Category Archives: Foreign Policy

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Joe Biden has earned exactly what he’s getting from Saudi Arabia Are there no adults in the White House?

We have previously noted that the oil production cut by OPEC+ was primarily engineered by Russia and Saudi Arabia, and that President Biden’s statements condemning Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler, might not have exactly persuaded that nation to work charitably with the United States. Now, from Business Insider:

The US and Saudi Arabia traded petty insults in an feud over oil after a reported secret deal fell apart

by Tom Porter | Thursday, October 27, 2022 | 7:00 AM EDT

A US official mocked a comment by a Saudi prince who claimed the White House was acting immaturely, the latest exchange in an embarrassing feud between the nations over oil.

“It’s not like some high school romance here,” John Kirby, the communications coordinator at the National Security Council, said when asked about a comment by Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.

The prince had criticized the White House for releasing some of its vast oil reserves to reduce prices, painting the move as childish and describing Saudi Arabia as the “maturer” country.

Kirby was not happy. “We’re talking about a significant, important bilateral relationship, a partnership that has survived over 80 years,” he said. “I don’t think talking about it in terms like that necessarily lends the gravity of how important this relationship is, to the way that we’re considering it.”

The New York Times reported on it from a different angle:

U.S. Officials Had a Secret Oil Deal With the Saudis. Or So They Thought.

After Saudi leaders pushed to slash oil production despite a visit by President Biden, American officials have been left fuming that they were duped.

By Mark Mazzetti, Edward Wong and Adam Entous | Tuesday, October 25, 2022

WASHINGTON — As President Biden was planning a politically risky trip to Saudi Arabia this summer, his top aides thought they had struck a secret deal to boost oil production through the end of the year — an arrangement that could have helped justify breaking a campaign pledge to shun the kingdom and its crown prince.

It didn’t work out that way.

Mr. Biden went through with the trip. But earlier this month, Saudi Arabia and Russia steered a group of oil-producing countries in voting to slash oil production by two million barrels per day, the opposite of the outcome the administration thought it had secured as the Democratic Party struggles to deal with inflation and high gas prices heading into the November elections.

So, President Biden went through with what the Times called a “politically risky trip”, but while on that trip, raised the Jamal Khashoggi killing at the very beginning:

“I raised it at the top of the meeting, making clear what I thought at the time and what I think of it now,” Mr. Biden said. “I was straightforward and direct in discussing it. I made my view crystal clear. I said very straightforwardly for an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am. I always stand up for our values.”

He reported that Prince Mohammed, often known by his initials M.B.S., denied culpability.

“He basically said that he was not personally responsible for it,” Mr. Biden said. “I indicated that I thought he was.”

Somehow, some way. no one in the Biden Administration was adult enough to realize that the President’s supposedly private conversations with the Crown Prince, which Mr Biden then reiterated publicly, might just sabotage the deal that had been previously negotiated to help “justify breaking a campaign pledge to shun the kingdom and its crown prince.”

The move led angry Biden administration officials to reassess America’s relationship with the kingdom and produced a flurry of accusatory statements between the two governments — including a charge by the White House that Saudi Arabia was helping Russia in its war in Ukraine.

Lawmakers who had been told about the trip’s benefits in classified briefings and other conversations that included details of the oil deal — which has not been previously disclosed and was supposed to lead to a surge in production between September and December — have been left fuming that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman duped the administration.

An obvious point: the Arabs have a completely different culture than do Americans — yes, I know: we Americans do not really seem to have just one culture ourselves — and perhaps it shouldn’t have been expected that the Crown Prince would shrug off a little public insult the way Americans seem to believe he should have. Mr Khasoggi’s murder was arranged sometime after the Saudi exile, who wrote for The Washington Post, essentially called Mr bin Salman a liar. It was a political risk for the Crown Prince to arrange, order, or at least suggest — “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” — that Mr Khasoggi needed to be eliminated, but it happened anyway. A savvy foreign policy expert might have realized that Mr bin Salman took things, took criticism, personally.

Of course, when I look at the silliness, right before an election in which the Democrats are expected to lose control of the House of Representatives, in which the Biden Administration has engaged, I don’t see a lot of savviness evident.

Perhaps those congressmen “fuming that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman duped the administration” might start asking themselves: was it Mr bin Salman who duped the Biden Administration, or was that Mr Biden himself?
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Cross-posted on American Free News Network.

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The economy being an electoral loser for the Democrats, now they’re pushing Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine!

We have noted ‘neo-conservative’ Washington Post columnist Max Boot several times previously, not particularly charitably. The neo-conservatives were rather useful to Republicans from the Reagan Administration through that of the younger George Bush, in that they supported a stronger American military. The trouble is that while conservatives wanted the US to have the world’s strongest military to defend the United States, and were proceeding from something of a Cold War mindset, the neo-cons wanted to use that military to project American power forward. President Reagan used that power judiciously, in quick, easy actions in Panama and Grenada, and the elder President Bush used it in response to the actual threat of Iraq under Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait, and the threat posed to world oil supplies. The younger President Bush used it in response to an actual threat in Afghanistan, and a perceived threat from Iraq. The actions of President Reagan and the elder President Bush went well: they had defined missions which could be, and were, accomplished quickly, and we got right back out. Under the younger President Bush? Not so much: the wholly necessary mission of destroying al Qaeda was accomplished fairly quickly, while the very much unnecessary mission of trying to build Iraq and Afghanistan into functioning, Western-style democracies took years and years and years, and, in the end were never accomplished.

