We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.
– Mao Tse Tung
The recent offer of truces by both Al Quaeda and Muqtada al Sadr’s followers in Iraq suggests an incompetence for guerrilla warfare, or that they are losing.
There are two dangers in the weeks ahead. The first is that since the 1960s, a different sort of guerrilla warfare has emerged, which consists of sacrificing cannon-fodder until your opponent can no longer morally take it.
The first historical case of this that I can find comes from the First World War, on the second day of the Battle of Loos. It was an accident. Ten thousand British troops were lined up in ten ranks and marched slowly across muddy open terrain with range markers placed by the Germans. The German machine gunners simply mowed down rank after rank of the British, without taking any casualties themselves. The British came up to the barbed wire that was supposed to have been cut by the artillery bombardment, only it had not been. None of the British troops was equipped with wire cutters (this bit has not changed). So groups of British soldiers ran up and down the barbed wire looking for a way through. The result was virtually 100 per cent casualties on the British side.
Now it is not true that this battle left the Germans unscathed. About a dozen German machine gunners were so traumatised by the massacre that they suffered nervous breakdowns and needed to be hospitalized (the British would have shot them for cowardice).
Since the Vietnam War, it has become a deliberate tactic of the weaker combattant to make a point of losing hundreds or thousands of casualties in the belief that the West does not have the stomach for slaughtering poorly armed enemies. To return to the Mao quote, now is the time to press even more firmly with military force: “enemy tires, we attack”. Failure to do so merely confuses by-standers who consider compassion to be effeminate weakness, and encourages the enemy.
The second threat is the ‘compromise’ with the UN. Letting the UN organise the hand-over of power to an Iraqi government (which will surely be different from the one the US wants) is rather like inviting the USSR to decide who governs Germany and Japan in 1945. Except that the USSR was an ally.
Paul Staines points out a splendid example of the French state doing its bit to support the world’s largest tyranny
As Taiwan’s democrats get bullets before ballots, France demonstrates its exceptionalism once again. This week the French navy began joint exercises with the Chinese navy. No, really.
Not content with just lobbying other EU countries to lift the arms embargo on China imposed in the wake of the Tiannamen Square massacre in 1989 (who says the French are always against free trade?), they are training with the Chinese navy. The official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, said they would be China’s biggest ever joint military exercises with a foreign power. (Note to Beijing, it took Churchill a single day to sink almost the entire French navy, but maybe you have not got many seafaring friends to learn from.)
Taiwan obviously is anxious about the situation – which they describe as a threatening show of force. The French not content with cruising the seas with Taiwan’s mortal enemy recently condemned President Chen Shui-bian’s plan to hold a referendum on missile defense as part of this coming Saturday’s election, prompting Taipei to suspend top-level ties with Paris.
I suppose with reduced opportunities for arms sales to Iraq the prospect of equipping the Chinese military appeals.
Paul Staines
There is a reason why the military is one of the few areas in which the State operates successfully. It is Darwinian. Bad soldiers die at a faster rate than good soldiers; bad generals lose battles and are replaced; nations with bad armies cease to exist.
So it is with defense programs in war time. No matter how technically sweet a weapon system may be, it must fulfill an actual current battlefield need. It must be able to survive in the battlefield that actually exists and perform the actual missions required in war as it is, rather than as it was imagined.
So it is with heavy heart we say goodbye to a truly magnificent and now still-born aircraft: the Comanche. The US Army announced it will be cancelled. The money will instead be used to buy more Longbows and Blackhawks and to upgrade survivability across the fleet and especially in the National Guard units.
The SAM’s of Iraq spoke… and the US Army listened.
About a year ago I predicted the US was in the first stages of disentangling itself from global tarbabies. Invading Iraq was one of the items I expected as there was no real path out of the Middle East so long as Saddam was there. Northern and Southern Watch would have continued for decades. This is not to say America will not be stuck there for quite a few years to come, only that there is a plausible exit strategy where there once was none.
The BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) process is due to culminate in a report in mid-March and will include what may well be the greatest re-organization of American overseas basing since the end of WWII. I expect to see the buzz word ‘capabilities based defense’ used as an explanation for greatly decreased numbers of Americans in overseas bases.
The third part is South Korea, and I give you these two items from Jane’s to take as thou wilt:
Seoul’s AEW&C buy will reduce reliance on US.
The relaunch of the E-X airborne early-warning and control (AEW&C) programme by the Republic of Korea (RoK) Ministry of National Defence (MND) on 4 February is intended to reduce the country’s reliance on US Air Force E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS) aircraft (JDW 11 February).
