The Naval War College After October 7th

an area for improvement, perhaps?

So, we’re three weeks in to the … I’m not sure what we are officially calling the largest anti-Jewish pogrom since WWII … except when accounting for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab and North African nations since WWII. Perhaps better to look at the ongoing conflict that started in on October 7th, 2023 that resulted more murders, rapes, and torturing of Jews in one day since WWII as … something else.

We’ll call it the Gaza War of 2023 for now, until more gifted minds come up with a more appropriate term.

This war is a significant event, I think that is fair to say. From a maritime perspective, in living memory we’ve had the Suez Canal closed due to wars around Israel with her neighbors. Speaking of her neighbors, the entire Arabian Peninsula and North Africa across the Levant - all maritime domains where the balance of world trade flows by - have been a caldron for the last few years.

That doesn’t even start to cover the Russo-Ukrainian War that as of last month was in its 20th month of war, with the client state of Hamas, Iran, very deep in supporting Russia. Just up the coast from Israel, another supporter of Hamas, Turkey, is supporting Ukraine.

The world is a mess.

As an American navalist, what is the premier intellectual hub - or should be - for what used to be the world’s largest Navy? That of course, would be the Naval War College (NWC).

Even though the US Navy is now the word’s second largest, running off inertia and substantial institutional capital, we still consider ourselves the premier naval power. One would assume this remains the same, so this would be a great time to to see what NWC was putting out on YouTube as a datapoint in our interesting time.

For those not in the know, YouTube is no longer a place for cute cat videos. No - not at all. With just his beautiful mug, interesting shirts, and jocular personality, our friend Sal Mercogliano’s “What is Going on With Shipping” has over 150,000 followers, puts out content almost every day that gets thousands of likes on each video covering bespoke topics like low water on the Mississippi River, the Jones Act, and cyber attacks on Australian ports - just to name a couple recently. His last post is less than a day old and has over 3,700 likes and 41,182 views. His post a week ago on the MV Galaxy Leader hijacking has 9,300 likes and over 353,000 views.

He is driving the conversation and is appearing on more important venues than just Midrats.

It is a thing.

So, as a retired naval officer, part-time opinion guy and full-time taxpayer, I thought I’d see what NWC is putting out to keep everyone informed and hopefully raising the intellectual debate from a maritime perspective.

I mean, it’s in NWC’s mission statement;

Shall we dive in to the NWC YouTube channel?

Just like it is interesting to read the message traffic and orders in Hawaii from December 1st to 6th of 1941, let’s see what what NWC put out on October 1st to 6th of 2023. Like I wrote above, the world was a busy and dangerous place prior to October 7th, I am sure there was plenty to concern ourselves with. Then we’ll see what NWC put out after October 7th.

NWC ended September with a video of the U.S. Naval War College College of Distance Education Virtual Graduation (7 likes, 315 views). Nice to have your name scroll up, I guess.

We kick off October on the 3rd with a short, under 4-minute Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Perspective video (10 likes, 424 views) to make sure, in case anyone was wondering, well, of course - to answer a driving question for us all;

On the 4th we have another WPS Perspectives (3 likes, 133 views) where the PhD in charge of making sure NWC gets all the academic certifications it - for some reason - thinks it needs, to first of all apologize for men dominating the last few thousand of years of military history. He then goes on for almost 7-minutes generally responding to questions that sound like some Self-Criticism to the People’s Court;

Nothing happens for the next couple of weeks until on the 18th of October they upload the August 2023, 2023 Future Warfighting Symposium: Keynote Speaker Eric Schmidt (28 likes, 745 views). The former CEO of google involved in some interesting areas in the cyber domain … that’s important.

Nice.

We then have a series of four “Lecture of Opportunity” on a variety of topics starting on 11 October and coming out about once a week:

• China’s geostrategic and economic interests: Maintaining Power, Sustaining the Rise (20 likes, 663 vies). That is an excellent topic. BZ.

• The state of India’s democracy under Prime Minister Modi: In India Democracy is in (sic) Death Bed (24 likes, 899 views). Ummm…India is as important topic as China, but this seems more about internal politics from a partisan point of view. Meh.

• Climate change in Tommorowland: Geoengineering the Earth’s Climate (7 likes, 214 views). Really? I could only listen to the first two minutes. File in the “Great Green Fleet” foolishness file.

On the 26th of October we have a different series entry, “NWC Issues in National Security” with the topic, Space and National Security (24 likes, 649 views). Solid topic by Burbach in his lane and owning the stage. Lecture was on 24 October and was uploaded the 26th.

We’re coming up on three weeks post October 7th, there should be something soon on topic, you’d think … and there it is.

We then return to the Lecture of Opportunity series with a 23 October lecture by two NWC professors that was uploaded on 27 October titled, The Israel-Gaza War: A Strategic Overview (129 likes, 4,839 views).

We’re going to spend some time here, as this is not just the first (and only as you will see) video on the Gaza War of 2023, it has some … interesting things to say.

You can watch it in full below if you wish. Below the video, I have a few comments.

(NB: you can get the transcript on YouTube):

The first part is a nice conversational overview and about the NWC, I thought this was good to say right after the 1-min mark;

…when I got this job 20 years ago I had a lot of people from the civilian world that I came from who said don’t go to government because you won’t be able to speak freely about things and I can say that I was a little worried and in the 20 years I’ve been here it has never once been the case, so I’m really delighted to have this opportunity…

I am glad that has been her experience. Others have had different ones, but good for her. The recording is only their prepared remarks, but there was a Chatham House Rules Q&A afterwards that would have been fun to have sat in on…because, well, things get wobbly in the second professor’s statements.

