Posts Tagged ‘Cold War’

How A Coffee Shortage Almost Ended East Germany

Saturday, January 6th, 2024

East Germany was widely cited as the most successful of the Warsaw Pact puppet states, the one whose industrious nature “made communism work.” That was never true, but East Germany did seem to function more efficiently than the rest of the bloc.

One reason: Coffee.

  • “In the fall of 1977 the Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, East Germany’s feared secret police, warned the government that the country was on the verge of revolt. The trust lost in this incident would never be restored.”
  • “From the beginning, East Germany did not have access to the same level of luxury goods as the non-Soviet bloc West. Immediately after the second World War and through the 1950s, the Soviet Union supplied most of the coffee in the German Democratic Republic.”
  • “As East Germany became more autarkic from the Soviet Union, so followed its need to supply coffee independently.”
  • “The average East German coffee household expenditure was twice the amount spent on shoes, and equal to the amount spent on furniture.”
  • “This accounted for 4% of all retail sales in the GDR. As the East German state attempted to gain coffee independence, they also pushed as a core part of East German identity. Coffee allowed workers to be more productive, which contributed to a more prosperous society while maintaining an aesthetic of an invigorated society.”
  • “There was a problem though: it was a scarce resource and it was expensive to import. But, because of its importance, the Socialist Unity Party (the SED, who were effectively the state) saw a bargain that could be had from it. By being able to provide a scarce resource, it gave them legitimacy. But to gain this legitimacy they were constantly fighting back against a black market.”
  • “Officially any interaction with the black market
    was illegal. Unofficially everyone knew it existed, and the Socialist Unity Party wasn’t happy with it, but it offered a window into what scarce resources would engender support if they could provide them.”

  • “Even before the Cold War, coffee in Germany was scarce – the blends were often not real coffee but blends of varying quality. This continued on after the post-war division and a fight between the Socialist Unity Party and the people of East Germany. The SED wanted to be the ones to provide coffee – the public wanted more of it and at a better quality. Thus developed a black market that the SED was constantly trying to stay ahead of.”
  • “One of the reasons for the Berlin Wall was that the SED couldn’t regulate the black market. It allowed goods to flood in from the West they were trying to provide, while allowing goods from the East (with subsidized prices) to flow out.”
  • “But, by 1973, things in East Germany had stabilized and things were, well, good. At least according to the CIA.”
  • “The SED had achieved a Faustian bargain: A black market where people had to depend upon relationships with each other to get access to goods meant that the populace actively grew in solidarity with each other.”
  • “The average East German citizen was willing to deal with shortages because it was something everyone was enduring together. In short, East Germany had entered a period of political stability, with a relatively high standard of living, and the shortcomings of the system reinforced the ideals that the system preached.”
  • “Two events at the beginning of the 1970s shook the East German economy to its core: the 1973 oil shock, and a failed coffee crop in Brazil. These events compounded within the fragile East German economy: to import goods from the west (such as oil) they needed to use western currency. As the price of oil skyrocketed, so did the rate at which East Germany drained its reserves of Western currency.” This part I’m not so sure of. I believe that East Germany imported most (but not all) of its oil from the Soviet Union under the Comecon plan. Oil prices from that did increase, but not immediately.
  • “Luxury goods, like coffee, became prohibitively expensive in an economy planned out to the penny. Before the failed coffee crop, East Germany spent 150 million marks per year on coffee imports. After the crisis began, this number had skyrocketed to 700 million. The SED was faced with a dilemma: money for oil, or marks for mocha?”
  • “They attempted to split the difference. The only coffee imported would be the higher end blends that the party leadership used. Lower end brands were either eliminated completely, or the recipe adjusted to use less coffee. Further, certain blends would only be available in Intershops, which required the use of Western currency – which would help the state refill it’s currency coffers.”
  • “East Germans rejected the new coffee mixes in a way the state was not prepared for. In a report to SED leadership on September 1, 1977, the Ministry for State stated that, ‘the quality and price of [the new coffee mixes] are rejected by broad circles of the population.'”
  • “Complaints recorded by the Stasi included ‘critical indications of taste,’ and a first indication that the new mixes were unable to be processed to the ‘full filtering capability in household machines.’ The coffee mixes were breaking the machines.”
  • “The Stasi further expressed in this report that workers resented party officials requesting austerity for workers, while still importing ‘expensive Western cars for officials.'”
  • “Additionally, Stasi reports say that citizen did not believe the ‘information policy.’ Far from just rejecting the new coffee mixes, were rejecting the SED’s handling of the crisis.”
  • “By September 12, the frustration over austerity moved to unrest. A Stasi report stated that in discussions among workers, ‘skeptical, resigned, pessimistic and negative opinions up to aggressive arguments become clear.'”
  • “While blaming Western media for this development, the Stasi also states that there are rumors of ‘warning strikes.'” These strikes would demand wages be paid in Western currency so that they could shop at the Intershops.”
  • “In relation, the report states growing frustration with the expansion of Intershop stores, with the simultaneous ‘elimination of low-price coffees and the limited supply in restaurants.’
  • Workers also believed that the classless East German society was now stratified, with three distinct categories: those without western currency who would be forced to endure austerity, those with access to western currency who could shop at Intershops, and ‘privileged persons and high officials who…drove expensive Western cars and [weren’t] affected by austerity.'”
  • “These last two categories were contrasted with the common worker and pensioner who ‘have returned to the point where begging letters have been sent to [West Germany]’ for coffee.'”
  • They were even criticizing Party officials! “East Germany was on the precipice of a revolt.”
  • “The SED would finally act on 23 September to contain the growing unrest. The price of the lowest quality mixes was reduced, and a communication was published on the coffee shortage, explaining the reasoning behind austerity measures.”
  • East Germany also started sourcing coffee from Vietnam.
  • Eventually, of course, East Germany would cease to exist due to the “internal contradictions” of communism and because the Soviet Union could no longer afford to keep it’s foot on Eastern Europe’s neck.

