Abhorrent Solutions

 

I have a number of "ignorant and abhorrent" ideas about how to do things - and I'm comfortable calling them that because I know first how little I know, and second that no expert would ever consider any of them. With that in mind, here are three of them, all variations on the poison pill idea  - with rational comments very much requested.

The poison pill idea here can be understood in terms of an analogy in which a parasite has control of a host; the parasite gobbles down the pill because it offers everything the parasite says it wants; but the pill eventually kills the parasite and so frees the host.

Example 1: Ukraine and WWIII

The mess in the Ukraine can be seen in many ways, two of which are closely related but may seem to represent opposing extremes. In one, there's a twelve hundred year history of regional and tribal conflict motivating all involved to occasionally run up the flag and start slitting throats; while, in the other, it's a Russian response to Bond level international villainy seeking to develop post soviet Ukrainian national socialism into the armored fist enforcing their vision of an eugenics driven, feudalist, state on the world in general and Europe in particular.

In fact, however, it doesn't really matter which combination of what factors most closely describes why or how things got to where they are - there's a very simple and effective way to end this particular eruption for decades to come.

The new American administration can offer both sides a deal under which:

• the U.S. agrees to withdraw from NATO within eight months;
• Russia pulls its troops back to its pre-war borders;
• Ukraine withdraws its forces from all areas in dispute;
• both sides renounce all support for guerrilla actions by partisans within the disputed areas and agree to jointly finance para-military peacekeeping activities in those areas to be organized and managed by the governments, or quasi-governments, in place;

  the United States, Russia, and the Ukraine announce their support for the right of the populations of any well defined, longer term, political jurisdiction to choose their own current and future associations;

• the agreement specifies that a new vote on language and larger political affiliations will be held in the disputed areas within three years - pending the outcome of which they will remain in the Russian federation with government and education conducted in Russian; and,
• the United States agrees to make monies already allocated by Congress for the purchase of military goods and services for the Ukraine available on a lend-lease basis for the purchase of industrial goods and services in the United States for use in any of the disputed areas.

Do this and six things happen:

1. the killing mostly stops and huge numbers of Ukrainian families avoid either starving or freezing to death this winter while a significant number (estimated at upwards of 100,000) armed forces personnel drawn from both sides aren't killed and about three times as many aren't wounded;
2. the Russian federation would claim a major win but irretrievably lose popular support, and so ultimately its territories, if they did anything other than move immediately to providing extensive post war support to Crimea and the border republics - all of whom have voted multiple times for Moscow over Kiev and can be counted on to do so again if treated fairly now;
3. those currently in control in Kiev would also claim victory while deciding whether to take their monies and run, or fight an ultimately losing battle to hold their positions in what would, in their hands, quickly became a minor agricultural country;
4. the first half of Tom Clancy's Bear and Dragoon scenario in which China attempts to take the northern resource area from the Russian federation would become considerably less likely; while the second half, an eventual Russian-American alliance against China, would become more credible;
5. the political uproar associated with the withdrawal in the United States would combine with the availability of the resources previously committed to western Europe to greatly increase China's perceived risk in going after Taiwan or the Philippines - and the entire progressive "russia russia russia" thing (which I believe was initiated and pursued precisely to prevent a Russian-American alliance against China) would first blow up to hurricane level and then blow over; and,
6. western Europe, left on its own, would both rejoice and trash around in belligerent panic before eventually settling down to develop strong and interlocking trade with both Ukraine and the Russian federation - probably leading, and in not that many years, to a much larger, and far less bureaucratically constrained, version of the original European common market.

Example 2: Gaza: the tarbaby option

The most basic issue Israel and the world face with respect to Gaza is that the UN has encouraged the refugee mentality to fester there for more than four generations. As a result there are no, or very few, civilians in Gaza - there are lots of dispirited people trying to keep their heads down, but there's no realistic hope of an organized internal resistance to Hamas capable of taking power to end the conflict and enforce a long term peace;

One of the consequences of this is that every terrorist killed today will be replaced within a a few years by younger men made angrier, and correspondingly more vicious, in response to local and worldwide support for a cause that, realistically, doesn't extend beyond killing jews.

Given that all of the more widely known proposed solutions have been tried before -and without success both in the specific context set by Israel's conflicts with its neighbors and in other areas around the world where partially similar boundary and cultural conflicts have led to sporadic outbreaks of violence spanning, in many cases, hundreds of years- any hope for lasting peace in the area seems impossibly naive.

In reality, however, this particular gordian knot can be cut by applying a variation on the adage about using a thief to catch a thief.

Turkiye's present government, led by former president Obama's best international friend, Tayyip Erdogan, has ambitions as a regional political and religious power; has expressed vociferous support for Hamas; has been expanding its military; happily bombs it's own Kurdish population; and stands out as one of the UN's most committed Israel haters - so inviting Turkiye to enforce the peace while providing civil administration in Gaza might seem stupid beyond belief; but it isn't.

