Playing Politics With the Pentagon Always Ends Poorly

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Today’s Agenda

• Military blockades are dangerous and petty.
• Azerbaijan’s victors should hold the confetti.
• $2 gasoline promises should make Texas sweaty.
• UK landlords are looking rather unsteady.

Tommy’s Magic Bean Problem

Picture this: You work at a magic bean factory in Washington, DC. You’re the Senior Assistant to the Sorcerer of Bean Defense. Your primary job is quality control — making sure the non-magical beans are plucked out of the pile before they get put on the conveyor belt. You’re very, very good at your job. You’ve been at the helm of 427 bean interventions since you started your position, and you even got on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Legume List of Legends last year. You’ve been nominated to take over the US Spellworking Cannellini Command — a Miami-based outpost that involves negotiating with magic bean farmers in Latin America and the Caribbean. It’s a prestigious promotion, but it has to get the green light from the Black Magic Bean Board of Approval before it becomes official.

Already, some objections to your nomination are beginning to surface. You see, your boss — the Sorcerer — isn’t exactly popular. “He should be canned — just like our beans!” you overheard in the break room the other day. Still: You earned this promotion! And bean jobs are so deeply intertwined. The warlock you’re replacing in Miami? He’s slated to become the Supreme Allied Commander of the Northern Bean Treaty Organization. The incoming officer that’s set to take your place? She can’t move to Magic Bean HQ unless you’re in your new post. In other words: If you don’t get promoted, the entire magical bean operation gets put on hold.

This is pretty much what nearly happened to James Stavridis in 2006 when he was nominated to become a four-star admiral to take over the Miami-based US Southern Command. “As the first Navy officer ever named to that post, I was proud, excited and a bit intimidated by the responsibilities ahead. But as I went through weeks of preparation for my testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which had to approve the promotion (and roughly 50,000 others each year), a few storm clouds appeared on the horizon.” You see, not many people liked James’s boss, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But after running through the logistics, it became clear that there would be significant national security concerns if James’s nomination didn’t go through. Without him in Miami, “efforts to rescue American hostages held by the terrorists there would likewise grind to a halt,” he explained. Plus, they were in the midst two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — leaving an empty post at NATO wasn’t an option. So James was granted permission and all was right in the world.

That is, until this year. Perhaps you’ve heard about Senator Tommy Tuberville’s decision to put a freeze on military promotions because of a Pentagon policy he claims facilitates abortions. It’s a situation that’s “hundreds of times worse” than what happened to James in 2006, “because one Republican senator from Alabama is using an arcane legislative rule to effectively put a hold on promotions for hundreds of generals and admirals.” Luckily, Chuck Schumer seems to understand this — or perhaps he read James’s column today and was inspired to act. This afternoon, the Senate Majority Leader began to push through Tuberville’s blockade by slating a smattering of nomination votes this week. Read the whole thing , which will cost you exactly zero magic beans because it’s free.

One-Day War

Although yesterday’s conflict in Azerbaijan may have felt like the shortest war in history, it wasn’t. That distinction goes the little known Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896, which lasted a grand total of 40 minutes. By my rough calculations, Azerbaijan’s victory over the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh took about 22 hours longer than that.

On Tuesday, President Ilham Aliyev decided to launch a “local anti-terrorist operation” against the predominantly ethnic-Armenian region, and by Wednesday, after over 30 people had been killed and 200 others wounded, the fighters agreed to lay down their weapons in a deal that was brokered by Russian peacekeepers. “Handled right, this could be positive, ending more than three decades of often bloody conflict. But given the dispute’s brutal history, that will demand uncommon self-restraint on the part of the Azeris,” Marc Champion writes .

Sadly, this isn’t the first wartime rodeo for Armenia and Azerbaijan. “The struggle over Karabakh has been underway on and off since before the 1991 collapse of the former Soviet Union. There have been two wars, near-constant skirmishes, tens of thousands of deaths and bouts of ethnic cleansing by both sides,” Marc explains.

Now, maybe you’re thinking: “The Nagorno-Karaba—wha??” And you’d be forgiven for that: “Most Americans have probably never heard of that disputed region in the Caucasus,” Hal Brands wrote way back in 2020, when the second war broke out. But James Stavridis made it clear back then that “what may seem to many Westerners a minor clash in a remote corner of the world actually has significant implications for regional security [and] energy markets.” Since the ’90s, many things have changed within the region. Azerbaijan went through a major gas and oil boom, boosting the nation’s economic standing. Armenia struggled to keep up with that progress, and its neighboring ally Russia wasn’t super pleased to see a popular revolt lead to Nikol Pashinyan’s prime ministership in 2018.