    Note: Bluehost has been dog slow for the last 24 hours. If this keeps up tomorrow I’ll try to go through the agonizing technical support process to do something about it…

    LinkSwarm for December 1, 2023

    Friday, December 1st, 2023

    Congratulations! You’ve successfully made it to the last month of 2023! Give yourself a cookie!

    I’ve spent most of today getting my latest book catalog ready to send out, so I’m probably going to have to break this LinkSwarm into two parts. This part: More Biden corrupton evidence, Big Brother wants all your tweets, Jihadi gets stabby in Ireland, and a couple of fairly notable political deaths.

  • “Bank Investigator Flagged ‘Unusual’ Chinese Payments behind $40k Check to Biden, Raised Possibility of Influence Peddling.” Ya think?

    A bank money-laundering investigator expressed serious concerns about a transfer of funds from China that ultimately trickled down to President Biden in the form of a $40,000 check from his brother, James Biden, according to an email obtained by the House

    Biden received a $40,000 personal check from an account shared by his brother, James Biden, and sister-in-law, Sara Biden, in September 2017 — money that was marked as a “loan repayment.” The alleged repayment was sent after funds were filtered from Northern International Capital, a Chinese company affiliated with the Chinese energy firm CEFC, through several accounts related to Hunter Biden and eventually down to the personal account shared by James and Sara Biden.

    Northern International Capital sent $5 million to Hudson West III, a joint venture established by Hunter Biden and CEFC associate Gongwen Dong on August 8.

    On the same day, Hudson West III then sent $400,000 to Owasco, P.C., an entity owned and controlled by Hunter Biden. Six days later, Hunter Biden wired $150,000 to Lion Hall Group, a company owned by James and Sara Biden. Sara Biden withdrew $50,000 in cash from Lion Hall Group on August 28 and then deposited the funds into her and her husband’s personal checking account later that day.

    On September 3, 2017, Sara Biden wrote a check to Joe Biden for $40,000.

    We all know that if Trump did something remotely close to this, he’d already be in prison.

  • Hamas Violates Cease-Fire, Israel Resumes Airstrikes in Gaza.” This is my shocked face.
  • Big Brother says that all your tweets are belong to us.

    Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded information on Twitter users who liked or retweeted former President Donald Trump’s tweets leading up to the January 6 riot, according to a heavily redacted search warrant and other documents released Monday.

    Smith’s comprehensive search warrant sought the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner’s search history, direct messages, and “content of all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by his account from October 2020 to January 2021.

    The special counsel also demanded a list of all devices used to log into Trump’s then-Twitter, now X account, as well as information on users who interacted with the then-president in the months leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, the court filings show.

    Among the information Smith sought were lists of all Twitter users who “favorited or retweeted” Trump’s tweets, “as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account” in “mentions” or “replies.”

    The special counsel also requested a list of every user Trump “followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” and a list of users who took any of the same actions with Trump’s account during the aforementioned timeframe.

    “There is no benign or reasonable justification for that demand,” wrote former FBI agent/whistleblower Steve Friend on X.

  • “Patrick Wojahn, a well-known LGBTQ activist and friend of key people in the Joe Biden administration, was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Monday. Wojahn pleaded guilty to 140 charges related to child pornography as part of a deal struck with prosecutors.”
  • Henry Kissinger dead at 100.

    Henry Kissinger, the legendary diplomat who played a central role in advising Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford on foreign policy, died at his home in Connecticut late Wednesday at age 100.

    Kissinger was the only person to simultaneously be secretary of state and hold the position of White House national-security adviser. In 1973, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho for their work in brokering the 1973 Paris Agreement ending America’s involvement in Vietnam.

    Kissinger was born in Germany in 1923. Three months before Kristallnacht, his family fled, bound for New York City. Kissinger served in the Army during World War II and was assigned to the 84 Infantry Division, voluntarily staying behind at the Battle of the Bulge to reportedly conduct “hazardous counter-intelligence duties” while also “making good use of his German.”

    Kissinger was a key Cold War figure as Secretary of State, and one who doesn’t deserve all of the extensive condemnation he receives (for different reasons) from left and right, nor the hosannas of praise he received from the mainstream media during is heyday. The instantly betrayed peace treaty with North Vietnam (the won he won the Nobel Peace Prize for) was shameful, but LBJ’s incompetence and Washington elite failure of nerve probably doomed South Vietnam before Kissinger even got to the negotiating table. The opening to China was a brilliant move to counter the Soviet Union at the time, and helped usher in a brief period of economic and political liberalization that has now been almost completely undone. SALT1 and the ABM treaties were violated by the Soviet Union before the ink was even dry.

    Kissinger was at his best down deep in the intricacies of face-to-face diplomacy, and played a key role in negotiating details after the Yom Kippur War. Indeed, Kissinger’s goal of stabilizing the Middle East (at least as far as preventing another major Arab-Israeli War) was met.

