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Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Monday, December 30, 2024
For Latin America, 2025 Will Be About Accountability - Guest Post World Politics Review by James Bosworth
For Latin America, 2025 Will Be About Accountability
World Politics Review
For Latin America, 2025 Will Be About Accountability
A protest in Quito, Ecuador.
A protester stands in front of a police cordon during a protest against the policies of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, in Quito, Ecuador, Nov. 21, 2024 (Sipa photo by Veronica Lombeida via AP Images).
By James Bosworth
Many political and business leaders in Latin America look ahead to 2025 with concern over the worst-case scenarios that could potentially result from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House. If Trump follows through with his promise to deport millions of Latin Americans currently in the U.S. back to their countries of origin, the societal impact would be immense. If he follows through on his promised global trade war—including the threat of imposing 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico—the economic pain would likely create a regional recession. If the new administration launches military operations against criminal groups in Mexico, it could create new interstate tensions without resolving the massive security challenges the region faces.
It is all the “ifs” in the preceding paragraph that represent the major challenge for countries in the region seeking to plan out their scenarios for next year. Nobody knows whether Trump will attempt any of those policies or, if he does, whether their scale in practice will match his rhetoric. Once implemented, their real-world impact could turn out to be quite different from what is expected. While Trump promised similarly big changes in his first term, those policies when they were enacted did not become the worst-case scenarios that many of the United States’ international partners feared. It’s also possible that Trump’s second term will be hit by a “black swan” event similar to the pandemic that derailed his first term. So, while the worst-case scenarios are concerning, it is hard for regional leaders to quantify exactly how concerned they should be, given all the unknowns.
Meanwhile, though many of Latin America’s political and business leaders are concerned, the regional reaction is far from uniform. Argentine President Javier Milei and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, for example, are celebrating the incoming Trump administration and eager for him to implement his agenda. Both men believe they and their countries will benefit economically and diplomatically from a Trump administration far more than they did under outgoing President Joe Biden. Other center-right politicians around the region, while less openly enthusiastic, are content to embrace Trump. They will find ways to cooperate with his agenda, trading assistance on the logistically challenging deportation scheme—by accepting return of third-country nationals whose governments refuse to cooperate, for instance—for other policy goals. Meanwhile, some business leaders dismiss the possibility of a tariff and trade war altogether and look forward to what they believe will be a more pro-market administration in the United States.
Barring the two worst-case scenarios of mass deportations and punishing trade wars, the economic horizon is looking pretty good for much of Latin America in 2025. For most countries, inflation is under control, and economic growth should come in slightly higher compared to 2024.
Yet, most of Latin America remains in an anti-incumbent and anti-establishment mood, angry at what many perceive as corrupt governing elites who fail to deliver for their populations. Polling across Latin America shows that citizen anger and disappointment with democracy remains high throughout the region. Another year of good but not great economic growth will not be enough to reverse the tide of this populist anger. From 2018 through 2023, nearly every presidential election in the region was won by an opposition political party. The predictable exceptions to that wave in 2024 were due to politicians—Bukele in El Salvador and President Luis Abinader in the Dominican Republic—and movements—the Morena Party that delivered victory to President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico—that have successfully redirected citizen anger toward the traditional political elites of the past as represented by their leading opponents.
Most of Latin America remains in an anti-incumbent and anti-establishment mood, angry at what many perceive as corrupt governing elites who fail to deliver for their populations.
