Author Archive: W. S. Topp

Managing China’s Return

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As Chinese economic, diplomatic, and military power grows, and China becomes ever more assertive in pursuing its interests in Asia, the United States must inevitably adjust to the changing strategic landscape in the Indo-Pacific region.

The ability of China and the United States to jointly manage the evolution of the strategic landscape will determine if war or peace prevail. But our ability to manage conflict is limited by our incomplete understanding of Chinese history, culture, political philosophy, and national power.

Here are seven things to keep in mind when trying to assess the threat that China might pose to the United States:

  1. For most of its history, China was the most technologically advanced and modern society on the planet, a status that the nation achieved and maintained without engaging in campaigns of military conquest. China’s ability to amass and maintain a vast empire without military conquest is a significant source of pride for the Chinese people and is an integral component of China’s national mythology – whether completely accurate or not. (1)
  2. China does not consider itself a ‘rising power;’ it believes that it is a ‘returning power,‘ reclaiming the respect and influence it enjoyed in Asia for two thousand years. Lee Kuan Yew, longtime president of Singapore and a careful observer of China, stated that China’s number one priority is to “recover its lost greatness.” (2).
  3. As a land-based power surrounded by powerful states, with more than 13,000 miles of indefensible borders, China’s greatest strategic fear has been and remains that of being encircled by powerful enemies. Today, China is surrounded by potential adversaries: Russia to the north, Japan and South Korea to the east, Vietnam and India to the south, and Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines nearby. In Henry Kissinger’s description, “This is not a constellation conducive to conquest. It is more likely to raise fears of encirclement.” (3)
  4. A second strategic priority for China is resisting foreign efforts to foment internal discontent.
  5. A third strategic imperative is the desire to reclaim China’s historical sphere of influence, including the nearshore waters of the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea. This concern has drawn China into armed confrontations with states that have competing claims in the South China Sea and the East China Sea and with the United States (1954, 1958, 1995-1996). China’s claimed historical right to islands in the South China Sea is one of the primary sources of tension in the region today.
  6. Historically, China has preferred to use war as part of a comprehensive political effort to shape the strategic environment that includes diplomacy, economics, and other elements of national power. They do not distinguish between war and diplomacy. They use war as a means of gaining an advantage in future relations, rather than as a means to resolve issues. They are extremely wary of prolonged wars of attrition, and prefer to strike quick, sharp blows for maximum psychological effect and then withdraw militarily, even if their operational and tactical objectives have not been achieved. They are not afraid of stalemates and they are adept at keeping conflicts simmering at a low level to psychologically exhaust their opponents. (4)
  7. China’s rich and extensive history is the foundation of Chinese national security policies. Historically, China’s military has been used almost exclusively to secure the nation’s borders, repel invaders, maintain internal order, and protect the ruling government.

Notes:

(1) – Kissinger, Henry; The Future of U.S. – China Relations; Foreign Affairs Magazine; March/April 2012;  https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2012-03-01/future-us-chinese-relations, Retrieved 8.15.2018.

(2)- Allison, Graham; Destined for War; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Boston – New York; 2017; page 107.

(3)  – Kissinger, (March/April 2012)

(4) – Li, Xiaobing, editor; China at War: An Encyclopedia; ABC-CLIO; Santa Barbara, CA; 2012; page xvii.

 

August 29, 2018

A Stable Genius

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For reasons we can’t actually explain, our daughter has become a very capable equestrian. For the past couple of years she has been a member of a riding team, operating out of a stable near our home.

We think the best part of the whole experience – for her, and for us – is that she did it virtually all on her own.  I am no big fan of horses, and neither is my wife. Neither of us have ridden more than three or four times in our lives.  So we’re not really sure where our daughter acquired her love for horses and riding, but we are certain that it did not come from us.

The equestrian thing is Melina’s deal.  We support her, we pay for it, and we drive her all over Ohio to compete with her teammates.  She’s not the greatest rider ever, partly because she picked up the sport years later than most of her teammates.  But every jump she has completed and every ribbon she has won has been the result of her own effort and dedication. She’s not riding because one of her parents used to ride in high school. She’s not getting any special coaching from mom and dad, who know as much about riding as they know about particle physics. She’s not even riding to boost her resume for college admissions officers.  She does it because she loves it, and she has made herself into a skilled rider.

Our hope is that the sense of accomplishment she feels from her success will be self-reinforcing and will help motivate her in the future.