    Kissinger was ultimately wrong for favoring detente over rollback, but that preference was also emblematic of the Washington foreign policy establishment of the time, and it would take Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 to set America on the right course (and the Soviet Union to the dust-heap of history).

  • Sandra Day O’Connor dead at 93. Eh, she wasn’t the worst Republican appointee to the Supreme Court.
  • Irish riot over illegal alien stabbing spree against children. Rioting is bad, mmkay, but Irish citizens, like those across the rest of the EU, are tired of the enforced consensus for allowing unassimilable Islamic immigrants to cross the border and immediately apply for the welfare rolls.
  • History made as the Irish riot while sober.
  • “Ireland Declares Asking An Immigrant To Stop Stabbing You A Hate Crime.”
  • Not just Ireland. “‘We are here to stab white people’: Teen killed, 16 others wounded in French village after migrant gang reportedly descends on winter ball.”
  • High prices and “lot rot” are doing CarMax in. Not to mention the Biden recession…
  • More of that voting fraud that doesn’t exist. “Virginia Election Official ‘Altered Election Results’ in 2020.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • I just must not be paying attention, because I missed I missed the return of former UK PM David Cameron as foreign secretary a few weeks ago. Eh, you do get a lot of reruns this time of year…
  • “Disney got Microsoft to change its AI image generator because people were making too many savage Pixar-style posters.”
  • Examples, some of which are very not safe for work:

  • Speaking of AI, Sports Illustrated has evidently been caught using it rather than hiring competent sportswriters.
  • Critical Drinker is not too impressed with Napoleon.
  • “Biden Airdrops Humanitarian Resupply Of Hostages Into Gaza.”
  • Was the Yugo As Bad As Critics Said? Yes.

    Saturday, September 16th, 2023

    How bad an idea was it buying a car made in a communist country? Two guys from Donut Media pick up a used Yugo to see if it lives down to its reputation.

  • “Journalists have been crapping on it for decades, but is it really that bad?” Spoiler: Yes.
  • Their Yugo has 20,593 miles on it, and the build quality is obviously crap. “The needle for the speedometer is broken off, which is annoying, and it has a very optimistic high number of 110 miles per hour.”
  • One reason the car has such poor quality is the cost: The Yugo was $4,000 brand new back in the mid-1980s.
  • “This was the first and only Yugoslavian car that made it to the U.S market. It was made by a company called Corvina Zastava, which literally means red flag. You think the people that bought these would have seen the huge red flag.”
  • “In reality the Yugo is a clone of the Fiat 127. Corvina Zastava licensed the design from Fiat and built their version in the motherland.”
  • “One thing that communist Yugoslavia didn’t have access to that Fiat did was purpose-built machinery. And that’s how you get panel gaps.”
  • “Zastava literally spared every expense they possibly could when making this thing, from the metal stamping to the interior.”
  • You really have to watch the entire video to enjoy the diverse panoply of mystery noises and bumps they experience.
  • “Americans ended up hating the Yugo, but here’s the thing: It was never meant for the U.S market. It was a complete fluke that had ever made it to our shores in the first place.”
  • It was strictly meant as a utilitarian vehicle for Yugoslavians.
  • “As Edmunds said when they reviewed an 89 Yugo, ‘the Yugo is slow, low grip and high effort.’ Sure, it’s got a rack and pinion, but the Yugo doesn’t even have power steering. You have to throw your entire body weight into most of your turns.”
  • “This is not good. Dude, having a car change direction depending on what the throttle is doing? I’m gonna give that a fail.”
  • The transmission is awful, the shifter is floppy and the throttle is sticky.
  • It idles at 3,000 RPM. (A Honda Accord idles around 750.)
  • Car entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin (who formed Subaru of America to import those cars) was looking to import low-cost cars in America. Not in the video is this weird passage in Bricklin’s Wikipedia entry: “Bricklin, senior advisor Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Under-Secretary of State and Yugo board member Lawrence Eagleburger, and Global Motors executives met with Zastava. Bricklin agreed to import the Zastava Koral, marketing it as the Yugo.” Because who knows about cars better than Secretaries of State?
  • “The kids were calling it Yugomania, and people were legitimately psyched about the Yugo.” Having been alive at that time, I can assure you that never happened. The only marketing I remember from the time was a radio spot that focused on the cheapness and the “new car smell” and had an insipid little jingle: “Me and my Yugo/Wherever we go.”
  • “140,000 Yugos were sold in the U.S.”
  • The reason it got imported over here was that Yugoslavia had broken away from the Soviet Union and enjoyed pretty good relations with Reagan’s America, and Fiat had pulled out of the American market, meaning Zastava had no contractual bar to exporting the Fiat clone into the U.S.
  • “The manufacturer claimed it could go 0-60 and 14.3 seconds, which is horrible for even then but some reviewers clocked in at more like 18 seconds.” How long did it take the Donut guys to hit 60? 35.3 seconds. At full throttle.
  • “Carbureted engines can be very reliable, but probably not ones built in a communist country on the brink of collapse.”
  • Their Yugo broke down 10 minutes into filming a mile down the freeway.
  • “Factories in communist countries had terrible working conditions and very little oversight. Consistency also wasn’t their top priority, either. That’s all to say that the high tolerances they had while manufacturing these cars led to some very unreliable parts.”
  • At the time Yugos were being sold, Honda Civics started at $5,800. And the stock Civic engine makes more power than two Yugo engines!
  • “Yugo did not make a good car.”
  • Sales peaked at 48,812 in the U.S. in 1987, but had declined to 3,092 in 1991, when the Yugoslavian Civil War got underway, then less than half that in 1992, when UN sanctions came down, and that was the end of the Yugo in America. Supposedly later Yugos were somewhat more reliable.

