You reiterate Dead Karl's oft-misunerstood point. If war is the answer, then Total War is the Way. If it isn't worth going all-in, and bloody-minded and destructive as you need to be, then it isn't the Way, and you should seek other paths. Because, in the end, there will probably be less death, less destruction, and a more durable peace. I.e., if the war is optional, choose a different option.
Well, I'd say it isn't the "discretionary" part that is the problem, but the execution of the war once engaged. There may be, and have been, times when the government sees a national security threat or interest that requires the use of force - in the sense of Clausewitz's dynamic where war is an extension of politics.
But, loathe as I am to say it due to how he turned out, the Powell Doctrine is an appropriate approach to war. Quick, devastating, overwhelming war. Break the enemy's will in the shortest amount of time.
If "never choose to launch a war that you can afford to lose" isn't beaten into your dna by the year of our lord 2024, I really don't hold out much hope
That is a self-conflicting statement...I don't know if you meant it that way. In other words, only enter the fight if you can be a bully and be assured of victory? Well that is what Iraq and Afghanistan were. We wiped out the Iraqi government and armed forces in weeks. We wiped out the Taliban/Northern Alliance with a few Green Beret A-teams. Then we fought against insurgencies composed of die hard Islamists in both. But in neither case was there anywhere that our military couldn't go, couldn't strike, couldn't own in either country - we were in no danger of having our military displaced. And the "resistance" killed fewer troops on a day to day basis than citizens that are killed in our major cities day to day.
However, we had no chance of changing them culturally into a Western style democracy, it was a fools errand to try - and our foreign affairs people did fail to stand up a national unity government in Afghanistan. We eventually got pretty much there in Iraq, but with far too much Iranian influence.
In the end, though, all war is a battle of wills and you can't approach such endeavors without the will to break things and kill people to impose your will on the opponent. That has always been true - they must be made to quit. We try to do that by showing them "resistance is futile" so to speak. By and large, though, those that make the decisions to keep fighting for the terrorists are not doing the fighting or dying, so they have no reason to quit. They have more unemployed, radicalized young men to send out to be killed to support their resistance. So, the point is that the center of gravity is the leadership - the whole leadership. You can't play whack a mole...you've got to take all the leaders out from the top, not bottom up.
"However, we had no chance of changing them culturally into a Western style democracy, it was a fools errand to try - and our foreign affairs people did fail to stand up a national unity government in Afghanistan. We eventually got pretty much there in Iraq, but with far too much Iranian influence."
I would argue that the US "Modernization/Westernization" has failed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We have just failed less dramatically in Iraq. State went into both efforts with a paralyzing fear of being seen as a colonizer and/or infidel agent undermining Islamic sovereignity. The US was successful in post-war Japan because it not only did NOT fear making societal changes but wholeheartedly embraced making the necessary wholesale changes. This is something rarely mentioned in even college-level undergraduate American history curriculum. https://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/the_allied_occupation_of_japan#sthash.APvOugVV.dpbs
Great points. The soil that would later sprout the full blown woke movement was already around back then, in fact it was pretty broadly accepted (because it had yet to manifest in a clearly toxic form and as a result polarize many away from it). It's an over-simplification, but perhaps a helpful one, to say that we started approaching everything from a relativistic, morally agnostic position that led to wearing kid gloves when it came to defining our objectives.
There's the Powell Doctrine of the First Gulf War when he was Chairman of the JCS and then there is what flowed from the Powell Doctrine in the second incursion into Iraq and into Afghanistan when he was SecState in which the "we broke it, now we gotta fix it" attitude bogged us down for almost 2 decades of nation building with an end game and exit resulting in jack squat. We should have went in and wrecked things, and then left with a promise that we'd be back if they didn't behave.
Very true...and I was speaking to the "overwhelming force" doctrine, no the nation-building BS. We don't have to fix anything unless they agree to it being fixed - at a price. "You want that done? Then you'll have free elections or no deal." "Oh, you want THAT done? Then you'll have to get rid of the Iranian Shia Muslims in your government...if not, bye bye!"
He also said "The war is not meant to be won - it is meant to be continuous".
My son (USAFA 2000) spent 23 years on active duty, either getting ready to go to the AO, in the AO, or recovering from the AO (which meant for him, getting ready to go to the AO, again).
My son did one tour in Afghanistan with the Marines, then when he got out as a SSgt he went to work as a contractor and did several tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan again. It was a long war.
I am glad your son wasn't harmed or hope he wasn't.
My son was in an HMLA ground crew in Afghanistan, he would call home from the FOB and we could here the door slamming of incoming rockets, as a contractor he worked in RSB and IED, ECM. Secret squirrel stuff LOL.
Strawman much? Fits my point. It wasn't worth the cost, so we didn't do it. We did have an era of "peace" after the Soviets cased their colors.
The fact that we (and Europe) didn't exploit the win wisely doesn't invalidate the point. And the adventures in optional warfare (including Russia's ongoing optional war) only serves to reinforce it.
Funny thing about optional wars. What was a choice for you, is usually existential for your target. Motivations are different. Ask the North Vietnamese, Taliban, and the Ukes.
But you revel in what you think is a cheap and easy burn.
See as well Westheimer's "Death is Lighter than a Feather." The exercise is to problematize the often pithy narratives found here and elsewhere regarding war and its waging.
Nope. Bush lost that one himself. Perot (and Buchanan) was just a symptom; a result of Bush's losing the loyalty of the people who voted for him the first time. "Read my lips...".
In the New Hampshire primary in '92 Pat Buchanan (Who?) got 37% of the Rep. vote after being in the race for less than 90 days. I knew then that Bush was toast. Perot wasn't even in the race until a couple of days later. I don't think you remember how unpopular Bush actually was.
By the way, if you like circuses, Manchester NH is the place to be during a Presidential primary election. Of course it may have changed a bit since '92.
Not in 1945, they didn't. Of course, we didn't EITHER, having used both of ours in Japan. But we could have - and did - build more, while the USSR was 4 years away from developing one.
I don't think we knew at the time when the Soviets had a working nuclear bomb. We believed they knew how to make a nuke and thought they had the necessary materials. We could not have known that the USSR would not have a working nuke until 1949.
The USSR military was so strong in 1945 that it is not certain that using a nuke on the USSR in late 1945 would have stopped the Soviet Military. Maybe. We did have another "Fat Boy" ready for use in August of 1945. Truman ordered that no nuke could be used without his explicit permission.
If we had dropped a nuke on Russia, Stalin would have accelerated with every resource he had the production of their nukes and returned the favor to us. How much more destruction would an angry and vengeful Stalin inflict on the world if we nuked Moscow?
After winning the war in Europe and Japan, would America have supported a war against the USSR? Perhaps, though I doubt it. The Communists had many supporters in America in powerful positions, and we were war-weary, as were our Allies.
Taking on the USSR conventionally at the end of WWII might have worked. Possibly. Patton thought we could win, though MacArthur thought the same about the Chinese in Korea.
The soviet army's strength was largely myth. Without western arms and a willingness to slaughter infinite numbers of its own, the USSR would not have had a chance. We should have let Hitler and Stalin duke it out without Lend-Lease. It would have been a devastating draw and the end of two of the worlds worst tyrannies.
I'm (gently) poking the "vill uber alles" Dr. Strangeloves here. If they keep up their foolishness, I'll start in on the "Powell Doctrine" (the reason European armies have the best military bands in the world).
