h/tJerry Pournelle
Recently, the House passed, by an overwhelming margin, a resolution to condemn the Russian Federation for actions considered hostile and aggressive within its sphere of influence, specifically with regard to the politically torn country of Ukraine.
Ten Members voted “nay,” myself among them. I wish to explain why I took this unpopular position.
#2
The threats to America looming largest are, in order, radical Islamic terrorism and a still-Communist China, whose new economic power has emboldened its leadership to imagine that the ancient Middle Kingdom should control the world. The perils posed by Putin, if any, are not close.
How about that? A guy who gets it and a Californian to boot. I would have added illegal immigration. Putin might worry me if he was anywhere near as powerful as he'd like to be. But as it stands I see Obama as a much larger threat to me personally than I do Putin.
#3
I don't see the Middle Kingdom as ever being interesting in ruling the world, not 2000 years ago and not now. The Han have always had their hands full ruling the Middle Kingdom itself. (The Mongol in a burst of imperial enthusiasm swept out of North Asia, took over China briefly, conquered a good chunk of central Asia and far eastern Europe & then went back to horse herding. They're not Han.)
The closest historical effort to projection of global power from China was just prior to the voyage of Columbus when magnificent fleets of the then-Chinese navy made it as far as the east coast of Africa & the southern coast of Arabia. The entire navy was then disbanded by imperial order, and for centuries even the memory of such an effort was forgotten.
That being said, China is once more insisting on projecting its power to its old zones of influence: the western Pacific & Indochina among them. When I took Mandarin last year at the local university, one of the students was a Hmong girl born & raised in the USA, fluent in both midwestern English and her family's dialect, & another was an Indonesian / overseas Chinese about to graduate with a US degree and who intended to return home and take up the family business in Indonesia. The course faculty were probably all Party members, but that's another story. Educated Americans know too little about China.
#4
One fundamental difference between 'old' China and 'new' China is the new for resources to fuel their economy. I'm sure the Chinese military has consumed Alfred Thayer Mahan as much as any other national entity that's dependent upon sea transportation of goods.
#6
How useful is condemning a nation anyway? It's like the old trade embargo that makes you feel good but helps the dictators stay in power and grow their bank accounts.
Having a State Department that has the size and ability to articulate a foreign policy for the Department of Defense to follow would assist in this task immeasurably. The Department of Defense is a mission-oriented organization and should be taking its orders from the top, not making them up themselves as they go along.
#1
Having a State Department that has the size and ability to articulate a foreign policy for the Department of Defense to follow would assist in this task immeasurably.
Some would argue that State is far to big already. It doesn't help that there is a pompous dufus at the helm. Recent Secretary of States have not been strong, effective or respected in a dangerous world.
#2
The Department of Defense is a mission-oriented organization and should be taking its orders from the top, not making them up themselves as they go along.
Shall we talk about the procurement agencies?
This lack of a general fund of widely disseminated military information is perilous to the maintenance of civilian power in government. The civilian mind, presumably concerned with the maintenance of peace and the shaping of policies by the limits of efficient military defense, can derive no instruction from acrimonious disputes between militarists, limitless in their demands, and pacifists, lost in utopian visions. Where the civilians fail to comprehend and guide military policy, the true military men, distinguished from the militarists, are also imperiled. For these the executioners of civilian will, dedicated to the preparation of defense and war with the utmost regard for efficiency, are dependent upon the former.
Again, and again, the military men have seen themselves hurled into war by ambitions, passions, and blunders of civilian governments, almost wholly uninformed as to the limits of their military potentials and almost recklessly indifferent to the military requirements of the wars they let loose. Aware that they may again be thrown by civilians into an unforeseen conflict, perhaps with a foe they have not envisaged, these realistic military men find themselves unable to do anything save demand all the men, guns, and supplies they can possibly wring from the civilians, in the hope that they may be prepared or half prepared for whatever may befall them. In so doing they inevitably find themselves associated with militaristic military men who demand all they can get merely for the sake of having it without reference to ends.
Vagts, Alfred, History of Militarism, rev. 1959, Free Press, NY, pp 33-34.
#3
In so doing they inevitably find themselves associated with militaristic military men who demand all they can get merely for the sake of having it without reference to ends.
#4
Ask the Army grunt if he want an A-10 on call or something the fighter mafia promises in the future? If it meets the mission requirement, why screw with it? This is asking the guys who are still comfortable with the M2 (entered service in 1933).
#7
Yuuup, lets finally let the USAF be the US Aerospace Force = US Astro/Space/Star Force it wants to be.
To paraph "STARSHIP TROOPERS" RICO = "NAVY DOES THE FLYING, MOBILE INFANTRY DOES THE DYING"!
As long as there are unknown, new Planets that Humanity needs to survive + expand, Daleks, + just-darn-unfriendly Aliens, etc. there will always be the Mobile Infantry.
Under such conditions, history's wars usually start when some opportunistic -- but often relatively weaker -- power does something unwise on the gamble that the perceived benefits outweigh the risks. That belligerence is only prevented when more powerful countries collectively make it clear to the aggressor that it would be suicidal to start a war that would end in the aggressor's sure defeat.
What is scary in these unstable times is that a powerful United States either thinks that it is weak or believes that its past oversight of the postwar order was either wrong or too costly -- or that after Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, America is no longer a force for positive change.
A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventative vigilance that might have stopped it.