[Jane’s Defence Weekly – first posted to http://jdw.janes.com – 13 February 2004]
South Korea haggles over procurement programme. The Republic of Korea Ministry of National Defence (MND) established its Korea Multirole Helicopter (KMH) Programme Management Office (PMO) last month to lead the country’s largest-ever defence procurement programme, with a value of some $12.5 billion.
[Jane’s Defence Weekly – first posted to http://jdw.janes.com – 13 February 2004]
We will see agreements for unrestricted bases containing pre-positioned supplies in in places convenient to expected trouble spots. There will only be enough local American staff to handle peace-time security, inventory and infrastructure. Perhaps there will be some intelligence, training and Special Forces as well, but the ‘footprint’ will be small. As much as possible will be handled by civilians, on base where absolutely required and otherwise ‘outsourced’ to a back-office in the US.
Naval basing will be an exception. A primarily maritime power still needs home ports for the Fleet that are within reasonable sailing distances of trouble spots.
We are entering an era in which our military will be kept at home and deployed only when and where required. It will take most of this decade to get there.
Wired reports that Russia has successfully tested a hypersonic anti-Star Wars weapon capable of penetrating any prospective missile shield, a senior general said Thursday. The prototype weapon proved it could maneuver so quickly as to make “any missile defense useless,” Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, told a news conference.
This exchange of statements has an air of nostalgia about it:
Putin said that the development of new weapons was not directed against the United States, and Baluyevsky reaffirmed the statement, saying that the experiment shouldn’t be seen as Russia’s response to U.S. missile defense plans. “The experiment conducted by us must not be interpreted as a warning to the Americans not to build their missile defense because we designed this thing.”
In Washington, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked by reporters about the Putin statement. “If you’re in that business — intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads — you want them to be survivable, and maneuverability is one way to increase their survivability against any potential defenses.”
I suppose the signs of new era are the following bits:
Putin said that Russia has no intention of immediately deploying new weapons based on the experimental vehicle. “We have demonstrated our capability, but we have no intention of building this craft tomorrow.”
Baluyevsky said that Russia had informed the United States about its intention to conduct the experiment and added that U.S. officials issued no objections.
We shall see.
This is an thoughtful posting:
The weekend was spent in Manchester, via Oxford. On Sunday morning a friend and I visited the Imperial War Museum North, which forms part of the dramatic redevelopment of the quaysides around the ship canal on the Salford/Trafford border.
I was brought up on school trips to the Imperial War Museum in Kennington. The huge naval guns at the entrance, the trench experience, the endless tanks, artillery pieces and bombers’ cockpits you can climb over, the uniforms, guns and bayonettes in cases. Regardless of your attitude towards war, you can’t deny it is a fascinating collection.
So we expected something similar in Manchester, but were surprised. There are very few physical exhibits: one T34 tank, a field gun, a fire engine, and for reasons I still don’t understand, a Trabant car. The cases are sparsely filled. The emphasis is not on weapons or uniforms or battles, but on the effect of war on people – refugees, children, prisoners, asylum-seekers, and peace protestors. So there were more letters and diaries than rifles and grenades. There was even a case filled with cultural items which reflect Britons’ obsession with WWII: Warlord comics, action man, and Dad’s Army.
There are frequent films projected on the vast walls – we saw one about children in war, and one about the ’causes of war’ (it’s all about oil and money).
This is not a place for a military historian or one who wants to see the development of the machine gun, but perhaps that’s not what people want anymore. Does the new type of musuem reflect changing social attitudes, or is it trying to mould them?
At least the architecture of the building, designed by Daniel Libeskind, is stunning, and you can buy Airfix models in the giftshop (very tempting!).
“Stunning” means, from the outside, looking like this:
Normally, I do not dislike buildings of this sort. For modern art something along these (curvey) lines is very appropriate. But put it like this, if the people who fought and died in the wars being propagandised about inside this edifice were asked what they thought of it, what do you think they would say? Or is it that I now associate such buildings with harmless trivialities, that therefore it really does not matter what they look like, and that therefore the architect might as well have some fun – but this is a museum about war?
By the way, to add some other design-related facts, the genius who did the recent redesign of Samizdata.net, and who designed this and this, and also, not surprisingly, this, also did this.
India has closed the deal for the purchase of the ‘Admiral Gorschkov’, a Cold War era Russian aircraft carrier. It is expected this ship will come into service with the Indian Navy around 2008, just in time for the retirement of the INS Viraat, their current aircraft carrier.
It is quite interesting that there is a continuing armaments relationship between the Russians and India, despite the seismic geopolitical changes of the last decade. An untutored alien landing for the first time on Earth would make no sense of it. The roles of the US and the USSR in that region should be reversed, Russia should be partnered with the alternating military dictatorship and semi-democratic kleptocracies of Pakistan and the US with India, the oldest liberal democratic state in Asia.