As a sport, riding is not really optimal.  It’s pretty expensive, the competitions take all day and are almost always a couple of hours away, and there is an element of risk.  Melina’s mom is pretty nervous about the whole thing, especially the jumps.  One of Melina’s friends broke her arm and got a concussion in a fall.  Melina has fallen, but she has never been injured. On the plus side, the kids are expected to take care of the horses, including feeding, cleaning, tacking up, and cleaning up after.  The girls work together to make sure everything is done, they seem to genuinely love the animals, and they bond a bit over their shared experiences. And unlike other youth sports, nobody’s dad is reliving his high school glory days coaching the kids.

August 22, 2018

“One word: Plastics”

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The Great Lakes, which provide drinking water for 30 million people, are increasingly littered with plastic, and that plastic is being ingested by humans with unknown consequences says a researcher from the State University of New York at Fredonia.  Tiny particles of plastic – either manufactured as microbeads or created by the disintegration of larger plastic items – are not removed by water treatment processes and are regularly consumed in drinking water.  While the exact effects of plastic ingestion on human health are still being studied, the possibility of significant harm should encourage us to reduce the amount of plastic in our daily lives, said Dr. Sherri Mason, a professor of Chemistry at SUNY Fredonia.

“Skip the straw, bag the bag, boot the bottle.”

“I believe in the precautionary principle,” said Mason. “If something is suspected of having an adverse health impact, stop it.”

Mason spoke at the Cleveland City Club yesterday on the state of the Great Lakes. In 2012 she led the first scientific survey of plastic loading in the Great Lakes, and has continued to study the extent of plastic contamination of the lakes. The most recent sampling found that Lake Erie contained 46,000 bits of plastic per square kilometer of water, a concentration higher than in any of the world’s oceans.  Lake Ontario, downstream from Lake Erie, contained 230,000 particles per square kilometer.

While there is no conclusive evidence that ingested plastic itself is harmful to human health, certain chemicals which are known to be harmful readily bind to plastic, said Mason. These chemicals have been linked to obesity, cancer, ADHD, autism, and decreased sperm counts.

Mason’s research helped convince the federal government to ban the use of plastic microbeads in personal care products in 2015. That ban took effect on July 1, 2018, and Mason expects that it will reduce plastic levels in the lakes by about 10 percent.

But microbeads are just a fraction of the 22 million pounds of discarded plastic that finds its way into the Great Lakes each year, said Mason. The lakes provide drinking water for more than 30 million people, and inevitably those people are consuming tiny particles of plastic with each glass of water.

Switching to bottled water isn’t going to help, said Mason, as bottled water, which is nearly always packed in plastic bottles, contains twice the amount of microplastic as does tap water.  The picture is not completely bleak, however. “Based on all evidence, beer is cleaner than water,” said Mason.

But switching from water to beer might not be the best solution. A better answer, said Mason, is stopping, or greatly reducing, the flow of plastic into the Great Lakes.  “We are the problem,” said Mason, “we are also the solution.”

As a society, we can look to replace plastic with other materials. Plastic has been in widespread use for less than 75 years. Every product made of plastic today was once made from other materials. “There is no reason we cannot replace plastic with less harmful alternatives,” said Mason.

But consumers don’t have to wait for industry or government to take action. There are simple steps that individuals can take that can make a difference. Three common products – plastic bags, plastic straws, and plastic bottles – account for 65 percent of the plastic market in the United States, said Mason.  By reducing their use of these three items, consumers can make an appreciable dent on the amount of plastic in our environment.

Mason cited several policies that can make a difference:

  • Stores can charge fees for providing single-use plastic bags, especially if the fees increase over time.
  • Restaurants can stop providing plastic straws automatically and can provide them only upon request.
  • Public education campaigns.

In addition, individual consumers can change personal behaviors to reduce the amount of plastic we use:

  • Prefer products with less plastic packaging
  • Reduce use of single-use plastic products, especially plastic water bottles.
  • Prefer goods made from other materials (wood, paper, metal, glass, cotton, etc.)

Over time, plastic has replaced many of these materials for convenience.  But we are only now realizing the long-term cost of that convenience. “We shouldn’t underestimate our influence,” said Mason. “The more we demand it, the more likely we are to see action.”

August 14, 2018

A well-regulated militia…

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From the news:

“A man accidentally shot his wife last night at the Super 8 Motel on Merchants Drive, but that’s not what he initially told officers, KPD officials said. Officers responded around midnight after the man called 911 and said someone had shot through the window of the motel room and struck his wife.

Officers said they found the woman lying on a bed with a knee injury, where they applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding until EMT’s arrived to transport the victim to University of Tennessee Medical Center. Her injury was non-life threatening.