But the neo-cons have learned nothing.

Max Boot, trying to look all journalist-like in his fedora. From his Twitter biography.

The midterms are a referendum on democracy in America and Ukraine

by Max Boot | Monday, October 24, 2022 | 1:11 PM EDT

Polls suggest that the economy and crime are among the most important issues for voters in the midterms — and that, as a result, Republicans are surging in the home stretch. I think a lot of voters are missing the point. These elections are actually a referendum on whether you favor the continuation of democracy in America — and Ukraine.

Can we please stop pretending that Ukraine was a democracy? In 2010, Viktor Yanukovych was elected President in what observers stated was a free and fair election. As President, Mt Yanukovych was more pro-Russian than oriented toward western Europe, and declined to sign a closer arrangement between the European Union and Ukraine, or accept NATO membership. He was not defeated for re-election, but overthrown by the “Euromaidan Revolution“. Some democratic forms were reinstated, but deposing President Yanukovych was most certainly not democratic at all.

Those issues are more closely linked than most people realize, because most of the same MAGA candidates who support Donald Trump’s strongman rule at home are either indifferent or hostile to the fate of democracy abroad. J.D. Vance, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio, exemplifies the trend: He has said the 2020 election was “stolen” and “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

That makes it all the more disturbing that Vance and other MAGA candidates are in the lead two weeks before Election Day. Vladimir Putin must have a smug smile on his face as he reads reports of recent political developments in the “Main Enemy,” as KGB agents of his generation referred to the United States.

A Post analysis found that “a majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 291 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election.” Put another way, this means a majority of the most important GOP candidates reject the fundamental premise of democracy, which is to accept the outcome of an election even if your side loses. Yet in a recent New York Times-Siena College poll, 39 percent of voters (and 71 percent of Republicans) said they are open to supporting candidates who reject the results of the 2020 election. If these candidates prevail, it will mean that aspiring authoritarians could have a stranglehold on our democracy.

I must say that I find this amusing: the distinguished Mr Boot, who tells us how very much he supports democracy, also tells us that it is a horrible, horrible thing that the voters might have issues other than Donald Trump and the war in Ukraine on their minds, and that if Republican candidates win a majority in the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, in a free and fair election, our democracy is doomed.

The fallout could reach all the way to Ukraine, where an embattled democracy needs U.S. aid to beat back the Russian invasion. Last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the likely next House speaker, said: “I think people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. They just won’t do it.”

Mr Boot, it seems, is very concerned that if Republican candidates win majorities in Congress as the result of free elections, they might just follow what they see as the will of the voters, and stop sending unlimited and unaccountable aid to Ukraine. Don’t the public have the right to believe that we shouldn’t do that?

Mr Boot, who never served in the military himself, is very much a fan of war, and he wants to see American and European aid to Ukraine to continue, to fight Russia, a nation with a strategic and tactical nuclear arsenal.

As we have previously noted, Mr Boot, who was brought to the United States as a child when his parents fled the Soviet Union, and other neoconservatives have not been real fans of individual liberty. Patterico’s tweet, “We may get to a point where the big debate becomes: why on earth didn’t we institute more coercive measures on the unvaccinated in July 2021, when we could have stopped COVID before it mutated beyond the vaccines’ capacity to immunize people against it?” wound up not aging well, as there were already breakthrough COVID infections among people who were immunized, and while the SARS-CoV-2 virus does seem to have mutated to be able to get beyond vaccinations to prevent contraction and transmission of the virus even more easily — it’s clear that, even originally, the vaccines didn’t completely prevent infection — it has also mutated to be a much less serious disease.

Mr Boot called President Trump a fascist, knowing that the definition of fascism includes ” individual interests (being) subordinated to the good of the nation,” as he called for individual interests being subordinated to the good of the nation![1]Via Wikipedia: “In an opinion piece for Foreign Policy in September 2017, Max Boot outlines his political views as follows: “I am socially liberal: I am pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-abortion … Continue reading

Then again, why would we expect any sense, or trust the judgement, of a man who stated, “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump.” One would think that a man who holds a baccalaureate degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master of Arts degree in diplomatic history from Yale would know and understand that the Soviet concentration camp system flourished under Comrade Stalin; did Mr Boot believe that Donald Trump would somehow establish his own ГУЛаг, Гла́вное управле́ние лагере́й, in the United States? If he did, it certainly never happened, and the repression of speech in the United States has happened only by liberal institutions in banning conservatives, not the government under President Trump.