The elections on the calendar in 2025 are expected to continue the region’s anti-establishment trend, meaning the only way incumbent presidents can hope to win is to position themselves as anti-elite outsiders. The year will begin with what promises to be a close election in Ecuador, where President Daniel Noboa is running for reelection after less than 18 months in office due to having won a shortened term in a snap election. Noboa’s chances depend on whether he can portray the country’s many current problems as being the fault of former President Rafael Correa, the patron of his opponent, Luisa Gonzalez. Later in the year, Bolivian President Luis Arce will struggle in his bid for reelection, as former President Evo Morales challenges him from the left from within a fractured ruling party, while several centrist and right-wing opponents hope the resulting divisions give them space to win. In Honduras, President Xiomara Castro wants to hand off power to a chosen successor, Defense Minister Rixi Moncada Godoy. In Chile, President Gabriel Boric has spent much of his time in office struggling with low approval ratings and an inability to pass his agenda. He is barred from running for consecutive reelection, and the expectation is that one of his right-wing opponents will succeed him, with the possibility that Chile will be the latest Southern Cone country to embrace a populist outsider.
Across all of these countries, insecurity remains a top concern, and in many of them homicide rates are too high and still rising. New and reformed criminal groups have emerged in the past decade that profit not only from cocaine, but also from illicit gold mining, human smuggling and extortion, a trend that Will Freeman at the Council on Foreign Relations refers to as “reorganized crime.” These groups share many of the same characteristics as their predecessors but have found ways to corrupt and control state authorities in ways that make rooting them out more difficult. From the Sinaloa Cartel bribing former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez and sparking a gang war in Ecuador to Brazil’s PCC assassinating a Paraguayan prosecutor in Colombia, these groups cross borders with impunity, bringing violence and corruption with them.
Separate, but related, is the fact that nonviolent crime is an increasingly commonplace experience for Latin Americans in general. In fact, if asked what the biggest threat they face is, many Latin Americans would probably answer, Getting mugged in the street. In other words, insecurity is both a big-picture geopolitical risk as well as a day-to-day ground-level threat.
The other risk that many citizens would point to is the wild weather from the past year. Floods ravaged Brazil in early 2024, killing almost 200 people, displacing a half-million more from their homes and causing over $3 billion in damage. Then drought and heat hit South America. Rivers dried up. Fires damaged forests in many countries. And electricity from hydroelectric power became scarce, leading to power outages and more political outrage. The odds of climate change bringing more calamities in Latin America in 2025 seem high, given that the prospect of too much or too little rain has become an annual threat to most countries across the hemisphere.
Amid all the uncertainty, one thing seems clear: The challenges Latin America will face in 2025 won’t be solved in 2025. Indeed, they can’t be. Relations with the U.S., discontent with democracy, organized crime and climate change are issues that require years if not decades of work to resolve. Yet dealing with their short-term impact often impedes the long-term solutions that are needed. Latin America’s winners next year will be the leaders and societies that can figure out how to move away from immediate crisis management to formulate and adopt strategies that can solve those bigger challenges over the many years to come. Unfortunately, patience is in short supply, for both voters and politicians.
James Bosworth is the founder of Hxagon, a firm that does political risk analysis and bespoke research in emerging and frontier markets, as well as a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program. He has two decades of experience analyzing politics, economics and security in Latin America and the Caribbean.
A Guide to Peter Thiel's Washington Web - Business Insider
a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-washington-vance-musk-trump-ramaswamy-altman-palantir-2024-11">A Guide to Peter Thiel's Washington Web - Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-washington-vance-musk-trump-ramaswamy-altman-palantir-2024-11
A guide to tech billionaire Peter Thiel's Washington web
Alice TecotzkyDec 10, 2024, 4:49 PM GMT+1
Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel's influence in Washington stretches far and wide, from politicians to tech leaders to his own companies' government contracts. Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union
JD Vance
JD Vance
Thiel has mentored Vance since 2011. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Thiel played a critical role in orchestrating Vance's rise to the top of Republican politics. The two first met in 2011, when Vance attended a talk Thiel gave at Yale Law School. In a magazine article written nearly a decade later, Vance called Thiel "a good friend" and said his speech was "the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School."