We should know what a truly unlimited war looks like. Operation Starvation combined with an effective submarine offensive was killing Japan, but not fast enough for the Generals running the country to realize.
It is a contest of wills that DC often lacks, and it results in horrible things. My maternal grandmother taught at an American school in Japan shortly after the War. She saw scenes of deprivation that stood with her for the rest of her life. It was a concrete thing. I wish the bureaucratic class understood what happened at a ground level, they have nothing at risk in their lives it seems.
Me on X a few days ago: "Skin in the game. Tyrant Me would mandate that any politico voting to authorize military force *must* spend time during or immediately after, gathering bodies, digging graves, clearing rubble.
I'd go Heinlein and try the front loaded solution. All Congresspersons need to be Vets, military, Peace Corps, same same. The people that send our folks in harm's way, should know what that looks like downrange
Disagree. There are plenty of stupid, venal Vets. Service doesn't equate to much beyond enlistment/commissioning if the individual doesn't have or can't acquire the lessons necessary for good citizenship.
Or ... maybe y'all served exclusively with wise, moral and steady people. Certainly a lot of the people I served with (the vast majority) were those things - or became those things - but there were a number of folks "not fit to run a "Johnny Detail".
I think you're projecting just a bit; you likely had that altruistic motive, many of us did/do but there are a number of folks (at least in my experience/observation) who didn't/don't
Mea Culpa. There was absolutely no altruism involved in my enlisting. I think I can also safely say there was none involved in the enlistment of at least a few ;of my fellow enlistees.
It's not about intelligence or stupidity; the system is about improving the average performance by allowing only those who have demonstrated, by a period of difficult, low paid, and dangerous service, that they put the group over the self. To quote Heinlein, “He may fail in wisdom, he may lapse in civic virtue. But his average performance is enormously better than that of any other class of rulers in history.”
Would such a system eventually fail? Almost certainly. But it is silly to try to measure good and evil by reference only to scope, depth, and intensity, without also referencing duration. The best orgasm in human history is small change when it was with your brother's wife and will be followed by an eternity in Hell, for example. Hence, when discussing Starship Troopers and the Timocracy, therein, you have to ask would it last a good while. The answer is probably yes. Will western liberal democracy? One is inclined to doubt; we're only in our third century and failing apace.
Again, while for many of us it WAS " difficult, low paid, and dangerous service" for others it was anything but. The concept sounded pretty good in my adolescent reading of Heinlein (and I had already determined that I would serve even with a shooting war going on); experience and reflection have rendered it less appealing.
As opposed to what we have, with the people we have, the leftist half of whom are freaking insane? I'll take my chances with imperfect. Indeed, I think it may be the only way to save our civilization.
And, if you want some philosophical meat on the bare bones Heinlein gave us, there's this series by some hack sci fi author...
Also, note that there's a split in the system in SST. Professionals, people like me and many others here, didn't really prove much by serving; we liked that shit. In SST, we'd be in until we were old and gray before retiring and getting the vote. The bulk of people voting would be those who did NOT like it, but did it anyway because it seemed the right thing to do.
You've put your finger squarely on what might be the most critical weakness of the west today. our feminized psyche has tried to pretty up the inherently brutish act of war by 'rising above' all of the nastiest bits. the sheer might of our hegemony allowed us to get away with it for a bit, at least enough to ignore whether it actually worked or not. but the times, they seem to be a changin. meanwhile, the notion that just war must be civilized and cruelty free is still firmly mainstream. something is going to give
The look on her face. That bint hadn't been playing any 3-D chess. There was a checkerboard with 2 squares, 2 checkers (magenta & robin's egg blue) and a 42 page how-to instruction manual.
"My constant, unwelcome message at all the meetings on Bosnia was simply that we could not commit military forces until we had a clear political objective," Powell wrote in his memoir, “My American Journey.” Albright, he wrote, "asked me, 'What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?' I thought I would have an aneurysm."
Frederick Kagan, an American, American educated and a former professor at West Point. "Mechanised, con-stellation, remobilised, pro-gramme, honour". Whye sirrah? (Decent article, but triggering for me.)
It is always good to refer to General Sherman's letter to the leader's of Atlanta. The letter, most importantly, showed a willingness to wage war at all cost to defeat the Rebel Armies. Sherman viewed his tactics as just being a part of war, which soon came to represent not only his opinion, but many of those in the North. "War is hell", wrote Sherman, and the only good option is to make the war as short as possible using the most effective tactics to achieve that victory...and peace on the other side of that victory.
No it wasn't. Under customary law of war an army may subsist itself on the country through which it operates. One is supposed to pay for civilian property taken, but that's all. Enemy governmental property may be taken without compensation or destroyed.
Farms providing food to confederate armies, in what way are they different from factories providing arms and ammunition? They are not, hence may be destroyed. Moreover, you can do damned near anything in war if the advantage to be gained is roughly commensurate with the damage done. So, burn, baby, burn.
Now, was there destruction beyond the necessary and even advantageous. Clearly, and Sherman, himself, admitted such. However, that was ancillary to the March. The March, itself, was perfectly legal. As for the deportation northward of the seamstresses from, IIRC, Roswell, GA, which figures prominently in neo-confederate narratives, what should he have done, let them starve there?
I have this bit of bad news for you...wait for it...wait for it...
Yes, in war might largely makes right but, no, you've missed the very platonic essence of my post, which is that you can do anything where your advantage/gain* is roughly commensurate to the harm to be done to civilians. Yes, really. So if burning down Georgia was necessary, which is to say, advantageous, to starve confederate armies and the harm done to civilians was roughly commensurate with that, then, yes, burning Georgia was lawful, "60 miles in latitude, 300 to the sea, while we were marching through Georgia."
The term used is "necessity," but almost nothing is actually necessary except to win. It's not necessary to shoot any given enemy soldier, it is merely advantageous to do so. We win by gaining advantage hence gaining advantage is necessary.
No more than German industrialists are entitled to compensation.
None of his deprivations and war crimes did nothing to advance victory. Burning homes and barns, taking 300 women captive who were never seen again and causing starvation and death of women and children was strictly vengeance on a population that did not accept northern hegemony over their lives.
Ummmm...I'm pretty darn sure that him taking out the Southern armies under Hardee/Wheeler and Johnston (in the Carolina campaign) did quite a lot to end the war. He and Grant had agreed on a "scorched earth" policy, destroying military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property. The aim was to disrupt the Confederacy's economy and transportation networks. By crippling their transporation and supplies from GA and the Carolinas, it forced the South to a much quicker surrender. Sherman's campaign is regarded as an early example of modern total war as practiced in WWII, for instance.
You may want to trumpet some neo-Confederate "Lost Cause" narrative, but the only reality is that the South lost and Sherman and his tactics certainly led to this. I would note that Sherman explained that doing it quickly to end the war was the most humane way to operate. The pain and destruction was going to happen...quickly ending it being preferable to drawn out suffering of the depradations of a war the South started.
As he told his Southern friends before the war: "You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about."
No mention of armies of the south were made but if you reread it I spoke about the civilians who suffered at the hands of fiends and killers. The old saw about how that helped the war effort is pure CYA. Grant never did that. Neither did other successful Union Generals. Sherman's sociopathy continued with his treatment of Indians. Winners version of the wars they fought are always half smoke and mirrors. No. It was unnecessary violence against civilians who were already tapped out from CSA appropriating the food and horses. Over here on the KS/MO border, Union atrocities against civilians threw gas on the fight against the CSA guerrilla bands. I'm personal friends of descendants of Quantrill fighters who in every case, their Father's were slain and the farm and barns burned. Nobody thinks that helped that Union cause.
