While Havana’s forced conscriptions is a new development in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, recruiting Cuban soldiers is an age-old Kremlin practice previously used by the Soviet Union. In its story last September, ADN Cuba quoted Cuban former political prisoner Luis Zuniga as saying that it’s worth reminding the [Cuban] regime that they have indeed functioned as mercenaries. The Soviets paid them for every soldier sent to fight in Angola and Ethiopia. Unfortunately, Ukraine’s troops can expect to face more Cubans on the battlefield. Last week, Cuba’s straw president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, who takes his orders from Communist Party Chairman Raul Castro, met with Mr. Putin at the Kremlin at the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. The two leaders celebrated the long Soviet-era alliance between Havana and Moscow and condemned the U.S. as a common enemy. While both leaders condemned U.S. sanctions on the Cuban military dictatorship, the real purpose of the visit, is negotiating more Cuban conscriptions in exchange for Russian military intelligence reinforcement and loan forgiveness for oil for Havana’s failing military dictatorship. While some on the fringe right continue to suggest that today’s Russia has evolved from the days of Soviet brutality, they should take note that Mr. Putin and Mr. Diaz-Canel do not distinguish the two and instead celebrate them in the same breath. That is because unlike those fringe Americans foolish enough to embrace Kremlin propaganda, Mr. Putin has never distinguished today’s Russia from its Soviet ancestor ? and he will continue to sacrifice both Russians and Cubans on the battlefield to fulfill his dream of reconstituting “the new evil empire.”

Vladimir Putin is getting desperate. The embattled Russian leader’s dream of reconstituting the Soviet Union has proved more difficult than he anticipated. Mr. Putin recently replaced Sergei Shoigyu, his longtime ally and defense minister, with an economist, signaling that his illegal invasion of Ukraine is causing a financial drain on the country. A recent assessment by the British government estimates that the Kremlin has suffered 450,000 casualties since the war began. While Mr. Putin continues to saber rattle his nuclear arsenal on the world stage to veil his fear of defeat, he is quietly mitigating Russian troop losses by conscripting young Cubans into his armed forces. To date, as many as an estimated 5,000 young Cubans have been lured to Eastern Europe with false promises of lucrative work contracts and Russian passports but are instead being forced to fight for Russia’s army. This plan was initially revealed in September by The Moscow Times and ADN Cuba, and later amplified by Politico, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC. Politico reported that Mr. Putin signed a November 2022 decree fast-tracking naturalization to foreigners signing up as contract soldiers. While the Journal estimates the number of Cubans conscripted to fight for Russia at between 400 and 3,000, ADN America reported last week that the number is closer to 5,000. When news of Mr. Putin’s recruitment of young Cubans broke, Havana tried to cover up the forced conscriptions by saying they were the result of an external trafficking ring. That lie was dispelled after some abducted Cubans gave their testimonials to loved ones and the press.

Recently, Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward Markey of Massachusetts revealed that automobiles sold in the United States with a GPS or emergency call system accumulate the travel data of the vehicle on computer chips in the vehicle and the vehicle manufacturers have remote access to the computer chips. The senators complained that the computer chips in late-model vehicles retain the records of the location and driving habits of the operator of each vehicle. One probably expects some of this, as most GPS systems ask if you are looking for directions to a location to which you have traveled in the past. That request on your dashboard should trigger the observation that the vehicle’s computer chip has stored the requests you have entered in the GPS. But it doesn’t stop with a record of your GPS requests. What the two senators revealed was truly startling. The computer chips record every movement and speed of the vehicle, and some vehicles ? those equipped with certain sensors and exterior cameras ? also record the surroundings of the location of the vehicle. Both senators complained that Americans largely do not know that the manufacturer of the vehicle they drive has remote access to the computer chips in the vehicle, and most Americans are largely unaware that the vehicle manufacturers make this data available to the government without a search warrant. Is this constitutional? In a word, no. Some have argued that the culprits regarding these computer chips are the vehicle manufacturers. They are wrong. The culprit is the government. What we have here is the slow, silent erosion of personal liberty.