After graduating from Yale, Vance became a principal at Thiel's VC firm, Mithril Capital. Their mentor-mentee relationship only grew stronger, with Thiel eventually investing heavily in Vance's own venture fund, Narya Capital, and writing a blurb for "Hillbilly Elegy." When Vance decided to pursue politics, Thiel remained by his side, pouring at least $15 million into his 2022 Senate campaign, according to OpenSecrets.
In 2021, Thiel introduced Trump and Vance at Mar-a-Lago, and remained invested in their relationship through the 2024 election. With repeated calls to President-Elect Donald Trump and persistent lobbying, Thiel played an important role in getting Vance on the ticket.
Elon Musk
peter thiel elon musk early paypal
Thiel and Musk merged their companies in 2000. AP
Musk and Thiel merged their online banking companies in 2000, forming PayPal. Their relationship soured, though, when Thiel ousted Musk as CEO and eventually took over the role. Come 2008, relations had evidently thawed enough for Thiel to make a $20 million investment in SpaceX, one of Musk's companies. The investment was crucial to helping SpaceX recover from a failed rocket launch that same year.
After Trump won the 2024 election, Thiel credited Musk for making other Silicon Valley leaders feel comfortable supporting the president-elect. Musk is one of Trump's top advisors and soon-to-be co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Donald Trump
Donald Trump and Peter Thiel
Thiel didn't donate to Trump in 2020 or 2024. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
In 2016, Thiel donated more than $1 million to Trump's presidential campaign. He had a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention and served as a go-between with Silicon Valley. Thiel said he was disappointed by Trump's first term and didn't donate in 2020 or 2024. Still, he predicted that Trump would win this year.
With Vance anointed as MAGA heir apparent, Thiel and Trump have a chance to rekindle their ties.
Mark Zuckerberg
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a mixed martial arts tournament in 2024.
Zuckerberg relied on Thiel during the early days of Facebook. Chris Unger/Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg may not be a politician, but his influence in Washington runs deep. Between Facebook's role in free speech culture wars, the Federal Trade Commission's ongoing antitrust case against Meta, and Zuckerberg's rocky relationship with Trump, the tech leader is entrenched in the political conversation.
Thiel has a stake in Zuckerberg's involvement. He counts the Facebook founder among his mentees and was the site's first outside investor. Thiel sat on the board of Facebook and wielded great influence as its longest-serving member, but sparred with some of the company's more liberal employees, per the Washington Post. He ended up stepping down in 2022.
In 2019, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Trump all had dinner at the White House, illustrating the strengthening ties between the tech world and Washington.
Sam Altman
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Thiel was an early investor in OpenAI, Altman's company. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
Sam Altman, billionaire co-founder of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is another one of Thiel's mentees. Thiel offered advice and support throughout Altman's early career, eventually becoming an early investor in OpenAI.
Like other prominent tech companies, OpenAI is under federal scrutiny. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating if the company's investors were misguided after board members suddenly ousted Altman as CEO in 2023, the Journal reported.
Beyond the investigation, Altman is becoming more involved in Washington. In the summer of 2023, he began a lobbying campaign in Congress about the future of AI regulation. OpenAI has spent money trying to sway Washington and hired staff with political know-how, per CNBC. As AI policy is poised to become an even bigger political question, Altman's influence — and Thiel's, by proxy — may continue to grow.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Vivek Ramaswamy speaks at a podium
Thiel invested in Ramaswamy's "anti-woke" investment fund. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Biotech billionaire and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is set to co-lead DOGE.
Like Vance, Ramaswamy first met Thiel as a student at Yale Law School — he told PBS that it may have been at the very same speech that so impacted the vice president-elect. At the time, Ramaswamy attended an "intimate lunch seminar" Thiel hosted for a small group of students, per the New Yorker.
Eventually, Thiel threw his wealth behind Ramaswamy. In early 2022, Ramaswamy co-founded Strive Asset Management, an "anti-woke" investment fund, and Thiel was an early investor.