#1
Much as the reasons for WWII...US isolation and pacifism and rampant weak kneed namby pamby diplomacy encouraged Hitler and Japan to go forward.
When Germany invaded Poland, Liddell Hart said the BEF could have beaten Germany in a week. The diplomacy of the 30s gave Hitler time to build a viable military. In 1939, Poland stretched Germany's logistics and manpower very thin.
#2
A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventative vigilance that might have stopped it.
It does seem like 1939 except the weapons are more dangerous. Although Chamberlain the Appeaser is gone, there are plenty of appeasers in the West who won't address rising threats in the M.E., Iran and Russia. They continue living in a fool's paradise such as Europe did in 1939. The politicians distract with P.C. nonsense and hope the threats will go away. It is the ostrich approach to geo-political threats. One can't appease the world's bullies ever--they will over-reach, expand and try to make you submit to their wants and/or ideology.
In his defense, the military had been victim of over a decade of decline in support of just maintenance. He did initiate a crash program to regenerate the industry need to rearm before Poland. At that point he was buying time. With all the talk about Putin and Russia, has anyone seen the contemporary major Euro states do likewise?
#4
The appeasers of the 1930s at least had the example of WWI to avoid repeating. We gave up after a sliver of those casualties and after imposing all sorts of constraints on ourselves.
It's like we don't want to win.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
12/10/2014 10:41 Comments ||
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#5
In the new PC world where everybody gets a prize for participating and no one loses, winning is not acceptable. Everyone has to feel good about themselves. Insuring self-esteem replaces learning as the goal of education. Blame is never assigned to anyone unless it assigned to everyone. Failure does not occur. It is a sad bunch of 1960s hippie hogwash and has little to do with the extant dangerous realities then or now. We will have to confront our enemies and win or submit to someone's boot or die. Kumbaya does not work if your enemies don't believe in the concept--it is not long before someone strong fills the vacuum of weakness you have created for yourself.
Bambi and his minions don't want us to, Al. (Note they don't think of themselves as us.) >:-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
12/10/2014 13:30 Comments ||
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#7
Interesting to see mention of Liddell Hart. The only one in the west to take his tactics seriously were the Germans. He had German flag officers attending his speeches with hardly any westerners and low and behold the Germans used his tactics very successfully in their drive towards Moscow.
I suspect our enemies are learning from our tactics right now while we try to dismantle the more successful ones for being unpleasant.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Unlike the Assad cult, the ISIS cult operates upon patterns of religious ideological lines. They identify with signs, flags, idioms and emblems. The external facade of their barbaric ruthlessness, limitless violence and hostility is based upon their own self-made fantasy that they are soldiers who punish those who oppose their ideology.
Unlike Assad's cult, which seeks the continuity of the dynasty and the power of Assad's family, for ISIS it is the territorial existence of their fanatic narrative which offers them hope, acceptance and an identity. While survival is at the core of Assad's cult, death is the ISIS cult's main cause. The self-proclaimed Caliph, His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us... , sacrifices ISIS cult followers for the cause. As with other cults, the ISIS cult draws people to fear, obedience and ultimate sacrifice.
They put their life in the hands of a man who will decide their destiny. ISIS cult followers are willingly and voluntarily besieged in order to be closer to the cult and to be cut off from the outside world.
The ISIS cult will never develop into a deep-rooted religion, everlasting ideology or a solid state. It will gradually collapse into a tragedy or to a disaster. A very similar example is Guyana 1977, as Jim Jones dragged his cult in Jonestown to self-destruction so will Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/10/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Syrian cult culture, perhaps. Might it not be an Islamic cult culture problem?
There's a saying that the surest way to go crazy is to keep the company of the insane. Glenn Reynolds links to an account of a male gender studies [1] graduate telling every stranger he could find at a party to admit their "privilege". The man who may or may not have been invited, "moved throughout the party, unleashing the fundamental concepts of his undergraduate major at every opportunity. ‘It was kind of weird to get lectured about the patriarchy by, y'know, a member of the patriarchy,' one victim commented. ‘He called me an Uncle Tom for wearing bras.'"
That was a satire -- really, really well done satire that got a lot of people.
"Privilege" is the word du jour. Have you checked your privilege lately?
Recently there were two dueling articles in the Israeli press. The first, wrote Benjy Cannon of J Street, argued that Jewishness [2] could not excuse the crime of "whiteness". "While I do not often think, write about, or actively engage with my whiteness, it is an omnipresent force in my life". This was challenged by Hila Hershkovitz [3] in the Times of Israel, who asserts "Ashkenazi Jews are not white" or at least there was a time when real white people, guys with names like Himmler, didn't think so.
She has a point. Things are no longer what they seem. Ward Churchill is Native American, as is Elizabeth Warren. Nikki Haley is definitely not white, even though she's checked the box. And the whitest man in America, though he may not look it, is George Zimmerman.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Having a State Department that has the size and ability to articulate a foreign policy for the Department of Defense to follow would assist in this task immeasurably. The Department of Defense is a mission-oriented organization and should be taking its orders from the top, not making them up themselves as they go along.
Under such conditions, history's wars usually start when some opportunistic -- but often relatively weaker -- power does something unwise on the gamble that the perceived benefits outweigh the risks. That belligerence is only prevented when more powerful countries collectively make it clear to the aggressor that it would be suicidal to start a war that would end in the aggressor's sure defeat.