The man repeatedly said he didn’t know who had shot his wife, but after additional questioning from officers admitted it was his handgun that had discharged, KPD officials said.He told officers he owned a handgun and kept it inside his vehicle. He was attempting to unload the weapon while inside his vehicle when it discharged and struck his wife.”

Sadly, there is nothing remarkable about this news item.  As a former police officer, I especially like the details about the responsible gun owner’s actions after he accidentally shot his wife.  Naturally, he hid the weapon and lied repeatedly to police.  Because what kind of a responsible gun owner would take actual responsibility for his own actions?  I don’t suppose he will be charged, since gun owners normally get a pass on any kind of goofhead negligence that results in an “accidental” shooting, even when the result is dead body.

For a daily dose of such nonsense, take a look at a news and media Facebook site called “A Well-Regulated Militia.”  The site is a compendium of news articles about accidental and intentional shootings committed by so-called “responsible gun owners.”

As the website notes: “The 2nd amendment calls for a well regulated militia, but this is what we have instead. Which founding father would be proudest of us?”

The website itself adds no editorial comment to the articles it posts, except for referring to the responsible parties as “members of our well regulated militia.”

To scroll through the site is to gape in horror at the fetid swamp of America’s gun culture.  The incidents related on the site have a common theme: “A responsible gun owner is responsible until he or she is not.”  This is the sad truth about gun ownership.  Firearms are tools that are designed to kill.  When mishandled or used inappropriately, they can and do kill.  There’s no way to know beforehand if a person will handle a firearm responsibly or if they will leave it unattended and loaded on a coffee table, so that a 4-year old child can pick it up and kill a 2-year old.

The website makes no policy recommendations, and I personally have no answer for the endless procession of senseless tragedies that we are apparently willing to accept. Guns are legal, and I suppose they always will be, hysterical rants about “government gun grabs” notwithstanding.  If I lived in an area where I truly felt imperiled by high rates of criminal activity or ineffective law enforcement, I might want to own a firearm myself.  But I was a police officer for nine years and I served in the military for more than twenty, so I understand a few things about proper handling and use of firearms.  As the website mournfully attests, not all “responsible gun owners” do.

The saddest part of the whole thing is how often children are victimized by the negligence of adults, and how infrequently “responsible gun owners” are actually held responsible for the results of their negligence.  Over and over again, authorities decline to charge persons responsible for “accidental” shootings.  Sometimes, when the dead victim is the child of the “responsible gun owner,” some official will be quoted saying, “They’ve suffered enough.”

That’s quite a presumption, and I am not certain that someone’s feeling should determine whether or not they are held accountable for their actions.  We don’t seem to feel that way when drunk or distracted drivers kill people through negligence.

Click here for more news about our well-regulated militia: https://www.facebook.com/OurWellRegulatedMilitia/

 

August 12, 2018

Running government like a business

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From the news: “President Trump’s Scottish golf resort raked in more than $77,000 in government money thanks to his visit there this past weekend, federal spending records showed.

US State Department documents, cited by Reuters and The Scotsman newspaper, showed that it paid $77,345.35 to Trump’s SLC Turnberry Ltd for “hotel rooms for VIP visit.”

 

Looking at this article and an associated social media thread, a couple of points come to mind:

  1. Of course it is an ethics violation. Anyone who has worked for the government for fifteen minutes knows this.
  2. When people talk about “running government like a business,” this is exactly what they have in mind. There are no ethics violations in business: an act is either legal or illegal, nothing else. The terms “ethical,” “improper,” “unfair,” and “in the public interest” have no meaning whatsoever. Running government like a business means no rules, no accountability, no purpose beyond personal enrichment, no recognition that the public has any right to know what is being done or how much it costs.
  3. Although we won’t know for sure for some years, it is likely that the current administration is the most corrupt in American history.
  4. Other administrations have been corrupt, but in most cases, corruption was a betrayal of a president who was generally (or in the case of US Grant, scrupulously) trustworthy and honest.
  5. In this administration, the president set the tone from the very beginning, openly challenging the legitimacy of the electoral process prior to the election and refusing to release personal financial records (tax returns). He’s running the government like a business; meaning that anything not nailed down is his for the taking and every government employee works for him, and not for the people of the United States. His cabinet – filled with businessmen – operates the same way.

https://nypost.com/2018/07/17/us-government-paid-trumps-scottish-golf-course-77k-for-weekend-visit/

 

July 23, 2018

Nice Country You got there…

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Saw on the news today that the Democrats are looking for a new political slogan for the midterm elections. Apparently their focus group did not like their original choice: “Hillary 2016 – It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.”

The Republicans haven’t announced their midterm slogan yet, but here are a couple of suggestions:

“Nice Country You Got There. Be a Shame if Something Happened to it.”

