Supporting Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

AKA countering Russia, Iran and the PRC

I used to assume that it was obvious who to support in the various wars and threatened wars going on. But apparently this is not so because every war now seems to get wrapped around politics in the US and/or Europe and support of one side or the other then depends on whether you support Transgender rights or not (only slightly joking)

Well I would prefer not to play that game.

I support what I perceive to be the side of freedom and civilization over the side of barbarism and tyranny.

Hence I support Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan and I am against Hamass and its Iranian sponsors, Russia and the PRC. That does not mean I want to see US (or NATO etc.) boots on the ground in Israel, Ukraine or Taiwan - I don’t. Nor does it mean that I uncritically support the current governments of Israel, Ukraine or Taiwan - again I don’t.

However I look at those governments and those societies and think they are all superior to the ones on the other side.

Israel

AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov (via RedState)

Let us start with the easy one and also be very clear what happened. On October 7 Hamass broke the barriers between the Gaza Strip and Israel and then Hamass terrorists and sympathizers when on a rampage of killing, raping (sometimes in that order) and otherwise attacking Israelis, both civilian and military as well as destroying their homes and kidnapping some of them to be taken back into Gaza to be used as hostages that could be traded for prisoners in Israeli jails. It is important to realize that there was no military objective in this. No attempt to seize ground. No attempt, beyond the initial over-running of bases near Gaza, to attack the Israeli Defense Forces or police. Once the nearest forces had been subdued or killed Hamass moved straight to rape, murder and so on. There wasn’t even much of an attempt to seize or destroy IDF weaponry. Hamass preferred to take hostages back to Gaza rather than take tanks. Rather than do that they gang-raped the female attendees at a music festival for peace. In many cases so harshly that their pelvic bones were broken. Others had their breasts cut off and/or had their genitals mutilated in various other gruesome ways.

I work with people in Israel. One of my coworkers was killed on October 7 in the mostly trashed kibbutz of Holit and her children were - fortunately briefly - kidnapped by Hamass (her story is here - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-family-recounts-last-moments-before-canadian-womans-kidnapping-by/ and you can donate to help her family rebuild here - https://www.geerz.site/en/project/adi-kaploun-vital-memorial-fund/ )

My colleague’s laptop. Hamass ripped the screen off instead of stealing it

Prior to October 7 I had a certain amount of sympathy for the Palestinian cause. In particular I think that Israeli settlers have not behaved well in the West Bank. BUT none of that applies to Gaza. There were no Israelis in Gaza and there had not been for almost twenty years. Gaza was self-governing and billions of dollars (pounds/euros/dinars etc.) in aid had been provided to them during that time. The Gazans could have built a paradise (and in parts they did - at least what looked like one - you can guess who lived there). Instead they allowed Hamass to take over and steal most of the aid. Some of the stolen aid was used to build or buy weapons. Some was used to build bunkers and tunnels. Some of it went to the Hamass leadership in exile where they could live in luxury. Very little actually aided the inhabitants and even when it was used to, say, build schools or hospitals for them, those schools and hospitals were built with embedded terrorist hideouts, caches and bunkers.

And on Oct 7 we saw far more than the Hamass and other terror organizations cheer on the atrocities against Israelis who had done absolutely nothing to the Gaza residents. In fact many of the Kibbutzim they attacked had employed Gazans as a deliberate way to try and build stronger peaceful relationships. There is no doubt that many people in Gaza were coerced to support Hamass and its attacks, but the widespread scenes of celebration show that there was, and probably still is, broad support for Hamass and its antisemitic program in Gaza. In fact this report of the experiences of released Israelis shows that support for Hamass is quite active, as do the reports of children being used as messageners/ammo suppliers.

Hamass needs to be eliminated root and branch to such a degree that even vague sympathizers decide they want to do something else. That means the Israelis need to kill or capture about 10% of the male population of the Gaza strip, they are making decent progress at this but there’s still a good way to go so they must not stop now.