David Sacks
David Sacks
David Sacks Reuters
David Sacks, a former PayPal executive and prominent venture capitalist, will serve as the White House's AI and crypto czar during Trump's second term. Thiel and Sacks met at Stanford, where they co-wrote the controversial book, "The Diversity Myth." Both men have apologized for some of the book's content, which downplayed date rape. Sacks also served as editor-in-chief for the Stanford Review, a libertarian newspaper Thiel founded.
In 1999, Sacks joined Thiel's company Confinity, which later became PayPal. He eventually served as PayPal's chief operating officer and continued working closely with Thiel.
As the AI and crypto czar, Sacks will create the country's legal framework for crypto and head a presidential council of advisors on science and technology. The council will, according to the White House's website, be comprised of industry actors, academics, and people from non-profit organizations. Through Sacks, cryptocurrency supporters will likely have a direct line to Trump, Bloomberg reported.
Jim O'Neill
Jim O'Neill in a crowd
O'Neill is the former CEO of the Thiel Foundation. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Trump has nominated Jim O'Neill, former CEO of the Thiel Foundation, as the deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
A Silicon Valley investor, O'Neill worked at HHS under former President George W. Bush before moving to Thiel's network. During his time as the acting CEO of the Thiel Foundation, O'Neill co-founded the Thiel Fellowship, which gives a $10,000 grant to young people who skip out on or pause college to tackle big projects. In 2012, O'Neill worked with Thiel to launch Mithril Capital Management, the same VC fund where Vance worked. He served as the fund's managing director but left in 2019 — he sued Mithril later that year over claims of unfair business practices and a contract breach.
During Trump's first term, Thiel pushed to have O'Neill fill a prominent health role, per the Post. If confirmed this time around, O'Neill will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump tapped to lead HHS. O'Neill, who has criticized the FDA in the past, would play a big role in HHS' daily operations and policy decisions.
Palantir
Palantir is a big data analytics firm.
The federal government is Palantir's biggest client. Illustration by Piotr Swat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
> Thiel's Washington connections extend to his businesses, especially the data mining company Palantir that he co-founded in 2003. Palantir makes software to manage, analyze, and secure data, and its biggest client is the US federal government.
Federal government contracts helped build Palantir, which started out by partnering with defense and intelligence agencies. The company focuses on counterterrorism efforts and immigration enforcement. Some investors anticipate defense and immigration enforcement will see increased spending under a second Trump administration, meaning Palantir may get a boost.
Blake Masters
Blake Masters lost his Senate race, even after getting Thiel's help and Trump's endorsement. Mario Tama/Getty Images
An ideological ally of Thiel and Vance, Blake Masters lost his bid for a Senate seat in Arizona to Sen. Mark Kelly, but nonetheless benefited from Thiel's money and support. A decade before running for the Senate in 2022, Masters took Thiel's lecture when he was a student at Stanford Law School. Enthralled by Thiel and the course, Masters posted his notes from the influential class on a website.
>The two co-authored a book, and Masters served as chief investment officer at Thiel's investment firm and president of the Thiel Foundation. When Masters pivoted to politics, Thiel donated $13.5 million to Masters' 2022 campaign.
Other elected officials
Josh Hawley and Gavin Newsom
Thiel has donated to other politicians, including a few Democrats. Getty Images
Though Thiel's most notable political contributions have gone to Vance, Masters, and Trump, he's donated to an array of other politicians and Republican causes. Among his beneficiaries are Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, according to OpenSecrets. He's also given to the Republican National Committee and other GOP-aligned groups.
Thiel isn't entirely partisan with his contributions, though. In 2014 and 2015, he gave at least $70,000 to Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California. Between 2011 and 2016, he also donated at least $7,800 to Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who represents parts of Silicon Valley, per OpenSecrets.