I'm sure the people of Lawrencville, or the descendants of those who survived, share your view of the conflict and the caring nature of Quantrill's raiders.
Again, people putting words and thoughts into what they think I wrote. I'm a direct descendant of 2 CSA veterans. Proud of it. They served honorably and they did not own slaves . I think Lawrence was a terrorist attack. Quit assuming you know anything about me or what my opinions are beyond what I write. Taking a reading comprehension course is in order skippy.
"Over here on the KS/MO border, Union atrocities against civilians threw gas on the fight against the CSA guerrilla bands. I'm personal friends of descendants of Quantrill fighters who in every case, their Father's were slain and the farm and barns burned. Nobody thinks that helped that Union cause."
So, "Skippy", tell me how that statement can be otherwise interpreted? I think both sides fought viciously, in some instances, and have no problem with calling that out. What Sherman and Grant did in executing "total war" doctrine is quite different than what Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson did.
I would like to point out that you are absolutely correct. War is a matter, above all, of breaking the enemys will to fight and operation starvation was very effective in bringing that about. The reverse is also true. Supporting the enemy with airdrops of food and protests in his behalf can have only one outcome: massively strengthening his will to resist. Take the current situation in Gaza. Hamas can confiscate as much food as it wants, while using the media to portray Israelis as brutes starving palestinians. At the same time aid trucks from Egypt are attacked and forced to abort aid missions because the propaganda is more important to them. The more Israel is told to minimize civilian casualties the more effective human shields shall be.
The UN has done for Palestinians what the Bureau of Indian Affairs has done for Native Americans.
Every group of refuges since World War II has been resettled - Eastern Germans; Hindus and Muslins in India after partition; Jews from Europe and Muslim countries; Cubans, Chinese and Vietnamese fleeing Communism, etc. - with one exception - Palestinians.
I wonder if a lot of UN bureaucrats have an interest in not solving a problem.
Solving the problem would put them out of a job, so its the last thing they ever want to do. Your comparisin to the bureau of Indian affairs is apt, but UNRWA is far worse - they collaborate with Hamas, allow Hamas to run their schools, summer camps and hispitals and actively teach chikdren tonhate and murder Jews.
No Arab country will willingly accept the Palestinians. They all know the P's won't assimilate but use their newfound safety to re-arm and re-attack Israel. Decades ago - yeah that long - a Saudi Navy O-5 told me that to the Saudis admitting Palestinians was like accepting a barrel of apples knowing that more than a few were poisoned. "Would you chose one and give to your child?" he asked.
The Jordanians have had some experience with allowing a Palestinian presence in their country. They had to fight a war to prevent them from taking over the country. I think the other middle-eastern countries have learned from that.
regrettably, one of the most effective means to quickly end the current war in Gaza (and future similar conflicts) is to immediately, instantly, without hesitation, chalk up "hostages" as fatal casualties. Prosecute the war accordingly.
I will add my own expression, proven, yet again, by the above.
Proportional Response is a Profoundly Stupid Plan!
We should always be cautious of entering into war, except when attacked.
But when we DO chose to fight, we must, as a people, learn that the most HUMANE way to end that conflict as quickly as possible, and to deter future conflict as much as possible, is to prosecute that fight with every ounce of strength we have, and to defeat the enemy utterly, as quickly as possible.
Civilian casualties should be avoided in general, but we should NOT allow fear of said casualties to prevent us from taking necessary action against valid military (to include industrial) targets.
I'm not a member of the 'Mattis fan club', but he did have one quote I think was very appropriate.
"If you cross us, the survivors will talk about what we do to you in return for a thousand years"
Every nation should know that to invite war with the United States is to invite the utter destruction of your culture (Japan is a good example - the Japanese emerged from the reconstruction as a different, albeit related - culture)
Proportional response remind me of "targeted economic sanctions."
If one plans to use economic sanctions -- which to the best of my knowledge have never succeeded in changing the behavior of the sanctioned party -- they should be comprehensive and overwhelming.
Racheting sanctions allow more than sufficient time for the sanctioned party to adjust. Leadership is never effected, only the lower and middle classes.
The economists tell us that free trade is good because both sides benefit. They call it comparative advantage. So, if you impose sanctions on a country aren't you then hurting yourself?
Absolutely. We should be known as the country that gets absurdly UNproportional when our military is unleashed. While Im not choosing WWII-esque firebombings and such as a first day option, if at some point that category of action is needed to end a war quicker and save American lives, then so be it. Im sick to death of the word proportional when applied to our use of force!!!
My opinion of Mattis nosedived for betraying the guy who gave him a second chance and his involvement as a board member - or lack thereof - with the now defunct Theranos.
The manner in which wars end is critical to the course of post-war history, but bringing the enemy to the point where he gives up the will to fight is sometimes inadequate or even inimical to the task of achieving long term peace. The classic example is WWI, where a militarily defeated and demoralized Germany that was on the verge of destruction from without and within finally agreed to an armistice in November 2018. Yet, the armistice occurred at a time when Germany's front-line trenches were still on French soil. Germany may have been powerless to oppose the draconian terms imposed on it at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, but WWI ended as much from the exhaustion of the Entente Powers as from defeat of Germany. The German homeland remained largely unscathed. Depending on whether you lived east or west of the Rhine you came to believe one of two narratives about the Great War, that Germany was defeated or that Germany got 'stabbed in the back' by its military leaders on the way to certain victory. And, as they say, the rest is history.
It makes for very interesting speculation to ask whether the 20th Century would have unfolded more peacefully if the allies had marched to Berlin, dismantled it stone by stone and salted the earth. But the take-away from history is unmistakable and has significant implications for wars currently being fought in the world.
CDR Sal, great conversation starter. Couple of comments on WWII, largely based upon Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank. Read the book after getting into a discussion with one of my daughter's college professors who was having the students explain why the U.S. owed Japan an apology for dropping the a-bombs. Pertinent to this discussion: The allies made a decision to not repeat the end of WWI, and remade the societies of Germany and Japan to prevent them from reverting to form. Hence, unconditional surrender for Japan (nuancing the emperor situation). Roughly a 100,000 people a month were dying in the "Greater SEA Co-Prosperity Sphere" (based upon Japanese records). Frank was given access to material not previously released (the Emperor's diaries, for instance). They were not ready to surrender, and were totally committed to forcing an invasion to enhance their conditions of capitulation. One can argue the immediate casualties for the a-bomb were a month of Japan's occupation as awful as that sounds. Between Lemay's strategic bombing campaign, the sub warfare, the destruction of Japan's transportation infrastructure (the plan under discussion a big part of it) mass starvation was inevitable (IIRC a half million died of starvation even after we occupied the country). Bottom line, it was total war, waged against an opponent who would have done the same (likely a lot worse!) were the roles reversed. The DIME / PMESII models, and Game Theory (think transactional analysis at the nation state level) can shed light on this...but not explain it without a lot of historical perspective.
