The Practical Realist

North Korea has just successfully tested a “good” nuclear bomb. Their scientists know they’ve figured out the technological hurdles, and it now becomes an issue of scaling up the process so that a greater arsenal can be stockpiled. This is, to put it bluntly, just about as great a threat to global security as one can imagine.

Even a nuclear-armed Iran would have to give pause before attempting to “wipe Israel off the map”. Its people may have no great love of Israel, but they understand the principle of mutually assured destruction.

By contrast, the people of North Korea are so thoroughly crushed and cut off from the outside world that there is no legitimate expectation they would ever attempt to rise up against a government willing to bring about nuclear war and its certain retribution. This means that a sufficiently deranged North Korean leader probably would order a nuclear first strike once he had the ability.

Consider for a moment that Kim Jong-Il is believed to be in terrible health, and he has no successor publicly named. In his mind, he may have nothing to lose and everything to gain by hitting us and our allies with the biggest weapon his scientists can give him. And deployed with their increasingly sophisticated long-range ballistic missiles, such a first strike could conceivably be against our own western shores.

The trouble is, how do we deal with a proven nuclear state that is essentially a medieval fiefdom existing in modern times? Negotiations have proven almost fruitless. I concede that they did stop production at their Yongbong facility. That was their outward pretense at good faith, and so their stockpile of nuclear material is not as great today as it could have been.

Yet clearly the laboratory research never stopped. There is no way that the 6 weeks since the 6-party talks broke down was sufficient time to prepare a new nuclear weapon test. They simply needed the talks to fall apart before they could conduct it. That the latest test happened so quickly, and so successfully, we must conclude that the research program never even paused. And the bogus satellite launch last month was merely the North Korean way of sabotaging talks once that test was ready.

I think a military solution may now be the only credible option. We have legitimacy on the international stage because we attempted negotiation with good old fashioned carrot and stick diplomacy. We can point to multiple UN resolutions to demonstrate our sincere efforts at multilateralism. And while I dread to contemplate what war with North Korea could bring about in human cost, I think that we have proven all other methods are doomed to failure.

So, if it is to be war, how should a war with such a state be waged?

The first clear action is to halt humanitarian supplies. South Korea, China, and UN aid shipments are essentially propping up the country, as the assumption has been that a humanitarian crisis there would send waves of refugees out into the region, destabilizing nearby countries. And that’s a valid concern. So, prior to the cessation of humanitarian shipments, the most likely border crossings should be identified and transit routes prepared to assist the expected refugees’ journey to the nicest refugee camps that can be fashioned in a short amount of time.

The purpose of these refugee camps will be to both provide for basic needs like food and shelter, as well as to introduce these people to the outside world. There should be high-quality recreational facilities for playing, and lots of bathrooms with hot showers and fluffy towels. There should be outdoor movie screens that show fun, family-friendly movies every evening the weather will permit. And while not the Ritz-Carlton, these camps need to be demonstrably more enjoyable than whatever their old lives were.

Back in North Korea, the initial air-strikes should be targeted at the political leadership, and their emblems of authority and prestige. The people need to see that we are not seeking to hurt them, only their leaders.

The follow-up ground invasion should proceed with a simple dictum: ‘join us and be fed - fight us and die’. Every territory established under the rule of the occupying multinational force will see full resumption of humanitarian aid, as well as a few perks, such as road repairs and free clinics. The goal is not to kill an enemy, but to replace a regime, and do so with as many survivors among the population as possible - military and civilian alike.

In the end, I think the civilians will flock to areas controlled by the coalition, leaving the leadership increasingly alone and irrelevant. Plus, unlike Iraq, we won’t disband the army once the leadership is out of power. We’ll simply raise their wages and turn them to the task of rebuilding and improving their own country.

And rather than try to build a brand new democracy, our goal should be to facilitate reunification of the Korean peninsula, leaving the South Korean government to rule the entire country. Once our presence is no longer needed in fighting the army of North Korea, our troops should begin withdrawing from the region. If there is an insurgency, and I think it would be unlikely, it need not be our problem.

I don’t imagine it will be cheap, but in the long run I think we’ll be better off fixing North Korea than defending ourselves against it.