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Sunday, December 29, 2024
[Salon] Decline Of Newspapers Threatens The Future Of Representative Government - Guest post by Allan Brownfeld
DECLINE OF NEWSPAPERS THREATENS THE FUTURE OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
BY
ALLAN C.BROWNFELD
—————————————————————————————————————————
Across our country, newspapers are closing. A declining share of Americans are closely following the news, according to Pew Research Center surveys. Audiences are shrinking for older types of news media—-such as local t.v. stations, , most newspapers and public radio—-even as they grow for newer platforms like podcasts, and on-line, unedited material.
Daily newspaper circulation nationwide, counting digital subscriptions and print circulation, fell to just under 21 million in 2022, according to projections using data from the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM). Weekday circulation is down 8% from the previous year and 32% from five years prior.
There are nearly 6,000 newspapers that publish in the U.S. and, on average, two shut down every week. Current projections show that in the past year the U.S. will have lost one-third of the newspapers it had in 2005. A shift to consuming news on line, often unedited for accuracy by anyone, intensified by smart phones, has disrupted traditional news outlets like print media. In a recent survey, the Pew Research Center found that 9 per cent of American adults said they turn to print publications often to get their news compared to 56% who say they get their news digitally.
This survey found that nearly one-third of all young people get most of their news on-line from Tik Tok. It is also clear that large numbers of Americans of all ages confine their news consumption to publications, websites, podcasts and t.v.networks that share their political perspective. Thus, liberals tend to rely upon liberal sources of information and conservatives on conservative ones. It is a far different era from the one we had in the past when the vast majority of Americans received the same, largely accurate and unbiased, information from the three established networks, ABC,CBS, and NBC. Members of Generation Z, it was found, get most of their news from four platforms: Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
The Local News Initiative, a project from Northwestern University that tracks local news outlets across the country, has found that over 1,500 counties across the country have only a single news outlet and more than 200 counties have none at all. This creates “information deserts” that deprive communities of vital information. Typically, when a newspaper closes there are no other news outlets, either in print or on line. There has been a net loss of over 3,200 papers since 2005. Between 2004 and 2024, the number of non-daily papers fell from over 7.4 thousand to less than 4.6 thousand.
When I worked as a staff member in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, one of my responsibilities was meeting on a regular basis with the Washington correspondents of newspapers from the district the Senator or Congressman represented. Today, for most members of Congress, that would no longer be necessary—-because fewer and fewer newspapers around the country any longer have Washington correspondents. In 21 states, local newspapers have no reporters on Capitol Hill. Another 14 states only have a single correspondent in Washington. Members of Congress acted differently when reporters from their districts were paying close attention to what they were doing.
It is ironic that just as traditional media are declining in influence, some politicians are repeatedly denouncing them and threatening them. This is a familiar pattern in U.S. history.
In 1798, the Federalist Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act. It was signed into law by President John Adams. The Sedition Act prohibited public opposition to the government. Fines and imprisonment could be used against those who “write, print, offer or publish, any false, scandalous and malicious writing against the government.”
Over 20 Democratic-Republican newspaper editors were imprisoned. Rep. Matthew Lyon of Vermont wrote a letter that criticized President Adams’ “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation and self avarice.” This caused him to be imprisoned. While Federalists sent Lyon to prison for his opinions, his constituents re-elected him to Congress, even from his jail cell.
The Sedition Act clearly violated individual protections under the First Amendment. However, the practice of judicial review, whereby the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of laws, was not yet fully developed. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson directed their opposition to the new law to state legislatures. The Virginia and Kentucky legislatures passed resolutions declaring the federal laws invalid within their states.
There was a fear of imminent armed conflict in the country. Criticism of the Sedition law was widespread and the Federalists were defeated in the election of 1800, after which the acts were repealed or allowed to expire.
