy shortage crisis that can be met mainly by importing expensive, climate-warming, natural gas from Russia.  

Hypersonic Missile

 I do not often disagree with Fareed Zakaria, but this week I disagree with both his Washington Post column and his CNN GPS commentary. 

In his Washington Post column, Fareed Zakaria says he does not believe that the Chinese and Russian tests of a hypersonic missile is a Sputnik moment.  Gen. Milley did not say that the Chinese test was a Sputnik moment, but was close to it.  Fareed says:

“Sputnik was a revolution in the space race. Hypersonic missiles, on the other hand, are old news. A hypersonic missile travels at five times the speed of sound or faster. Starting in 1959, the United States and the Soviet Union have deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles that travel more than 20 times the speed of sound.”

If hypersonic missile technology is so unimportant, why are the US, China, and Russia working on it.  It may not be a strategic game changer, but it does show where each country stands in terms of developing new weapons technology.  A hypersonic missile could be a precursor of a hypersonic plane, civilian or military.  Or it might be a useless white elephant like “Star Wars” anti-ballistic missile technology has been so far.  Military technology, whether for “Star Wars” or hypersonic missiles, does give some insight into a country’s defense capabilities, even if it is not immediately implemented in deployed weapons.

The hypersonic competition shows that there is some kind of cold war among the big three countries, even if it is different from the old cold war between the US and Russia.    I think hypersonic missiles are more important than Fareed thinks they are.