On the one hand, I strongly support the goal of universal coverage for all Americans. And I agree it has to be affordable to everyone. But the Obama plan, high-minded though it may be, has some serious shortcomings showing up in the deliberations in Congress.

They say they’re going to require all Americans to get health insurance. And they want to subsidize coverage for families making under $88,000 per year. That might sound good, but it’s going to drive up costs by piling everyone into the same broken system we have now. When more money is available to pay for a particular good, but no new supply is created, it will become more expensive. You’ve simply altered the supply and demand curve.

Real reform will come when public health care is managed by a national health system of some sort, one where every level works exclusively for the benefit of the patient rather than profit. The fundamental shortcomings of the health care system we have today are that it makes more money from sub-standard care than it does from superior care, and that costs go up at every stage of delivery for administrative and procedural reasons that do not improve patient outcomes.

For those who have been priced out of the current system, the proposed plan will get them into the health care system at a point other than the emergency room. That alone will be a positive, since about 40% of emergency room visits can be treated ahead of time by preventive care, and at a much lower cost. But the underlying problems that cause health care to be so expensive and at the same time so ineffective are being ignored. And with the subsidies and mandate, we’re essentially throwing the health insurance industry a few hundred billion dollars in taxpayer money that we can ill afford to spend.

If this bill passes without major changes, then the best I can hope for is a wash, where my health insurance premiums plus my taxes add up to about the same as they are now. But except for the uninsured, I suspect most of us will probably get screwed when one or both increase.

A public plan would help, since it would be sure to have lower administrative costs and be able to place some sort of cap on provider costs, but it won’t improve the standard of care. And simply placing a cap on those costs doesn’t do anything about the fact that a hospital makes a lot more money when people have to be re-admitted because they didn’t get the treatment they needed on their initial visit.

On March 30, I wrote that it looked as if Geithner was going to hang on to repayments of TARP funding in order to continue lending it out until it was gone. http://pr.hbblogs.com/2009/03/30/that-feeling-youre-being-had/.

Today I read that Geithner is finally being completely up front about that reality: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090513/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bank_rescue

I have to know - will we ever get this money back into the federal coffers? Our federal budget now borrows 46 cents for every dollar it spends, and yet we’re going to continue pissing this money away as if we don’t need it. Doesn’t anyone in DC understand that eventually we have to repay our creditors?

Obama’s budget for the fiscal year ending October 1 is now at $3.6×10^12. I don’t know about you, but a quick calculation revealed that this budget means that my household’s share (assuming each American is responsible for 1/300,000,000th of it) is now EQUAL to my household’s income.

How the heck are we going to pay for this? I’m willing to pay some extra taxes, especially if the increase is offset by a reduction in my health care costs. But I can’t afford a 100% tax rate. And my household’s share of the current national debt is now larger than most mortgages.

If the GOP wants an issue to help bring them back into power, they should devise a plan to cut the debt somehow. But short of defaulting on it, I just don’t see how that’s possible.

We’re all hoping so desperately that the economy will recover and everything will get fixed. It’s a nice dream, but it reminds me of the gambler who’s way down, praying that he’ll hit a lucky streak and break even before the bookie tells him it’s time to pay up.

Maybe this whole democracy plus capitalism is inherently unsustainable? Or maybe it’s just our military hegemony that makes it fall apart.

There has been much fuss over the recent memos from the Bush administration that appear to authorize the torture of terror suspects. While I’m perfectly willing to admit that the techniques used sounded unpleasant, I also heard quite a few safeguards deliberately written in so as to prevent any lasting harm to the interviewee. What I have not yet heard is whether anyone died from this torture or suffered permanent physical damage. Honestly, the techniques seemed designed not to even cause much pain. Slapping stings for a moment or two, and I know having water up your nose is incredibly uncomfortable, but as torture techniques go, they all seem rather tame. Forced nudity? Uncomfortable positions? Sleep deprivation? I can understand why John Yoo at the Justice Department thought these techniques fell short of actual torture.

