We're making things worse
The pandemic won't wipe us out, but its consequences may
Yesterday, Libération published an ugly story. Note: It was originally reported by Russia Today. But Libération got on the phone and confirmed it with several sources.
The president of France’s Paca region, they report, ordered several million masks from a Chinese supplier. They paid for them, and the masks were ready and on the tarmac. This is one of the most badly devastated areas in France.
Then the US outbid them—in cash. The masks were diverted on the tarmac and flown to the US.
Some of you will be delighted to learn that according to this report, we’re doing this around the world: paying any price for the equipment we need, no matter how high, in cash, even before inspecting the goods, and snatching it right out of our allies’ hands.
“That’s great!” You'll think. “America First!”
It’s not great. The Administration is displaying exactly the same defect of imagination that got us into this mess in the first place: a complete inability to consider second- and third-order effects.
The pandemic is awful, but it is not an existential threat to American survival. It’s a threat to selected Americans’ survival, but not to the continued existence of the United States.
However, because of the pandemic, our vulnerability to real existential threats has skyrocketed. Has anyone considered what would happen if someone who wanted us gone from the world launched a massive cyber attack right now—now that we’re all completely, not partially, dependent on the Internet for every communication and economic transaction?
Has anyone considered how tempting this moment must be to adversaries who would like to demonstrate that our security commitments are meaningless? There’s more than one country that would be delighted to make this point, and might well think, “There won’t be a better chance.” If you’re an American adversary looking at news like this, how could you fail to think that?
More than 1,200 military personnel and their family members are affected, disabling a talisman of American military might—a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier—and leaving the Defense Department virtually at war with itself over two competing instincts: protecting troops from the virus and continuing its decades-old mission of patrolling the globe and engaging in combat, if ordered to do so.
The risk of miscalculation among nuclear powers is too great for comfort at any given moment. It’s now stratospheric.
I don’t know that this story is correct. The original source of the story was RT, which should make us at least wonder whether the whole story is a Russian information operation. But it sure sounds as if Libération picked up the phone, called “an entourage” of regional presidents in France, and they all said the same thing.
If the story is correct, it means that this is our policy. Someone in the Administration explicitly authorized this policy, or the Administration has created an environment in which the motto “American First” is taken so literally that no one even asked, “Is this a good idea?” So now we’re the country that sees that our allies have made a deal to procure life-saving equipment, parachutes in, and says, “Screw contracts. Screw your promises. Screw our allies. We have more money.”
This makes the news in the allied country in question, especially with a little help from RT or Sputnik. The public reacts very, very badly to it. (Predictably.)
What happens if the grid goes down in the United States?
What happens if Russia decides now’s the time to prove Article V’s not worth the paper it’s written on and invades the Baltics?
The Chinese military is stepping up threats to South China Sea and Taiwan. What happens if this gets out of hand?
Do you think anyone will be inclined to help us?
Photos of the day
You may be asking yourself, as I am, why every other Western government is keeping its ministers in quarantine, or having them go out like this:
Or talking to each other like this:
Whereas we’re almost proudly advertising that the bunch of walking comorbidities, who are responsible for our national security—at a time it’s never been under so much threat—can’t even think through the problems involved in assuring their own security.
Why? Why? Why are they standing so close to each other? Is there not one man among them who’s internalized the seriousness of this pandemic?
The last thing we need right now is for our whole national security establishment to be decapitated. Why aren’t they all in the underground bunker—or whatever the pandemic equivalent would be?
And why aren’t they modeling “social distancing” for Americans? Why would the Secret Service allow this to happen?
Chart of the Day
UPDATE: It's now a serious diplomatic issue: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-03/germany-and-france-blame-americans-for-playing-dirty-over-masks
On CBC news in Canada last night, about protective supplies being increasingly hard to get on the market, even when you think you have a deal. The Health Minister of one province said there is a "whole saga behind the scenes of inventory that doesn't exist, of orders that disappear, and quite frankly, of deliveries being purchased from underneath us at the plane, by other jurisdictions outside of Canada." at 11:47 on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WloXtZa8MlM