Some students in top schools find they are better off not attending, despite having been admitted. the benefits of higher education no longer exceed the costs, the excess costs are borne by the taxpayers and the students and their families, which reduces everyone’s standard of living. It has long been known that the typical government job (with many exceptions) costs more than similar private sector jobs because of lack of proper incentives and management, and thus does not meet the test of the highest and best use of taxpayer dollars. As government grows as a share of gross domestic product, more workers depend on government for their jobs. Productivity-increasing tools and practices in government tend to lag far behind those in the private sector. Budgets are loaded with vanity projects of government bureaucrats and elected officials. When the government wastes money on counterproductive regulations or things that are unnecessary or overpriced, it reduces the real incomes of all. These unnecessary costs show up in higher taxes and inflation. The U.S. and most other developed countries have reached the point where fewer and fewer highly productive workers are supporting more and more workers whose costs are greater than the benefits of their activities. It is possible to have a definitionally full-employment economy (where many dropped out of the labor force and are no longer counted) where people become poorer and poorer as a result of the negative wealth producers overwhelming the positive wealth producers. Is America destined to stagnate and collapse like the Soviet Union?

Imaging machines are revolutionizing dentistry, joint replacement and heart surgery by enabling doctors to do most procedures with much greater precision and speed, saving lives and time, and reducing pain. Given these spectacular advances, why isn’t this showing up in higher average incomes? The workers that provide the biggest benefit to others in terms of income and prospects for a better life are elementary school teachers who teach children to read and write and basic arithmetic. Methods of teaching have advanced little over the decades even though basic education has enormous benefit. There has been little productivity gain, as bureaucracy has overwhelmed constructive innovation. Universities and colleges used to be wealth producers, taking unwashed students and giving them basic knowledge and tools to be more productive citizens. But professors’ productivity has plummeted, as teaching loads greatly shrunk and less time is spent on useful subjects and more time is spent on diversity, inclusion and equity. The schools have loaded their payrolls with people who are supposed to make sure that there is the “proper” percentage of Black men versus Asian women in the course on quantum mechanics and to monitor the faculty to make sure that none of them utters an unapproved opinion or fact. Of course, diversity is not a value when ability really counts, like on the school football team. Do you think that Japanese universities waste even a minute of valuable teaching and learning time on the alleged benefits of diversity? The result is that the cost of education has soared.

Do all jobs have the same value? More people working should lead to higher real incomes, except when the jobs are destroying wealth. Wages have been rising, but prices are rising even faster. So the average working person is getting poorer in real terms. When the Soviet Union existed, the communists-socialists would brag about having full employment, in that all were guaranteed jobs. The problem was that many of the jobs created no real wealth and in fact were a drag on the economy, and as a result, real incomes were falling, leading to the economic collapse. (Old Soviet joke: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”) Many people are enormously productive in that they create real wealth, which benefits everyone. Those who design, build, distribute and market smartphones and tablets produce products that replace far less efficient and much more costly products of the past (e.g., the cellphone camera). Almost all areas of manufacturing are showing major productivity gains, and this is likely to accelerate as robots become more advanced and AI slashes the cost of information. Eventually, the world will move to almost all-electric vehicles (just not as fast as some claim, because batteries still need much improvement, as does the entire electrical grid). Electric vehicles are much less complex than gasoline-powered cars and will require far fewer workers to make them ― which has caused a certain panic in the labor unions, partially resulting in the current strikes over job protection. The combination of artificial intelligence and advanced devices and materials is already having a huge positive impact on medicine.

The Chinese military envisions its carriers as the forward elements of a comprehensive operational system incorporating air, missile and maritime power against America’s carrier strike groups. As such, it is developing the procedures and doctrine to integrate its air and rocket forces into maritime operations within and just beyond the “near seas,” or what the West calls the first island chain ? which includes the Japanese archipelago, the Ryukyu Islands, the Kuril Islands, the northern Philippines, Taiwan and Borneo. Those efforts are in the early stages, but the Chinese military’s joint operations are improving, and the Fujian will play a key role in shaping those efforts over the next two to three years. More importantly, the lessons learned will be applied to employing the Type 004 and later carriers that will enter service between 2028 and 2030. Equally important, the PLAN’s aircraft carrier construction choices and force structure will signal China’s maritime goals and intentions. More immediately, the Type 004 will have an air wing, battle space management and flight operations capabilities approaching those of the Ford class. It most likely will be conventionally powered and lack the American carriers’ strategic mobility and endurance. But those won’t be decisive factors in the waters of the South China Sea and areas close to China. But constructing a nuclear-powered carrier will signal China’s naval ambitions extend far beyond the “near seas.” Those carriers’ combat capabilities and strategic mobility will match our Navy carriers and be capable of challenging U.S. naval power in the Central Pacific and other waters far from U.S. soil.