Perhaps I’ve simply been desensitized by the media, but when I think of torture, I think of hot pokers being shoved into sensitive areas, the use of dental equipment without anesthetic, or stretching someone out on a rack. I don’t think of being forced to hold still in a painful position or of being slapped in the face.

The problem, as I see it, is that the definition of torture is far too subjective. Is causing any pain while questioning someone really torture? Is any level of fear-inducement unacceptable? Here is what the Geneva Convention on torture actually says:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Obviously, we have to keep our international treaty obligations, but what exactly are those obligations? Do you know where the line between severe pain or suffering and moderate pain or suffering lies?

I also understand the argument that if we torture, eventually our soldiers will be captured and tortured as well. But against Al Qaeda I have little reason to believe that any captured American soldier would not be tortured, regardless of how we treat our own captives, so in asymmetric warfare that particular argument loses some of its weight.

If the Geneva convention on torture is to have any legal authority, then it needs to include precise language delineating the difference between torture and non-torture. If we did torture, then we have got to have prosecutions. And if we didn’t, then we need to move on and leave this painful chapter in the past.

Ok, I know the whole Carrie Prejean issue is old news now, but I’ve gone through a few different thoughts on it now and figure maybe they’re still worth sharing.

In the first place, I should explain that I’m personally against gay marriage. Not to the point that I’d let it overshadow or steal attention from more important issues, but if I were asked I’d give an honest answer.

And that was what happened to Miss California. She was asked a question and she gave her honest answer. She didn’t go in with an agenda, and she wasn’t obnoxious about it when she responded.

So my first reaction to the story about Miss California losing the Miss USA crown over her belief in traditional marriage was the same as a lot of conservatives. I was angry that she was persecuted for simply stating her beliefs honestly. If the judges didn’t want to hear her opinion, then they shouldn’t have asked her for it. And if they did want it, they shouldn’t have punished her for having an opinion different from their own.

But after thinking about it some, and especially after reading her actual response, I couldn’t help but be struck by how dumb it sounded. It doesn’t matter whether you’re for or against gay marriage, but Carrie Prejean made herself sound like an idiot up there. Stupidity, and not principle, is a legitimate reason to deny a contestant the prize at the end. In that light, I no longer hold any resentment for the judges.

Now, in fairness, I wasn’t the one put on the spot, and if Miss Prejean had been given more time to reflect and formulate a response, she might have done a better job. I can’t know whether I could have come up with an intelligent answer during an interview in a situation like that, but here’s the response I wish she could have given instead:

“There are gay people who clearly love each other and I understand their desire to have it recognized as marriage. But no court or legislative body in the world has the authority to do so. Marriage has existed long before the laws and courts of the United States. For as long as there have been people, there has been marriage. And to come along and try to redefine it through some new law or legal opinion is, in my mind, like trying to pass a law redefining ’sunrise’, ‘logic’, or ‘motherhood’. Marriage is what it has always been. God made it, and if you want to change it, you’ll have to take it up with Him.

“The role of the state with respect to marriage is limited to what rights and obligations it chooses to attach to it. If the state should determine that gay couples (or anyone, for that matter) can voluntarily enter into such contracts with or without marriage, then that is entirely within the ability of the state to do. Civil unions come to mind, for instance. But gay couples can never marry, regardless of what laws are passed, because a marriage is between a man and a woman. It has always been that way, and so long as humanity exists, it always will be.”

I’m confident that the suggestions I gave yesterday could stop piracy, but there’s one HUGE weakness in it. The reason the international community hasn’t already ended piracy is simple - the pirates don’t kill their hostages. It is very hard to justify a dangerous commando operation to save hostages when historically, the likelihood is that those captive sailors are being treated like guests. Guests who can’t go home perhaps, but who are well fed, allowed to talk on their phones, and given access to whatever comforts their own ships can provide.

Now compare that to the fate of the French yacht passengers that were rescued in a daring commando raid. The yacht’s owner actually died in that skirmish, and it was entirely possible that other passengers could have been killed as well.

Taking serious action against pirates means that sailors who otherwise would have been released unharmed (after a ransom was paid of course) could be killed, along with the marines who try to rescue them. But until governments decide that piracy is a sufficiently serious threat that some casulaties are acceptable, the pirates will continue to have a free pass. Personally, I think I’d probably support further actions like the French commando raid, but it’s not a decision I wish were mine to make.

