Thoughts for March 6, 2022
Good afternoon. A long, wartime edition today featuring energy security, food security, missile defense, and a look at the strategic and political situations.
Energy Security
As mentioned last week, energy security is back on the agenda now in a way that it hasn’t been for quite a few years. The price of Brent (a major crude oil contract) is the highest it has been since 2014, and the public is worried about both the risk of oil dependence and the fact that such dependence finances hostile regimes. Fairly quickly, the International Energy Agency has prepared a report outlining how Western Europe can reduce their dependence on Russian natural gas.
In the years after 9/11, energy security, rather than environmentalism, was the driving force behind energy policy. Environmentalists were forced to phrase their agenda in energy security terms. For the most part, the two agendas overlapped enough for them to work together, but there are a few areas of difference. For example,
Hydraulic fracturing is contentious among environmentalists. Gas is responsible for about half the greenhouse gas emissions as coal and much less conventional air pollution, but environmentalists fear that hydraulic fracturing will lock in gas usage and result in higher emissions in the long run. However, it has been an unequivocal win from an energy security standpoint.
In the round of energy security anxiety following the OPEC oil embargo, the Department of Energy made great, but mostly futile, investment into turning coal to liquid fuel. CTL has been done mostly by nations in distress, particularly Germany during World War II and South Africa under Apartheid embargoes. CTL is bad from an environmental perspective.
Corn ethanol production was sold primary as an energy security measure. Corn ethanol marginally reduces greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution relative to gasoline, but the high land usage makes it, in my judgment, a bad choice environmentally. Corn ethanol is also bad from a food security perspective, as discussed below.
How permissive the federal government should be on awarding oil drilling leases, such as on the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, is a perennial issue, with energy security hawks generally in favor and environmentalists generally against.
With heightened concern about energy security, in the shorter term, I am more disposed to favor oil and gas production than I would have been a month ago. In the long run, both agendas converge as to where we want to get. Our ultimate goal is a highly electrified economy, powered principally by nuclear and/or solar power, with electrofuels to provide what cannot be electrified directly. However, getting to this point is a multi-decade venture.
While my long-term views of energy policy are not changed, the current crisis does give it a heightened level of urgency. Energy abundance should be the goal. From a security standpoint, energy abundance for the United States means moving beyond supplying our own needs and being able to supply energy to the free world, as we now do with weapons.
Food Security
Another tragic outcome of the war is disruption to food exports, at a time when commodity markets and supply chains were already stressed. Russia and Ukraine are both among the leading exporters of wheat, and the war has pushed up prices to record levels.
Before the invasion, the Breakthrough Institute outlined the disruption that is now going on in low-income countries.
Beyond the humanitarian concerns, food insecurity creates conditions favorable for civil wars and terrorist groups. The American Security Project discussed this recently and how a previous round of high commodity prices helped trigger the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War.
The ASP recommends that a Strategic Food Reserve, analogous to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, be created to protect against such disruptions. According to the ASP, several countries have such food reserves, but the United States converted its reserve into an ineffective all-cash reserve.
The United States is the top food exporter by far by monetary value. This can be further enhanced by rolling back ill-advised ethanol subsidies and mandates. Food exports and a strategic food reserve will grant the United States geopolitical advantage and have enormous humanitarian benefit.
Missile Defense
At this early date, I don’t think the full gravity of what happened last week has yet set in. A fascist dictatorship not only launched an unprovoked attack against against a neighboring sovereign state, but used nuclear blackmail against NATO to deter a response to the aggression. Americans have not experienced such dastardly conduct from a large nation since the Cold War, and it is entirely unacceptable to let it pass.
Fortunately, some things are different from the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States protects itself and other free nations with a missile defense system that is much more robust than during the Cold War. The chief components of this system are Patriot surface-to-air interceptors, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System (water- and land-based systems) to protect primarily against short and intermediate range ballistic missiles, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) to protect against short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles, and the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense to protect against ICBM’s.
The last major review of the US missile defense posture was conducted in 2019. The review was done in the aftermath of particular belligerence from North Korea, and as the report emphasizes, our current missile defense posture is aimed primarily against small attacks with limited capability, such as from North Korea or Iran. The defenses are inadequate for a full-scale attack from Russia or China. For these nations, the report emphasizes that our defense is deterrence, no progress from the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction developed by President Eisenhower.
Particularly alarming is that Russia and China have both deployed hypersonic missiles, capable of traveling at Mach 5 or above, and they will be particularly difficult for our current defenses. This report by CSIS outlines the threat and ways to counter. It is debated just how serious of a threat hypersonics are, and the fact that the defense industry is involved in the preceding report should prompt some skepticism. The current system, at least the SM-6 missile as used by Aegis, might be able to handle hypersonics.
The report does not really deal with SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), as proposed by President Reagan in 1983. SDI never got past basic research before being cancelled in 1993. The program was reincarnated in 2019, with L3Harris and SpaceX winning contracts for warning satellites. But I am not aware of plans on the horizon to demonstrate space-based shootdown of missiles. I think we’ll ultimately need that.
This article from the Arms Control Association points out that the cost of the missile defense system, as outlined in the 2019 report, would be $176 billion for the 2020-29 decade. The article thinks it’s too much, but I think it is far too little. On an annual basis, $17.6 billion is only 2.4% of total US defense spending in 2019. A nuclear attack would do tens of trillions of dollars of damage, and even a 1% reduction of the likelihood of such an attack over the lifetime of the program would justify 10 times as much spending. If that is what it takes to neutralize the Russian threat, it is well worth it. With a robust shield against the Russians in place, the free world next time could implement a no-fly zone in Ukraine with confidence. Or better yet, there won’t be a next time, because dictators won’t attack if they know that they have no chance of success.
