Tuesday, March 01, 2016

New York Times Omits Bernard Henri Levy's Role in Libya

The NYT's excellent articles (Part I and Part 2) about Hillary Clinton's role in the Libya disaster after getting rid of Qaddafi, omit the role of French philosopher Bernard Henri Levy in creating the mess, examined in this France 24 article.  The NYT articles talk about how the Europeans, particularly the French and British promised to take the lead in Libya, and even to go ahead there without the US, but it does not look at the role played by Levy in getting the French government to play such a leading role.

Levy clearly saw this intervention as benefiting Israel, but whether he convinced Israel or whether Israel convinced him is not clear to me.  The fact that an Arab Muslim country has fallen into civil war or anarchy probably benefits Israel, although the fact that Libya has increasingly become a base for ISIS operations probably does not.

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Westward Expansion as Safety Net

Everybody makes big deal of diversity in US.  It is an accident of history.  Unlike Europe, which has been settled for millennia, America was virtually empty when it was discovered by Columbus in 1492.  The Indians were hunter-gatherers who had created only a few cities or towns in North America, mostly in the Southwest, although they had created grander ones in Central and South America.  In North America there was relatively little resistance to the westward expansion of Europeans across the continent.  There was never much threat from Indians against European-built cities after the first hundred years or so.  As the Indians were driven westward, the war against them moved westward to protect the settlers as they moved in. 

The westward expansion essentially created free land for those who were will to claim it and fight for it.  This became the social and economic safety net for Europeans who could not make it on the more civilized east coast.  If you couldn’t make it in Boston or Charleston, you could set out for Indiana or Alabama, and eventually Kansas, Texas, or California.  Life was hard, but it was possible to get out of the oppressive slums in the east coast cities where immigrants first arrived.  Today, if you are stuck in a slum, there is no wild West to go to.  Three is no more free land, although people like Cliven Bundy claim that there should be.  As a result, it is harder for people trapped in slums to get out. 

Another mass migration that took place later was the movement of blacks from the deep South, where they had lived since slavery, to the industrial north, where low skilled jobs with good pay were available, particularly in the car industry in Detroit.  These jobs became the security safety net for struggling poor people in the South. 

When the Great Depression hit, however, the geographic safety net had largely disappeared.  There was no golden region of the country to which people could flee for a better life.  It was only then, under FDR, that the government moved in to provide its own safety net in the form of the CCC, WPA, TVA, Social Security and other government programs.  These programs became necessary because by 1930, the formerly empty United States had filled up with people. 

Prior to this there had been few restraints on immigration, because people saw it as positive to make use of empty land by farming, ranching, mining or manufacturing.  During this open immigration period, most of the immigrants came from Europe, mainly from western and northern Europe.  Thus it was not surprising when prejudice grew up against immigrants from Ireland and Italy by settlers of English and northern European extraction, for example.  The descendants brought some of their old-country hostilities with them.  Irish-English animosities were alive and well in Boston and Belfast well into the 1990s. 


The idea that the United States has always been a land welcoming any immigrants from anywhere is largely fiction.  Blacks arrived as slaves.  The Chinese were discriminated against for years, as were southern Europeans.  Even immigrants like the Germans and Poles, largely went west to more open places like Michigan and Minnesota, finding the already crowded east coast somewhat hostile to them.  

Friday, February 19, 2016

Apple Opposes FBI for Commercial Reasons

The Guardian reported that the FBI responded to Apple’s refusal to help it break into the San Bernardino terrorist’s phone by accusing Apple of using the case for financial and commercial benefit.  The article said:
The FBI accused Apple of prioritizing its public relations strategy over a terrorism investigation on Friday in a significant escalation of this week’s war between the tech company and the law enforcement agency.



The accusation, made in a court filing demanding Apple comply with an order to unlock an iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino terrorists, represents a nadir in the relationship between two opponents that previously extended each other public respect.
“Apple’s current refusal to comply with the Court’s Order, despite the technical feasibility of doing so, instead appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in the Friday filing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/business/justice-department-calls-apples-refusal-to-unlock-iphone-a-marketing-strategy.html?emc=edit_na_20160219&nlid=56573240&ref=cta

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Kashkari on Bank Break Up

I am pleased with Kashkari's remarks reported in the WSJ, reinforcing my earlier remarks that the big banks need to be broken up.

Friday, February 12, 2016

Bank Problems

I am concerned about declining confidence in the US banking sector.  Recently CNBC and Bloomberg have been discussing problems at the German bank Deutsche Bank.  More disturbing for Americans, declining stock prices for big American banks indicate a lack of confidence in the whole industry. Dodd-Frank was supposed to protect us from bank failures, but today Sen. Elizabeth Warren grilled Fed Chair Janet Yellen at length about problems with “living wills” for banks that fail. 

I am concerned that American banks are still too big to fail, and that Dodd-Frank has failed to keep them from engaging in risky activities that could create a global financial catastrophe.  Dodd-Frank and the Volker rule have failed to fill the gap created by President Clinton’s elimination of Glass-Steagall. 

I would like to see Glass-Steagall re-enacted.  At a minimum we need to make big banks smaller and rein in their riskier trading activities.  I am alarmed to see the stock market illustrate Wall Street’s lack of confidence in its own big banks like JP Morgan-Chase and Goldman Sachs. 