Sadly, it isn’t just Mr Boot; the Editorial Board of The Washington Post also weighed in, telling readers, “This is no time to go wobbly on resisting Russian aggression.” Worried sick that the voters might, gasp! vote in a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the Editorial Board tell us:

It’s no surprise that the Kremlin would try to divert attention from its failures in Ukraine toward a new story about Kyiv’s purported plans to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb.” Transparent disinformation, Moscow’s tale might be intended to serve as a pretext for its own first strike with unconventional weaponry. More likely, it is another attempt to play on the West’s fears of nuclear war, the goal of which, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that tracks the conflict, is “to slow or suspend Western military aid to Ukraine and possibly weaken the NATO alliance.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin guessed right that Western solidarity with Ukraine would be crucial; he has consistently guessed wrong about the willingness of Kyiv’s friends to stay the course, despite the costs of doing so. As Mr. Putin has no doubt noticed, however, there are incipient fissures in that united front, including — ominously — signs of a split within the Republican Party over U.S. aid to Ukraine, which has totaled $54 billion since the war began in February. Rank-and-file GOP voters, possibly influenced by messaging from former president Donald Trump and Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, are warming to the idea that U.S. aid is a waste of money better spent on domestic problems. A September Pew Research poll found that a significant minority of Republicans — 32 percent — say the United States is providing “too much” aid, up from 9 percent in March. Small wonder 57 GOP members of the House and 11 GOP senators voted no on a $40 billion package in May. Trump-endorsed Republican candidates for Senate in Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Ohio have disparaged aid for Ukraine, as have several House candidates. Republican Joe Kent, running for Congress in a historically red district in Washington state, has tweeted: “No aid to Ukraine unless they are at the [negotiating] table.”

If indeed the Republicans take one or both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections, it will be up to their leadership to contain isolationist sentiment and work with President Biden and other Democrats on aid for Ukraine. Unfortunately, potential speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said last week that next year “people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.” Mr. McCarthy — who voted for the May bill — modified that remark slightly later, noting that he supports “making sure that we move forward to defeat Russia.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell countered Mr. McCarthy by calling for “expedited” aid. To his credit, Mr. McConnell has been a strong supporter of a robust U.S. response to Russian aggression in Europe, based on the succinct, and apt, rationale that it is an investment in vital U.S. interests: “The future of America’s security and core strategic interests will be shaped by the outcome of this fight. Anyone concerned about the cost of supporting a Ukrainian victory should consider the much larger cost should Ukraine lose.”

Good heavens, it looks like the Editorial Board have gone full neo-con! The concept that intervention is required to support “vital US interests” could have been lifted from the writings of Bill Kristol.

To be sure, real democracies abroad are in American interests, because real democracies are (mostly) unlikely to start wars of aggression. But there is a real, qualitative difference between wars of aggression when Iraq invaded Kuwait, or the Muslim guerrilla wars in Africa, and the invasion of Ukraine by a nation with a nuclear arsenal capable of killing the majority of people on earth. I do not want Russia to succeed in its war of conquest against Ukraine, but I want the defense of Ukraine to turn into a nuclear war even less.

That’s the part these clowns just don’t get: the harder we press Russia, the harder Russia as resisted. The action by OPEC+ to cut back oil production, to push increased prices, was led in part by Russia, anxious to hurt the United States and NATO Europe for giving aid to Ukraine. The cutbacks of natural gas shipments to Europe, as winter is approaching — and remember: most of Germany and Poland, and a good part of France, are north of our longest border with Canada — are methods Russia is taking against the West that is supporting Ukraine. If, after all of that, Ukraine begins to push back Russian troops, it is hardly out of the possibility that Russia would use smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troop concentrations. Vladimir Putin does not seem to be the most stable national leader around, and he certainly doesn’t think like a Westerner; he could easily see this as a logical step to cow the West into ceasing its aid to Ukraine, and a way to stave off defeat.

Once that nuclear threshold has been crossed, we have no idea whatsoever how far and how often it will be crossed. I do care what happens in Ukraine . . . but I care more about what happens in New York and Philadelphia and Lexington, and one thing about which I care is not increasing the chances that one of them could be incinerated in nuclear fire.

The GOP’s mixed signals are music to Mr. Putin’s ears. Also unhelpful, in its own way, was Monday’s letter from a group of 30 progressive House Democrats to Mr. Biden, urging the president to open direct cease-fire negotiations with Moscow. The Democrats, unlike Mr. Biden’s critics in the GOP, said they want to “pair” this new diplomatic push with continued aid; there is no moral equivalence between the two parties in that regard. Still, Russia is all too likely to advertise the progressives’ letter, which includes the suggestion that ending the war would help ease high gas prices, as evidence of flagging U.S. resolve. The White House politely but firmly rebuffed the idea, as it should have. This is no time to go wobbly — and that goes for lawmakers in both parties.

And now we have The Washington Post’s Editorial Board telling us that not only should the United States continue sending military aid to Ukraine, but that we shouldn’t even attempt to negotiate an end to the war.

If there is no negotiated end to the war — something which would decrease the chances of a nuclear escalation and the spread of a nuclear conflict — then the war must be fought to a conclusion, with one side winning and the other side losing. If Ukraine loses, it’s independence is gone and the Ukrainian people will suffer a lot more death and devastation; if Russia loses, the probabilities of nuclear war significantly increase. I, for one, don’t see what Major Kong called “nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies,” as a wise idea.