    The lesson here: Never buy a car made in a communist country, unless you’re building a Museum of Failure.

    As a bonus, enjoy this hilariously dishonest Yugo TV ad.

    German Dam On Ukraine Aid Finally Bursts

    Tuesday, January 17th, 2023

    For most of last year there was a recurring pattern for German military aid to Ukraine:

  • The German government would talk about sending various types of modern military equipment to Germany.
  • The German government would actually send Ukraine numerous pallets of Diddly and Squat.
  • I almost did a post on “What’s holding up the German weapons pipeline?” Now, thanks to Peter Zeihan, we know that clog has a name: Christine Lambrecht, the German Defense Minister, who just resigned.

    Takeaways:

  • Lambrecht is not somebody with defense experience. She’s a politico. She has been up relatively high in Germany’s Social Democratic Party, which is a center-left party for decades. So it’s not that she’s a nobody, it’s just she doesn’t have a lot of skills that are appropriate to her current portfolio. This has not been a problem. In fact her specific, deliberate, intentional incompetence and defense matters in many ways was seen by the SPD as a plus.

    Until the Russo-Ukrainian War.

  • “The general position in Germany as a whole, and specifically in the SPD, was that the Defense Ministry itself is unnecessary, that in the aftermath of the Cold War, the threat to Germany is gone.”
  • Plus the deep-seated problem of all Germany’s Historical Unpleasantness.

  • So for the Germans, the post-cold war environment in Europe has been the best it’s ever been. You’re talking about a golden age, because NATO has provided defense, but all the countries that border Germany are either neutral, like Switzerland, or are members of NATO, which is basically everyone else. And in that sort of environment, the Germans can kind of dither and become pacifist socialists. Which, to be perfectly blunt, looking at the long stretch of German history is much, much, much, much, much, much better for everyone than the alternative.

  • “Lambrecht was put in charge of the Defense Ministry to basically continue slowly sliding it into functional oblivion.”
  • “That doesn’t work in an environment where the Russians are back on the warpath, and the Germans need to be starting thinking not just about 20th century military strategy, but 19th century military strategy, and Lambrecht was completely unprepared, professionally, personally and ideologically for this sort of shift.”
  • Indeed, she was a poor fit for a Germany doubling its defense budget. Plus, she hates the U.S.
  • “The Russians are not just mobilizing, but mobilizing in force. They’re finally beginning significant industrial upgrades. They’re finally starting to churn out missiles and ammo and tanks and numbers. And they are finally doing a full-scale mobilization. This isn’t the 300,000 that they did a few weeks ago. We’re talking about at least another half a million men likely being in the theater within a very few number of months.” Not sure where he’s getting this info, only see references to Russia considering it. (Unless my speculation that Russia was carrying out a full mobilization under the guise of a partial mobilization was on the mark.)
  • Germany may now finally move on approving other countries transferring Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. “There are a number of countries, specifically Denmark and Poland, who have been pressuring the Germans in order to allow them to take these exported tanks and then send them on to Ukraine. That requires Berlin’s approval, and Berlin at this point has been demurring. But the coalition now involves almost every single country that the Germans have sold the Leopards, to and so all of a sudden with Lambrecht gone, all of this is in motion, and I think we’re going to see the Germans relent.”
  • Faster, please.

    Finally, all of this is just an excuse to embedded this classic Norm Macdonald bit about Germany. “I’m not sure if any of you are history buffs…”

    George Shultz, RIP

    Monday, February 8th, 2021

    George Shultz, who served as Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan for six years, died yesterday at age 100.

    Reagan assumed the presidency at a time when the existence of the Soviet Union and its domination of eastern Europe was regarded as an immutable fact of world politics. Taking office after Alexander Haig, Shultz helped implement Reagan’s vision of containing and rolling back communism across the globe. From supporting Solidarity in Poland, to backing anticommunist rebels in Reagan Doctrine countries like Afghanistan and Nicaragua, to the liberation of Grenada, to deploying intermediate nuclear missiles in Europe, to a hundred other policies, the Reagan Administration pressed Soviet communism in ways that would eventually force not only the liberation of Eastern Europe, but the demise of the Soviet Union itself. Shultz would play a key role in keeping American allies onboard with the program, and eventually in negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that would lead to the end of the Cold War.

    Compared to Haig, Shultz was a low-key, drama-free professional who skillfully kept a wide variety of western governments broadly aligned with American goals, and for that he deserves credit. That he was wrong about much outside the Cold War (the gold standard, carbon taxes, and Brexit, to name but three) should not take away from his central achievement. With James A. Baker III, Secretary of State under Bush 41 (who largely followed the policies laid down under Reagan), Shultz presided over the most successful period of post-World War II diplomacy in American history, and his achievements were far more lasting than those under flashier Secretaries of State like Henry Kissinger or Colin Powell.

    The Battle of 73 Easting

    Wednesday, February 26th, 2020

    Twenty nine years ago today, on February 26, 1991, units of the American Second Armored Cavalry Regiment engaged the armor of the Iraqi Republican Guard Tawakalna Division in the Battle of 73 Easting.