Related to this is, I believe, is the issue of income inequality.  There has been talk of lack of liquidity surrounding the current unsettled bank environment.  One problem with consolidating all the nation’s wealth in a few hands is that the few hundred families who control that wealth may all decide at once to do the same thing, e.g., sell bonds.  If they all act at once, there will be no one to buy bonds, for example.  Prices would plunge, and we would be back in another financial crisis.  To some extent this is what happened in the 1929 market crash, when like today, much wealth was held by a few extremely wealthy people.  The aggregation of wealth means that markets become smaller, controlled by a few people. and more susceptible to volatility.  As markets become dominated by a few players, the country becomes less capitalistic and more oligopolistic.  This is what happened to Russia under Yeltsin.  I hate to see America following the Russian model. 


Keep the Draft

As one of the last people subject to the draft during the Vietnam War. I am writing to support the continued existence of the Selective Service System in case we need a military draft sometime in the future.  I actually volunteered after being classified 1-A and passing the physical, rather than wait a month or two to be drafted. 

I am very disappointed that military service has become such a contemptible, dishonorable profession in the United States.  I came home from Vietnam to scorn for being a veteran.  Today, people praise veterans, but in my opinion, it is usually because the people heaping the praise are not willing to serve themselves.  They think, “If I tell this fool what a great job he is doing, then I won’t have to do it.”  When it comes to something more expensive than praise, like giving veterans jobs or health benefits, the country is less fulsome. 

The military likes having an all-volunteer force, but I think we need people who would not ordinarily serve in the military.  We need people from Harvard and Stanford who look at the world differently from the ordinary pool of recruits, who are mostly poor and less well educated.  Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan hated the military so much when she was dean of the Harvard Law School that she prohibited military recruiting there.  The military needs a diversity of personalities, perspectives and talents, just like any other large organization.  This lack of intellectual diversity has hampered the military ever since Vietnam, when despite the draft, rich, smart, well-educated people generally did not serve.  That may be one reason we lost the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  We sent our trailer-park trash to fight and we got trashy results. 

I realize that the proposal by Congressmen Coffman and Polis to abolish the draft is motivated by the recent call to include women in the draft.  I have no objection to including women in the draft, but I do oppose the recent decision to include women in all fighting units of the military, including the Army infantry and the Marines.  I think the problems with rape and other sex offenses in our universities illustrate the problems of putting young men and women with raging hormones together in situations where there are frequent romantic temptations.  I was in the artillery, where living conditions are better than in the infantry, but everyone slept together in one bunker, used the same latrine, etc.  Living conditions are probably manageable in rear echelon environments, where women could certainly serve, but I think forcing men and women to live together in combat situations is just asking for trouble in terms of sexual contact.  In any case, there are certainly military jobs for which America could draft women. 

I believe that the draft would strengthen the military by bringing in new blood, although the military leadership probably is not enthusiastic about the challenges to it that would emerge from a better quality of recruits. 



Tuesday, February 09, 2016

World War I Memorial

I was struck by the fact that the announcement of the new Washington memorial for World War I veterans, and the exposé of high administrative costs for the Wounded Warrior Project came out at almost the same time.  It’s interesting that the Vietnam War was the first American war in which veterans were widely reviled and hated, not counting the Civil War, which was a special case.  Other small wars were not widely supported, perhaps the Mexican War or the Spanish-American War, but there was not widespread contempt for the men who participated in them.  Teddy Roosevelt came out of the Spanish American War a hero, like John McCain came out a hero of the Vietnam War, unlike most of his fellow servicemen.  Similarly, there were some heroes of the Mexican-American War, like Zachery Taylor.  About the only heroes Vietnam produced were POWs.  General Westmoreland is usually considered a failure.  It was a case where the common soldiers won almost every battle, but the generals and the politicians lost the war.  So, in order to honor the common soldiers who died, the nation created a Vietnam Memorial to offset to some extent the general disrepute in which the soldiers were held. 

For previous wars there was no need to build a memorial, because those who fought were generally held in high regard.  There were many local memorials in small cities and towns, because everyone knew someone who had served.  Soldiers came from ordinary people’s homes, their relatives, their neighbors.  They often came from good families, and those who returned often went on to take leadership roles in their communities.  The reverse was true for Vietnam, people from good families refused to fight, and veterans who returned often found themselves treated like outcasts.  Homeless Vietnam veterans became a common sight in most cities. 

Now, people who grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam era have little idea what national service is like.  There was a burst of patriotism after 9/11, but it was squandered in a pointless war in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11.  After an initial rush to join the military after 9/11, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan began to be ignored or disrespected like their Vietnam predecessors.  Nevertheless, people who don’t want to fight themselves want someone to fight for them.  So, they tell the veterans how much they love and respect them, when their actual attitude is, “I’m glad they went so that I didn’t have to.”  They tend to see veterans as people who can’t get a real job and have no choice but to join the military.  We have an all-volunteer military, but one that does not include many of the country’s best people. 


It’s the people who don’t remember when serving in the military was a well-respected calling who now want to build memorials.  The men who fought in World War I and II did not think that they needed memorials.  They thought that their service was their memorial, and that their sacrifices lived in the hearts and minds of their friends and relatives.  But that remembrance has died out, and average people today think World War I and II veterans were as worthless as the veterans of Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.  Today many people think they have to build memorials so that poor, stupid people like me will still go off to war when the country wants to fight a war.  It’s all about themselves, not about the veterans.  At least superficially, it is a better welcome home now than during Vietnam.  But is it reasonable that people today care more about the veterans who fought in World War I than America did 100 years ago?  And is it reasonable that people today care more about World War II veterans than their loved ones did fifty years ago?  No, if anything, the memorials are a penance for not caring.  

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Dangers of Global Wealth Inequality

A Credit Swisse Report says that the top 0.7% of the world’s population, those with net wealth of $1 million or more, about 34 million people, own 45% of all global wealth.  It says there are 123,800 Ultra High Net Worth individuals worldwide who have a net worth of more than $50 million.  Fortune summarized the report. 