There is, of course, the unstated part of both Mr Boot’s and the Editorial Board’s messages: with the domestic issues of inflation and the American people getting poorer, in real terms, those evil reich-wing Republicans might just gain more power, including taking control of the House of Representatives, and even the Senate, which would completely mess with the left’s domestic goals of nationalizing an abortion license, expanding homosexual and transgender ‘rights,’ putting Donald Trump in jail, and generally pushing the ‘progressive’ agenda. In the end, those things are far more important to them than Ukraine, but those have not been the electoral winners they think they should be.

References

References
↑1 Via Wikipedia: “In an opinion piece for Foreign Policy in September 2017, Max Boot outlines his political views as follows: “I am socially liberal: I am pro-LGBTQ rights, pro-abortion rights, pro-immigration. I am fiscally conservative: I think we need to reduce the deficit and get entitlement spending under control. I am pro-environment: I think that climate change is a major threat that we need to address. I am pro-free trade: I think we should be concluding new trade treaties rather than pulling out of old ones. I am strong on defense: I think we need to beef up our military to cope with multiple enemies. And I am very much in favor of America acting as a world leader: I believe it is in our own self-interest to promote and defend freedom and free markets as we have been doing in one form or another since at least 1898.

In December 2017, also in Foreign Policy, Boot wrote that recent events—particularly since the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president—had caused him to rethink some of his previous views concerning the existence of white privilege and male privilege. “In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males. People like me, in other words. Whether I realize it or not, I have benefited from my skin color and my gender — and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.”

Does that sound like a conservative to you?
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No surprise: fuel prices are beginning to rise again

We noted, on Wednesday, October 5th, that very much contrary to President Joe Biden’s wishes, Russia and Saudi Arabia pushed OPEC+ to set a reduction in petroleum production of 2,000,000 barrels per day:

Saudi Arabia and Russia, acting as leaders of the OPEC Plus energy cartel, agreed on Wednesday to their biggest production cuts in more than two years in a bid to raise prices, countering efforts by the United States and Europe to choke off the enormous revenue that Moscow reaps from the sale of crude.

President Biden and European leaders have urged more oil production to ease gasoline prices and punish Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine. Russia has been accused of using energy as a weapon against countries opposing its invasion of Ukraine, and the optics of the decision could not be missed.

“This is completely not what the White House wants, and it is exactly what Russia wants,” said Bill Farren-Price, the head of macro oil and gas analysis at Enverus, a research firm. It also puts Saudi Arabia on a diplomatic “collision course” with the United States, he said.

The cut of two million barrels a day represents about 2 percent of global oil production.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the decision was a “mistake and misguided. “It’s clear that OPEC Plus is aligning with Russia with today’s announcement,” she said.

The United States is hardly a nation President Vladimir Putin wants to please: the US continues to send money and war materiel to Ukraine, which is directly at war with Russia, so the US is, in effect, engaged in a proxy war with Russia. Maybe, just maybe, Vladimir Vladimirovich isn’t in any mood to do favors for Mr Biden.

And, of course, Mr Biden directly accused Saudi Crown Prince of ordering the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and called teh Crown Prince a liar for denying it. Could it possibly be that the de facto ruler of the world’s largest petroleum exporter is not really inclined to be nice to our President?

Well, now the effects of the OPEC+ decision are becoming known:

Why gas prices are going back up after nearly 100 days of declines

by Rob Wile | Monday, October 10, 2022

It was the longest losing streak for gasoline prices since the early months of the pandemic: For 98-consecutive days this summer, American drivers experienced declining gas prices thanks in part to a slower worldwide demand for oil.

Now, a cut in oil production signaled by the OPEC+ group last week has sent global crude prices higher, bringing upward pressure back to prices at the pump.

According to AAA, the national average gas price climbed to $3.92 a gallon Monday.

Prices are likely to keep going higher from here as oil prices continue to climb, according to Patrick De Haan, chief petroleum analyst at gas price tracking group GasBuddy.com.

“With OPEC+ deciding to cut oil production by two million barrels a day, we’ve seen oil prices surge 20%, which is the primary factor in the national average rising for the third straight week,” he said in a blog post Monday.

For the rest of the country, De Haan said he expects prices to rise as much as $0.30 from their September lows, which would put them at around $4 a gallon.

It’s not all peaches and cream in OPEC+: as The Wall Street Journal reported, Iraq is concerned that it cannot afford the mandated production cuts, but that’s somewhat counterbalanced by a strike among Iranian oil workers. That does mean that projections that gasoline will reach into the $4.00+ per gallon range a bit more guesswork than straight statistical modeling.

The most important point? The election is in 29 days.

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More Biden Administration muddled and contradictory policies

As we noted on Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s foreign policy only made the decision by OPEC+ to cut petroleum production by two million barrels per day has not helped his efforts to bring down inflation. But it’s more than just pissing off Russia and Saudi Arabia:

Biden juggles Iran nuke talks as Iranian repression grows

President Joe Biden has criticized Iran over the government’s brutal crackdown on antigovernment protests, praised the “brave women of Iran” for demanding basic rights and signaled possible sanctions.

by Matthew Lee and Aamer Madhani, Associated Press | Wednesday, October 5, 2022

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has hit back at Iran over the government’s brutal crackdown on antigovernment protests. He’s praised the “brave women of Iran” for demanding basic rights and signaled that he’ll announce more sanctions against those responsible for violence against protesters in the coming days.