All the cries for “ceasefire” from people outside Gaza must be ignored until Hamas is no longer a viable force. That means its leadership in the strip must be visibly eliminated, UNWRA banned from the place, all Hamass and UNWRA assets seized and all employees of both assumed to be Hamass terrorists unless proven otherwise. In general the apocryphal¹ “kill them all and let God sort them out” is a bad idea. In the case of Gaza it may be the only practical option.

Hence, despite my general disapproval of Netanyahu² I completely agree with his response to Biden’s red line. Everyone in Israel is aware that the only way that Israel can be safe in the future is if Hamas is essentially eradicated and that will require going into Rafah. Netanyahu knows that, any one with some clue about strategy and politics knows it, so Biden saying “don’t do that” just means he will be ignored. And publicly so when the Israelis do finally move into Rafah.

Part of the problem Israel faces is that much of the developed world simply fails to grasp this reality and judges Gazans by the yardstick of people they know. Those people being generally not the sort of people who believe that the only good Jew is a dead one and that killing Jews is a divinely inspired task. They also haven’t had the indoctrination in anti-semitism that Gazans have had thanks to UNRWA schools

Anti-semitic textbook from Gaza (source)

Hence they tend to write (and read and repeat) articles like this Bloomberg one (archived link) which look at the future of Israel and the potential for peace as some kind of version of the underpants gnomes business model. This is because they just can’t face the idea of rubbing the Palestinians noses in the stick of defeat and keep on giving them an out so that their lying leaders can claim they “won”. This time Israel needs to make it abundantly clear to the Gazans that they have lost and the ideology they supported was a failure.

Taiwan

Source - https://meme.aho.st/west-taiwan/

Taiwan ought to be recognized by the world as an independent nation with full diplomatic etc. rights. Communist “West Taiwan” was, in the 1990s and early 2000s, apparently heading towards a more representative free market system, but under Winnie the Flu that trajectory has reversed and they are now back in the Orwellian tyranny zone. Taiwanese people were somewhat interested in reunification with the mainland during the period that West Taiwan seemed to moving towards liberty and particularly with the way Hong Kong seemed to be retaining its distinctly free market mostly democratic ways.

After all the KMT had been pretty repressive in Taiwan in the 1950s and 60s and only gradually became less so during the 1970s and 80s. It seemed logical to assume that the Communist mainland might follow a similar trajectory and the KMT had, for their own reasons, been quite clear that they saw Taiwan and West Taiwan as a single country. But as progress away from tyranny stalled on the mainland and as Taiwan itself became massively richer, the Taiwanese started to develop their own sense of nationhood distinct from the mainland and to elect leaders who were uninterested in pretending Taiwan was a province as opposed to a country. If you believe, as I do, that people should have a right of self-determination, then you have to grant Taiwan independence from the mainland because its people, after over a century of not being ruled from the mainland (except for a brief 4 year period in the late 1940s), have no desire to be ruled by mainlanders.

Supporting the “reunification” of Taiwan with West Taiwan on historical grounds is a bit like supporting the “reunification” of Ireland with the “rest of Great Britain” only with less historical justification³. I can say from some discussions with Taiwanese that many of them view the mainland in similar ways to the way the Irish view the UK - a country they want to have good relations with, but not to be ruled by.

Winnie the Flu has stated he intends to re-unify Taiwan with the mainland one way or another. It would be helpful if developed nations made it clear that they will not permit this to be done in any other way than via a democratic vote because attempts at force, like a blockade, seem certain to slip into actual war and such a war will be far more disastrous for the world as a whole than the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That’s not just because it would mean the world lost Taiwanese exports (advanced chips) but because it would lose a lot of West Taiwanese exports too. Both from direct response by Taiwan (and maybe allies) destroying mainland ports/shipping and indirectly because a ton of mainland products require Taiwanese chips and other products that cannot be substituted easily (if at all).