The Guardian says that there are 199,235 Ultra High Net Worth individuals, whose combined net worth is around $27.7 trillion, about 40% of the world’s GDP. 

This increasing concentration of wealth may have implications for financial liquidity.  To be liquid, markets need buyers and sellers, and this means there needs to be some diversity.  You need people who are looking for different things from their investments.  As you narrow the group making investments, you narrow their interests.  At some point you might end up with a small group of people who all want to sell.  The people who would in the past have been  buyers, now would not have enough resources to buy the huge amounts the superrich want to sell.  The result might be a violent dive in the price of the assests in disfavor, whether they are stocks, bonds, or real estate.  The same would be true if all the superrich wanted to buy some particular asset.  The result would be at best increasing volatility, and at worst market crashes.  These crashes might have less effect on the superrich than on ordinary people, because the superrich would probably be diversified.  For example, a big loss in their real estate investments would be cushioned by their investments in the stock and bond markets, or the art market, etc.  However, for ordinary people a big loss in the value of their home might be devastating, because they would not have other big, valuable assets to cushion the loss of their home value. 

This is more or less what happened in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. 

The other side of that crisis was what happened to the banks.  A few banks then and now were humongous, dominating the market for complicated financial instruments, like bonds made up of home mortgages.  Having only a few huge banks is like having a small group of superrich people, the chances of some event affecting all of the players becomes larger as the group of players becomes smaller.  Dodd-Frank and the Volker Rule were supposed to help remedy this, but so appears to have done little, despite (or because of) the loud protests of the big banks against any restrictions. 


Thursday, January 14, 2016

Obama's State of the Union

I think Obama has done a good job as President compared to many of his predecessors, especially George W. Bush, one of the worst Presidents in modern history.  Bush and Cheney slept while New York City and Washington were attacked.  Then they retaliated against the wrong country.  They created Guantanamo, America’s version of the Soviet gulags, located in another country, because it was such a horrible thing that we didn’t want it in the continental US, just as Hitler did not want Auschwitz within the borders of Germany.  Under Bush and Cheney, America descended into a moral abyss.  It fell to the level of the terrorists who attacked it.  Obama has not done anything nearly as bad as that. 

ObamaCare was not a complete success.  Single-payer Medicare would have been preferable to the messy, hybrid, expensive system we got from the process, but it is better than nothing, which is what we had before.  He has not gotten rid of Guantanamo, but at least he says he wants to and will try to do so before the end of his term. 

His supposed admission that his one big failure was not restoring a civil dialogue between the Republicans and Democrats, is not really an acknowledgement of failure, it is just a nice sounding, back-handed way of saying, “I still can’t get along with those Republicans; they are just as nasty as ever.”  It was more an insult than an admission of failure. 

On the plus side, however, he tried to get us out of failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He did not entirely succeed in this, in large part because he inherited a horribly flawed situation from the previous administration.   Bush started the destabilization of the Middle East, but Obama may have abetted it by his encouragement of the Arab Spring’s desire to throw out all the old leadership of the Middle East.  Bush removed the foundation of Middle East stability, and Obama pushed over the unstable structure Bush left behind. 

I believe that Obama has done the right thing regarding Syria by not getting us deeper into that civil war.  The Syrian destruction of most of its chemical weapons was a plus for the conflict.  We would probably be hearing many more gruesome stories about chemical attacks, surpassing the stories of starvation and mutilation resulting from more conventional warfare.  Syria only presents a multitude of bad choices for the US, from want to do about Assad, to what rebel groups to support.  There is no one who can replace Assad and end the war, and there is no rebel group who will be able to put an end to the civil war militarily, without massive help and massive casualties on the side of whoever helps them.  The Republicans are anxious to see Americans die in Syria; I am not. 

On the economy, Obama has so far been pretty much a success.  He has restored employment, and under him the economy and the stock market have soared, compared with the great recession that Bush left for him.  He still has a year left for the economy to crater, but the gains under his Presidency have been so enormous, that even a moderate drop would still leave his administration with a very positive result.  He has been more willing to take on entrenched business and financial interests, but under his Presidency, consolidation of big business and banks has continued, and although he talks a good game against income inequality, it has increased on his watch.  Nevertheless, things are much better than under Bush, and what he has done is vastly superior to what the nay-saying Republicans have advocated. 

On foreign policy, the Republicans chafe at his unwillingness to kill everybody in sight, calling that weakness.  But I believe that it shows strength.  People may be more willing to challenge the US because they do not fear that Obama will nuke them for a small provocation, but they also see him as someone with whom they can negotiate.  His Iran nuclear deal is far superior to a war with Iran.  He showed strength in resisting Republican and Israeli screams for Iranian blood, based on some sort of extreme racial, religious and ethnic hatred.  In the long run, Obama’s approach is more likely to prevent a nuclear arms race or war in the Middle East  than a military attack. 

Reestablishing relations with Cuba was another positive step.  One reason I retired and left the Foreign Service was because of the Helms-Burton sanctions on Cuba.  An Italian complained to me that his daughter could not get a visa to visit Disneyworld because he worked for the Italian phone company and they had some kind a connection to Cuba.  It was too much like the German refusal to issue a visa to a Jewish child in order to prevent its mother from leaving Italy in one of the “Winds of War” books.  I don’t approve of punishing children for the sins of their parents.  The US bitterness and retaliation against Cuba has gone on too long.  It was time to end it; it was time years ago, but Obama finally did it. 

