On the menu today: Why the Biden administration’s decision to spend $190 million on 20 miles of fencing in south Texas is less than meets the eye — and not quite the flip-flop that many media organizations are portraying it as. Plus, a deep dive into whether Russia could afford another mass mobilization of conscripts and try to beat Ukraine in a long, bloody, drawn-out war of attrition.
Biden, the Wall, and Russia
I had planned for today’s newsletter to cover the Biden administration’s decision to build an additional 20 miles of border fencing in Starr County, Texas. But the editors have weighed in already this morning, and upon closer look, this move is the opposite of a Transformer — it’s less than meets the eye.
The Biden administration didn’t really announce the move to great fanfare so much as make the legally required public notice in the Federal Register. The Associated Press noticed, which led to news coverage, which led to reporters at the White House asking President Biden what had changed. It looked like, and still technically is, a violation of then-candidate Biden’s promise, from August 2020, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration.”
Yesterday, Biden insisted nothing had changed, and it looked like the president was his usual doddering self, oblivious to decisions within his own administration. But the explanation from Biden and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas actually checks out. This isn’t a change in policy so much as an effort to avoid breaking the law, and maybe avoid the political headaches that would stem from the administration not spending money on border fencing that DHS is legally required to spend.
Back in the 2019 fiscal year, Congress appropriated $1.375 billion “for the construction of primary pedestrian fencing, including levee pedestrian fencing, in the Rio Grande Valley” to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
When Congress provides funds and specifies their purpose in such a manner, a federal agency can’t just decide, “Eh, we’re just going to spend that money on surveillance drones instead” — or at least it’s difficult to do that without getting caught and facing the consequences that come from defying Congress. (You may recall the number of times Pentagon officials have complained that Congress makes them buy weapons systems that the lawmakers think are the best and most needed, as opposed to what the professional warfighters think are the best and most needed.)
Back in June, CBP announced in a press release that it had “an estimated $190 million remaining in FY 2019 funding. The administration continues to call on Congress to cancel or reappropriate remaining border barrier funding and instead fund smarter border security measures, like border technology and modernization of land ports of entry, that are proven to be more effective at improving safety and security at the border. Until and unless Congress cancels these funds, the law requires DHS to use the funds consistent with their appropriated purpose.”
Congress never got around to canceling or reappropriating that money, and so the administration had no choice but to get started on building border fencing. In the eyes of Biden, Mayorkas, and presumably the DHS lawyers, their hands are tied.
Thus, the characterizations of this move as a “flip-flop,” “about-face,” “U-Turn,” etcetera aren’t quite right. When you see the Biden administration spending money that it isn’t legally required to spend on fencing, then it’s a flip-flop.
And if this move represented some dramatic reversal in the administration’s policy . . . wouldn’t it want to spend more than $190 million on building more than 20 miles of fencing? About a year ago, the administration authorized work to close four wide gaps in the wall near Yuma, Ariz. That move garnered some news coverage, but no one treated it as a dramatic reversal of Biden policies.
With that said, the language used by Mayorkas in the Federal Register this week wouldn’t sound all that different from what you would find in a release from a GOP presidential campaign:
The United States Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector is an area of “high illegal entry.” As of early August 2023, Border Patrol had encountered over 245,000 such entrants attempting to enter the United States between ports of entry in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Fiscal Year 2023.
Therefore, I must use my authority under section 102 of IIRIRA to install additional physical barriers and roads in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. . . .
There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas. . . .
And I can’t blame anyone for initially thinking that Biden was just casually abandoning a campaign promise again. About a week ago, Biden broke his promise to block any new offshore drilling for oil and gas.
Can Russia Mobilize More Troops?
Yesterday’s Corner post, laying out that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is, so far, something in between a complete failure and a resounding victory, raises a natural follow-up question: Is Russia going to counter by flooding the battlefields with another massive wave of conscripts and just outlast Ukraine in a war of attrition?
First, some perspective on the numbers. Back in August, U.S. officials estimated that when you add up all of Russia’s soldiers, paramilitary outfits, and mercenaries, it has 1.3 million personnel in the battle theater. The Ukrainians have around 500,000 troops, including active-duty, reserve, and paramilitary troops.
And that ominous two-and-a-half-to-one ratio persists even after the Ukrainians have inflicted jaw-dropping casualties on the Russian army. According to those same U.S. officials, “Russia’s military casualties . . . are approaching 300,000. The number includes as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops.” For perspective, the U.S. recorded 58,220 military fatalities during the Vietnam War, which lasted almost 20 years. In other words, in about 18 months, Russia has suffered two Vietnam Wars’ worth of fatalities.