Relations between nations have layers within layers and oft-times deep and conflicting historical roots, I am aware of some of the public history of the region, but cannot help wondering if there is a bit more to it, an unspoken geopolitical undertext.
India has centuries of liberal European traditions behind it. It is also not likely to change very much even under severe pressure. Generations would come and go before the paperwork for change was properly submitted, checked, authorized and filed. In a Cold War world the risk of India actually going Red was rather slim and thus of less worry than perennially unstable Pakistan.
Pakistan borders China and is within spitting distance of Russia across a ultra thin panhandle of Afghanistan. The region is wild and uncontrolled and right in the hotspot is the contested Kashmir Province. Given the location and the consistant interest in access to the oil and southern oceans shown from Tsarist through Soviet days, Northern Pakistan was absolutely ripe for fun and games with the KGB. It seems obvious checkmating this move was of far more Realpolitik value than telling the Indians how much we admired their history.
With the end of the Evil Empire, much of Geopolitics changed, but the full extent of the re-alignment of interests in this part of the world did not really click into place until September 11th, 2001. Islamic fundamentalists were already a clear and present danger to the Russians. Nutcases don’t even have to board an airliner to get to Moscow. They can drive there. After 9/11 they were also top priority to the US.
Over the last century or so, the Russians have ticked off a lot of people on their borders and they know it. They’ve done a far better job at this than the US… so it is somewhat in their interest for the US to take the brunt of whatever direct ire is caused by sorting out the problems. Otherwise they would have to deal with it, and given their level of success in Afghanistan and Chechnya, I would not have much hope for solutions from that direction.
From the Russian viewpoint, it is ideal if the US stabilizes Pakistan and acts as the lightning rod for fundamentalist ire; meanwhile they help arm India so that in the worst case, a fundamentalist takeover of Pakistan, India can keep Pakistan occupied and looking away from Russian territory.
The Russians see the regional problems up front and personal; they are damned pretty much whatever they do and aren’t very good at building stable liberal democracies. They haven’t even worked the bugs out of their own yet. The US is somewhat less at risk from the downsides of action in the region since it is far, far away and bordered by oceans and democracies. Not that such is a total protection. It just means the crazies have to expend more energy and more resources to carry out their attacks. To put it bluntly, the US stands to lose a smaller number of cities to the fundies than would Russia.
So there is method to this madness. You just have to sit a moment in everyone’s chair and ask ‘what’s in it for me?’
The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq
Kenneth M. Pollack
Random House, 2002
The author, a (presumably ex-) CIA operative, has written this book, published in the Autumn of 2002, as an advocate of “regime change” in Iraq, listing the various alternative options, five in all: Containment, Deterrence, Covert Action, The Afghan Approach” and (the preferred one) Invasion (p. xxix and Part III, pp. 211-386).
Iraq’s History and Relations with the US to Gulf War I
Part I (pp. 1-108) Iraq and the United States, following a 30 page Introduction, gives a concise summary of Iraq’s history and relations with US, with greater concentration after the fall of the Shah turned Iran from a Western bulwark to Islamic menace. From someone regarded with repugnance, Saddam became the “man we can do business with”, which meant tolerating some ghastly atrocities in the chemical warfare line against rebel Kurds and Iran, which Saddam had rashly taken on after its armed forces had been purged by the mullahs and sabotaged by departing US and dissident technicians. If the US rescued Iraq by supplying weapons, others – China, Russia (still the USSR), France, Germany and Britain – followed suit, many selling the ingredients for the nuclear, chemical and biological programs that have subsequently given so much trouble (p. 19). Officially Saddam could claim a victory and emerged from the 1980-88 war with a large well-armed army, but with 200,000 dead, terribly in debt and his economy badly degraded. His decision to attack and occupy Kuwait for its wealth, in gold, goods and oil, was fortified by his mistaken belief that his army could defeat an American riposte, and not unassisted by misguided pacific overtures and reports by the US ambassador, Susan Glaspie – and what has happened to her, I wonder? → Continue reading: The case for invading Iraq put (before it actually happened)
I rarely add a new blog to my list of daily visits, but Belmont Club makes the cut.
What does Belmont Club bring to the blog party, you ask? Adamantine analysis of the military situation in Iraq, for one thing, as well as a very interesting look at the pending takeover of the European left by radical Islamists.
As for the Iraqi situation, Mr. Wretchard thinks that the Baathists and Islamists are getting their asses handed to them,
and backs it up with trenchant strategic analysis.