I am not a fan of free immigration.  I issued visas for a tour in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and felt bad every time I denied a visa, knowing that a Mexican could just walk across the border if he or she were denied a visa, but that it was not so easy for a Brazilian to do so.  Everyone looked the other way at illegal immigration for years.  Business benefitted because it kept salaries low, and liberals looked the other way because they wanted to see poor foreigners help themselves by coming to America.  Our immigration laws have been like Prohibition – strict laws on the books that are ignored in everyday life.  The law should be changed so that it can and will be enforced, whatever it turns our to be, strict or liberal.  Meanwhile, I don’t think there is much of a problem denying anyone who is a foreigner a visa for any reason; non-citizen, non-residents outside the US have no Constitutional protections, and keeping out anyone that poses even the least risk to the country is legal; we only need to decide what level that “least risk” should be. 


Monday, January 11, 2016

Jewish Financiers

There is so much talk in financial circles about the Federal Reserve raising interest rates that it has piqued my interest in the role of Jews in the US.  There have been only Jewish chairmen of the Fed since Paul Volker in the Carter administration. Prior to Volker there had been only one Jewish Fed chairman, who held the post at the height of the great depression. 

My concern is that the Jewish dominated Fed has helped Jewish bankers, financiers, and businessmen in a preferential manner.  This may not have been the result of some great scheme or cabal, like that envisioned by Henry Ford, but simply the result of a convergence of interests, formed at dinners, social occasions and business meetings among Jews over the years.  The results of this convergence of interests may not have been illegal insider trading, but they may have disproportionately benefited Jews over other parts of American society. It was a form of insider trading that was too vague and amorphous to be illegal, but one that affected how trillions of dollars were invested.  

Jews have been involved in financial businesses since before America was a country, and they have been active in financial circles since before the founding of the country.  But they did not play the huge role that they do today until after World War II.  The Holocaust drove many wealthy Jews out of Europe to America, where they resumed the financial activities in which they had excelled in Europe.  Today Jews not only play a dominant role in the Fed, but in most financial activities, particularly on Wall Street.  

Most wealthy financiers would not win any prizes for being great humanitarians.  They tend to be greedy, selfish, and often dishonest.  If they don't break the law, they go right up to the legal limit, and today they pay lobbyists to change the laws to let them do what they want to do.  Most of them leave a lot of their riches to charitable and cultural foundations as they approach death to try to atone for the evil they did in amassing their fortunes.  But that doesn't make the evil they did while amassing their fortunes any less evil.  The Protestant Rockefellers, Carneigies, Astors, Vanderbilts, Hearsts and their cohorts all fall into this same category, along with many present day Jews and Gentiles.  However, this cohort contains considerably more Jews in the top 1% than their 2% of the population would represent.  Jews represent nearly half of the richest of the rich in America.  

Jews believe they are smarter at doing business and manipulating markets than other people, so that if business and the markets are very complicated, Jews are likely to win and do better than their Gentile competition.  Thus, if interest rates are either very high or very low, Jews are likely to do better.  Many Gentiles would be happy just putting their savings into insured savings accounts and earning some interest, but if interest rates are less than one percent, that is not an option.  When rates are high, you have to be very clever about borrowing, or have money in hand, so that you don't have to borrow, again favoring many Jews.  Thus, Jews have disproportionately benefitted from the global financial turmoil, and from the complicated financial instruments and transactions that have been developed in recent years.  

NYT article on rich not paying taxes.

As described in an article in The New York Times on Wednesday, tax rates on America’s 400 wealthiest taxpayers fell sharply from the late 1990s through 2012, when their average effective income tax rate fell to 16.7 percent from 26.4 percent.  Of the few names specifically mentioned in the article, most were Jews, including Loeb, Simons, and Soros.    

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/economy/for-the-wealthiest-private-tax-system-saves-them-billions.html?_r=0

Tax rates rose for wealthy last year

Data released by the I.R.S. on Wednesday shows that tax rates on the income of America’s 400 wealthiest taxpayers rose sharply to 22.9 percent in 2013, erasing a majority of the last two decades’ decline in their effective tax rate, although 22.9% is still less than the old 26.4%.  They are all much lower than the maximum 39.6% tax rate which you would expect the wealthiest people to pay, even accounting for the lower tax rate they would pay on the first few thousand dollars they earn.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/upshot/thanks-obama-highest-earners-tax-rates-rose-sharply-in-2013.html

Monday, January 04, 2016

Recent MTCR News Items

Since I worked on the creation of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) back in the 1980s, I'm interested to see that it is still going.  Here are some recent news articles about it collected by Google Alert.  Most of them deal with India.  


No Decision Yet on India's MTCR Membership Application





Turkey and the Kurds

On CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Anne Marie Slaughter picked the Turkey-Kurd issue as one of the most important for 2016, and I agree with her.  We have become increasingly dependent on the Kurds in the most volatile parts of the Middle East in which we are involved – Syria, Iraq, and Iran – and now the conflict is boiling over into Turkey.

Turkey used to be a reliable ally, a secular Muslim country with a competent government.  Now it is becoming increasingly sectarian, and the government is becoming increasingly problematic.  One of the main issues for the government is the irredentism of the Kurds in Turkey, who want to form a greater Kurdistan with their Kurdish brothers in Iraq, Syria, and Iran.  Years ago, Turkey got the West to agree to characterize the Kurdish rebels in Turkey as terrorists.  So, while the US is primarily worried about ISIS terrorists, the Turks are mainly worried about the Kurdish terrorists.  When we ask the Turks for cooperation against terrorists, we are thinking, “Let’s go kill some ISIS rebels,” and the Turks are thinking, “Let’s go kill some Kurdish rebels.”  Meanwhile the US is supporting the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, who have been the main line of defense against ISIS. 