So what are the prospects of PLAN's big deck gators getting across if the Taiwan Strait is seeded huge numbers of CAPTOR mines by Taiwan? Mines may not be sexy but a devastated global economy and unfathomable loss of American lives and treasure is a price worth avoiding if the best deterrence isn't sexy. And the history of mine warfare should not be a lesson that has to be re-learned by senior military leadership; espcially given a choice amongst all the other options on the table. How many hours of effort and resources have been expended to get at the question of supporting Taiwan? The logistics required... distances... the probability that the U.S. Navy will have 1000's of targets to prosecute and that she will have to do so from a great distance away from Taiwan. That we are unlikely to have the volumes of PGMs necessary to last us? And yet we know that mine production can be done in a sustainable and clandestine manner - in Taiwan!!!. Oh no, we can't have a decisively assymetric means of totally hosing up the PLANs ability to operate in the strait... oh that's right 1000's of CCAs is the answer... just got to figure out that whole logistics piece thingy... My cup of cynicism is running over.
Silly question: is there not a tech "solution" that makes mines obsolete as a weapon of war? Surely current underwater detection and mapping systems are capable of producing and distributing a detailed marine minefield which, integrated with navigation systems, would place mines in the same category as other underwater hazards—known, located, and avoidable.
You probably should go with the answer "nothing remotely even close" makes mines obsolete and ML/AI is only going to make things far more challenging. I would imagine the next generation or two of captor mines is going to be a very unpleasant proposition to deal with regardless of who you are.
Are you saying mines ("captor" or otherwise) are NOT detectable using underwater "sniffers" and satellite imaging? Are they actually autonomous (or remotely controlled) unmanned submarine-like devices that can change depth, location, and actively target or surveil enemy assets? I'm unfamiliar with mine tech, both in their strengths and weaknesses, and am posing honest questions here.
Well imagine what it would take to detect a minefield consisting of 100's of buried and difficult to detect mines across a strait that is narrow & relatively shallow depth... What equipment, vessel, etc. are you going to be operating in the midst of a shooting war where you are attempting to detect, avoid, and/or de-mine. How much area can said equipment cover in what amount of time to come up with a suitable remedy that takes said minefield out of your calculus? How long does it take to do the detection? Once detected, how long to address a single mine? If your strategy is built on performing an amphibious landing and you only have a small number of suitable landing locations, where do you put your mines defensively to greatly hinder the probability that the enemies amphibs will reach their landing points? And, at the same, time what's coming at those amphibs in terms of precision guided munitions that hidden in the urban landcape and natural topology of Taiwan?
If the mines are stationary, they're simply Maginot Line artifacts and are exquisitely vulnerable as to discovery and effective countermeasures. As to the theoretical infinity of locations, as you mention a small number of suitable landing locations and transit corridors circumscribes and limits the scope of mine detection and mapping operations. I would imagine a fast-moving underwater drone could detect and map every mine along a hundred mile section of coastline in a matter of hours. More mappers mean even less time. As well, sacrificial drones could readily be deployed to clear landing approaches of mines for the invasion forces. The real trick is to gain real-time detection and mapping capability, and I simply don't know enough about the tech (super-duper double top secret, I would imagine) to gauge its impact on mining as a viable tactic in warfare going forward.
If aircraft and ships can be "stealthy", there is no reason why a much smaller and less actively emitting object cannot be even stealthier. And no reason why a HARM (high-speed ant-radiation mine) cannot be developed to eliminate the few anti-mine vessels we have.
Excellent point. Jim Dunnigan said pretty much exactly that in How to Make War (man -- has it been _that_ long since that book was published? *creak, groan*).
The natural state of human affairs is conflict... peace is merely the interim state between conflicts. It is temporary, of uncertain duration, a fragile interregnum. The only purpose for war is to dictate the terms of the next interim peace. Late strategist Colin S. Gray should be required reading. Let me recommend two of his works:
"Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy" and "Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare" - or why the next hundred years is not going to be any different than the the last, or the centuries before that.
Mines were the key component for "starvation." And modern mines are even more effective today, but even old fashioned "dumb" mines can still get the job done.
So, we should have a large stockpile of mines, a cadre of skilled specialists able to maintain and deploy them, and platforms to deliver them. And, as Murphy says "if the enemy is in range, so are you" and it would be prudent to have a robust capability to detect and neutralize any mine that other state OR NON-STATE actors might deploy in places we want to send ships.
But, alas, we have none of the above. Key shortage such as those make it harder for us to win a war, and a lot easier to lose one. Especially if fighting with one hand tied behind your back by politicians worried about what someone might say, and unwilling to be "in it to win it."
Just asking..... Houthiland got any port facilities, perhaps where stuff from places like Iran might be offloaded? It is unfathomable why any such port facilities are not already rubble, even if commercial shipping might be inconvenienced.
The natural state of human affairs is conflict... peace is merely the interregnum between conflicts. It is temporary and of undependable duration, a brittle hiatus. The only purpose for war is to dictate the terms of the next interlude of peace. Late strategist Colin S. Gray should be required reading. Let me recommend two of his works:
"Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy" and "Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare" - or why the next hundred years is not going to be any different than the last, or the centuries before that.
You reiterate Dead Karl's oft-misunerstood point. If war is the answer, then Total War is the Way. If it isn't worth going all-in, and bloody-minded and destructive as you need to be, then it isn't the Way, and you should seek other paths. Because, in the end, there will probably be less death, less destruction, and a more durable peace. I.e., if the war is optional, choose a different option.
not an overstatement to say that discretionary wars are the root of most evil in a capitalist democracy or republic
Well, I'd say it isn't the "discretionary" part that is the problem, but the execution of the war once engaged. There may be, and have been, times when the government sees a national security threat or interest that requires the use of force - in the sense of Clausewitz's dynamic where war is an extension of politics.
But, loathe as I am to say it due to how he turned out, the Powell Doctrine is an appropriate approach to war. Quick, devastating, overwhelming war. Break the enemy's will in the shortest amount of time.
then you'd be wrong.
If "never choose to launch a war that you can afford to lose" isn't beaten into your dna by the year of our lord 2024, I really don't hold out much hope
That is a self-conflicting statement...I don't know if you meant it that way. In other words, only enter the fight if you can be a bully and be assured of victory? Well that is what Iraq and Afghanistan were. We wiped out the Iraqi government and armed forces in weeks. We wiped out the Taliban/Northern Alliance with a few Green Beret A-teams. Then we fought against insurgencies composed of die hard Islamists in both. But in neither case was there anywhere that our military couldn't go, couldn't strike, couldn't own in either country - we were in no danger of having our military displaced. And the "resistance" killed fewer troops on a day to day basis than citizens that are killed in our major cities day to day.
However, we had no chance of changing them culturally into a Western style democracy, it was a fools errand to try - and our foreign affairs people did fail to stand up a national unity government in Afghanistan. We eventually got pretty much there in Iraq, but with far too much Iranian influence.
In the end, though, all war is a battle of wills and you can't approach such endeavors without the will to break things and kill people to impose your will on the opponent. That has always been true - they must be made to quit. We try to do that by showing them "resistance is futile" so to speak. By and large, though, those that make the decisions to keep fighting for the terrorists are not doing the fighting or dying, so they have no reason to quit. They have more unemployed, radicalized young men to send out to be killed to support their resistance. So, the point is that the center of gravity is the leadership - the whole leadership. You can't play whack a mole...you've got to take all the leaders out from the top, not bottom up.
No. I said what I meant pretty plainly, and it bears no resemblance to your proposed "in other words..."
With all due respect, you may have meant it but what you meant is not conveyed well and results in two conflicting ideas in the same sentence.