In 1787, Jefferson declared, “The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether Washington should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
One wonders what Jefferson would make of our current society in which newspapers across the country are closing and young people learn what they know about the world from sources such as Tik Tok. A recent poll found that the majority of Americans were unable to name the three branches of our government. Many of our schools are no longer teaching civics and American history. Still, a recent Pew survey found that 73% of Americans say that freedom of the press is extremely or very important to the well-being,of society. Yet, fewer and fewer Americans are getting their information from legitimate, well-edited and reliable news sources. What this means for the future of our society is something Americans would do well to carefully consider.
Saturday, December 28, 2024
Friday, December 27, 2024
Thursday, December 26, 2024
[Salon] Will Trump Invade Panama? - https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-panama-canal-shipping-china-jose-raul-mulino-8e7729da
Will Trump Invade Panama?
The President-elect threatens to retake the canal, but how?
By The Editorial Board The Wall Street Journal Dec. 24, 2024
image
A container ship passes through the Cocoli Locks at the Panama Canal Photo: enea lebrun/Reuters
Forgive us if we missed it, but we don’t recall Donald Trump campaigning to invade Panama and retake its famous canal. But there was the President-elect on the weekend, threatening our Central American ally with punishment if it doesn’t meet his demands.
“Our Navy and commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair, especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama—I say, very foolishly, by the United States,” Mr. Trump told a crowd in Phoenix. “This complete ripoff of our country will immediately stop.”
He added: “We will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly and without question. I’m not going to stand for it. So to the officials of Panama, please be guided accordingly.”
***
Where did that come from? Did some shipping magnate whisper in Mr. Trump’s ear? Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino quickly rebutted Mr. Trump and said Panama will defend its interests. Mr. Trump replied on Truth Social, “We’ll see about that.”
So what is Mr. Trump proposing to do—invade? Make the Americas in the image of William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt again?
If we can introduce a few facts, Mr. Trump’s claim that Panama is gouging Americans is unfounded. Every vessel, regardless of its flag, pays the same rate according to tonnage and type. Container ships, which carry finished goods, pay more than bulk carriers. About 75% of the total price is a toll and 25% is for services like tugboat or locomotive escorts.
When the U.S. ceded the canal to Panama in 1999 under a treaty negotiated in the 1970s by Jimmy Carter, there was concern that the country couldn’t run the vital transit way. But the Panama Canal Authority has done well by guarding its institutional independence from the government and running as a business.
The canal’s budget is reviewed by its board of directors, the president’s cabinet and Panama’s congress, and excess earnings are transferred to government coffers. But the canal authority is financially and managerially independent of the state. A third set of locks, which opened in 2016, was planned and built by the canal authority, not Panama.
Lake Gatun is crucial to the canal operation, but it also supplies 60% of the country’s potable water, which takes priority over shippers. When an El Nino drought that started in June 2023 and lasted a year lowered the draft on the lake, the canal authority had to reduce sharply the number of daily transits. Jorge Quijano, a former Panama Canal administrator, told us that he estimates that the loss of revenue to the canal authority was about $1 billion.
To remain competitive and help customers get their products to market, the authority adopted an online auction for express passes. Those willing to pay more got through the shipping lanes faster. Others either had to wait or use alternate routes around the Cape of Good Hope or through the Suez Canal. If Mr. Trump wants to put pressure on Panama prices, he should demand that the Houthis stop firing missiles at commercial ships in the Red Sea.
When the canal was in U.S. hands, it adjusted tolls to break even. But today the Panama Canal Authority can’t depend on the U.S. government for maintenance or capital expenditures.
Mr. Quijano says that building the one or two more reservoirs needed to mitigate water uncertainty could cost more than $2 billion. The authority has to think about its bottom line so it charges for the market value of the canal, measuring size, weight and demand. It holds a public hearing on toll increases, and in the past it has adjusted fees based on feedback.
We doubt Mr. Trump knows much of this, and he’s famous for popping off to grab attention and hit a nationalist theme. Perhaps he’s concerned about China’s spreading influence in Latin America, which is real and isn’t in the U.S. interest. Two of the canal’s five cargo ports are run as a concession by Hutchison Whampoa, a publicly traded firm on the Hong Kong stock exchange, while three others are run by U.S., Singapore and Taiwanese commercial interests.