The outpouring of anger — largely led by young women and directed at the government’s male leadership — has created a seminal moment for the country, spurring some of the largest and boldest protests against the country’s Islamic leadership seen in years.

And while the Biden administration says it is dedicated to standing by the women of Iran, the president faces a tough question: Can he credibly side with the protest movement while also trying to salvage the languishing 2015 Iran nuclear deal that would pump billions into Tehran’s treasury?

“The risk of a nuclear Iran is terrifying on all levels,” Marjan Keypour Greenblatt, director of a network of activists that promotes human rights in Iran and a nonresident scholar with the Middle East Institute’s Iran Program, wrote in an analysis this week. “However, President Biden simply cannot offer the prospect of sanctions relief and de facto legitimize a regime that is ruthlessly gunning down its own citizens in the street.”

There’s more at the original.

Of course, Iran’s leadership has hated us ever since the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khoumeini took over in 1979, and as long as the mad mullahs are in charge, that will remain the case. We can never expect any help from Iran on oil prices, but let’s face it: the OPEC+ action helps Iran just as much as it helps Vladimir Putin and the Saudis, as Iran will get more money for its oil exports as well.

Mr Greenblatt is wrong, of course: the Iranian regime, which has been in power for 43 years, does not need President Biden to somehow legitimize it. The fact that the United States has actually been negotiating with Iran about the nuclear deal shows that the US regards the Iranian regime as the leadership of that nation, and that everybody is very worried about Iran developing and building atomic bombs shows just how much everybody worries about it.

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European socialism has saddled Europeans with skyrocketing electricity bills

I’ve got to admit it: Ursula von der Leyen is a pretty cool name, almost as cool as Annemiek van Vleuten, the Dutch cyclist who won the Tour de France Femmes this year. But Mrs von der Leyen isn’t a cyclist.

Energy crisis: Ursula von der Leyen calls for ’emergency intervention’ in electricity market

By Jorge Liboreiro • August 30, 2022

The worsening energy crisis besieging Europe has laid bare the “limitations” of the electricity market and requires an “emergency intervention” to bring down soaring prices, Ursula von der Leyen has said.

“The skyrocketing electricity prices are now exposing, for different reasons, the limitations of our current electricity market design,” the European Commission president said on Monday while addressing the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia.

“[The market] was developed under completely different circumstances and for completely different purposes. It is no longer fit for purpose.

“That is why we, the Commission, are now working on an emergency intervention and a structural reform of the electricity market. We need a new market model for electricity that really functions and brings us back into balance.”

It wouldn’t have anything to do with the European nations supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia with more than just words, would it?

Well, part of the pain is the European Union’s regulations setting the cost of electricity:

Today, the EU’s wholesale electricity market works on the basis of marginal pricing, also known as the “pay-as-clear market”.

Under this system, all electricity producers – from fossil fuels to wind and solar – bid into the market and offer power according to their production costs. The bidding starts from the cheapest resources – the renewables – and finishes with the most expensive ones, usually gas.

Since most EU countries still rely on fossil fuels to meet all their energy demands, the final price of electricity is often set by the price of gas. If gas becomes more expensive, electricity bills inevitably go up, even if clean, cheaper sources also contribute to the total energy supply.

The system was initially praised for boosting transparency and promoting the switch to green sources, but since late 2021, it has come under intense criticism.

In other words, all electric consumers are paying for sparktricity based on the cost of the most expensive means of production. That’s European socialism for you!

Of course, Russian’s invasion of Ukraine brought about swift sanctions against the bear, but the Russians hold the high cards here: Europe is dependent upon natural gas from Russia for fuel for power plants and winter heating. And much of democratic Europe is not east of the United States, but due east of Canada. Berlin, for example, is at approximately the same latitude as the southern border of Labrador. To quote Ned Stark, “Winter is coming.”

Natural gas futures are more than ten times what they were a year ago:

There’s no stopping Europe’s gas bills.

On Thursday, future gas prices at the Title Transfer Facility (TTF), the continent’s leading trading hub, reached €321 per megawatt-hour, a stratospheric figure compared to the €27 set a year ago.

The new all-time high follows a surprising announcement by Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy giant, who last week said it would soon shut down Nord Stream 1 – which pipes gas from Russia to Germany – for a three-day maintenance operation, performed alongside Siemens.

Gazprom argues the pipeline must be checked for cracks, dents, leaks and other potential glitches.

European politicians have repeatedly accused the company of weaponising energy flows and exploiting technical questions as an excuse for piling pressure on countries at Vladimir Putin’s will.

Well, of course Russia is weaponizing energy flows. After all, some of the European nations are sending money and military equipment to Ukraine, to use to fight Russia. What else would you expect Russia to do? Vladimir Vladimirovich is attacking Europe that same way Europe is attacking him: economically. The only thing cannier Russia could do is keep sending limited, though slightly increasing, amounts of gas to Europe, keeping prices high but also lulling the Europeans to sleep, then, maybe around December 15th, Pow! shut it off completely.