"However, we had no chance of changing them culturally into a Western style democracy, it was a fools errand to try - and our foreign affairs people did fail to stand up a national unity government in Afghanistan. We eventually got pretty much there in Iraq, but with far too much Iranian influence."
I would argue that the US "Modernization/Westernization" has failed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We have just failed less dramatically in Iraq. State went into both efforts with a paralyzing fear of being seen as a colonizer and/or infidel agent undermining Islamic sovereignity. The US was successful in post-war Japan because it not only did NOT fear making societal changes but wholeheartedly embraced making the necessary wholesale changes. This is something rarely mentioned in even college-level undergraduate American history curriculum. https://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/the_allied_occupation_of_japan#sthash.APvOugVV.dpbs
Great points. The soil that would later sprout the full blown woke movement was already around back then, in fact it was pretty broadly accepted (because it had yet to manifest in a clearly toxic form and as a result polarize many away from it). It's an over-simplification, but perhaps a helpful one, to say that we started approaching everything from a relativistic, morally agnostic position that led to wearing kid gloves when it came to defining our objectives.
" We wiped out the Taliban/Northern Alliance with a few Green Beret A-teams. "
Evidently not, since they once again rule Afghanistan. And the Northern Alliance were our "allies" when we "wiped out" the Taliban.
There's the Powell Doctrine of the First Gulf War when he was Chairman of the JCS and then there is what flowed from the Powell Doctrine in the second incursion into Iraq and into Afghanistan when he was SecState in which the "we broke it, now we gotta fix it" attitude bogged us down for almost 2 decades of nation building with an end game and exit resulting in jack squat. We should have went in and wrecked things, and then left with a promise that we'd be back if they didn't behave.
Very true...and I was speaking to the "overwhelming force" doctrine, no the nation-building BS. We don't have to fix anything unless they agree to it being fixed - at a price. "You want that done? Then you'll have free elections or no deal." "Oh, you want THAT done? Then you'll have to get rid of the Iranian Shia Muslims in your government...if not, bye bye!"
The last sentence. Exactly. Amen.
War is Peace - Orwell
He also said "The war is not meant to be won - it is meant to be continuous".
My son (USAFA 2000) spent 23 years on active duty, either getting ready to go to the AO, in the AO, or recovering from the AO (which meant for him, getting ready to go to the AO, again).
My son did one tour in Afghanistan with the Marines, then when he got out as a SSgt he went to work as a contractor and did several tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan again. It was a long war.
It still is.
Glad your son wasn't badly harmed
I am glad your son wasn't harmed or hope he wasn't.
My son was in an HMLA ground crew in Afghanistan, he would call home from the FOB and we could here the door slamming of incoming rockets, as a contractor he worked in RSB and IED, ECM. Secret squirrel stuff LOL.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1999-07-01/give-war-chance
Yeah, if only we'd nuked the USSR, we wouldn't have Russia to deal with today...
Strawman much? Fits my point. It wasn't worth the cost, so we didn't do it. We did have an era of "peace" after the Soviets cased their colors.
The fact that we (and Europe) didn't exploit the win wisely doesn't invalidate the point. And the adventures in optional warfare (including Russia's ongoing optional war) only serves to reinforce it.
Funny thing about optional wars. What was a choice for you, is usually existential for your target. Motivations are different. Ask the North Vietnamese, Taliban, and the Ukes.
But you revel in what you think is a cheap and easy burn.
See as well Westheimer's "Death is Lighter than a Feather." The exercise is to problematize the often pithy narratives found here and elsewhere regarding war and its waging.
Elections have consequences & Bush 1 not winning reelection was brutal for longterm geopolitical security.
Quite right. Thanks (NOT!) to Perot.
Nope. Bush lost that one himself. Perot (and Buchanan) was just a symptom; a result of Bush's losing the loyalty of the people who voted for him the first time. "Read my lips...".
In the New Hampshire primary in '92 Pat Buchanan (Who?) got 37% of the Rep. vote after being in the race for less than 90 days. I knew then that Bush was toast. Perot wasn't even in the race until a couple of days later. I don't think you remember how unpopular Bush actually was.
By the way, if you like circuses, Manchester NH is the place to be during a Presidential primary election. Of course it may have changed a bit since '92.
Yeah. Well, I think the margin of Bush's loss was pretty much Perot's vote. Libertarians: winning elections for Democrats since forever.
The Soviets also had nukes. Not such a good idea.
Not in 1945, they didn't. Of course, we didn't EITHER, having used both of ours in Japan. But we could have - and did - build more, while the USSR was 4 years away from developing one.
I don't think we knew at the time when the Soviets had a working nuclear bomb. We believed they knew how to make a nuke and thought they had the necessary materials. We could not have known that the USSR would not have a working nuke until 1949.
The USSR military was so strong in 1945 that it is not certain that using a nuke on the USSR in late 1945 would have stopped the Soviet Military. Maybe. We did have another "Fat Boy" ready for use in August of 1945. Truman ordered that no nuke could be used without his explicit permission.
If we had dropped a nuke on Russia, Stalin would have accelerated with every resource he had the production of their nukes and returned the favor to us. How much more destruction would an angry and vengeful Stalin inflict on the world if we nuked Moscow?
After winning the war in Europe and Japan, would America have supported a war against the USSR? Perhaps, though I doubt it. The Communists had many supporters in America in powerful positions, and we were war-weary, as were our Allies.
Taking on the USSR conventionally at the end of WWII might have worked. Possibly. Patton thought we could win, though MacArthur thought the same about the Chinese in Korea.
The soviet army's strength was largely myth. Without western arms and a willingness to slaughter infinite numbers of its own, the USSR would not have had a chance. We should have let Hitler and Stalin duke it out without Lend-Lease. It would have been a devastating draw and the end of two of the worlds worst tyrannies.
Everything you wrote here is wrong.
And we would not be here today.
What part of global nuclear war would leave us in better shape than the Soviet Union?
Um, we have more, better, stronger "will"?
Well if stronger will can win out over radioactive fallout, starvation and a complete fall of civilization does that count?
I give you MAD as an example.
I'm (gently) poking the "vill uber alles" Dr. Strangeloves here. If they keep up their foolishness, I'll start in on the "Powell Doctrine" (the reason European armies have the best military bands in the world).
Neither would they have to deal with us. We would be ashes
This Is the Way.
We should know what a truly unlimited war looks like. Operation Starvation combined with an effective submarine offensive was killing Japan, but not fast enough for the Generals running the country to realize.
It is a contest of wills that DC often lacks, and it results in horrible things. My maternal grandmother taught at an American school in Japan shortly after the War. She saw scenes of deprivation that stood with her for the rest of her life. It was a concrete thing. I wish the bureaucratic class understood what happened at a ground level, they have nothing at risk in their lives it seems.
Me on X a few days ago: "Skin in the game. Tyrant Me would mandate that any politico voting to authorize military force *must* spend time during or immediately after, gathering bodies, digging graves, clearing rubble.
Let them have the full experience.
Especially the smell."
I'd go Heinlein and try the front loaded solution. All Congresspersons need to be Vets, military, Peace Corps, same same. The people that send our folks in harm's way, should know what that looks like downrange
Disagree. There are plenty of stupid, venal Vets. Service doesn't equate to much beyond enlistment/commissioning if the individual doesn't have or can't acquire the lessons necessary for good citizenship.