Ukraine

source https://meme.aho.st/the-fireworks-were-no-good/

That brings us to Ukraine. Tucker Carlson says the "West" in general and the US in particular should not be supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. Rather we should be encouraging Ukraine to negotiate a peace agreement with Russia and not be concerned at all that this will result in Russia basically controlling Ukraine.

I may be missing nuances but that seems to be his basic point of view. It is a point of view that seems to be shared by Donald Trump, Don Surber and by various other people that I generally respect and usually agree with such as Elon Musk.

It is also, IMHO, wrong.

Tucker (and the others) seems to think that Ukraine is just as corrupt as Russia and therefore thinks that we have no interest in helping it defend against Russia. He also buys into the claims that Ukraine is not a democratic nation, has neo-nazis and is otherwise a repressive state towards Russophones and other minorities.

What Tucker effectively objects to is the US (and NATO allies) providing Ukraine with lots and lots of expensive weapons and ammo and other aid. He seems to think Ukraine is going to be like the Afghan government and either misuse the weapons supplied or hand them over to Russia by losing them in conflict if not simply sell them on the black market somewhere and pocket the cash.

To summarize my disagreements.

1. Ukraine is trying to become a free-market democracy from a corrupt kleptocracy and is making progress in that direction

2. Russia under Putin is not. Instead it is seeking to rebuild the Russian/soviet empire

3. Part of which is Ukraine and Ukraine as a whole objects to that

4. If Putin isn't stopped in Ukraine he'll need to be stopped in Poland or Estonia

5. Also, appeasing Putin in Ukraine encourages Winnie the Flu to try the same in Taiwan

6. Arming and supplying Ukraine achieves a side benefit of seeing how well the latest weapons fare against generally competent adversaries

Let's start with the corruption thing. Yes Ukraine has historically been corrupt. This is not a surprise. Every country in the world, including the US, has had institutional corruption in places. While the US is better now, you don't have to look very hard to find examples of corruption and bribery in the US today - starting of course with the Bidens, the Pelosis and other Washington, DC politicians (of both political parties).

Ukraine has been gradually trying to clean up its act for the last decade or two. This has been messy. It has to have been so because every lawyer, judge, bureaucrat, politician and industrialist in the soviet and post-soviet era was corrupt. They were corrupt because the entire Soviet Union ran on corruption since communism simply didn't work and corruption was required to get anything done. Bribes were a standard business expense, slicing a bit off the top or shaking down a supplicant was the only way bureaucrats and police officers could survive on their salaries. The public prosecutor that went after Burisma was probably corrupt. So was Burisma. In fact so were all the Ukrainian leaders prior to Zelensky, even the "pro-Western" ones. This is little different to the politicians etc. in Romania, Bulgaria and much of the rest of (formerly communist) Southern and Eastern Europe.

And yes that means that Zelensky is also likely at the very least a beneficiary of corrupt practices and supported by political/business leaders who are corrupt.

The key questions are regarding the degree of corruption and the direction (i.e. is the place becoming more corrupt or less). It seems quite clear to me that Ukraine, particularly since the Maidan revolution in 2014 and the more or less simultaneous the annexation of Crimea by Russia, has got serious about cleaning its act up and reducing corruption and the like. For example at the start of 2023 Zelensky's government arrested several senior military figures for corruption and there have been plenty of other examples of the last decade and a few more since. Ukraine has also got a large number of investigative journalists and none of them have had "accidents", drunk the wrong tea or fallen out of the top floor windows of tall buildings unlike their far rarer counterparts in Russia.

Oh and let's talk about the Maidan revolution. Some on the right seem to think that this was a put up job by the CIA / US State Department / the EU etc. While it is certainly true that these parties provided support, it is also certain that Maidan involved hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian protestors. This level of involvement goes way beyond any possible astroturf. A lot of Ukrainians wanted closer ties with Europe (even though the EU-Ukraine treaty that Yanukovich refused to sign was not a great one for Ukraine) and absolutely 100% did not want to be part of the Russia sphere of influence.