Dr. Lane’s remarks are the first 30 minutes and are a solid back-of-the-cocktail-napkin review of 1948 to today from what could best be described as the center-point of the American academic perspective. Center-left, but more center than anything else.

Dr. Alvi’s remarks in the second half? Well, she warns you at the 30:31 mark,

I’m going to preface my talk with mentioning that I do genocide studies here at the college and my presentation is from the lens of that particular discipline of genocide studies and that’s the way in which I’m analyzing this particular topic.

I would encourage everyone to listen to the whole thing, but especially considering Alvi’s putting herself out as the genocide expert, there is no mention of the fact what started this was the wholesale rape, child murder, torturing of entire families, slaughter of civilians, and kidnapping on a scale almost unimaginable the 21st Century American mind … simply because people were Jews. Not Israelis … but simply Jews.

This it completely ignored. Instead, Alvi quickly references Rand’s Raphael Cohen to push the point she brings up on a regular basis; it isn’t the unspoken Hamas genocidal attack that is the problem, it is Israel’s response to it (32:38);

…mowing the grass killing the perpetrators along with some number of civilians buying at least a few years of relative peace and fueling further long-term radicalization and so the cycle continues ..

You see, Israel is making Hamas act this way. Was their skirt too short? Did they talk back?

She then goes to former Israeli peace negotiator who was involved in the failed Oslo Accords who co-authored an op-ed with human rights lawyer Zaha Hassan who,

…stressed three points in their op-ed:

1. Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilians was unconscionable

2. Israel’s collective punishment of the people in Gaza notably the cutting off of water, food, and electricity as as well

3. They make the point that the importance of addressing the context of occupation and apartheid in which this is unfolding

Amazing. That op-ed, especially point #3, is straight Hamas talking points and not even close to accurate. As if it needs to be said, there have been no Israeli citizens in Gaza since 2005. Arab Muslims and Christians, Druse & other minorities with Israeli citizenship, ~+20% of the population, have more voting and civil rights than Arabs in majority Muslim countries.

That framing waves away what Hamas did on October 7th and moves the discussion to how it is Israel’s fault.

You would think the WPS faculty at NWC would have something to say about rape as a weapon of war, kidnapping of hostages by non-state actors, intentional targeting killing of unarmed civilians based on ethnicity … or something. We don’t have a video lecture on that. Instead, we have this lecture on bothsidesism.

At the 38:39 point;

I’ve highlighted a few things in the Rome statute regarding crimes against humanity and let me emphasize this goes for both sides, the Hamas side as well as the Netanyahu regime side, so you can peruse this on your own but bearing in mind that number 11 in particular - again emphasizing on both sides in terms of who is the culprits causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

Here is the slide she is referring to:

There we go.

I’ll let you struggle through the next ten minutes on your own as she rages against Netanyahu is a strangely obsessive way. That is twice in October we’ve seen NWC YouTube selections where the speakers weigh in on foreign domestic political issues from an exceptionally partisan manner. Just by chance, I’m sure, but they are both attacks from the left.

She also weighs into American domestic politics a bit, specifically aimed at President Biden (47:55),

…a lot of Arabs and Muslims and pro-Palestinian sentiments in the United States in social media have expressed up till now that they will not be voting for President Biden next year…

Huh. There’s more along those lines.

I wanted to find what NWC had to contribute to the conversation about the events after October 7th…and I got them.

So, do we have anything else?

On November 1st NWC uploaded the 27 October, 6th Annual Genocide Studies Conference: The Informational Tools of Genocide (17 likes, 360 views) hosted by Dr. Aldi mentioned above. It is over 2-hours long, but I did a little word count for you:

• Russia/etc: 28

• United States of America/etc: 22

• Israel: 18

• Jews/etc: 15

• Ukraine: 15

• Hamas: 13

• Putin: 8

• Netanyahu: 5

• Palestinian: 5

• China: 5

• Gaza: 3

• Muslim/Islam: 3

• Iran: 2

• Biden: 1

• Christian/etc: 0

• Syria: 0

• Myanmar/Burma: 0

• Uyghur/Yighur/Xinjiang/East Turkestan: 0

So, we have that.

We then have on November 3rd the International Maritime Staff Officers Course (IMSOC) 23-02 Graduation Ceremony (11 likes, 215 views). Well done folks.

On the 7th of November you can count me amongst the 13 fans of the next of the Lecture of Opportunity on Coastal Hazards and Port Infrastructure (13 likes, 283 views) … thought it tries too hard to gather clout with the followers of Vaal … but you can skip through that.

A week later on 14 November, the very busy WPS cadre are back with a little under 2 minute sales pitch about how great the WPS program is by Lt. Gen. Nagar Johar, Pakistan Army (Ret.), (4 likes, 219 views)

16 November sends our way another in the “NWC Issues in National Security” series, Cyber and National Security (15 likes, 325 views). A meaty topic by Professor Demchak for an hour that really should have more views.

The next day on the 17th, just in time to hit the road for Thanksgiving, we had the in residence U.S. Naval War College College (sic) Fall Graduation (1 like 118 views).

Last but not least, on the same day, we have another Lecture of Opportunity titled, The War for Kindness: Building Resilient Teams.

This … is … something.

I’ll let you either note that or dive in to the 41:07 lecture that makes sure you know that November 13th is World Kindness Day and asks you to ponder, “What does Kindness mean to you?”

Well, there we go. I dove in to answer the question you did not ask on what our Naval War College is putting out to the world.

That is 14 videos since October 1st. Topic areas:

• Women, Peace, and Security: 3

• Cyber: 2

• Climate Change: 2

• Graduation Ceremonies: 2

• China: 1

• India: 1

• Space: 1

• Wellness (?): 1

• Israel-Gaza: 1

Think about all that is going on in the maritime security arena. Just ponder a bit.