Turkey sees the Kurds as a threat to its very existence; the Kurds would cut off a chunk of Turkey and incorporate it into greater Kurdistan.  Where does the US come down?  On the side of the Kurds who are fighting with us in Iraq, or with the Turks who have been NATO allies for many years. 

If we lose Turkey as a NATO ally, we face big problems in central Europe.  Turkey controls the Bosporus.  Without access to the Black Sea, we have real problems confronting Russia’s recent take over of Crimea, as well access in general to that part of the world.  I would think the US Navy would really want Turkey on our side.  In addition Turkish air bases give American air power better access to that unstable part of the world.  We would miss them. 

But if we don’t support the Kurds, what happens in Iraq and Syria?  We have to balance our interests there against our interests in other parts of the world, including Russia and Ukraine.  Plus, we have to worry about where Turkey is going.  Is Erdogan a passing phase for Turkey, or does he represent a long-term turn toward a less Western, more Muslim state?  We don’t want our opposition to push Turkey away toward a more religious Muslim orientation. 




Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Regime Change and Assassination Nation

This Wall Street Journal article discusses the intraparty dispute that has broker out within both the Republican and Democratic parties over the role of “regime change” in US foreign policy.  Against regime change are Republicans Donald Trump, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, joined by Democrat Bernie Sanders.  Hillary Clinton is for regime change, since she oversaw it in Egypt and Libya, although she says she argued for more gradual change in Egypt but was overruled by others in the Obama administration.  Her interventionism is echoed by Marco Rubio.   

I am disappointed that the US has become “assassination nation,” beginning perhaps after World War II when the CIA was formed.  But it was relatively rare until the Bush and Obama administrations.  Bush just liked killing Muslims, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan.  With drones Obama now can kill anybody anywhere, and he often does.  Assassination by drone is probably better than the old fashioned way which often involved many collateral casualties, even in the case of bin Laden. 

For me, however, it goes against the standard set by leading men in the old Western movies, who did not shoot their enemies in the back.  Attacking individuals secretly from the sky seems cowardly, even if it may be good for American security.  You can argue that terrorists have no right to any kind of fair treatment, but when the US abandons fairness and justice, it sets a bad example for the rest of the world. 




Tuesday, December 08, 2015

Trump on Visas


As a one-time visa officer, I am appalled at the misinformation about visas. 

 First, President Obama said the wife of the San Bernardino shooting couple had come to the US under a visa waiver program, when she had come under at fiancée K-1 visa. That was probably just bad staff work, but for a major address, there should have been better fact checking. Apparently, the State Department has said it will review the K-1 visa program, although a miniscule number of K visas are issued compared to temporary visas and even other types of immigrant visas. It is just trying to make Obama look less stupid that he did Sunday night. State will also review issuance procedures for other types of visas that are more relevant than fiancée visas. 

 The main problem with all visas is the lack of good intelligence about who is a problem and who is not. The CIA and FBI can’t know what every person in the world harbors in his heart. The only absolutely safe thing to do would be to stop issuing any visas and stop allowing any foreigners to enter the US. There are probably a significant number of Americans who would support such a proposition, despite its disastrous effect on the US economy and the US reputation in the world. But it would not be prohibited by the Constitution. No foreigner has a Constitutional right to enter the US. American citizens do have such a right, but they don’t need a visa, just a passport. 

 Trump’s proposal stops short of an across the board visa denial and would deny visas only to Muslims for a limited time, until as he said, “we can figure out what is going on.” There has been outrage among various people, many of whom should know better, saying this is unconstitutional because it discriminates against a religion. There is no Constitutional protection for visa applicants. By their reasoning, if we denied a visa to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, he would be entitled to appeal the visa denial all the way to the US Supreme Court. That is ridiculous. I know Joe Scarborough likes to go the mosque to pray, but he should not be so generous to ISIS terrorists. 

Donald Trump’s proposal may not be the best solution to the terrorist threat, but it’s not illegal, and over the years, the US has had many very discriminatory visa programs. When I was issuing visas, the big concern was the Communist threat; so, we denied visas to Communists. That doesn’t mean that we were engaged in some McCarthy-ite campaign against Americans who had some vague Communist connection. We just didn’t what people who might foment some kind of trouble once they entered the United States on a visa. Americans in America have Constitutional protection of free speech, but a Communist living in Moscow does not, although Joe Scarborough thinks he should have. Joe thinks he has a right to come to America and work to overthrow the US government. Or that a foreign Muslim has a Constitutional right to come to America and kill people, because he is innocent until proven guilty under the Fifth Amendment. I don’t agree. American citizens are protected by the Fifth Amendment; al-Baghdadi is not.

Friday, December 04, 2015

Star Wars and Me

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself quoted in one of the latest “Moments in Diplomatic History” published online by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST). 

While working in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) during the Reagan Administration my main responsibility was to work on space arms control issues.  About halfway through my assignment, President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) called “Star Wars.”  As you can see from the ADST article, the announcement came as a surprise to almost everyone in the foreign affairs and defense community of the government.  It was at least partly inspired by private conversations between Reagan and physicist Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb. 

One of my jobs at ACDA was to write an “Arms Control Impact Statement” on space arms control.  Reagan’s Star Wars announcement threw a monkey wrench into that statement, since it proposed violating at least two arms control agreements, the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty and the Treaty on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.  What made it even worse was that the statement had to be approved by the Defense Department, which meant Richard Perle, who was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. 