Or ... maybe y'all served exclusively with wise, moral and steady people. Certainly a lot of the people I served with (the vast majority) were those things - or became those things - but there were a number of folks "not fit to run a "Johnny Detail".
however, as a group, they have one thing going for them. They have been willing to put their bodies between War's desolation, and their community.
I think you're projecting just a bit; you likely had that altruistic motive, many of us did/do but there are a number of folks (at least in my experience/observation) who didn't/don't
Mea Culpa. There was absolutely no altruism involved in my enlisting. I think I can also safely say there was none involved in the enlistment of at least a few ;of my fellow enlistees.
It's not about intelligence or stupidity; the system is about improving the average performance by allowing only those who have demonstrated, by a period of difficult, low paid, and dangerous service, that they put the group over the self. To quote Heinlein, “He may fail in wisdom, he may lapse in civic virtue. But his average performance is enormously better than that of any other class of rulers in history.”
Would such a system eventually fail? Almost certainly. But it is silly to try to measure good and evil by reference only to scope, depth, and intensity, without also referencing duration. The best orgasm in human history is small change when it was with your brother's wife and will be followed by an eternity in Hell, for example. Hence, when discussing Starship Troopers and the Timocracy, therein, you have to ask would it last a good while. The answer is probably yes. Will western liberal democracy? One is inclined to doubt; we're only in our third century and failing apace.
Again, while for many of us it WAS " difficult, low paid, and dangerous service" for others it was anything but. The concept sounded pretty good in my adolescent reading of Heinlein (and I had already determined that I would serve even with a shooting war going on); experience and reflection have rendered it less appealing.
As opposed to what we have, with the people we have, the leftist half of whom are freaking insane? I'll take my chances with imperfect. Indeed, I think it may be the only way to save our civilization.
And, if you want some philosophical meat on the bare bones Heinlein gave us, there's this series by some hack sci fi author...
Also, note that there's a split in the system in SST. Professionals, people like me and many others here, didn't really prove much by serving; we liked that shit. In SST, we'd be in until we were old and gray before retiring and getting the vote. The bulk of people voting would be those who did NOT like it, but did it anyway because it seemed the right thing to do.
Commission them as Reserve 0-6's with no pay & allowances and make them CACO's in their off time.
that works
Or mandatory service for their children, and I don't mean the Texas Air National Guard.
You've put your finger squarely on what might be the most critical weakness of the west today. our feminized psyche has tried to pretty up the inherently brutish act of war by 'rising above' all of the nastiest bits. the sheer might of our hegemony allowed us to get away with it for a bit, at least enough to ignore whether it actually worked or not. but the times, they seem to be a changin. meanwhile, the notion that just war must be civilized and cruelty free is still firmly mainstream. something is going to give
I saw how Hillary rose above it all in Libya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXDU48RHLU
The look on her face. That bint hadn't been playing any 3-D chess. There was a checkerboard with 2 squares, 2 checkers (magenta & robin's egg blue) and a 42 page how-to instruction manual.
"My constant, unwelcome message at all the meetings on Bosnia was simply that we could not commit military forces until we had a clear political objective," Powell wrote in his memoir, “My American Journey.” Albright, he wrote, "asked me, 'What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?' I thought I would have an aneurysm."
"we could not commit military forces until we had a clear political objective,"
Pretty much straight out of Clausewitz. At least someone stayed awake during their War College classes and actually did the assigned reading.
I haven’t watched the videos yet, but the text is spot on. And it applies to more than one current conflict.
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/americas-problem-with-unconventional-warfare/
Frederick Kagan, an American, American educated and a former professor at West Point. "Mechanised, con-stellation, remobilised, pro-gramme, honour". Whye sirrah? (Decent article, but triggering for me.)
Kagan is another of these neocons who loves to send other people's children off to fight.
It is always good to refer to General Sherman's letter to the leader's of Atlanta. The letter, most importantly, showed a willingness to wage war at all cost to defeat the Rebel Armies. Sherman viewed his tactics as just being a part of war, which soon came to represent not only his opinion, but many of those in the North. "War is hell", wrote Sherman, and the only good option is to make the war as short as possible using the most effective tactics to achieve that victory...and peace on the other side of that victory.
Sherman was a war criminal even by 19th century standards. Why there is a magnificent gold statue of him in the middle of Manhattan is beyond me.
No he was not.
The march from Atlanta to the Sea was criminal and Sherman allowed it to happen.
A couple of generations of Georgians refused to named their children “William”….
Slick Willy wasn't that awful!
No it wasn't. Under customary law of war an army may subsist itself on the country through which it operates. One is supposed to pay for civilian property taken, but that's all. Enemy governmental property may be taken without compensation or destroyed.
Farms providing food to confederate armies, in what way are they different from factories providing arms and ammunition? They are not, hence may be destroyed. Moreover, you can do damned near anything in war if the advantage to be gained is roughly commensurate with the damage done. So, burn, baby, burn.
Now, was there destruction beyond the necessary and even advantageous. Clearly, and Sherman, himself, admitted such. However, that was ancillary to the March. The March, itself, was perfectly legal. As for the deportation northward of the seamstresses from, IIRC, Roswell, GA, which figures prominently in neo-confederate narratives, what should he have done, let them starve there?
Are Georgian farmers (or their descendants) owed compensation for what was stolen or destroyed by the Union? I think so.
I expect to hear Burn, baby! Burn! from a violent mob in LA not the professional U. S. Army.
I would rather take my chances at home rather than being deported to somewhere - or nowhere.
What you are saying boils down to Might Makes Right.
I have this bit of bad news for you...wait for it...wait for it...
Yes, in war might largely makes right but, no, you've missed the very platonic essence of my post, which is that you can do anything where your advantage/gain* is roughly commensurate to the harm to be done to civilians. Yes, really. So if burning down Georgia was necessary, which is to say, advantageous, to starve confederate armies and the harm done to civilians was roughly commensurate with that, then, yes, burning Georgia was lawful, "60 miles in latitude, 300 to the sea, while we were marching through Georgia."
The term used is "necessity," but almost nothing is actually necessary except to win. It's not necessary to shoot any given enemy soldier, it is merely advantageous to do so. We win by gaining advantage hence gaining advantage is necessary.
No more than German industrialists are entitled to compensation.
"rEpArAtIoNs", give me a break.
The wounds from the Civil War had mostly healed, until a bunch of communists, enabled by demographic change, decided to wage war on the peace.
Perhaps northern farmers, etc. should also get compensation for the losses they suffered at the hands of the Army of Northern Virginia.
"Sherman allowed it to happen. "
Hell's bells, he planned that march..
Because he fought on the winning side. America loves a winner.
Wow. I learn so much from this chatroom.
Other than Arthur Harris, I can't think of anyone that was shunned for their conduct during WW II.
Harris did receive five stars and was made a baronet. Not too bad.
None of his deprivations and war crimes did nothing to advance victory. Burning homes and barns, taking 300 women captive who were never seen again and causing starvation and death of women and children was strictly vengeance on a population that did not accept northern hegemony over their lives.
I will contradict myself by pointing out that total destruction and mass exterminations of the populations is extremely effective for long term
Ummmm...I'm pretty darn sure that him taking out the Southern armies under Hardee/Wheeler and Johnston (in the Carolina campaign) did quite a lot to end the war. He and Grant had agreed on a "scorched earth" policy, destroying military targets as well as industry, infrastructure, and civilian property. The aim was to disrupt the Confederacy's economy and transportation networks. By crippling their transporation and supplies from GA and the Carolinas, it forced the South to a much quicker surrender. Sherman's campaign is regarded as an early example of modern total war as practiced in WWII, for instance.