In 2014 it was possible to plausibly claim that this was a difference between Western (generally majority Ukrainian speaking) and Eastern (generally majority Russian speaking) Ukrainians, but this was simplistic and there was considerable minority support in both halves for the other position. However after the Russian annexed Crimea in 2014 and then started their puppet revolutions in the Dombas opinion turned hard against Russia, even (perhaps especially) amongst Russophones. We know this from the way that Russia's invasion force was not welcomed with open arms. If Ukrainians had been, as claimed, institutionally and uniformly discriminating against Russian speakers then the mostly Russian speaking residents of Kharkiv and Kherson etc. would have welcomed the invaders as rescuers, would have gladly told the Russians who/where the pro-Ukrainian resistance were and so on. As it happens though what we saw was precisely the opposite and the Russians reciprocated by raping, torturing and looting to a degree that makes clear that this was officially condoned if not outright encouraged. At this point I doubt there's anywhere in occupied Ukraine other than parts of Crimea where the inhabitants (or refugee former inhabitants) want to remain under Russia governance.

However, that does not mean that I want US (or even non-US NATO) troops fighting in Ukraine. They shouldn’t need to. What Ukraine needs is what Zelensky said in 2022 “I need ammo not a ride”. The fact that Western Europe in general has utterly failed to get serious about supplying Ukraine with advanced weaponry in large quantity is a scandal. The fact that the Biden administration appears to deliberately slow-walk and otherwise limit the supplies it provides is a second one. As we have seen in Gaza, these politicians and the chattering classes that support them are generally not clueful. It’s been two years since Russia invaded Ukraine and the manufacturers of cruise missiles and the like still haven’t had mass orders of new munitions. Russia struggles to build more than about one missile a week. There is no excuse for Europe to have a similar problem, but they do.

It has occurred to me that, as with Israel, a lot of Western leaders and pundits simply cannot think their way through to an end-state that is acceptable to Ukraine. That end-state is the restoration of Ukraine’s pre 2014 integrity and corresponding removal of Russian forces from all of Ukrainian territory. The reason they can’t think there way to that is because they can see that such an end-state would be fatal to Putin (literally so - as in he’d be executed) and the end of the Putin regime would plunge Russia into chaos because he has successfully purged Russia of potential successors.

Short of full Russian withdrawal Ukraine will keep fighting. Unlike Iraqis or Afghanis, Ukrainians have proven to be very innovative and so any temporary end of hostilities that is less than this would likely lead to significant resistance and then destruction all over Russia. Ukraine is probably the country with the best drone development teams in the world, it’s how Ukraine has sunk so many Russian ships in the Black Sea, and a major contributor to how it has deprived the Russians control of airspace or the ability to successfully attack on land. Russia has repeatedly failed to interdict Ukrainian drones in Russia and failed to stop the manufacture of these drones and I see no reason to assume they would gain that ability if a “ceasefire” were to be implemented.

Disagree? tell me in the comments

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1. Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Dominus_qui_sunt_eius. If you don’t trust wikipedia there are other sources that are equally skeptical

2. Having talked to a number of Israelis, I think that PM Netanyahu is to blame for enabling Hamass and Oct 7. There are other problems too but most critically he’s guilty of both diverting attention/resources away from Gaza and for deliberately and cynically providing support to Hamass to weaken the corrupt Palerstinian Authority.

3. The English ruled Ireland to some significant degree for centuries, starting with the Normans in the 12th century, until granting home rule after WW1. By contrast the Qing dynasty only claimed part of Taiwan in 1684 and for over a century made no claim on the mountainous east. Control was gradually extended during the 19th century but then the islands were handed over to Japan after the Sino-Japanese war of 1895. Only after the US assisted by the British Empire beat Japan in 1945 was control returned to the mainland, just in time for it to be used as a refuge by the KMT when they lost to the Chicoms.