    The furious action lasted twenty-three minutes. The troop stopped when there was nothing left to shoot. Sporadic contact ranged from nuisance machine gun fire to one company-sized counterattack of T-72s and BMP armored personnel carriers. Tanks and Bradleys destroyed enemy vehicles at long range from the dominating position on the ridge. Three Bradleys from first platoon, led by Lieutenant Michael Petschek, encountered and destroyed four T-72s as they moved north to reestablish physical contact with G Troop. Medics treated and evacuated enemy wounded. Crews cross-leveled ammunition. Mortars suppressed enemy infantry further to the east as our fire support officer, Lieutenant Dan Davis, called in devastating artillery strikes on enemy logistical bases. Scouts and a team under the control of First Sergeant Bill Virrill cleared bunkers using grenades and satchel charges, and then led a much-needed resupply convoy through minefields to our rear. A psychological operations team broadcasted surrender appeals forward of the troop and the troop took the first of hundreds of prisoners including the brigade commander. Soldiers segregated, searched, and secured prisoners through the night. Many prisoners cried because they had not expected such humane treatment; their officers had told them that we would execute them. The prisoners were incredulous when our soldiers returned their wallets without taking any of the money that they had looted from Kuwait City. Just after 2200, 1ID conducted a forward passage of lines in Third Squadron’s area of operation to our south.

    The morning after the battle, soldiers were exhausted. Many of the approximately fifty T-72s, twenty-five armored personnel carriers, forty trucks and numerous other vehicles that the troop destroyed were still smoldering. Our troop had taken no casualties.

    Here’s a video on the battle:

    In addition to being an overwhelming victory, and part of the larger overwhelming victory of Desert Storm, the Battle of 73 Easting was important for several other reasons.

    For one thing, it was the largest tank battle between American- and Soviet-constructed armor since Israeli M-60 Patton tanks faced off against Egyptian T-62s in Sinai campaign of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. All throughout the 70s and early 1980s, various media outlets talked about how much better Soviet military equipment was than American equipment. (I remember a 60 Minutes episode that talked about Soviet equipment being better “all across the board.”) And Soviet equipment was better—on paper, with thicker armor, higher top speeds, etc. And then 73 Easting happened, and M1A1s wiped the floor with T-72s. A lot of that was American troops being much better trained and led than Iraqi troops. But the Republican Guard was the best the Iraq army had, and on paper the T-72 was a match for the M1A1s. In actual combat, the T-72s started blowing up before they realized the Americans were engaging (and destroying) Iraqi armor at the extreme range of the American computerized fire control systems. Soviet armor still used reticules, where the gunner had to manually calculate distance and windage to put shots on target.

    In Vietnam, early computerized combat technology was clunky and unreliable. By the time of Desert Storm, the furious onrush of Moore’s Law had rendered technology smaller, more compact, more reliable, and more user-friendly. By pursuing what Jerry Pournelle called the strategy of technology, the United States was producing weapons that were qualitatively superior to those of its communist foes. That technological gap (especially in the form of SDI) was one of the drivers for the end of the Cold War, and it was on full display in Desert Storm. The Soviet Union itself would dissolve later the same year.

    The Battle of 73 Easting was also important because it become the most accurately simulated battle ever:

    The Battle of 73 Easting has become the single most accurately recorded combat engagement in human history. Army historians and simulation modelers thoroughly interviewed the American participants, and paced the battlefield meter by meter. They came up with a fully interactive, network-capable digital replica of the events at 73 Easting, right down to the last TOW missile and .50-caliber pockmark. Military historians and armchair strategists can now fly over the virtual battlefield in the “stealth vehicle,” the so-called “SIMNET flying carpet,” viewing the 3-D virtual landscape from any angle during any moment of the battle. They can even change the parameters – give the Iraqis infrared targeting scopes, for instance, which they lacked at the time, and which made them sitting ducks for high-tech American M1s charging out of blowing sand. The whole triumphal blitzkrieg can be pondered over repeatedly (gloated over even), in perfect scratch-free digital fidelity. It’s the spirit of Southwest Asia in a digital nutshell. In terms of American military morale, it’s like a ’90s CD remix of some ’60s oldie, rescued from warping vinyl and remade closer to the heart’s desire.

    Like Agincourt or Amiens, the Battle of 73 Easting heralded the arrival of a new type of technology to the battlefield, one that every army in the world henceforth need to take into account.

    Mesta 50

    Sunday, December 15th, 2019

    This is the end of an exceptionally busy week for me, so enjoy a little light posting with this look at the largest American forging press ever built, the Mesta 50:

    Europe’s Dysfunctional Defense Dilemma

    Saturday, February 2nd, 2019

    Warfare is an endemic part of the human condition, but for at least two millennia, Europeans were the defining practitioners of it. From Alexander the Great and the Roman legions up through the Napoleonic Wars and the Blitzkrieg, Europe was at the forefront of finding new, innovative ways of killing people on a massive scale.

    Now the continent that defined warfare can’t figure out how to defend itself. Or, more accurately, they know how to do it but are singularly unwilling to spend the necessary money. For decades, Europe has let the United States do the heavy lifting on defense spending, with most nations falling below the 2% of GDP funding level called called for by NATO. (Only the United States, the UK, Greece, Estonia and Latvia met that threshold last year, with Poland and Lithuania just barely missing it.) It seems that stagnant economies and cradle-to-grave welfare states make adequate defense spending democratically unpopular in most of the EU.