It’s hard to know how seriously to take Mr. Trump’s broadsides. But threatening a takeover that would require an invasion may court more trouble than he imagines.
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Monday, December 23, 2024
[Salon] Fwd: Evidence of 33 Years of Missile Defense Failures and Their Implications for the Future - Guest Post by Ted Postol
Attachments6:43 PM (1 hour ago)
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Dear Colleagues:
Attached is a video file I put together showing two nearly identical failed attempts to intercept ballistic missiles that occurred 33 years apart. The first of the two engagements occurred on December 20, 2024 in Tel Aviv. The second engagement occurred 33 years earlier in Riyadh in January 1991.
I am indebted to Wesley Toland, a graduate student in International Relations and Security Studies in the Master of Public Policy Program at Portland State University for calling the video of the December 20 failed engagement to my attention.
The video of the 1991 engagement comes from the video files my colleague George Lewis and I compiled during our study that showed the Patriot missile was a complete failure during the Gulf War of 1991, which the US government had misrepresented to the public as having a nearly 100% intercept rate.
For those of you who might be interested, I am including as an attachment with the video, an article that George and I wrote that describes many of the details of the Patriot missile’s failures in the Gulf War of 1991.
Although the attached video of the engagements shown in 2024 and 1991 differ in minor details, they both basically show interceptors failing to come close enough to the incoming missile-target to detonate at the appropriate time.
In both cases, the interceptors detonate behind the incoming missile-target.
What is actually happening in both cases, is that the interceptors were not close enough to the target-missile for their fuses to detect the presence of the missile-target. As a result, the warheads in the missiles did not detonate on a signal from the interceptor's on-board fuse.
When the interceptor passes the target-missile without detecting it, the ground-radar, which is monitoring the entire engagement, issues a command to destroy the interceptor so that the interceptor will not fall to the ground as a single large unit. This results in the interceptor detonations occurring behind the incoming missile-target.
The fact that both the engagements shown on the videos from 2024 and 1991 exhibit exactly the same kind of system failures indicates that the interceptor guidance systems were sufficiently poor that they were not able to guide interceptors close enough to target-missiles for a chance at an intercept.
This indicates that the missile-defense technology improvements in the guidance and control deployed in 2024 has not improved sufficiently relative to the defense guidance and control that was available in 1991.
The implications of this observation are significant.
· First, this indicates that the fundamental limitations in the precision-tracking ground radars and on-board interceptor sensors have not significantly advanced to make it possible for interceptors to reliably intercept fast-moving low radar cross-section ballistic missiles of ranges from 600 to 1000 or more km range.
· Second, it almost certainly indicates that additional vast amounts of funding for air-defenses for use against such long-range ballistic targets is very unlikely to result in higher intercept rates.
· Third, it does NOT indicate that air-defenses cannot be useful against aircraft, cruise missiles, and certain boost glide missiles like the ATACMs, which slow down substantially as they glide towards the end of their trajectory towards a target.
In contrast to the situation against ballistic missile-targets, there is no doubt that modern air-defenses are extremely capable against aircraft. As such, they may have a potential role to play in modern warfare.
However, the cost of missile defenses is enormous and there are valid questions about whether or not these systems will be viable without important upgrades in the future.
I emphasize that their potential role is still ambiguous because the introduction of drones that carry warheads that are sufficiently damaging to destroy air-defense systems raises questions about the utility of air-defenses in any extended war.
What we have seen in Ukraine is the use of drones to force air-defenses to defend themselves by expending interceptors against relatively innocuous targets, thereby depleting their interceptor loads that could otherwise be used against aircraft or threatening cruise or gliding ATACMs missiles.