The fact is that no foreign administration, no matter how friendly and politically aligned, can bring peace to Gaza because those who now hold power there, however fragmented, will not give it up. What they'll do instead is leverage tribal loyalties, population hatreds, and UN weaknesses to maintain and extend their own positions - and if Turkiye is brought in as an administrator for Gaza those people will welcome Turkiye with open arms and stunning TV oriented parades before settling down to bringing the simmering conflict between Iran and Turkiye to a boil, refocusing their own hatreds on Turkiye instead of Israel, and forcing Turkiye into an ever escalating military and financial commitment to Gaza while frustrating its hopes of using Gaza as a strategic asset for the exercise of regional political and religious power.

Erdogan and his advisors aren't stupid and will see the trap, but are unlikely to survive politically if they refuse a public UN request - meaning that the request should fairly quickly be followed by Turkish troops on the ground, a ceasefire, the return of any hostages still alive, and jubilation among Israel haters everywhere.

In all likelihood, however, the haters will be badly disappointed as Turkiye's early successes in Gaza turn into disaster; Israeli troops largely redeploy to other borders; and, Israel discovers that where neither international morality nor its nuclear deterrent meant anything against Hamas and Hezbollah it can now hold Turkiye at risk for Palestinian actions - meaning that the religious extremists in places like Tehran, Lebanon, or the terrorist centers in the Yemen would suddenly face a very different strategic calculus across the middle east.

 

Example 3: Advice for Danielle Smith in Alberta

Background

Danielle Smith is the conservative premier (think Governor) of the Canadian province of Alberta. She made her political bones by doing a kind of "Mrs Smith goes to Washington" act as a member of the Calgary School board. The Alberta Teacher's Association [ATA] is currently in negotiations with the provincial government and major school boards on a new multi-year contract.

In the past the ATA has been seen as aligned with the idealogue wing of Canada's progressives, known as the New Democratic Party or NDP. It is my opinion - and this is a personal opinion or guess, not something based on personal knowledge of the players or inside information - that there are people on, or assisting with, both negotiating teams who detest the conservative government in general and Danielle Smith in particular, and would cheerfully foment a painful teacher's strike followed by a bad deal to ensure active educational community support for the NDP in the next provincial election. Again, however, let me stress that this is a statement of opinion, not a statement of fact - if, however, we assume that this is in ballpark of right then the advice below follows.

Right now about half of Alberta's new teachers leave the profession within five years of graduation. The key drivers for this are:

1. the typical classroom has some students who are well in advance of their grade level, some who mostly meet grade level expectations, and some who cannot or will not meet grade level expectations;

   The main reasons for this are DIE thinking and the social pass - under which the disruptive are never punished, kids with the right skin color are advantaged (and whites disadvantaged) and kids who cannot read, write, or behave civilly eventually receive high school diplomas.

   What this means for teachers, however, is that they have to teach to several different curriculae in the same class at the same time, cannot adequately control their classrooms; and find themselves unable to help marginal cases.

2. current salaries aren't actually unreasonable but are seen as unreasonable by classroom teachers comparing the stress and time demands of their jobs both to imagined jobs in other sectors and, more importantly, to real ones held by administrative and school board staff and consultants; and,
3. teaching skills transfer well to areas like sales and many apparently appealing opportunities are, correspondingly, open to teachers looking for alternatives at comparable or better nominal pay scales.

So what to do?

Money is not now a critical issue for the province and won't, given the expected American renaissance under the Trump and Vance administrations, be one for the next few years either; but the erosion in educational standards and demoralization in the teaching professions at all levels is.

So here's what the government could do: make the ATA an extremely generous, and very public, offer in the range of a 15% immediate increase on current gross compensation plus a further 5% for each year on a five year contract covering all classroom staff. There would be three stipulations:

1. the immediate increase goes only to people spending at least 3.5 hours per working day in the classroom with non teaching staff getting no immediate increase in base pay and a smaller annual increase over the contract term;
2. the ATA and school boards commit to working with the government to eliminate all DIE considerations, starting with the "social pass", by the end of August 2026;
3. the ATA and school boards commit to working with the government to formally embrace performance based assignment of students to classes in order to separate students within grades according to their willingness and ability to meet grade and other standards; and,
4. assuring the school boards and the public that the new monies will come from provincial general revenues, not property taxes.

The net effects will be to vastly improve education in Alberta by:

1. creating internal pressures within the educational community to prioritize classroom practice over administration - reversing the long term trend in which teachers seeking respite from classrooms push to expand school board and other administrative staffing;
2. bringing relief and opportunity to Alberta's better (smarter, hard working) students;
3. making it possible for teachers to help at least some of the slower students achieve behavioral and educational norms;
4. greatly increasing teacher retention and job satisfaction; and,
5. defanging the ATA as a major source of money, vocal support, and volunteers for the NDP.