Ukraine has suffered a bit more than a Vietnam War; those same U.S. officials estimated that Ukraine had suffered “close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.” Those losses are felt everywhere. As you may recall from my coverage in Ukraine, the relatively small city of Kovel, far from the front in the northwestern corner of the country, had buried 47 local men killed in the war.
Last month, the Russian government — obviously, not the most reliable source — said it would not mobilize reserves:
The fall military call-up will begin as scheduled on Oct. 1 and no conscripts will be sent to fight in Ukraine during their 12-month training period, he added. Russia enlisted 147,000 men during this year’s spring call-up.” The Russian government said this year’s conscripts will not be used in the “special military operation,” which is their preferred term for what I think is more accurately labeled an “unprovoked unjustifiable war-crime-laden invasion of conquest.
(Also note that Russia is now conscripting men from the four annexed regions of Ukraine, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. If you’re going to force a man to serve in your army, you had better make sure he’s on your side. Otherwise, you’re just recruiting saboteurs.)
You can see one strategy the Russians might pursue — conscript more and more men, throw them into a bloody meat grinder of a war, and just outlast the Ukrainians through sheer numbers and attrition. But that would be a slow and costly approach. Conscripts are nowhere near as effective as professionally trained soldiers, and their primary motivation is to not get killed by the enemy or their own commanding officers. A Russian conscript is certainly much less motivated than a Ukrainian who believes that if he doesn’t fight and win, his country will be conquered and all the women he knows will get raped. It also takes time to train a conscript, which means you can’t expect them to get to the front and fight effectively anytime soon. You can skimp on the training, but that usually just gets you more dead conscripts.
Also note that every man that the Russian government conscripts and send to Ukraine is a man who can’t do other work on the home front. (Russia’s oil and natural-gas industries need a whole lot of military-age men to keep operating.) The Russian economy is already in rough shape, the ruble is plummeting, and the defense budget has tripled.
There’s a perception that Putin, like most dictators, can simply order something and it happens. And that’s largely true, but there are limits. The short-lived coup of Yevgeny Prigozhin demonstrates that anger and frustration with the status quo of the war can flare up in unexpected ways. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the Russian people will suddenly rise up and overthrow Putin. But over the course of their sad and brutal history, the Russian people have perfected the art of learning how to drag their feet when obeying the whims of a tyrant.
In March 2024, Russia will hold its presidential elections, and Vladimir Putin will win a fifth term. These aren’t free and fair elections. But in every “election,” the Russian people show up and go through the motions of casting ballots, and Putin would prefer for public discontent to be low and patriotism to be high. If nothing else, Putin would probably rather not announce a massive new mobilization right before an election designed to show the Russian people still love and adore him.
That’s the optimistic assessment — that the costs of the war have grown so great that Putin can’t order another mass mobilization without putting more pressure on Russian society and its economy than it can withstand. Sure, Russia could theoretically win a war of attrition, but along the way, it would grow so expensive in blood and treasure that even Vladmir Putin might not hold onto power.
Then there’s the pessimistic assessment. A little while ago, I was sent this account by Sergei Chernyshov, published at the Russia Post, describing modern life in Russia’s small communities, and how if you’re one of the young men who signs up with Wagner and lives through your service, a usually bitter life can be pretty sweet for a while.
So, overall, the people have not lost anything. They have nothing special to lose.
But what did they get? They got a lot. First of all, money. So much money.
In my wife’s hometown (not as big as ours, but much more industrial), one man came home with three million rubles, which he and his friends spent in 10 days. Three hundred thousand a day for the guys — limitless alcohol and prostitutes. That is life! Those who have families, meanwhile, come home and go to the sea, buy apartments, upgrade their cars.
Secondly, they get to feel like they are part of something great. Just as our grandfathers defeated fascism, we are defeating Nazism in Ukraine (or whatever is there now). At the same time, we are beating the gays, the Jews, the entire collective West, Freemasons, everyone. Those who are older rejoice at the revival of the pioneers, military training in schools, school uniforms and generally all the fixtures of their youth. It’s about time, or else today’s youth would completely let themselves go! And all these gains without any effort at all, usually without even getting up from the couch.
Yesterday’s notorious thug can be tomorrow’s hometown hero if he lives though his service with Wagner. And remember that Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has declared, “Sacrifice in the course of carrying out your military duty washes away all sins.”
Telling your followers that if they’re killed fighting the enemy, they’ll awaken and find themselves rewarded in blissful paradise? If ISIS were still around in a serious way, it would sue for copyright infringement.
ADDENDUM: Thanks to everyone who has generously contributed to our webathon.