    Many U.S. administrations have grumbled abut this. Only President Donald Trump grumbled about it loudly enough to make progress on the issue:

    NATO states have agreed to increase their defense spending by $100 billion over two years after President Trump went on a fiery tirade last July – calling on “delinquent” countries to boost their contributions by 2% to 4% of GDP. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance heard Trump’s call “loud and clear” and that member nations are “stepping up,” according to the Telegraph.

    Right now these are only promises; it remains to be seen if the various European nations will carry-through.

    Weirdly, at the same time Trump was pushing for adequate funding for NATO, France and Germany were signing a treaty proclaiming that they were the same country, at least as far as foreign and defense policy were concerned:

    Europe’s most powerful personages on Tuesday signed a treaty for the “unification,” of Western Europe’s biggest countries. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel inked the deal at Aachen/Aix la Chapelle. It was there in the chapel that Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer had knelt at Holy Mass to celebrate the signing of the 1963 Franco-German treaty of cooperation that sealed their peoples’ vow of friendship and cooperation. In the ensuing half century, it produced just that. France and Germany became the core of the Common Market and then of the European Union.

    Today’s treaty, its pretensions notwithstanding, is between regimes that are overwhelmingly occupied trying, with decreasing success, to fend off domestic challenges to their legitimacy. The treaty is a desperate attempt by France and Germany to change the subject from their internal struggles. Nevertheless, the treaty cannot but have major and deleterious effects on intra-European relations as well as on relations between Europe and the United States.

    In 1963, de Gaulle and Adenauer had hoped for even greater coordination in foreign and defense policy as well but, under U.S. diplomatic pressure, the German Bundestag added a clause to the treaty’s ratification that privileged the Federal Republic’s defense relationship with America. By contrast, the 2019 treaty’s main thrust is to sever that clause. The two countries will act “as a single unit with regard to relations with third countries.”

    Lest there be any doubt, the final sentence reads: “The admission of the Federal Republic of Germany as a permanent member of of the United Nations Security Council [where it would share France’s seat] is a priority of Franco-German diplomacy.”

    For other European countries, and for the United States, Macron and Merkel’s real domestic worries matter far less than the fact that, henceforth, the European core’s main weight will be wielded in unison.

    Rules notwithstanding, the EU never was a club of equals. As the years passed, and especially after the advent of the Euro and the European Central Bank, Germany became primus inter pares, and then more to the point, other states learned that Berlin was the place to ask for EU favors, and Germans the folks to blame for not getting them. Henceforth, with Berlin and Paris jointly at the helm, other countries will wonder whether asking or blaming will be of any use. The EU will do whatever the two will dictate to Brussels from their joint councils of ministers.

    Snip.

    In sum, the new Franco-German core is sure further to erode the EU, NATO, and the United Nations. But even as the French and German alliance is poised to disrupt so many international institutions, it is soft inside because it arises from both regimes’ alienation from their own peoples.

    Neither has France’s Macron found, nor is he likely to find, a way of appeasing the anger that the French people, via the “yellow vest” movement, have demonstrated for the way they have been governed for a half century; nor have Merkel and her allies on the traditional Left and Right been able to stanch the hemorrhaging of their electoral support, for reasons that differ little from those that motivate France’s yellow vests. France’s 1958 Fifth Republic constitution and Germany’s 1949 Grundgesetz largely insulate the respective governments from immediate popular pressure. But these governments’ alienation from their citizens is substantive and cultural. It is not such as can be healed by time—or by treaties.

    Charles de Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, and the people then in leadership positions in their countries were in basic sympathy with their peoples’ civilization. They wanted to keep France French and Germany German. As Catholics, the notion of enforcing the religion of “global warming” would have been repugnant to them, as would any of the current, ever-changing dictates of “political correctness.” They did not imagine themselves regulators of energy usage or of the details of life. As nationalists, they rejected the notion of supranational institutions beyond the peoples’ electoral control.

    In all these regards, Merkel and Macron, and their recent predecessors, have abandoned their peoples. The abandonment is mutual. Consequently, their regimes are rotting. On January 22 they took another step that transfers this rot to the international institutions of which their countries are part.

    France has long pushed for a “European” military structure apart from NATO, and now it may (theoretically) have the political framework to actually carry it out.

    (But wait, you ask: What about that “European Defence Union?” Indeed, that does exist, in the form of the Common Security and Defence Policy under the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, bringing with it a host of other organizations and acronyms dwelling between national military command hierarchies and the EU’s luxuriant tangle of bureaucracy. Never doubt, citizen, that many connected Europeans are being paid extremely well to man the bureaucratic barricades of the CSDP…)

    The irony, however, is that after more than a century of being on the losing end of Germany military might, France’s new military best buddy now sucks at war:

    The biggest problem that Bundeswehr soldiers complained about was the lack of equipment, despite repeated government promises, dating back to a 2014 NATO summit, of a change in direction. That does not count as a surprising development, considering the barrage of poor press the German military has been facing.

    Heavy machinery was a particular concern: [Hans-Peter] Bartels found that often less than 50 percent of the Bundeswehr’s tanks, ships and aircraft were available at any one time, either for training or operational purposes.

    “Spare parts are still missing; maintenance in industry is dragging; the training programs are suffering,” Social Democrat Bartels said. “An absolute must is the acceleration of procurement.” (…)

    Another worry for the Defense Ministry is the stagnation of its post-conscription recruitment drive, which began after Germany scrapped national service in 2011. Though the Bundeswehr is expanding overall (the report found a net gain of 4,000 professional soldiers), most of these were won by extending existing contracts. In other words, the German military is aging.