After that, “Armenia’s Russian security umbrella began to look leaky,” Marc explains. Now that Putin is engaged in a “special military operation” of his own, that so-called umbrella has pretty much been torn to shreds . The flow of food, medicine and arms that Russia previously supplied the corridor that connects Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia has slowed to a trickle since the start of the year.

Although the cease-fire is welcome news, an “agreement must be reached in talks that are set to begin Thursday, giving some guarantee of safety to Karabakh’s ethnic-Armenians,” Marc writes, noting that “the fact that Azerbaijan denied striking civilian targets on Tuesday, even as footage showed bombs landing in urban centers, does not bode well.” Read the whole thing , free from the paywall.

$2 Gasoline Dreams

Hmmmmmm:

Today, 2024 presidential hopeful Florida Governor Ron DeSantis visited the unofficial shale capital of America: Midland, Texas. The most buzzy part of his speech was his pledge to get $2 gasoline prices in first year in office. While it’s certainly true that oil prices have surged over the past three months and inflation is still top of mind for voters, as Conor Sen charts , it’s not exactly a wise (or logistical) campaign strategy. “The US has only seen average $2 pump prices on a nominal basis three times in the past 15 years. None of them will be remembered fondly by the US oil industry,” Liam Denning writes (another free read!). In real terms, we haven’t had $2 gas since 2004, when Usher’s "Yeah! " was blasting on your Sony Walkman:

“The superficially beguiling logic of DeSantis’s plan to unleash US production and thereby slash pump prices” is completely unrealistic in the current crude landscape, Liam explains. Frackers have put the volatile shale boom behind them, opting to establish sustainable business models instead. DeSantis’s proposal, which involves drilling on federal lands, dropping the federal pump tax and easing fuel-efficiency requirements, amounts to an incoherent US energy policy that will result in more, not less, dependence on foreign oil imports. If that happens, the only freedom he’s gonna fuel is anger.

Telltale Charts

Merryn Somerset Webb says nobody wants to be a landlord in the UK anymore because no sane person wants to refinance their mortgage (which was 0.1% when they took it out) with current rates hovering around 5.25%. Although UK property rents are rising at one of the fastest rates on record, she says a record number of buy-to-let investors are planning to sell . Many of them are unwilling to spend their money on added tax and regulatory costs, such as abiding to new net-zero rules. But Lara Williams says such regulations are non-negotiable if Britain wants to maintain its place as a climate leader. The UK is woefully behind on properly insulating its homes compared with the rest of Europe . As it stands, a house in the British countryside is losing heat up to three times faster than one in western Europe.

If you had to steal a car, which would it be? The hypothetical lot you can choose from has a BMW, an Audi, a Tesla, a Mercedes-Benz, a Ford and a Land Rover. It’s the Tesla, right? Yeahhh, I knew it. But the thing is, true criminals are choosing Land Rovers because they’re far easier to break into. “I’m no Tesla Inc. fanboy, but Elon Musk’s company goes the extra mile on security, and theft rates are low ,” Chris Bryant writes. That’s an impressive feat, considering how the car theft crime wave is pretty much at high tide right now in the UK , the US , Canada and Germany .

Further Reading

AI is about to revolutionize health care. — Lisa Jarvis

People who run public companies shouldn’t live in glass houses . — Matt Levine

China’s disappearing generals could poison the economy. — Minxin Pei

Linda Yaccarino is getting sabotaged by Elon Musk. — Dave Lee

Taiwan’s not about to buy into the “Chinese Dream .” — Karishma Vaswani

Good inflation news won’t ruffle the Bank of England’s feathers. — Marcus Ashworth

In China's backyard, all eyes are on Jay Powell . — Daniel Moss

The SCOTUS ruling over social media execs deserves a close look. — Noah Feldman

ICYMI

The worst retail job in America.

The US is doing free Covid tests again.

Neuralink is looking for volunteers.

Half of Miami’s officials are under investigation .

Book bans have reached an all-time high.

Kickers

San Diego’s sea lions don’t like your selfies.

There should be an Olympics in sleeping .

Lana Del Rey explains her viral Waffle House shift .

Kraft Singles are a choking hazard .

Hollywood set designers are pivoting to real estate .

Bonus Chart

In case you needed a reminder about how you are just a tiny speck in the universe that will never, ever be able to experience everything that life has to offer, Businessweek’s Daniela Sirtori-Cortina calculated that there are more than 383 billion different possibilities at Starbucks just for a latte. The options aren’t infinite, she writes, “but you’ll never try all of them.”