The German government might think differently about sending military aid to Ukraine if the German people are freezing in their flats.

But you can’t say they weren’t warned!

Trump accused Germany of becoming ‘totally dependent’ on Russian energy at the U.N. The Germans just smirked.

by Rick Noack | September 25, 2018 | 2:44 PM EDT

BERLIN — Out of President Trump’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, it probably won’t be the script that will be remembered by diplomats but, rather, world leaders’ laughter, caught on camera and shared in viral videos.

One of them captured the amused reactions of the German delegation as Trump said: “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course. Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence from the encroachment of expansionist foreign powers.”

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas could be seen smirking alongside his colleagues.

Who’s smirking now?

It wasn’t the first time Trump had lashed out at Germany over its gas imports from Russia.

During a NATO summit in July, he took aim at the Germans for the same reason, specifically singling out a planned 800-mile pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea called Nord Stream 2. “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia,” Trump told NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, also speaking on camera at the time. “We have to talk about the billions and billions of dollars that’s being paid to the country we’re supposed to be protecting you against.”

Looks like President Trump, the hated, evil reich-wing fascist, was right all along, and the Europeans were what they have so often been, wrong. I will confess to being somewhat amused.

You don’t have to somehow like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or hope that Vladimir Putin wins, to have been bitterly opposed to the responses of the United States and Europe: I might want Ukraine to win, to throw out the Russian invaders, but I don’t want it so much that I’m happy that the world is closer to nuclear war over it.

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The West are about out of non-military actions to take against Russia Economic sanctions are hurting democracies as much as Russia

The recent Supreme Court decisions in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen and Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization have pushed almost all discussion of other issues off the front pages, but there is still that nasty little war going on in Ukraine. I have made my position clear: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was very wrong, and almost everyone wants to see Ukraine win against the Russians. But I, at least, do not think it is worth risking what Major Kong called “nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies.”

President Joe Biden and the leaders of the NATO nations have all said that Russia’s invasion is wrong, wrong, wrong, and that something ought to be done, but reality has a way of biting people in the gluteus maximus, and as the G-7 leaders meet in Berlin to decide just what to do, that reality is staring them dead in the eye. From The Wall Street Journal:

G-7 Summit Exposes West’s Challenges in Tackling Russia

Economic fallout is hampering further sanctions against Moscow as Ukraine demands more weapons to halt the Russian advance

By Bojan Pancevski | Tuesday, June 28, 2022 | 9:31 AM EDT

The original picture caption is: “G-7 leaders displayed some unity during their summit as they pledged their unwavering support to Ukraine.
Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.” Click to enlarge.

BERLIN—The Group of Seven rich democracies ended their summit with an agreement to discuss a batch of new sanctions against Russia, but the gathering underlined the limits of using economic tools to punish Russia four months after its invasion of Ukraine.

While weapons deliveries have made an immediate difference on the battlefield and Ukraine has been clamoring for more equipment to repel Moscow’s forces, sanctions have proven slow to take effect, some of them have backfired against the West, and new ones have so far been too complex to deploy quickly.

G-7 leaders displayed some unity during their three-day summit in the German Alps as they pledged their unwavering support to Ukraine, with no sign of dissent on public display. Yet Kyiv and some Western experts said the Russian advance could only be halted in the short term with more heavy weapons.

The unprecedented sanctions against Russia implemented by the G-7 and other nations—targeting Moscow’s economy, energy exports and central-bank reserves—have caused global market volatility and raised energy costs.

Now high inflation, slowing growth, and the specter of energy shortages in Europe this winter are damping the West’s appetite for tougher sanctions against Moscow.

The photo caption originally said that the G-7 leaders “pledged their unwavering support to Ukraine,” but, of course, that support is wavering, because the sanctions imposed so far are hurting their own people. The only thing I see in the photo is further evidence that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson still doesn’t know how to brush his hair. Continue reading →

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Max Boot, the neo-conservatives, and endless war

Max (Maxim?) Aleksandrovich Boot was born on September 12, 1969 in Moscow, the son of two Russian Jews. They were lucky: they were able to emigrate to the United States in 1976, bringing young Max with them. Mr Boot, whose parents fled a strongly antisemitic regime in the USSR under Leonid Brezhnev, once said, “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump,” even though the USSR under Comrade Staling might well have sent Mr Boot and his family to a concentration camp; the Soviet leaders really didn’t like Jews very much.

In other words, Mr Boot has all of the intuitive judgement of a mud clod.

We have previously noted how Mr Boot specifically, and many of the neo-conservative in general, don’t think much of our individual liberties, or certainly didn’t when it came to mandating vaccinations against COVID-19. Mr Boot, who dearly loves having American troops all over the globe and has been a student of military history and strategic studies but has never served in the military himself, fretted that it would be a disaster for the United States to pull out of Afghanistan, though what more could be accomplished in that fetid and festering sewer that we hadn’t been able to accomplish in the 19½ years we had already been there he could not articulate.

And here he goes again!