The de Gaulle’s nuclear power gives it greater strategic reach, but once it is in the operating area, the Fujian will enjoy the advantage of greater battle space management and aerial striking power. Its air wing will be larger, with 50 to 60 aircraft versus 30 to 40 on current carriers. In addition, the Fujian’s air wing will include the tanking and airborne early warning and control system aircraft that the British aircraft carriers lack. That will enable the Fujian to launch its strikes from longer ranges or with greater ordnance loads; and direct its operations and those of its accompanying strike group more effectively. Finally, it is faster than the de Gaulle, sailing at 32 knots versus 27 knots, which offers many advantages in combat and conditions of slow to no wind. Thus, the Fujian reflects a trend that portends a coming challenge that the United States cannot ignore. Its sea trials and subsequent operations will serve as experiments to refine the PLAN’s vision for its aircraft carrier force. The coming Type 004 aircraft carrier is expected to have tactical combat capabilities approaching if not equal to those of the latest U.S. Navy aircraft carriers when the first unit enters service before this decade’s end. The Fujian’s combat power may be inferior to that of Ford-class carriers, but it would be a mistake to discount its capabilities. It should be viewed as a potential contribution to China’s military options in the areas where Beijing has been aggressively pressing its maritime claims. In those waters, the Fujian will enjoy air and ballistic missile support in the East and South China seas as well as the waters around Taiwan.

China’s national television, print and social media have released the latest pictures of the country’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, a designated CV-18 that is conducting its first underway sea trials. China state media will hype its capabilities while some Western commentators will note its shortcomings. Both perspectives, however, miss the carrier’s significance. As the country’s first indigenously designed and catapult-assisted takeoff and arrested recovery aircraft carrier, it represents a major step forward in the People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN, expansion and modernization program. The Fujian itself does not pose a major challenge to the U.S. Navy’s dominance in open ocean naval operations. Its air wing, however, will be more powerful and have greater reach than any European aircraft carrier in service. Moreover, with China’s fourth carrier nearing launch by the end of this year, the Fujian should be viewed as an advanced concept and doctrinal development platform intended to prepare the PLAN for the day when it becomes a global maritime force. While the PLAN has embarked on large-scale and comparatively rapid growth in size and capabilities, it has taken a conservative and evolutionary approach to doing so. Each class of ship, including its carriers, has been incrementally better than its predecessors. The Fujian’s electromagnetic aircraft launch system, or EMALS, does represent a major technical advancement, but its air wing and offensive strike capabilities are far below those of the United States’ latest Nimitz ? and Ford-class carriers but superior to those of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth-class vessels and France’s aircraft carrier the Charles de Gaulle, Europe’s two most powerful carriers.

What followed was the speed with which China and the U.S. normalized relations. Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong approached the U.S., convinced that enlisting a faraway enemy against a nearby enemy was the best strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union. Mao invited President Richard Nixon, who also distrusted the Soviet Union, to China. In February 1972, during Nixon’s visit to China, China and the U.S. agreed to a Shanghai Communique that committed the U.S. and China to work toward the normalization of relations. On Jan. 1, 1979, formal diplomatic relations were established, with Deng Xiaoping, who had replaced Mao as China’s paramount leader in 1978, agreeing to expand cooperation with the U.S. in collecting and sharing intelligence on the Soviet Union. CIA Director Stansfield Turner visited China in July 1981 to further discuss the Soviets’ December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. William Casey replaced Turner as CIA director and, Reagan administration officials collaborated to defeat the Soviet Union in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. And they were successful. Much of the success in Afghanistan in defeating the invading Soviet forces was because of China’s participation. Starting in 1982, China cooperated with the U.S. to provide weapons to the mujahedeen and training in China for their resistance fighters. China contributed significantly to the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. China’s distrust of the Soviet Union and its partnership with the U.S. to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan ― a prelude to the demise of the Soviet empire and end of the Cold War ― is in sharp relief to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s embrace of a revanchist Russian Federation and its dictator, Vladimir Putin.