Friday Links-Ukraine and GOP Foreign Policy
Verily, valiant vivacious Vivek vigorously vivisected the veritable vapid villains. Viva!
Howdy everyone, long time no see. I apologize for the long delay in updates. For several months I have been feeling under the weather, but recently started a higher dose of the thyroid hormone levothyroxine and have seen a dramatic improvement and am working on catching up on all the work that has piled up in the meantime, and I am hoping to get back to regular posting now that I have much more energy.
Law and Liberty on Funding Ukraine’s Forever War
Last week I was in Law and Liberty with a rather lengthy essay arguing against continued aid to Ukraine. My essay was in response to an original essay by Andrew E. Busch that argued the case against more aid to Ukraine was “feeble”. Busch in turn responded to my response here.
The TL/DR is that wars must be waged with present goods so there are obviously tradeoffs to sending tens of billions of dollars in cash and hardware to Ukraine. Seeing how we are up to our ears in inflation financed debt, it is hardly cost free to be waging this proxy war. Beyond that, the US and the West simply don’t have the military capacity needed for the Ukrainians to be victorious. Our logistical situation is a nightmare and Ukraine is going to be in deep trouble because we have scraped the bottom of the barrel for this failed counter offensive and the cupboard is next to bare.
As one former official told the WSJ yesterday, “‘We built up this mountain of steel for the counteroffensive. We can’t do that again,’ one former U.S. official said. ‘It doesn’t exist.’”
GOP Foreign Policy: Viva Vivek!
The first GOP debate has come an gone. The only two people of interest to me on that stage were Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy. One of them passed the test and the other did not.
For me, the main event of the night was when the candidates finally got around to talking about foreign policy. The contrast could not have been more clear. Aside from DeSantis and Vivek, everyone else was living in 2003 Neocon fevered dream land. Pence, Christie, and Haley were completely awful. Asa Hutchinson, who was on the stage for some unknown reason, was literally wearing an Israel flag pin with his American flag. Haley stated that the US needs Israel more than Israel needs the US. Thankfully, these jokers could not be further removed from the current GOP base.
I was very disappointed by Ron DeSantis, specifically his waffling answer on aid to Ukraine. The moderators asked who would oppose further aid to Ukraine. Vivek was the only one to raise his hand. DeSantis seemed to raise his hand, but not really, and when asked for clarification stated that further US aid would be contingent on Europeans doing more. This seems to confirm fears that he is not as solid on foreign policy as many fans have hoped he would be. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt before, in large part due to assurances that behind closed doors he favors restraint, but this public waffling seems to make it clear that the blob would likely walk all over him like it did Trump.
In sharp contrast, I was immensely pleased by Vivek’s answer on Ukraine and really his whole performance throughout the night. Some have said he more appears to be running to be Trump’s VP or a cabinet position, but given the nature of the race, that seems to be rather smart. The Secretary of the Treasury is automatically on the National Security Council, so that could be a good position for him.
To be frank, I was rooting for Vivek before the debate due to his foreign policy speech at the Nixon Library on August 17th where he laid out his vision of a new Monroe Doctrine (which, incidentally was the name of a paper I presented at the Libertarian Scholars Conference last year and discussed on War, Economy, and State) which was more than I could have ever hoped for.
Vivek explicitly stated his position was realism and American nationalism, and also argued in favor of retrenching from East Asia and explicitly stating that the US would not defend Taiwan after 2029. He was also very clear and explicit about wanting to negotiate and end to the Ukraine War, and while I question how feasible some of his ideas are, such as part of the deal being Russia removing nukes from Kaliningrad, I was swooning. Even if he only meant 1/4th of what he said it would still be a massive and revolutionary shift in American foreign policy in a positive direction. I highly recommend checking out the whole thing:
I would also note that Vivek is the only candidate who has endorsed Defend the Guard legislation that would prevent the deployment of the National Guard to active combat without a declaration of war from Congress.
Other Links
Dan Klein has a great piece in the WSJ about the danger of “Big Brother and the Digital Dollar.”
Even other Christian friends generally consider me to be a tad nuts for maintaining the once common Christian view opposing all contraception. So I suspect many people will react differently than I did to this Daily Mail story about a daughter who unknowingly poked holes in her parents contraception which resulted in the conception of her beloved younger sister, but I have no doubt that the friend who instigated all this was an angel in disguise. “I poked holes in my parents' condoms - it led to the birth of my little sister and I kept it secret for 25 years.”
Speaking of birth, there was an interesting piece in Palladium that has a lot of terrifying stats about the coming global population collapse and what it means for the future. The authors are not religious, and are rather nutty transhumanist types with whom I do not entirely agree, but I think it is worth a read. “Fertility Collapse Demands New Cultures.”