You may want to trumpet some neo-Confederate "Lost Cause" narrative, but the only reality is that the South lost and Sherman and his tactics certainly led to this. I would note that Sherman explained that doing it quickly to end the war was the most humane way to operate. The pain and destruction was going to happen...quickly ending it being preferable to drawn out suffering of the depradations of a war the South started.
As he told his Southern friends before the war: "You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about."
No mention of armies of the south were made but if you reread it I spoke about the civilians who suffered at the hands of fiends and killers. The old saw about how that helped the war effort is pure CYA. Grant never did that. Neither did other successful Union Generals. Sherman's sociopathy continued with his treatment of Indians. Winners version of the wars they fought are always half smoke and mirrors. No. It was unnecessary violence against civilians who were already tapped out from CSA appropriating the food and horses. Over here on the KS/MO border, Union atrocities against civilians threw gas on the fight against the CSA guerrilla bands. I'm personal friends of descendants of Quantrill fighters who in every case, their Father's were slain and the farm and barns burned. Nobody thinks that helped that Union cause.
I'm sure the people of Lawrencville, or the descendants of those who survived, share your view of the conflict and the caring nature of Quantrill's raiders.
Again, people putting words and thoughts into what they think I wrote. I'm a direct descendant of 2 CSA veterans. Proud of it. They served honorably and they did not own slaves . I think Lawrence was a terrorist attack. Quit assuming you know anything about me or what my opinions are beyond what I write. Taking a reading comprehension course is in order skippy.
"Over here on the KS/MO border, Union atrocities against civilians threw gas on the fight against the CSA guerrilla bands. I'm personal friends of descendants of Quantrill fighters who in every case, their Father's were slain and the farm and barns burned. Nobody thinks that helped that Union cause."
So, "Skippy", tell me how that statement can be otherwise interpreted? I think both sides fought viciously, in some instances, and have no problem with calling that out. What Sherman and Grant did in executing "total war" doctrine is quite different than what Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson did.
Dear CDR;
I would like to point out that you are absolutely correct. War is a matter, above all, of breaking the enemys will to fight and operation starvation was very effective in bringing that about. The reverse is also true. Supporting the enemy with airdrops of food and protests in his behalf can have only one outcome: massively strengthening his will to resist. Take the current situation in Gaza. Hamas can confiscate as much food as it wants, while using the media to portray Israelis as brutes starving palestinians. At the same time aid trucks from Egypt are attacked and forced to abort aid missions because the propaganda is more important to them. The more Israel is told to minimize civilian casualties the more effective human shields shall be.
The UN has done for Palestinians what the Bureau of Indian Affairs has done for Native Americans.
Every group of refuges since World War II has been resettled - Eastern Germans; Hindus and Muslins in India after partition; Jews from Europe and Muslim countries; Cubans, Chinese and Vietnamese fleeing Communism, etc. - with one exception - Palestinians.
I wonder if a lot of UN bureaucrats have an interest in not solving a problem.
Solving the problem would put them out of a job, so its the last thing they ever want to do. Your comparisin to the bureau of Indian affairs is apt, but UNRWA is far worse - they collaborate with Hamas, allow Hamas to run their schools, summer camps and hispitals and actively teach chikdren tonhate and murder Jews.
Spot on comparison.
No Arab country will willingly accept the Palestinians. They all know the P's won't assimilate but use their newfound safety to re-arm and re-attack Israel. Decades ago - yeah that long - a Saudi Navy O-5 told me that to the Saudis admitting Palestinians was like accepting a barrel of apples knowing that more than a few were poisoned. "Would you chose one and give to your child?" he asked.
The Jordanians have had some experience with allowing a Palestinian presence in their country. They had to fight a war to prevent them from taking over the country. I think the other middle-eastern countries have learned from that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
regrettably, one of the most effective means to quickly end the current war in Gaza (and future similar conflicts) is to immediately, instantly, without hesitation, chalk up "hostages" as fatal casualties. Prosecute the war accordingly.
Maybe if we drop more aid, the Palestinians will become our friends.
/s
Again, thank you Sal!
I will add my own expression, proven, yet again, by the above.
Proportional Response is a Profoundly Stupid Plan!
We should always be cautious of entering into war, except when attacked.
But when we DO chose to fight, we must, as a people, learn that the most HUMANE way to end that conflict as quickly as possible, and to deter future conflict as much as possible, is to prosecute that fight with every ounce of strength we have, and to defeat the enemy utterly, as quickly as possible.
Civilian casualties should be avoided in general, but we should NOT allow fear of said casualties to prevent us from taking necessary action against valid military (to include industrial) targets.
I'm not a member of the 'Mattis fan club', but he did have one quote I think was very appropriate.
"If you cross us, the survivors will talk about what we do to you in return for a thousand years"
Every nation should know that to invite war with the United States is to invite the utter destruction of your culture (Japan is a good example - the Japanese emerged from the reconstruction as a different, albeit related - culture)
Proportional response remind me of "targeted economic sanctions."
If one plans to use economic sanctions -- which to the best of my knowledge have never succeeded in changing the behavior of the sanctioned party -- they should be comprehensive and overwhelming.
Racheting sanctions allow more than sufficient time for the sanctioned party to adjust. Leadership is never effected, only the lower and middle classes.
sanctions are used for the wrong reasons.
They rarely succeed in 'changing behavior'
They frequently succeed in harming the capacity of the sanctioned entity. Either financially or by denying access to critical technology.
Sanctions should be evaluated for their capacity to HARM the adversary, not capacity to change behavior
The economists tell us that free trade is good because both sides benefit. They call it comparative advantage. So, if you impose sanctions on a country aren't you then hurting yourself?
EVERYTHING is tradeoffs.
Loss of revenue may be preferable to an enemy in possession of our advanced technology.
We utterly failed to grasp this as China raided and stole our technology for 2 decades
Absolutely. We should be known as the country that gets absurdly UNproportional when our military is unleashed. While Im not choosing WWII-esque firebombings and such as a first day option, if at some point that category of action is needed to end a war quicker and save American lives, then so be it. Im sick to death of the word proportional when applied to our use of force!!!
‘I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.’
My opinion of Mattis nosedived for betraying the guy who gave him a second chance and his involvement as a board member - or lack thereof - with the now defunct Theranos.
The manner in which wars end is critical to the course of post-war history, but bringing the enemy to the point where he gives up the will to fight is sometimes inadequate or even inimical to the task of achieving long term peace. The classic example is WWI, where a militarily defeated and demoralized Germany that was on the verge of destruction from without and within finally agreed to an armistice in November 2018. Yet, the armistice occurred at a time when Germany's front-line trenches were still on French soil. Germany may have been powerless to oppose the draconian terms imposed on it at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, but WWI ended as much from the exhaustion of the Entente Powers as from defeat of Germany. The German homeland remained largely unscathed. Depending on whether you lived east or west of the Rhine you came to believe one of two narratives about the Great War, that Germany was defeated or that Germany got 'stabbed in the back' by its military leaders on the way to certain victory. And, as they say, the rest is history.
It makes for very interesting speculation to ask whether the 20th Century would have unfolded more peacefully if the allies had marched to Berlin, dismantled it stone by stone and salted the earth. But the take-away from history is unmistakable and has significant implications for wars currently being fought in the world.