Perle was opposed to almost any arms control agreement.  I have long believed the urban myth that at Reykjavik, after Reagan and Gorbachev had agreed to mutually eliminate all land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBNs), Perle kept Reagan up all night talking him into rejecting the deal the next day.  This ADST note sheds some light on that issue, which may be mildly favorable to Perle.  It says that in return for eliminating all these missiles, Gorbachev wanted Reagan to drop the SDI program, and Reagan was unwilling to do that, because he liked the SDI program so much.  However, the article also says that after the tentative Reagan-Gorbachev agreement, Richard Perle and General Robert Linhard hauled Reagan into a bathroom and told him “it was an impractical thing to do, especially at a time when the Administration was trying to convince Congress to fund a new generation of land-based missiles, the MX.”  So, maybe there is some truth to the urban myth about Perle. 

In any case, Perle was going to make it very difficult to say anything bad about the arms control implications of the SDI.  I think that after a number of tries to get Defense Department clearance, the statement was so watered down that it hardly said anything. 

While I was working on this issue at ACDA, I attended the only National Security Council meeting that I ever attended.  It was on SDI, and I went as the back bench support for the main ACDA representative.  I don’t remember exactly what was discussed, but I think NSC deputy Robert McFarlane chaired the meeting, and one of the main speakers was General James Abrahamson, who was famous for being the officer who oversaw the F-16 development program for the Pentagon, one of the most successful aircraft ever developed.  People hoped he could do the same thing for SDI, but even he couldn’t do it. 




Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Veneration of Veterans

I thought this op-ed in the Washington Post was right on the money.  A lot of this current veneration of veterans is just for show, to make the people who express it feel better, not to help the veterans.  Most businesses that make a show of hiring veterans do it as publicity to win customers, rather than as a service to veterans.  Colorado claims to be veteran friendly, but seeing what is happening with the VA hospital here, Senators Gardner and Bennet and Governor Hickenlooper would hardly be less supportive of veterans than if they went around and punched each veteran in the nose. 

Here’s my comment on the Washington Post op-ed by Will Bardenwerper:


If you have to choose between the homecoming for Iran & Afghanistan vets of sham love and support and the homecoming for Vietnam vets of hostility, I would choose the former.  But you can't expect too much.  The 1946 movie "The Best Years of Our Lives" illustrated the shallowness of public support for even veterans of much venerated World War II.  If you choose to fight for your country, that probably has to be reward enough.  Others should be nice, but you probably have to content yourself with believing that virtue is its own reward.  Perhaps Vietnam vets (like me) can take some solace in the fact that Vietnam has become a functioning member of the community of nations while Iraq has become a snake pit of anti-American hatred and hostility.  

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Turkey and the Kurds

The US has to decide what course to take regarding Turkey as the recent suicide attacks illustrate the growing instability of the country.  The main issue facing Turkey is how to handle the Kurds, both the ethnic minority inside Turkey, and their Kurdish brethren in Syria, Iraq and Iran.  Turkey has for years declared the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) a terrorist group, and the US and NATO have also listed it as a terrorist group.  Currently, however, the Kurds in Iraq and Syria are America’s best allies in fighting ISIS.  Can the US support the Kurds in those countries while acquiescing in Turkey’s opposition to them in Turkey, and probably across the border, too?  The Turkish air force has been suspected of striking the Kurds while it was supposedly supporting US efforts against ISIS in Syria. 

If it were not for Turkey, the US could support the creation of a greater Kurdistan consisting of the Kurdish parts of Syria and Iraq.  We would probably be happy if the Kurds tried to annex part of Iran, if we could avoid getting involved.  However, we are involved in Turkey, which is a NATO member.  Turkey would not be happy giving up a significant amount of its territory to a greater Kurdistan. 

Adding to the problem for the US is the decline of the Turkish government.  It has become more religious, and President Erdogan has become more authoritarian, producing unhappiness among the Turkish people.  His party no longer holds a political majority, and the country is facing new elections as he tries to get a majority.  Thus, Turkey faces internal instability and destabilizing pressure from outside.  The US cannot easily abandon Turkey, a longtime NATO ally, especially when we need Turkey’s support in the battle against ISIS just across the border. 


The US could  lean heavily on the Kurds in Syria and Iraq to reign in their brothers in Turkey.  We could offer more and more military support, if they keep the Kurds in Turkey from making trouble.  We could even wink and imply that if they behave today, we might look the other way if they try to form a greater Kurdistan later.  Meanwhile, we should work with the Turkish government to calm the situation there, to tone down its campaign against the Turkish Kurds.  But Erdogan probably sees the Kurds as the greatest threat to his power, and the recent suicide bombings, with whispers of Turkish government complicity, illustrate the problems with that course of action.  

Friday, October 09, 2015

Kunduz Hospital Bombing

The shelling or bombing of the Doctors without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, reminds me of my time in an artillery battery in Vietnam.  In general we only fired at targets that had been precleared by someone in our chain of command, or we fired for forward observers who were engaged with the enemy.  In a few cases, working with our quad-50 machine gun crew, we would have to seek clearance to fire at someone who we thought was sneaking around our perimeter, just in case it was a South Vietnamese unit wandering around. 

We had a number of no-fire areas marked on our maps and charts, indicating the locations of towns and bases.  I don’t think we ever fired into one of these no-fire zones.  It would have required all kinds of special clearances. 

From the discussion it sounds as if the question in Kunduz is whether the Afghan or US forces were taking fire from the hospital.  Even if they were taking fire from the hospital, would that warrant calling in an air strike on it?  In Vietnam there was supposedly a pretty rigorous process for clearing a fire mission on a target that was not engaged in actual combat.  American liaison officers checked with Vietnamese contacts about whether there were any civilians or friendly troops in the area. 

The situation would have been complicated in Kunduz because the city had been friendly until the Taliban takeover.  The entire city would have been a no-fire area, and there would have been to reason to fire into it.  With the Taliban attack, the whole city would still be considered a no-fire area because there would be civilians everywhere.  However, if friendly troops were taking heavy fire, there would have been a debate about whether it was necessary to accept “collateral damage” in order to neutralize the enemy.  It would seem that a decision of that nature should have been made pretty high up. 