    (Previously.)

    The further irony is that, while Merkel and Macron signed the treaty, it may very well be National Front leader Marine Le Pen and Alternative for Germany’s leaders like Alice Weidel who inherit it.

    In a parallel development, President Trump has informed Moscow that the United States is pulling out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. American deployment of nuclear-capable Pershing missiles in Europe were, along with SDI, key elements in forcing the Soviet Union to the bargaining table in the 1980s, but Russia has been cheating on it, and the treaty outlived its usefulness.

    Speaking of outliving its usefulness, America’s political establishment seems desperate to avoid debating whether NATO itself has outlived its usefulness. The old adage “Keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down” no longer seems to apply. Russia still has ample nuclear weapons and a formidable conventional force, but it’s not nearly as strong as it was before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. While Vladimir Putin shows every sign of being willing to to bite more chunks off Ukraine (and I wouldn’t put trying to reconquer the Baltic countries past him), they can’t afford to deploy their next generation weapons in sufficient numbers, their navy is in a world of hurt, and their adventurism in Syria is looking more and more like costly overreach.

    This piece in National Review argues that (among other things):

    The irony is that the Trump administration actually has a success story to tell about its policies toward NATO and Russia, particularly in Europe. Under this administration, the U.S. has provided lethal aid to Ukraine to fight off Russian-backed insurgents. It has made no concessions to Moscow regarding that conflict. It has increased sanctions against Russia and boosted America’s military presence in Eastern Europe.

    All that is mostly true, except for the tiny, inconvenient facts that the “Russian-backed insurgents” include significant components of the Russian army and that all these efforts have been singularly ineffective at actually expelling Russian forces from Ukraine. This is not exactly a textbook definition of “success.”

    I’m willing to be persuaded that NATO is still a vital alliance, but the arguments I’ve seen thus far are not doing it. And letting Turkey remain a member while its Islamist government remains at cross-purposes to NATO’s stated goals is counterproductive.

    With a few exceptions, Europe’s transnational elites will continue to skimp on defense in order to continue feeding the maw of their failing welfare states as long as the United States lets them. And despite some moderate successes by the Trump Administration, I don’t see that dysfunctional dynamic changing as long as those same functionaries remain in charge.

    LinkSwarm for January 11, 2019

    Friday, January 11th, 2019

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! At least those of you not among the millions dead from the shutdown, assuming you already survived the tax cut and the end of Net Neutrality…

  • If you ignore the MSM-generated drama, 2018 was a great year for America:

    In December, the United States reached a staggering level of oil production, pumping some 11.6 million barrels per day. For the first time since 1973, America is now the world’s largest oil producer

    Since Trump took office, the United States has increased its oil production by nearly 3 million barrels per day, largely as the result of fewer regulations, more federal leasing, and the continuing brilliance of American frackers and horizontal drillers.

    It appears that there is still far more oil beneath U.S. soil than has ever been taken out. American production could even soar higher in the months ahead.

    In addition, the United States remains the largest producer of natural gas and the second-greatest producer of coal. The scary old energy-related phraseology of the last half-century—”energy crisis,” “peak oil,” “oil embargo”—no longer exists.

    Near-total energy self-sufficiency means the United States is no longer strategically leveraged by the Middle East, forced to pay exorbitant political prices to guarantee access to imported oil, or threatened by gasoline prices of $4 to $5 a gallon.

    The American economy grew by 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018, and by 3.4 percent in the third quarter. American GDP is nearly $1.7 trillion larger than in January 2017, and nearly $8 trillion larger than the GDP of China. For all the talk of the Chinese juggernaut, three Chinese workers produce about 60 percent of the goods and services produced by one American worker.

    In 2018, unemployment fell to a near-record peacetime low of 3.7 percent. That’s the lowest U.S. unemployment rate since 1969. Black unemployment hit an all-time low in 2018. For the first time in memory, employers are seeking out entry-level workers rather than vice versa.

    The poverty rate is also near a historic low, and household income increased. There are about 8 million fewer Americans living below the poverty line than there were eight years ago. Since January 2017, more than 3 million Americans have gone off so-called food stamps.

    Abroad, lots of bad things that were supposed to happen simply did not.

    After withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, the United States exceeded the annual percentage of carbon reductions of most countries that are part of the agreement.

    North Korea and the United States did not go to war. Instead, North Korea has stopped its provocative nuclear testing and its launching of ballistic missiles over the territory of its neighbors.

    Despite all the Trump bluster, NATO and NAFTA did not quite implode. Rather, allies and partners agreed to renegotiate past commitments and agreements on terms more favorable to the U.S.

    The United States—and increasingly most of the world—is at last addressing the systematic commercial cheating, technological appropriation, overt espionage, intellectual-property theft, cyber intrusions, and mercantilism of the Chinese government.

    Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • President Donald Trump visits the Texas border.
  • “The longer Donald Trump wrangles with his two superannuated cartoon antagonists, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the stronger the president’s position becomes.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “If the Dems Want to Lose the Wall Fight, All They Have to Do Is Keep Talking.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Secretary of State Secretary of State Mike Pompeo notes that Obama’s Cairo speech was full of shit.
  • Nobel Peace Prize secretary admits that giving the award to Obama was a mistake. In other news, Peter Dinklage will not be the starting center for the New York Knicks. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • “There is one thing that Palestine obsessives never seem obsessed with: the opinions of Palestinians. There’s no mystery here—asking what Palestinians believe exposes a fundamental problem with the liberal approach to the peace process, which is based on the belief that Palestinians are willing to live peacefully beside Israel.”
  • Flashback: How a Boris Yeltsin trip to a Randall’s in Clear Lake helped end the cold war.
  • The very first bill pushed by House Democrats takes aim at the First Amendment:

    House Democrats are up and running, and their first bill is instructive. Couched as an anti-corruption and good-government measure, it is really an attempt to silence or obstruct political opponents.

    A central part of H.R. 1 is “campaign-finance reform,” no surprise given the progressive fixation with money in politics, which oddly turns to mist when Tom Steyer or Mike Bloomberg are spending. The House bill requires some advocacy groups to publicly disclose the names of donors who give more than $10,000, even if the groups aren’t running ads that endorse candidates but merely inform voters about the issues.

    The goal is to identify donors who don’t genuflect to progressive views, then bully or harass them to stop giving. Recall how the Mozilla CEO was driven out after he donated to California’s referendum opposing same-sex marriage.

    (Hat tip: MQ Sullivan on Twitter.)

  • “WaPo’s embarrassing indulgence in hyperbole describing the attendance at Democratic candidates rallies.” Remember: Trump filling arenas is nothing, but when 200 Democrats turn out, it’s “filled to the rafters.”
  • Second dead black man found in the home of prominent gay California Democratic donor Ed Buck. I guest the first was just a “gimme” under California law.
  • “Hey officer, I have a dead body in my apartment, along with a bunch of illegal drugs.” “It’s cool. No worries.”

  • Tam suggests that people do not need to clean their gun as frequently as the old military guys suggest.
  • Laws are for the little people: “He’s been a staunch supporter of gun control measures for decades, but in a surprising twist, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday that nearly two dozen firearms were discovered in Ald. Ed Burke’s offices during their raids in November.” (Hat tip: Snowflakes in Hell.)
  • Woe unto those who own a house inadvertently mapped as a default location for unmapped IP addresses.
  • Being anti-communist is now evidently a hate crime in Seattle. (Hat tip: Gail Heriot at Instapundit.)
  • Twenty-one bodies found in north Mexico after gang clash near Texas border.
  • Media Matters head and Hillary Clinton crony David Brock says that Bernie supporters must be silenced in 2020.
  • Brazil:

    Jair Bolsonaro is “far right” and the media means that as a pejorative.

    Turns out he favors the private sector and wants to get rid of government owned industry.

    He favors expansive gun rights as a way to combat crime and let people protect themselves. This has led to massive media backlash in the United States.

    He favors conservative social policy including a rollback of the LGBT agenda in Brazil. Again, this has led to massive media backlash in the United States.

    Most damning in the eyes of many in western media, he favors abandoning restrictions on private property that could threaten Amazonian forest growth, i.e. he’s bad for climate change.

    The media has focused a lot on Bolsonaro talking favorably about Brazil’s American backed military dictatorship that ruthlessly exterminated communists and other dissident groups from the 1960’s into the early 1980’s. They suggest Bolsonaro might bring it back.

    So far, the only thing Bolsonaro seems to be doing is keeping his campaign promises to fight corruption, roll back progressive social policies his socialist predecessor supported, and expand gun rights. But the American commentariat can do nothing but see everything through the lens of Trump and if you hate Trump, you must hate Bolsonaro apparently.

  • Cahnman says cut Will Hurd some slack on some meaningless political posturing. I tend to agree, especially since here he might actually be voting the way his constituents favor.
  • Dan Crenshaw seems to be settling into his new job nicely:

  • Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke Instagrams his trip to the dentist. Because that’s what voters really want to see.
  • Related snark:

  • Open office plans suck. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “I’m attacking the Death Star…and I’m not wearing any pants!” (Link corrected.)
  • George H. W. Bush: Passing Reaction Roundup

    Sunday, December 2nd, 2018

    Here’s some news, tributes, roundups and reactions to President George H. W. Bush’s death:

  • Bush’s body to lie in state in the capitol rotunda. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • The Other McCain:

    Former President George Herbert Walker Bush will be universally praised in the wake of his death because it is always the policy of liberals to celebrate the dead Republicans they formerly defamed, as a means to impugn the living Republicans they currently defame. Those of us old enough to remember how liberals hated Bush when he was president (and before that, as vice-president under Ronald Reagan) will not be deceived by their panegyrics to his “civility” and “bipartisanship.”

    Snip.

    Bush was one of the leaders of the GOP’s effort to break the Democrat stranglehold on the “Solid South.” He defeated the powerful Texas Democrat machine to win two terms in Congress, ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1970, and served as Ambassador to the United Nations (1971-73) and later as director of the CIA. In the interval, Bush was chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973-74 when it fell his duty to inform President Nixon that he would have to resign, as the Watergate revelations had destroyed his support within the GOP. In all of these roles, Bush was a man of honor who did what duty required, as a patriotic servant of his country.

  • Scott Johnson at Powerline: “He led an almost impossibly full life, capped by his election to the presidency as Ronald Reagan’s successor in 1988. A good man and a good president, he was perhaps more than anything else a great American of the old-fashioned variety that is passing from the scene.” Plus a reminder of how the New York Times fabricated stories about him.
  • Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, hails Bush as the man who ended the Cold War. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Tweets:

    Finally, America’s journalist class in action: