Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
King George III and Lord North have been blamed for botching negotiations with the American colonies. Now, the same Conservative Party seems determined to botch another negotiation; with the EU. In both cases, the party and negotiators were determined to keep the relationship intact, no matter how unequal. An excellent piece in the claremont Review explains.
Many statesmen warned from the outset that British ideas of liberty would not survive a merger with the E.U. The most eloquent early diagnoses came from the Labour Party, not the Tories. That is because the fundamental disposition of the E.U. is to favor technocratic expertise over representative government, and the Tories have not generally been the British party that placed the highest priority on the passions of the masses. In 1962, as Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was eying EEC membership, Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell warned, “[I]t does mean the end of Britain as an independent nation state…. It means the end of a thousand years of history. You may say ‘Let it end’ but, my goodness, it is a decision that needs a little care and thought.”
Interesting that Labour saw the danger first. In the US, the party of the Administrative State is the Democrats although both parties are heavily invested as Angelo Codevilla has pointed out.
Eventually even the reliably anti-Brexit Economist came to see that some of Britain’s major problems had arisen from constitutional meddling. David Cameron’s 2011 Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, in particular, made it much more difficult to call the general elections that would ordinarily have been provoked by the resounding repudiation of Theresa May’s withdrawal package. Blair and Cameron, the magazine noted, “came to power when history was said to have come to an end. They saw no need to take particular care of the constitution.” E.U. membership hid these problems—if Britain wasn’t paying attention to its constitution at the time, it was partly because it had been using someone else’s.
I had not realized that “Judicial Review” of laws was an American phenomenon. John Marshall has reached far into the future with his ruling in Marbury vs Madison.
Back in January 2015 I wrote the column “Ukraine’s Viking Revival” on the shape of the emerging Ukrainian Nationalism caused by the Putin regime’s invasions of Crimea and the Donbas. It is a phenomena that will be seen in coming decades as one of the formative event of the 21st Century.
Ukraine’s “Viking Revival” complete with top knots, war cats and Tartar warriors.
For reasons best known to my writing muse, I revisited it Sunday for the lyrics and video of “100 BIYTSIV.” (100 Warriors)
Translated to English Lyrics:
Flowing / like blood from a blade across the steppe / in a fine line: left-handed battle / and the right fight, death awaits / in the distant blue . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And day by day, over again, One hundred warriors and one order. . Day by day, who knows where orders take us and the hundred go. . Through the fire / and bullets flying through coal / and through granite . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And every day, over and over again, One hundred warriors and one order. . With every turn / and crossroads every fork in the road / so far So far / your beloved is waiting back home / you with her . By chance / yesterday our destiny fell upon us / today, and tomorrow who knows / what will come … For the Fatherland / I give my life … . Tomorrow I, then you Who knows how, and when we go to battle we arm ourselves, death to the enemy! No rest for my feet … . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And day by day, over again, One hundred warriors and one order. . My love, do listen, and do not cry! He did not die / for our homeland! Let the enemy die / for our Donbass, A long road / awaits us. . We go one family one hundred warriors and I. And day by day, over again, One hundred warriors and one order.
I ran down and updated the video link address in my old post:
…and from there spent time looking across the latest music video markers of Ukrainian Nationalism.
There is quite a bit with really good production values and story telling. Some are from the ATO & Right Sector, but many other artists are now drawing upon these same Viking/Vanagarian/Tartar national symbols, complete with sword dancing and shield maidens, to forge a unique Ukrainian National Identity apart from Russia.
The “Blood Lands” of Ukraine are rising. And the peoples of Ukraine are remaking themselves into a new, wild, Viking ethnic nationalist image, drawing on their past heritage, and their new hatreds, with all that entails.
Proud to be Ukrainian — This video starts with children in fields and flashes to Ukraine’s struggles in the past and with Putin’s Regime.
Ukrainian Army Anthem — This anthem is a repackaging of the OUN Anthem. The 1929 “March of Ukrainian Nationalists”, which is now the basis of the revised and rearranged “Mарш Hової Aрмії [March of the New Army]” Wikipedia has the English lyrics. Putin era Russians hate this song immensely.Ukrainian Army Anthem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgdANpB9PnY
.
.
.
Марш нової українÑької армії – This has the same Ukrainian Army Anthem set to the visuals of the 2018 Ukraine military parade celebrating the centennial of the brief 1918 Ukraine National Republic. Ukraine‘s first independent state since it was dismembered after the Battle of Poltava in 1709. That Republic was conquered and incorporated into the Russian dominated Soviet Union. The men above wears the uniforms of that Republic.
It’s become something of a regular occurrence for the American mainstream media to blow a foreign policy story because of their Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yet they seem to have greatly sunk to new lows in missing the real importance of events leading to the 19 June 2019 Iranian shoot down of an American drone.
RQ-4N BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator)
President Trump has ended the 1980 Carter Doctrine!
The free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf is no longer a “Vital Interest,” thanks to frac’ing, for a near energy independent USA.
BACKGROUND
CENTCOM confirmed Last Wednesday night of 19 June 2019, in international air space over the Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian surface to air missile (SAM) battery shot down a US Navy RQ-4N BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator) Global Hawk. The ~$120 million drone in question was a navalised version of the USAF Global Hawk, used as proof of concept for the production MQ-4C Triton. It was essentially an unarmed, jet powered, sail plane with the wing span of a 737 jet liner and several tons of sensors. The drone fills the mission of the U-2, at similar altitudes, without the risks of a human pilot in the event of a shoot down.
Pentagon RQ-4N Shoot Down Map with Drone and SAM launch battery location.
Iran has claimed it used it’s ‘Third of Khordad‘ domestically built SAM system, operated by the IRGC, to shoot down the drone. This SAM system is described as a copy or derivative of the Russian Buk M3 / SA-17 GRIZZLY that incorporates the Bavar 373 missile that, in turn, appears to be a derivative/copy of the Soviet 5V55/SA-10B with additional controls. If you think of it as a late model Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk medium-range surface-to-air missile battery firing an early version of the MIM-104 Patriot PAC 1 missile, you would not be far wrong.
Press TV Tweet of Iranian SAM
It was this lack of a human pilot, either as a death or a prisoner of war, that saw President Trump jump off Iran’s scripted “escalation ladder.” Instead of destroying a SAM battery and converting 150 odd IRGC missile operators into another “Martyr blood sacrifice” for the Mullah regime to celebrate. Pres. Trump responded with cyber-attacks on Iranian missile control systems to remind the Mullah’s of the West’s technological “Black Magic” and additional economic sanctions that will cause further payroll cuts to both the IRGC and it’s over seas terror networks. (Truth be told, the new economic sanctions threaten the Mullah’s power far more than any set of tit for tat military strikes.)
And in a move treated as an afterthought, if the MSM mentioned it at all, President Trump ended an era in American Middle Eastern Foreign Policy.
END OF AN ERA
It has been almost 39 & 1/2 years — 10 years before the Cold War ended — that President Carter pronounced access to Mid-East oil a “Vital Interest” that the United States would go to war to protect.
Our two wars in Iraq both have that date, and that policy, as their starting point.
Now that era is over.
Last week Pres. Trump forged a completely new Middle East Foreign policy for America. Specifically, Pres. Trump took the opportunity Iran’s military escalations leading to the shooting down of the RQ-4N to end the January 23, 1980 “Carter Doctrine” expressed as follows —
“…An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
This is how Vandana Hari at the Nikkei Asian Review put it:
“U.S. President Donald Trump says he might take military action against Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. But he has indicated he won’t necessarily jump in to protect international oil supplies from the Middle East if they are under threat from the Islamic Republic.
.
The position, articulated by Trump in an interview with Time magazine on June 17, should not come as a surprise, even if it appears to be at odds with the Pentagon beefing up aircraft carriers and troops in the Middle East in recent weeks, citing a threat from Iran.
.
As Trump spelt out in the interview, the U.S. is no longer as dependent on oil from the Middle East as it was, thanks to burgeoning domestic production.
.
Air Force General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized the message a day later, pointing out that China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea were heavily dependent on supplies moving through the Strait of Hormuz, and needed to protect their interests. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made similar comments.”
The pronouncement above was the full “Bell, Book and Candle” exorcism of American foreign policy — President, Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State. And please carefully note that it happened two days beforethe RQ-4N was destroyed.
.
While “freedom of navigation” on the high seas over all and the Persian Gulf in particular remains a “major interest” of the United State of America. It is no longer one which America will automatically go to war over.
.
In ending the Carter Doctrine, President Trump has fulfilled his 2016 campaign promise of “No More Iraq’s.”
.
By changing the cost benefit calculations of Middle-Eastern oil — no more free riding on American protection of Persian Gulf Sea lanes — the only way a nation can “win” internationally now is by “getting close” to the American hyperpower.
.
If you are functionally anti-American. You get nothing but higher insurance rates included in your price of oil to cover the political risk premiumof lacking American protection. China is now paying -defacto- and additional American oil tariff via much higher insurance rate on the VLCC tankers moving Mid-East crude oil to the Far East.
.
Japan and South Korea could get lower insurance rates if they send naval forces to the Gulf to work with the US Navy. Or they can replace Mid-Eastern oil with exported US oil.
.
China, not so much.
.
As a correspondent put it in an e-mail to me when I mentioned the above to the list he and I are in —
“You all need to defend YOUR oil shipments through those NASTY Straits of Hormuz. The U.S. don’t need that filthy Middle East blood-oil no more. In fact, if you don’t want to spend the money and lives pounding sand in Iraq, Kuwait and Iran, we have some FINE Texas frackin’ goodness to sell at a SPECIAL price, just for YOU, our friends and allies for SO many years!”
.
Snicker, choke, GASP….”
The American Left has finally gotten what it always wanted…no more “Blood for Oil“ in the Middle East.
Somehow, I don’t think President Trump delivering that reality to them will make them very happy.
Neptunus Lex: The liberation of France started when each, individual man on those landing craft as the ramp came down each paratroop in his transport when the light turned green made the individual decision to step off with the only life he had and face the fire.]
(a reprise post from The Daily Brief – and re-posted here, now and again)
So this is one of those historic dates that seems to be slipping faster and faster out of sight, receding into a past at such a rate that we who were born afterwards, or long afterwards, can just barely see. But it was such an enormous, monumental enterprise so longed looked for, so carefully planned and involved so many soldiers, sailors and airmen of course the memory would linger long afterwards.
Think of looking down from the air, at that great metal armada, spilling out from every harbor, every estuary along England’s coast. Think of the sound of marching footsteps in a thousand encampments, and the silence left as the men marched away, counted out by squad, company and battalion, think of those great parks of tanks and vehicles, slowly emptying out, loaded into the holds of ships and onto the open decks of LSTs. Think of the roar of a thousand airplane engines, the sound of it rattling the china on the shelf, of white contrails scratching straight furrows across the moonless sky.