Doctors without Borders claims that no one was firing from the hospital.  In that case, there seems no justification for attacking it.  However, if they are wrong and there was firing, then maybe there was justification, but Doctors without Borders legitimately would want to know who decided that they were expendable.  I guess that is what the military review will try to determine.  I am inclined to give our troops the benefit of the doubt in the fog of war, but screw-up do happen. 


In Vietnam one night someone came up on our radio channel asking if we were firing at certain coordinates.  We were not, but we could hear him asking other batteries if they were firing there.  Finally one battery answered and said that they had just finished a “battery three-by-three” on that target.  The stranger on the net said that it was a small town, which was now destroyed.  A “battery three-by-three” means that an entire artillery battery, probably four large or six small guns, fired nine volleys in the shape of a box around the target.  Obviously something went wrong in the clearance process for that fire mission. 

Thursday, October 08, 2015

Attempts to Sell Radioactive Materials to Terrorists

The reports that someone in Moldova was going to see radioactive material to terrorists to make a dirty bomb is not to alarming.  Offers such as this happen frequently in the criminal underworld.  Radioactive materials, such as cesium are fairly available in small quantities from sources such as old hospital radiation therapy machines.  In Brazil about 30 years ago, such a machine was broken open in a junkyard by curious workers who ended up polluting and poisoning a good part of the city of Goiania.  When I was in Poland, there were frequent rumors of people with radioactive materials in Ukraine or Moldova who were willing to sell. In most of these cases the sellers had very little material, and probably had access to little more, usually just mishandled medical or scientific samples. 

Here are some examples of earlier cases. 




Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Bad Memories of a Government Shutdown

It looks like we will avoid a government shutdown tomorrow, but one still hangs over us before the end of the year. 

The 1990s government shutdown broke faith with the American people, and particularly with me as a government employee, and I have not forgiven the Republicans for bringing it on, although the Democrats were not guiltless.  Nevertheless, as a result of the shutdown, I am disposed never again to vote for a Republican, unless he is clearly the best qualified of the candidates in any election, local or nation. 

As a Foreign Service officer, I was sent to the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, to administer a science cooperation agreement, the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund, that was signed before I arrived, but that was to run for a total of five years, which would have been for four years after I arrived for my three year assignment in Warsaw.  It should have spanned my whole tour of duty.  When I arrived the fund for the agreement, which was financed by matching grants from the US and Poland, had about $4 million in the bank.  My predecessor had spent very little of it on cooperative projects.  Most of the money that had been spent had gone for meetings of administrators in the US and Warsaw.  I undertook to spend almost all of the money we had in the bank by funding projects, which we did. 

After we had funded our first round of projects, the Republicans cut off the next year’s funding.  Although there was an international agreement obligating both sides to contribute for five years, the US invoked an escape clause that had been inserted for the Poles, in case they ran into a financial crisis following the fall of the Communist government there.  It said that either side could fail to fund the agreement if it was impossible.  The US declared that it did not have the money to fund the agreement, which had been about $2 million in previous years.  Clearly the US government had $2 million that it could have contributed, but the Republicans would not. 

The Polish equivalent of an assistant secretary of State who was in charge of all Western Hemisphere affairs called me in periodically to berate me, on behalf of the US government for not honestly fulfilling the terms of a promise we had made in writing to the Polish government.  As someone who was brought up to be honest and pay his bills, I was embarrassed and humiliated to be the recipient of these demarches.  I told him that if he really wanted to change things, he should raise the matter with the Ambassador, or have his Ambassador in Washington raise it with the Secretary of State, but at that time, Poland main foreign policy objective was membership in NATO.  Poland was not yet a member, and was unwilling to do anything that might jeopardize its chances of becoming a member.  So, he complained to me, but would not raise the issue with higher officials, whom he needed to support his NATO application.  While I understood that I was not personally responsible, I was ashamed of my country, and I can still remember squirming in his office while he accused the US of dishonesty.  I inwardly agreed with him, but never admitted it to him or to anyone else in Poland.  I adhered to the instructions I received from Washington. 

Meanwhile, I was working on another project funding environmental projects in Poland.  An agreement on Polish debt said that instead of paying part of the debt it owed to the US, the Poland could pay a small part to fund environmental projects in Poland.  I was the US representative and sponsor of a Polish environmental NGO called the Ekofundusz, or Ecofund.  This was a small group of about 20 people who identified, funded and administered environmental projects around Poland.  The leaders were former senior Polish environmental officials, including a former Minister of Environment, who were on the outs because they had supported Solidarity’s overthrow of the Communist government.  After the initial change, many of the old Communists were back in government while I was there, including the current Minister of Environment.  The Ecofund served as sort of a Brookings Institution or American Enterprise Institute, giving a job and an opportunity to keep working on their issues to these anti-Communist leaders while they were out of power. 

It had taken me much of my first two years in Poland to get the legal and financial provisions in place for the Ecofund to stand on its own.  About the time that the Congress was refusing to fund the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund, I got the pieces in place to authorize the Polish treasury to pay part of its US debt to the Ecofund, setting up the Ecofund for ten or more years of funding. 

Because there was no more money for the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund, and the Ecofund was set up to get its future funding from the Polish government, the Ambassador said that he was going to recommend abolishing my position.  I was disappointed, because in addition to working on science and environment funding, I also worked on nuclear non-proliferation issues, but because of the division of labor in the embassy, and because my predecessor had not been interested in these issues, non-proliferation issues usually went automatically to the political section.  Sometimes I did not even get the cables from Washington about those issues.  For some reason, the one issue that automatically came to me was the Nuclear Suppliers Group.  Because of this, I formed a relationship with the Polish special ambassador for non-proliferation issues, Ambassador Strulak.  He became the rapporteur for the five year review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty while I was in Poland. 