One way this problem might eventually be addressed is if air-defenses are redesigned to have a large number of relatively inexpensive short-range interceptors and antiaircraft guns to deal with drones (Russian air defense systems already have substantial capabilities along these lines). This would allow Western air-defenses to deal with drones while allowing them to maintain their more capable and expensive interceptors for use against aircraft and cruise missile targets.
Here again, the challenge will be to build sufficiently inexpensive interceptors and guns that can reliably be used against massed drone attacks.
Unfortunately, Western military contractors have no incentive to do this since they can make much larger profits selling the bigger and more expensive and profitable systems.
Also complicating the situation is the drive in United States (and elsewhere) to privatize critical military enterprise has resulted in a loss in the government expertise needed to control the voracious conduct of defense contractors.
This situation exposes a fundamental structural problem that the West, and particularly the United States, has not solved relative to China and Russia, which remain the principal focus of US and Western hostility towards these rising powers.
My own conclusion is that as long as United States continues depending on large private military contractors it will never be able to compete militarily against the growing and accelerating high-tech industrial power of Russia and China.
The Russians and Chinese build their weapons at minimal cost, unlike what happens in the West, where the contractors have no incentive to limit costs and a great incentive to increase their profits. This is a structural problem that the West has to address if it believes it must be able to engage directly against China and Russia as they continue to grow as military powers.
Just a few of the numerous examples of this problem the West has with private military industry are the Switchblade FPV drone and the javelin antitank missile.
The Switchblade was costing $58,000 per unit when it was first sent by the United States to Ukraine and it was eventually replaced with equally or more efficient drones made using commercial manufacturing techniques that cost less than $1000 each. The story with the Javelin antitank missile, is also similar and similarly outrageous.
I am not optimistic that the United States can ever solve this problem, since the lobbying power of giant military contractors has taken over the Congress and nobody who appears to be in a position of authority is free from the big-money cudgel wielding from these contractors. It appears to me that we are basically stuck in a stable state of inefficiency that will limit our military potential for the foreseeable future.
This outrageous and potentially disastrous situation is also supported by the University and academic communities.
During my work on the catastrophic failure of the Patriot missile system in the Gulf War of 1991, I was brought under direct attack by the then president of MIT, Charles M. Vest. Once MIT got rid of Vest, they brought in Susan Hockfield, who was equally vicious and quite a bit less charming. She was aided by her Provost Robert Brown, who directly threatened financial reprisals against the MIT Security Studies Program. The former president of Harvard and Tufts, Robert Bacow, was directly involved in covering up administrative misconduct at MIT when he was conducting investigations for the MIT administration.
Bacow became president of Tufts and then Harvard in spite of his publicly known record of praising an MIT faculty member for his involvement in lying to the Congress. Vest went on to be president of the National Academy of Engineering in spite of his public record of misconduct in trying to repress information critical to the national security about problems with US missile defense technologies. Brown went on to be president of Boston University.
My faculty colleagues in the MIT Security Studies Program, had a secret meeting without me or any members of my research group being involved, to unanimously vote that I be kicked out of that program if I did not abide by the demands of the Provost, Robert Brown. When I refused to stop my research into the missile-defense issues I was working on, they kicked me out of the program and widely spread rumors that I had somehow engaged in misconduct.
At Stanford University, Scott Sagan, a political scientist in the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) took it on himself to go uninvited to a departmental meeting to claim that the department would suffer major disruptions if they did not withdraw their invitation for me to be a visiting professor during my sabbatical at Stanford.
The department, without conducting any investigation or putting any thought into the matter, immediately withdrew their invitation to host me as a visiting professor.
These are examples of the kind of “independence” and "courage" that can be expected from the academic community on important matters of national security.
The problem of profound moral and ethical decay in the United States is very serious, and it is a mistake to assume that only the US government is the problem.
I bring this up because this is another matter related to the problem of getting sound technical decision-making on national security matters by the ruling elites in the United States.
With warmest regards to my colleagues, Ted Postol
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