“Vote GOP. While You Still Can.”

“Healthcare? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Health Care.”

“America Foist! Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk.”

“I’ve Got Mine. Screw You.”

“Vote GOP. We Know Where Your Kids Live.”

July 21, 2018

“You think our country’s so innocent…”

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From the news: “President Donald Trump will consider allowing Russian investigators to question U.S.-born investor Bill Browder, former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and others after President Vladimir Putin floated the idea, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.”

While the idea of allowing a foreign entity to question an ambassador should be a complete non-starter, I am also disappointed in the willingness of the current administration to establish some sort of moral equivalency between the US and Russian governments. As a former law enforcement officer, I am well aware that our criminal justice system is far from perfect. But in general, in this country many officials do make an effort to adhere to the rule of law and to protect the rights of citizens who are suspected of criminal acts. No such protections exist in the Russian system, and the Russian criminal justice system is designed solely to maintain the power of the ruling party. Allowing Russian investigators to question a former US ambassador would simply support the Russian propaganda narrative (and the current administration narrative) that the west is hopelessly corrupt and that we would be better off if we were more like Russia.

White House: Trump will consider letting Russia question investor, former ambassador

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/18/trump-russia-browder-mcfaul-questioning-731616

July 20, 2018

 

Not free, but reasonable…

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I see a lot of products in the grocery store marked “gluten free.”  Well, of course.  Gluten’s always been free.  I’ve never been asked to pay extra for it, and I doubt that I would…

July 8, 2018

Time travelers

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I have just returned from the past, where everything is wonderful.

It’s no secret that dogs have a much keener sense of smell than humans.  But while we can easily see that dogs rely on their sense of smell much more than we do, we are mostly unaware of the vast quantity of information available to dogs through their noses.

Surprisingly, while dogs have been living with humans for thousands of years, no one actually knows how strong their sense of smell is.  Estimates range from 10,000 times as sensitive as humans to 100,000 times as sensitive. Since dogs can’t – or won’t – tell us, it is difficult to determine exactly what information they can obtain through smell.

But research continues, and some things are fairly certain.  Here are five things you might not have realized about your best friend’s nose:

  1. A dog’s nose is better-designed than yours. Your nose is a like a leaky shed out behind the garden, useful mostly to keep the rain off a handful of rarely-used shovels and rakes. A dog’s nose, on the other hand, is like a nuclear-powered submarine.  Exquisitely designed, meticulously constructed, and fantastically well-adapted to its operating environment.
  2. Dogs have a scent-detecting organ that you don’t have. This explains some of the discrepancy between their ability and yours, but not all of it. This extra organ is called the vomeronasal organ and it helps dogs detect pheromones.
  3. Dogs smell in 3-D. This is not the title of a budget flick, but instead, is a statement that helps explain how dogs can track someone. In the same way that your eyes combine two slightly different perspectives to create depth perception, a dog senses a scent separately through each nostril. This enables them to detect which direction a person was traveling in when they left behind a scent by recognizing in which direction a scent is getting stronger and in which direction it is getting weaker.
  4. Dogs can small certain medical conditions in humans. If you are diabetic, your dog can detect sharp drops in your blood sugar by smelling isoprene – which rises significantly as your blood sugar drops – on your breath. Dogs can also detect cancer cells, which, apparently, have a different scent than healthy cells.
  5. Dog noses are cold, wet time machines. When you walk down a sidewalk, you can see, and, when the weather is right, smell someone else walking toward you. But your dog not only knows who is there now, he can tell, by the scents they left behind, who was on the sidewalk an hour ago, a day ago, and, if their hygiene was poor enough, a week ago.

July 6, 2018

Our Cup Runneth Over

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Germany is out of the World Cup tournament, which is a matter of some interest to the German princesses that I live with.

Our daughter, in particular is enjoying the tournament, although sometimes I suspect that she is more interested in avoiding chores than in watching the actual games. But she is learning about soccer, which is good because she didn’t have the opportunity to play youth soccer, unlike most of the other kids in the town where we live.  Of course, youth soccer bears the same relationship to professional soccer that T-ball bears to professional auto racing, so her lack of experience hasn’t diminished her appreciation for the game.

These low-scoring games are pretty intense, which is part of the appeal.  I can understand, though, that some people might prefer a higher-scoring, faster-paced contest.  I guess that’s why they invented hockey (…Eh, what if we make the field smaller, flood it, freeze it, put the players on skates, give them sticks because some of them don’t skate that well, and instead of that clunky ball we’ll use a hard plastic disk that no one can actually see… That ought to speed things up… But we’ll need better dental insurance.”)

June 27, 2018