However, if the pirates have already begun trying in earnest to sink US vessels, the equation changes drastically. If the Liberty Sun attack really was the first salvo in the pirates’ war with us, we’ve got to quash this threat immediately, even if it means the inevitable deaths of some civilians. Without hesitation, our government has to be willing to take the fight to the pirates and win at any cost.

Piracy made sense in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Pirates could easily hide among ordinary sailors at most ports, and they could set up bases to hold their prizes in any shallow cove. But that ability to hide and evade no longer exists. We can instantly learn when a ship is attacked, and we can know its exact location in real-time. Ships without a valid and official flag-registration (or ones that have been reported hijacked) can’t enter any ports except the few they control off the coast of Somalia. So the pirates can’t hide, and yet somehow they continue to threaten international shipping.

So why have the pirates enjoyed so much success? It’s because we refuse to take the fight to them, and instead we try to engage them only when they actually attack our ships.

Do you think Bin Laden would last long if his base of operations was publicly known?

Today Hillary Clinton released the administration’s new 4-point plan for combating piracy, and to be blunt, I’m unimpressed.

Instead of trying to patrol millions of square miles of ocean for vessels that have no outward indication of hostility until shortly before they attack, we need to go after the infrastructure that actually sustains piracy. Although the state department is going to pursue the pirates’ bank assets, which I agree is a smart idea, the rest of their plan is either reactive, or will take far too long to have an effect.

So, here’s my own 4-point counter plan, arranged by order of importance. Decide for yourself what you think of it.

1. Blockade their home ports: Pirates, like everyone who goes out to sea, have to dock eventually and take on new supplies. Instead of fighting pirates at sea, we have to blockade their ports. The pirates can still put ashore with captured vessels along any shallow coastal area, but this is a far more risky proposition.

   Once they put to shore in some remote cove, we can dispatch a single warship to prevent the pirates from either offloading cargo or taking on supplies and reinforcements. With no easy access to supplies, whether they get a ransom or not, the pirates will eventually be forced to either leave their prize or starve. Even if piracy can continue in some anemic form, without ports, it will be reduced to a mere ghost of its current level.

2. No more ransoms: Shipping companies have been too willing to pay huge ransoms for their crews and ships. I sympathize, but it continues to fund the pirate activities. There have to be serious penalties for funding terrorists through ransoms. Companies that pay them should be barred from entering US ports (and hopefully our allies will be persuaded to extend the same bans to their own ports).

   Pirates aren’t just a bunch of guys who commit piracy for the thrill of it. Without the chance to turn a profit, none of them are going to risk their lives attacking ships. If they have no chance of earning a ransom, the only other way to make money is to steal the cargo and sell it on the black market. But taken together with blockading their home ports, it should prove impossible to offload and sell cargo as well.

   Companies that have employees or ships held now should no longer be allowed to negotiate with the pirates themselves. Instead, an international agency should act as a go-between, and it should only be authorized to offer humanitarian aid and the release of pirates we’ve captured. And to add pressure, the pirates’ bases should face the threat of invasion if the captured sailors are harmed.

3. Letters of marque: While proper navies are blockading pirates’ home ports, privateers should be able to earn bounties on every pirate vessel and crew they manage to disable, sink, or capture.

   Ron Paul has the right idea on this one. It’s a cost-effective strategy that makes it much harder for pirates to be sure when they are attacking an armed or unarmed target. Right now, so long as they avoid obvious warships, the pirates are safe. Under this idea, many of those supposedly innocuous-looking merchants might actually be privateers armed with the weaponry, training and legal authority to not merely defend against raiders, but also come to the aid of other merchants and even actively pursue and attack pirate motherships.

4. Prevent illegal fishing off Somalia’s coast: This gets back to the issue that started it all. Numerous fishermen lost the ability to support themselves because they could not compete against the huge trawlers that fished the coastlines illegally. Somalia, as the uber-failed state, had no way to stop it from happening.

   Many of those fishermen with their own boats and nautical know-how became desperate, and so a few of them were recruited into piracy. Without them, today’s pirates would probably still be a bunch of rough and violent men, but they’d be rough and violent men who stayed on land. If fisherman could once again support themselves, it may not sway the current fishermen-turned-pirates to give up their new occupation, but it could certainly prevent the creation of many future pirates.

Personally, I suspect that all of these (with the possible exception of stopping the illegal fishing) will eventually be implemented, in some form or other. However, I fear that we won’t take these actions until Americans are actually killed.

At least one pirate claimed that today’s attack on the American-flagged Liberty Sun was not an attempted hijacking at all, but an attempted sinking. Descriptions of the attack that I’ve read would seem to support that claim. If that’s true, then the stakes are now considerably higher. The longer we pussyfoot around and refuse to engage with effective strategies, the greater the likelihood of serious tragedy.

Tim Geithner made the Sunday morning talk show circuit yesterday, making his case for the way the administration is handling the ongoing financial crisis. When he went on ABC’s program with George Stephanopoulos, he revealed that the Treasury thinks it has $135 billion left in uncommitted TARP funds. This was news to George, since his own fact-finders estimated there was only $32 billion remaining. The discrepancy, according to Secretary Geithner, was explained like this:

“Now that, that estimate includes a judgment, a very conservative judgment, about how much money is likely to come back from banks that are strong enough not to need this capital now to get through a recession. But that’s a reasonably conservative estimate. And it gives us, and this is very important, substantial resources to move ahead with this broad based sweep of initiatives to help get the financial system back in the business of providing credit.”

Now, that to me triggers major alarm bells when I hear it. What it means is that the taxpayer isn’t going to be made whole when the money starts coming back. Instead of returning as revenues for the federal government (thus reducing our need to tax or borrow), the Treasury clearly expects that any repayments can be used for continuing bailouts.

To put it another way, the $700 billion TARP program is changing once again. Apparently, that money is going to be re-distributed over and over until the Treasury finally can’t get any of it back (at which point it’s time to ask Congress for more).

Honestly, I haven’t read the TARP authorization (but hey - hats off to anyone with that kind of time!), so I have no reason to doubt the legality of what the Treasury is doing. But we were sold something different. We were told that this huge allocation of taxpayer money wasn’t so much a spending spree as it was a bad investment. Sure, all but the rosiest projections assumed we would lose some of that money, but we’d get most of it back in the end, and in return we’d save our banking system. But so long as every dollar that DOES come back returns to Treasury rather than the taxpayer, it’s just a countdown until it’s gone.

I’m not a pot user, and I never have been. I never saw the point, but that’s just me. The few people I’ve been around when they were high seemed happy enough, but they acted and talked pretty stupid. I’m not their judge, but I’m not interested in it either.

That said, why the heck are we throwing people in jail for it? They may be stupid while they’re high, but who are pot-heads actually hurting? Most research shows that they aren’t even hurting themselves anymore than if they were taking an occasional cigarette. Nearly every problem we have with pot - the gangs, the rising costs of prisons and law enforcement - would all disappear if it were simply legal. And not only would we have a reduction in crime, but we’d be able to regulate it, tax it, and restrict it from being sold to minors far more effectively than we can now.

But I’m not going to try listing more reasons why it should be legal. In a free society you don’t NEED reasons to make something legal. Things should be legal by default unless there is a reason for them not to be. So the real question is: why ISN’T pot legal? Every reason I’ve ever heard (it impairs judgment, it makes people act stupid, it’s unhealthy) is at best an argument for helping people get treatment, but more likely an argument for moderation and self-control by individual users - same as we expect from people who drink beer.

I was pretty annoyed at Obama’s flippant response to millions of his constituents who came to the same conclusion I did. Why shouldn’t we legalize pot, tax it, and regulate it? It wasn’t a joke to them, and most of them voted for him in the elections.

Instead of arming the cartels, the money we spend on drugs like marijuana and cocaine should be staying in this country - going toward the production of safer drugs, as well as taxes that fund drug rehab programs. The war on drugs has been such a dismal failure, and such a waste of money, that the public is finally starting to call for a change in tactics. Let’s hope the politicians start paying attention.