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Accountability media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

A Leaner Bear

Russia is being painted as Enemy No. 1 by Hillary Clinton, despite her predecessor’s mocking of the same notion four years ago, when Republican Mitt Romney said it.

Of course, Mrs. Clinton is just using Russia as a distraction from her conspiracies and crimes and inadequacies as revealed by WikiLeaks.

What’s more worrying is Russia’s military adventuring, surely.

Before we wander into the morass that is foreign policy, maybe we should consider the Russian military itself . . . and its supporting economy.

Last year, TASS confidently informed us that the military budget was going up 0.8 percent in 2016, with $750 million slated for nuclear weaponry. I still hear talk of the latter fact; not much of the former factoid, that shockingly modest increase.

Even last year it was commonly noted that Russia’s military budget was getting “squeezed” . . . by hard times. Lack of revenue.

Now the hammer has fallen on the sickle: “Russian defence budget set to drop by 12%” in yesterday’s IHS Jane’s 360 article by Craig Caffrey.

First, don’t be alarmed: “defence” is how Brits misspell “defense.”

Second, take heart: Russia simply cannot do all it may want even in its darkest hearts.

Third, take caution: a weaker Russia is still dangerous, in some ways more so. We might see increased (and relatively cheap) cyber-warfare, of which Mrs. Clinton is so particularly mindful.

Finally, let’s acknowledge that American politicians have never focused rationally on the Russian threat, often hyping it gratuitously to enhance their own power, or, for that same reason, ignoring the threat entirely, as when smirking at Romney’s wise concerns.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Hillary Clinton, Russia, Wikileaks

 


Questions Answered:
Is Russia a threat?
Why are Democrats obsessed with Russia?
Why is Russia reducing its military budget?

Ask the next question. --Theodore Sturgeon

Ask The Next Question:
What kind of defense should a free people insist upon?

 

Categories
crime and punishment First Amendment rights government transparency national politics & policies

Secrecy Broken

The “Wikileaks” controversy proceeds to grow and mutate, like Clostridium botulinum in a Petri dish with spoiled pork, and I’ve avoided talking about it up till now.

Wikileaks is a website devoted to publishing leaked documents from governments and other scandal-prone institutions. You probably know the major players, and the various permutations of the story. You can hardly miss them. Because of that, I’m not going to go through the story in detail. Instead, I’d like to take a step back and offer a few “meta-thoughts” . . . ideas that might help produce a good conclusion.

  1. Republican forms of government require a great deal of transparency, though not on everything. There are military secrets and diplomatic info-dumps that, for our security, would best remain secret and un-dumped.
  2. Politicians, soldiers and bureaucrats tend to hate transparency. Why? They don’t like being second-guessed by “non-professionals.” So they often make government more opaque than it should be.
  3. Some of our leaders have tried to put nearly everything foreign-policy-related into the tightest security, demanding high clearances even for viewing. Much of this is self-serving, not truly security-related.
  4. A government worker who breaks security protocols to leak documents can be at once a hero and still prosecutable by law.

Now’s a good time to rethink transparency and our government’s secrecy protocols.

But, rethought or not, no one’s been surprised to learn of more amazing lapses in ethics and judgment on the part of our leaders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.