We can’t let Ukraine lose. It needs a lot more aid, starting with artillery.

by Max Boot | Monday, June 13, 2022 | 7:00 AM EDT[1]If you are stymied by The Washington Post’s paywall, you can read the whole thing here, for free.

Max boot, trying to look all journalist-like in his fedora. From his Twitter biography.

The battle of Donbas — with momentous implications for the future of Ukraine and the entire postwar world — is poised on a knife edge.

The Ukrainians are resisting bravely, but they are suffering terrible casualties and slowly losing ground. They are able to fire only 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, compared with 50,000 rounds a day from the Russians. The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition for their old Soviet artillery, and they don’t have enough Western artillery tubes to make up for the shortfall.

I am reminded of the old poem about how “for want of a nail a shoe was lost,” then a horse, then a rider, then a battle, then a kingdom. We cannot afford to see Donbas lost for want of artillery shells.

If Russian dictator Vladimir Putin captures this region, after having already secured a land corridor from Crimea to the Russian border, he will hold roughly a fourth of Ukraine, including its industrial heartland and most of its Black Sea coast. The Ukrainian economy is already in dire shape (estimated to shrink by 45 percent this year). Putin will then be in a position to further squeeze the rump state, while preparing a final offensive to finish it off.

Even a limited Russian victory will send a dangerous signal to the world that the West is weak and aggression pays. We must send lots more aid to Ukraine now to avert the loss of Donbas and to enable a counteroffensive to retake ground already occupied, but not yet fortified, by the invaders.

Emphasis in the original.

The most obvious Ukrainian need is for more artillery tubes and shells. The Biden administration has already provided 108 M777 155mm howitzers and more than 220,000 artillery rounds. More recently, it promised to send four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars) and ammunition with a maximum range of roughly 45 miles. That is wholly insufficient; even the 220,000 rounds would not last five days at current rates of use.

Huh? If, as Mr Boot stated just a couple of paragraphs previously, that the Ukrainians are able to fire only 5.000 to 6,000 artillery rounds per day, 220,000 rounds would last a whole lot longer than 4½ days. He’s actually talking about the Russians’ rate of fire, not the Ukrainians’.

The West should be sending hundreds of howitzers and multi-launch rocket systems, thousands of rockets and hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds. This should include Excalibur GPS-guided rounds for the M177 (range: 24 miles) and Army Tactical Missile Systems for the Himars (range: 186 miles). Those longer-range munitions would enable the Ukrainians to target Russia’s artillery, rockets and supply lines without risking their new weapons close to the front lines. Of course, it will take time to train Ukrainians on these systems, but they have shown they are fast learners.

That, of course, is not all Mr Boot wants to send to Ukraine to fight the Russians: he also called for sending  MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, F-16 fighter jets, A-10 “Warthog” ground-attack aircraft and Patriot air-defense systems.

An obvious question: if “we can’t let Ukraine lose,” as he claims in the column title, what does he want to do if Ukraine is about to lose even after such arms are sent to them?

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Max Boot and Allahpundit Are Very Worried About Our Friends in Ukraine

In 1939, President Roosevelt started sending military equipment to the United Kingdom, covertly at first, then more openly, to hold off the Third Reich. Following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, we started sending military aid to the USSR as well. There were worries that Adolf Hitler would see this as the United States being at war with Germany, and it was bandied about that that was exactly what the President wanted, for Germany to declare war on the United States. After all, we had 3,600 miles of deep, blue water between the United States and German-occupied France, so there was really nothing Der Führer could do to us!

But if we start sending more and more supplies and weapons to Ukraine, we will be putting American troops and contractors on the ground in Poland . . . and Russia has the weaponry to strike Poland. Perhaps Mr Boot thinks that Vladimir Putin would never dare to strike an American installation, especially one on the soil of a NATO member nation, and I will admit that it would seem to be a stupid, stupid move. But we need to remember: Mr Putin is perfectly capable of stupid moves!

Yes, I have a vested interest in this: my older daughter is, as I type, preparing for a year-long deployment to Kuwait with the Army Corps of Engineers. While it seems unlikely, increased American presence in Poland, to ship more weapons to Ukraine, could very well result in a change of orders; the first people needed for an American installation in Poland would be the Corps of Engineers, and surveyors, and my daughter is a surveyor!

Russia has thousands of battlefield range and short range nuclear weapons. Just how would the United States, and NATO, respond if, feeling his back against the wall, Mr Putin used one, just one, lower-yield nuke against a shipping point for American and NATO weapons to Ukraine? He might well believe that such a tactic would so scare the US and NATO about a potential all-out nuclear war that we’d just stop and back off.

And, quite frankly, that should be the response. Ukraine is not worth a nuclear war!

Mr Boot and the neoconservatives have spent a lot of time and ink and bandwidth arguing for an aggressive, muscular, and interventionist American foreign policy, with the second Persian Gulf War against Iraq being the most obvious example. The first was started by Saddam Hussein, and if the ender President Bush had not been so eager to limit that war, and just gone a couple of days more, we could have eliminated Saddam Hussein in 1991. Because we didn’t do that, his son got in his head to rectify that, and we had the debacle of the second Iraqi war, which did topple President Hussein, but Iraq today is hardly a democratic paradise. We went into Afghanistan because we had to, to respond to al Qaeda’s attack on the United States, but we stayed and stayed and stayed, far beyond the mission to destroy al Qaeda and kill Osama bin Laden, stayed 10½ years after Mr bin Laden was sent to his eternal reward, and what was accomplished? Afghanistan is once again ruled by the Taliban, who have been reimposing the same policies that they had during their first reign.[2]Full disclosure: on my daughter’s previous deployment to Kuwait, she wound up in Afghanistan, though she was apparently in little danger.