If the victorious Allies had treated Germany in 1919 the way they treated France in 1815 perhaps there would have been a century of relative peace.
No Mulligans in history.
The tradition of governments feeding their troops during times of siege does not bode well for the residents of Gaza.
Perhaps they will seek new representation when they get hungry enough.
Lots of talk about Gaza, but this should be applied to the Houthis.
CDR Sal, great conversation starter. Couple of comments on WWII, largely based upon Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank. Read the book after getting into a discussion with one of my daughter's college professors who was having the students explain why the U.S. owed Japan an apology for dropping the a-bombs. Pertinent to this discussion: The allies made a decision to not repeat the end of WWI, and remade the societies of Germany and Japan to prevent them from reverting to form. Hence, unconditional surrender for Japan (nuancing the emperor situation). Roughly a 100,000 people a month were dying in the "Greater SEA Co-Prosperity Sphere" (based upon Japanese records). Frank was given access to material not previously released (the Emperor's diaries, for instance). They were not ready to surrender, and were totally committed to forcing an invasion to enhance their conditions of capitulation. One can argue the immediate casualties for the a-bomb were a month of Japan's occupation as awful as that sounds. Between Lemay's strategic bombing campaign, the sub warfare, the destruction of Japan's transportation infrastructure (the plan under discussion a big part of it) mass starvation was inevitable (IIRC a half million died of starvation even after we occupied the country). Bottom line, it was total war, waged against an opponent who would have done the same (likely a lot worse!) were the roles reversed. The DIME / PMESII models, and Game Theory (think transactional analysis at the nation state level) can shed light on this...but not explain it without a lot of historical perspective.
Downfall is an excellent book. Not much to add to Aviation Sceptic's remarks except to agree.
I am sure the professor would have had a different opinion if he had been part of the initial landing party.
Paul Fussell also had something to say:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71ky7+0UeDL._SL1500_.jpg
"who would have done the same"
The Chinese argue, with some justification, that they did indeed do the same, and worse.
Mines are not sexy, but they can work well, and are relatively cheap.
Shhh Houthi
So what are the prospects of PLAN's big deck gators getting across if the Taiwan Strait is seeded huge numbers of CAPTOR mines by Taiwan? Mines may not be sexy but a devastated global economy and unfathomable loss of American lives and treasure is a price worth avoiding if the best deterrence isn't sexy. And the history of mine warfare should not be a lesson that has to be re-learned by senior military leadership; espcially given a choice amongst all the other options on the table. How many hours of effort and resources have been expended to get at the question of supporting Taiwan? The logistics required... distances... the probability that the U.S. Navy will have 1000's of targets to prosecute and that she will have to do so from a great distance away from Taiwan. That we are unlikely to have the volumes of PGMs necessary to last us? And yet we know that mine production can be done in a sustainable and clandestine manner - in Taiwan!!!. Oh no, we can't have a decisively assymetric means of totally hosing up the PLANs ability to operate in the strait... oh that's right 1000's of CCAs is the answer... just got to figure out that whole logistics piece thingy... My cup of cynicism is running over.
Silly question: is there not a tech "solution" that makes mines obsolete as a weapon of war? Surely current underwater detection and mapping systems are capable of producing and distributing a detailed marine minefield which, integrated with navigation systems, would place mines in the same category as other underwater hazards—known, located, and avoidable.
You probably should go with the answer "nothing remotely even close" makes mines obsolete and ML/AI is only going to make things far more challenging. I would imagine the next generation or two of captor mines is going to be a very unpleasant proposition to deal with regardless of who you are.
Are you saying mines ("captor" or otherwise) are NOT detectable using underwater "sniffers" and satellite imaging? Are they actually autonomous (or remotely controlled) unmanned submarine-like devices that can change depth, location, and actively target or surveil enemy assets? I'm unfamiliar with mine tech, both in their strengths and weaknesses, and am posing honest questions here.
Well imagine what it would take to detect a minefield consisting of 100's of buried and difficult to detect mines across a strait that is narrow & relatively shallow depth... What equipment, vessel, etc. are you going to be operating in the midst of a shooting war where you are attempting to detect, avoid, and/or de-mine. How much area can said equipment cover in what amount of time to come up with a suitable remedy that takes said minefield out of your calculus? How long does it take to do the detection? Once detected, how long to address a single mine? If your strategy is built on performing an amphibious landing and you only have a small number of suitable landing locations, where do you put your mines defensively to greatly hinder the probability that the enemies amphibs will reach their landing points? And, at the same, time what's coming at those amphibs in terms of precision guided munitions that hidden in the urban landcape and natural topology of Taiwan?
If the mines are stationary, they're simply Maginot Line artifacts and are exquisitely vulnerable as to discovery and effective countermeasures. As to the theoretical infinity of locations, as you mention a small number of suitable landing locations and transit corridors circumscribes and limits the scope of mine detection and mapping operations. I would imagine a fast-moving underwater drone could detect and map every mine along a hundred mile section of coastline in a matter of hours. More mappers mean even less time. As well, sacrificial drones could readily be deployed to clear landing approaches of mines for the invasion forces. The real trick is to gain real-time detection and mapping capability, and I simply don't know enough about the tech (super-duper double top secret, I would imagine) to gauge its impact on mining as a viable tactic in warfare going forward.
If aircraft and ships can be "stealthy", there is no reason why a much smaller and less actively emitting object cannot be even stealthier. And no reason why a HARM (high-speed ant-radiation mine) cannot be developed to eliminate the few anti-mine vessels we have.
Excellent point. Jim Dunnigan said pretty much exactly that in How to Make War (man -- has it been _that_ long since that book was published? *creak, groan*).
"The future is not granted, it is won and maintained through the successful execution of warfare."
Well written, CDR. This speaks volumes.
The natural state of human affairs is conflict... peace is merely the interim state between conflicts. It is temporary, of uncertain duration, a fragile interregnum. The only purpose for war is to dictate the terms of the next interim peace. Late strategist Colin S. Gray should be required reading. Let me recommend two of his works:
"Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy" and "Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare" - or why the next hundred years is not going to be any different than the the last, or the centuries before that.
Mines were the key component for "starvation." And modern mines are even more effective today, but even old fashioned "dumb" mines can still get the job done.
So, we should have a large stockpile of mines, a cadre of skilled specialists able to maintain and deploy them, and platforms to deliver them. And, as Murphy says "if the enemy is in range, so are you" and it would be prudent to have a robust capability to detect and neutralize any mine that other state OR NON-STATE actors might deploy in places we want to send ships.
But, alas, we have none of the above. Key shortage such as those make it harder for us to win a war, and a lot easier to lose one. Especially if fighting with one hand tied behind your back by politicians worried about what someone might say, and unwilling to be "in it to win it."
Just asking..... Houthiland got any port facilities, perhaps where stuff from places like Iran might be offloaded? It is unfathomable why any such port facilities are not already rubble, even if commercial shipping might be inconvenienced.
The natural state of human affairs is conflict... peace is merely the interregnum between conflicts. It is temporary and of undependable duration, a brittle hiatus. The only purpose for war is to dictate the terms of the next interlude of peace. Late strategist Colin S. Gray should be required reading. Let me recommend two of his works:
"Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy" and "Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare" - or why the next hundred years is not going to be any different than the last, or the centuries before that.
Get a copy of "The Rosy Future of War" if you can, too.
Thank you - copy on the way!