The Strategic View
As the war grinds on, it is difficult to get a good grasp of the situation, which is changing rapidly. I am grateful that the Western press has adopted a pro-Ukrainian stance without confusing “balanced” reporting for moral equivocation, but this has led to several elements of wishful thinking.
Wishful Thinking 1: the Ukrainians are bound to win the war.
Reality: I won’t hazard a guess as to which way this will turn out. The prediction market Metaculus currently shows about a 40% chance that the Russians will take over Kiev this month. What the Russians lack in morale and competence, they can make up for with brute force. The question in my mind is not so much whether the Russians are capable of conquering the country, but whether they can do it at a price in money, lives, and reputation that is acceptable to them.
Wishful Thinking 2: the enemy is the country’s dictator, not the people.
Reality: such sentiments are reminiscent of George W. Bush’s exhortation, after 9/11, that most Muslims are not the enemy. It is an admirable and well-intentioned statement, but one that should be asterisked. Despite the existence of robust anti-war movements that exist in the face of severe political repression, the evidence is that most Russians support the war and believe state propaganda about it. Most Russians support Putin, despite his character being clear for a long time.
The economic siege will have severe effects on ordinary Russians, about whom their dictator doesn’t care. This is unfortunate, but it is necessary to degrade the power of the state to make war on its neighbors and the rest of the world.
Wishful Thinking 3: the regime is on the verge of collapse.
Reality: there is hope, but I think unlikely hope, that the sanctions could trigger a popular uprising or someone in the Kremlin to pull a von Stauffenberg. As of today, PredictIt has a 76% chance of Putin remaining in power through the rest of 2022. As the case of North Korea shows, repressive governments can stay in power for a long time in the face of desperation of their population. Even if Putin is out of office or dead, there is no guarantee that who comes next will be better.
Wishful Thinking 4: hostilities can be resolved with a concession such as halting the expansion of NATO.
Reality: Putin’s own pretext for invading Ukraine made little mention of their interest in joining NATO. Putin believes that Ukraine is rightfully part of the Russian Empire and they do not have a sovereign right to exist. Trying to peacefully negotiate with such a view is as futile as appeasement of Hitler was.
Americans will have to put away wishful thinking and recognize that we are now in a conflict, with the possibility of a nuclear conflict, with a hostile state that will probably last for decades. Winning the new Cold War will look a lot like winning the old one, and it will entail the following.
A robust missile defense system, as outlined above.
A decisive advantage for the West in conventional forces.
Economic superiority.
Outmaneuver the autocratic bloc diplomatically.
Given the superiority of Western liberal democracy over Russian- and Chinese-styled autocracy, I am optimistic that the West will eventually come out on top. But this is not guaranteed, and I sincerely hope that the period of complacency is now over.
The Political View
I’ve described the Russian government as fascist. Most Americans don’t really know what this means, other than that it is bad, and how it differs from Soviet communism. I will try to clarify here. I don’t have a precise definition, but as I use the label, fascism is a system of thought that shows most of the following characteristics.
Militarism and glorification of violence.
Revanchism; a sense of restoring national borders to a (real or imagined) glorious past. Putin has stated that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a historical tragedy and that he wishes to reverse that. Hitler’s “Third Reich” was meant to be a successor to the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire of 1871-1918.
Glorification of suffering and struggle. Fascists often hold liberal democracies in contempt as soft and believe that a kind of national purification, through great suffering, is needed and desirable. This comes up, for instance, in the pseudoscience around Strauss and Howe’s generation theory and the “fourth turning”.
Extreme nationalism.
Extreme xenophobia.
Contempt for internationalism, often crossing into conspiracy theory. One may consider Hitler’s rants against “International Jewry” or more recent conspiracy theories about the Trilateral Commission, the New World Order, Agenda 21, the Great Reset, etc.
Traditionalism, whether real or imagined.
Anti-technology. Ted Kaczynski’s (the Unabomber’s) manifesto is illustrative. The nexus between the anti-vaccine movement and the far right is a clear red flag.
Ecologism, by which I mean a system of thought that seek to restrict economic growth and human population to fit within perceived ecological limits. Ecologism is a way of thinking for both the far left and the far right. Right wing ecologism, often known as ecofascism, often takes the form of anti-immigrant violence and wars of extermination.
After the Russian seizure of Crimea, Robert Zublin wrote about Alexander Dugin and his influence on Putin. Dugin developed “Eurasianist” philosophy and sees Russia’s destiny as to build an anti-liberal Eurasianist empire that will destroy the American empire.
Much as the Soviet Union was the nexus of communism, as promoted by Comintern, Russia under its current leadership is the nexus of fascism today and thus poses a fifth column threat. Former Vice-President Mike Pence recently gave a speech that there cannot be any room for Putin apologists within the GOP. Most Republicans are not sympathetic to Putin, and indeed in Congress, Republicans have generally been more hawkish on sanctions that President Biden has been. But some are. Tucker Carlson’s praise for Putin has been so effusive, for instance, that a translated version was featured on RT, Russia’s state television, on the day of the invasion.
Unlike Russia or China, the United States has a strong tradition of free speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. This protects treasonous speech as well, an area where Americans have historically struggled to get it right. I can think of several instances where Americans have overreacted to seditious speech, such as in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the Sedition Act of 1918, the World War II internment camps, and the Red Scare, and I cannot readily think of an instance where we have underreacted, so my bias would be against any legal moves against pro-Putin speech. Thomas Jefferson got it right on this one.