I get it: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was very wrong, and almost everyone wants to see Ukraine win against the Russians. But I, at least, do not think it is worth risking what Major Kong called “nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies.” The neo-cons, most of whom never spent a day in uniform, seem to have a romantic vision of the combat which they’ve only seen in the movies. If Mr Boot wants to see more American and NATO equipment sent to Ukraine to fight the Russians, then he needs to be on one of those convoys, in uniform, carrying an M4 rifle, and ready to fight himself. After all, he did note that there are “foreign volunteers” fighting with Ukraine’s ground forces. He needs to sign up himself.

References

References
↑1 If you are stymied by The Washington Post’s paywall, you can read the whole thing here, for free.
↑2 Full disclosure: on my daughter’s previous deployment to Kuwait, she wound up in Afghanistan, though she was apparently in little danger.
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Sanctions against Russia go up in gas

It seems that the Europeans, who are angry, angry, angry! at Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin aren’t angry enough to do without Russian natural gas. From The Washington Post:

Europe accepts Putin’s demands on gas payments to avoid more shut-offs

By Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli | Tuesday, May 24, 2022 | 1:22 PM EDT

ROME — European energy companies appear to have bent to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand that they purchase natural gas using an elaborate new payment system, a concession that avoids more gas shut-offs and also gives Putin a public relations victory while continuing to fund his war effort in Ukraine.

The system, which involves the creation of two accounts at Gazprombank, enables Europe to say it is technically paying for natural gas in euros, while Russia can say it is receiving payment in rubles — a requirement Putin imposed on “unfriendly” nations.

Putin’s insistence on rubles may be more about forcing European countries to scramble at his behest than about shoring up his country’s currency, some economists and energy experts suspect. European Union countries have been touchy about the notion they might violate their sanctions on Russia, and questions about the arrangement tested European unity, leading to weeks of chaos and contradictory guidance from Brussels. It also got countries talking about how much they still need Russian gas, even as they debate a Russian oil embargo.

Well, of course they need Russian gas! And they’ll continue to need Russian gas, especially as worsening economic conditions force reductions in investments on alternative energy sources. In the end, Mr Putin has them in a place in which their hearts and minds will follow.

But that also means sending money to Russia even as they condemn the Kremlin-launched war, sanction oligarchs and supply weapons to Ukraine.

Russia had already used strict capital controls and a massive interest rate hike to stabilize the ruble. With Europe now signaling that it will use the payment system as bills come due this week, the currency is strengthening all the more.

The system set up is a face-saving one, but it really doesn’t save a lot of face, not to anyone who has even a remote understanding of what is being done. The Europeans will pay their bills in euros, not the rubles President Putin had demanded, and then a special account at Газпромбанк will take the euros and convert them to rubles.

On February 24, 2022, the White House announced severe sanctions against Russian banks:

Today, the United States, along with Allies and partners, is imposing severe and immediate economic costs on Russia in response to Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine. Today’s actions include sweeping financial sanctions and stringent export controls that will have profound impact on Russia’s economy, financial system, and access to cutting-edge technology. The sanctions measures impose severe costs on Russia’s largest financial institutions and will further isolate Russia from the global financial system. With today’s financial sanctions, we have now targeted all ten of Russia’s largest financial institutions, including the imposition of full blocking and correspondent and payable-through account sanctions, and debt and equity restrictions, on institutions holding nearly 80% of Russian banking sector assets. The unprecedented export control measures will cut off more than half of Russia’s high-tech imports, restricting Russia’s access to vital technological inputs, atrophying its industrial base, and undercutting Russia’s strategic ambitions to exert influence on the world stage. The impact of these measures will be significantly magnified due to historical multilateral cooperation with a wide range of Allies and partners who are mirroring our actions, inhibiting Putin’s ambition to diversify Russia’s brittle, one-dimensional economy. The scale of Putin’s aggression and the threat it poses to the international order require a resolute response, and we will continue imposing severe costs if he does not change course.

It appears, however, that “full blocking and correspondent and payable-through account sanctions” are somehow less important when it comes to Europe’s need for natural gas!

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Mitt’s madness

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, after having said that Russia was (then) the biggest geopolitical threat facing the United States, then-President Barack Hussein Obama, in their third presidential debate, hit back:

A few months ago, when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. Not al Qaeda. You said Russia. And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.

I’ve got to admit it: that was a great political quip!

Now, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — along with the invasion of the eastern portion of Ukraine in 2014 — the media are starting to acknowledge that Mr Romney was right.

The problem is that while Mr Romney was right, so was Mr Obama, about 1980s foreign policy, which the now Senator from Utah seems to still embrace: Continue reading →