Monday NatSec Roundup

In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes.

• Drezner makes a practical case for impeachment. I’m not sure I’m buying any cases for impeachment at this point, but it helps when you when you go in with a full appreciation that Trump will not be removed from office.
• Say what you will about Rexy, he hasn’t pretended as if some bullshit selective code of honor keeps him from talking about his old boss. There’s a straight-shooting* Warrior Monk who might learn a couple of things from Rex…
• China is selling submarines to Thailand. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the Sino-Russian relationship seems to be going well at the moment, but there are a lot of areas where Moscow and Beijing are going to come into conflict. Arms sales is one of them, as China basically can’t help but cut into one of Russia’s last exports of any technological significance.
• More Rafales to India. The official handing over of the first aircraft will apparently happen on October 8; I know I’ll be having a party that night!
• China is focused on the Bashi Channel and the Miyako Strait, waterways that give the PLAN access to the Pacific.
• Interesting stuff on negative attitudes towards international arms sales. I suspect that if you broke this down by country (Saudi vs. Denmark, for example) you’d get some pretty wide variation, but nevertheless quite interesting.

*Straight-shooting only ever applies to Democratic administrations.