Another embarrassing moment involved Ambassador Strulak.  He often visited the US and met with many American non-proliferation officials.  Although I had spent many of my Washington assignments dealing with the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), it was an issue that seldom came to my attention at the embassy in Warsaw, because the cables and the action automatically went to the political section.  On one of my visits to Amb. Strulak to talk about Nuclear Supplier Group issues, he told me that during his last visit to Washington, he had been inquiring about the MTCR.  He told me that Poland wanted to join, but that the US had blocked their membership.  He said he had asked the experts in Washington who understood the issue, and my name frequently came up.  It was the first I had heard about the matter.   When I inquired about it after Amb. Strulak had told me about it, it turned out that President Clinton had personally decided to blackball Poland.  I understood the reason.  The MTCR had initially been set up as a somewhat informal arrangement among friendly nations, thus the administrative structure was relatively relaxed.  But it had begun to grow by leaps and bounds, making the informal structure difficult to work with.  Thus, the US wanted to put a more structured leadership in place before expanding the MTCR even further.  Although I understood, I was deeply disappointed that what was to some extent my baby had offended Poland while I was in Poland, and I had been completely cut out of the discussion. 

While I was stewing because my job would be eliminated with the end of the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund, and I was being cut out of non-proliferation policy issues, I got a call from Washington asking if I would be willing to go to Rome to take on the Science Office there in a few weeks.  Rome was about to take on the rotating presidency of the European Union, and the current science officer in Rome was leaving or had already left.  I agreed to go, rather than just sort of hang around in Warsaw, but in retrospect, I should have looked further into the offer, which at the time seemed too good to be true.  I later found out that the man I was replacing was a political appointee, a “schedule-C” who had been with the Ambassador to Italy Bartholomew for the maximum allowed eight years, and the State Department had not allowed him to convert over to become a career Foreign Service officer.  Thus, he had been forced to leave, and when I arrived in Rome, I discovered that various people in the embassy, probably notably including the Ambassador, were not happy about it.  But I didn’t know that while I was in Warsaw. 

Rome wanted me to come right away, but the first annual meeting of the Ecofund under their arrangement with the Polish treasury was about to take place in a few weeks.  I said that I could not leave until after the meeting, because I wanted to make sure that everything was in place for the Ecofund’s future existence.  It turned out that the date I was to leave was exactly the date of the government shutdown.  Preparing to move to Rome, my wife and I had packed everything.  Big things had been shipped to Rome, and our car was packed with clothes and two dogs, planning to drive to Rome as soon as the embassy closed for the day.  In the afternoon I was saying my farewells, and I was in the Defense Attaché’s office, when I got a call from my assistant who said I had an urgent call from Rome.  When I came down to take it, the caller said that I should not leave Rome because the government had been shut down.  After all the disappointments I had been through, it was the last straw.  I usually tend to follow orders, but this seemed too much.  My wife and I had no place to live in Warsaw; we had already moved out of our house.  We had already shipped our belongings to Rome.  It seemed to me that the US government had abandoned its troops in the field.  Its word was no good, either in promises to foreign governments or to its own Foreign Service officers. 

The only comparison I can come up with goes back to my days in the Army in Vietnam.  My artillery battery was stationed at Fire Base Barbara on a mountaintop near the Laotian border just a few miles south of the DMZ with North Korea.  We received an intelligence report that enemy troops were massing at the bottom of our mountain and were about to attack.  Our main defense was a group of old air defense artillery duster guns, twin 40-mm cannons that had been used against planes, but now were used against troops on the ground.  Because the duster crews were often stationed in dangerous places, they had a reputation for not being too disciplined and not playing by the Army rules.  We got a call from out battalion headquarters saying they heard that our dusters were low on gas, and we should not lend them any because it was too hard for our battalion to supply us out on the Laotian border.  We were not going to keep the dusters from firing at the enemy just because our battalion did not want to resupply us.  But I was not happy that headquarters apparently thought it was better for us to die to save gas than for them to have to resupply us a week or two early.  There is a history of expendable troops in war, and if you have to sacrifice your life, so be it, but it you don’t HAVE to sacrifice your life, you shouldn’t do it just to save the US government a few bucks.  The fact that my life was not worth a 55 gallon drum of gasoline, or a continuing resolution to keep the government open until a long-term agreement could be reached, was too much. 

It turned out that the deputy chief of mission, the embassy number two, was an old friend from my assignment in Brazil.  He said to go ahead and leave Warsaw and come to Rome, and he would work out the bureaucratic details.  So we went, but I had pretty much lost faith in the US government for not keeping its word, and in the Republican Party in particular for abandoning me in the field.  I was mad with the government when I left Rome for trying to strand me in Warsaw, and apparently Rome was mad with the government for firing my predecessor in Rome and sending me instead.  It did not make for a happy assignment.  I decided after a while that I would stay for as long as Rome held the presidency of the EU, but then I would retire from the Foreign Service.  I did not feel welcome in Rome, and I had lost respect for the American Government.  It was sad for me as a Vietnam veteran and a Foreign Service officer with more than twenty years of experience. 


In any case, as the US faces the potential of another government shutdown, whether now or in December, it brings back a lot of bad memories, and a huge contempt for the Republican Party.  It claims to be the party for a strong American defense, but I see it as the party that abandoned me in the field.  I keep trying to remind myself that as much as I dislike the party, there may be some good individuals in it, but I have a hard time finding any.