→ Continue reading: First-rate analysis
John Keegan writes about his meeting with Donald Rumsfeld. Aparently, he does not think the situation is that bad:
Mr Rumsfeld read me a series of reports, from the American regional commands, summarising progress achieved: terrorists apprehended, weapons recovered, explosives destroyed. The totals were impressive. Despite daily reports of American casualties, he was dismissive of the danger to coalition forces. Within the context of the total security situation, he sees the level of violence as bearable and believes that the trend of terrorist activity is downward.
Economically, the outlook is strongly positive. Electricity supply actually exceeds pre-war levels, with an output of 4,400 megawatts per day in October, as against 3,300 in January. Oil production is returning to pre-war levels, at nearly 2,200 million barrels per day in October, as against 2,500 million barrels before the war.
Socially, the country has returned to normal. More than 3.6 million children are in primary school and 1.5 million in secondary school. University registrations have increased from 63,000 before the war to 97,000. Healthcare is at pre-war levels and is improving rapidly, because of greatly increased spending, estimated to be at 26 times pre-war levels. Doctors’ salaries are eight times higher and vaccination and drug distribution programmes have also been greatly increased.
Mr Keegan was frequently asked why there is so much less trouble in the British than the American area of occupation. He conceded that America, the Great Satan is target of greater hatred and Britain as the ‘lesser’ Satan does not attract the same degree of hostility. Further he acknowledged that the southern Shia area, where the British are operating, has always been anti-Saddam and therefore their task is easier compared with the American policing of the Sunni area. Also, Basra has a long history of dealing with Britain going back to the days of the East India Company. However, he insisted that there is a fundamental difference between the British and the American approach.
While the Americans, for reasons connected with their own past, seek to solve the Iraqi problem by encouraging the development of democracy, the British, with their long experience of colonial campaigning and their recent exposure to Irish terrorism, take a more pragmatic attitude.
They recognise that Iraq is still a tribal society and that the key to pacification lies in identifying tribal leaders and other big men, in recognising social divisions that can be exploited, and in using a mixture of stick and carrot to restore and maintain order.
The conclusion is unexpected and I expected will be resisted by those who think the United States’ exceptional history and status is as a result of the country’s banishment of European political practices, especially its opposition to imperialism.
Forcibly, America is becoming an imperial if not an imperialist country. The attitude was exemplified by an encounter I had with a tall, lean, crew-cut young man I met in Washington. Our conversation went as follows: “Marine?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered. “Have you been in Iraq?” “Afghanistan. Just got back.” The exchange was straight out of Kipling. There is a lot more of that to come.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the British Empire by the Americans and by most marxist and statist continentals, namely that it was driven economically, not politically, and maintained defensively for the most part. The British merchants explored the world for new markets and the British state defended territories where trade with Britain took hold. British imperialism was not the sort the Romans would recognise. We do not need to look that far back, comparisons with Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Soviet Empire would highlight the different nature of the beast. So being imperial may not be so bad, provided you stop short of being imperialist.
Today is Remembrance Sunday and I am watching the Cenotaph ceremony in London. The military band just finished playing Rule Britannia and I remembered, time and again, what an amazing and powerful piece of music it is. Arrogance, defiance and a vow of no submission. It is not a piece of imperialist propaganda, as our transatlantic brethren are prone to conclude about anything British that smacks of national pride, but a cry that represents the desire to defend hundreds years of history and common heritage. It vows that Britons shall never be slaves. Not the country, not her rulers but Britons. And it rings true on this day, when we remember those whose lives were sacrificed to preserve the values that united Britain and her society against her enemies during the First World War and against the totalitarian evil sweeping the world during the Second World War.
Yesterday I was arguing hotly (off-line) against the very meaning of the Remebrance Day. It made me angry to think of so many individuals and their aspirations so cruelly and so pointlessly extinguished. Pointlessly, because the war was the result of the European states doing their ‘worst’ on the international scene. The state’s only legitimate role is to protect its citizens, but the First World War was sparked off by political horse-trading and petty international diplomacy that had nothing to do with the lives of those who were called upon to die on the European states’ playground. The British state let its people and soldiers down, by a strategy that counted lives by a heap. Today’s ceremonies are a far cry from the undignified deaths of the millions on the battlefields, in the trenches, they do not remember the mud, the corpses, the fear, pain and despair.
And it makes me angry to see the politicians taking on their most pious and sanctimonious expression for such occassions, men who have never known and would never understand that kind of sacrifice but are in a position to send others to it. Their expression contrasts with that of the veterans, whose eyes look beyond the memorials to their memories. And I suppose that is why I join the two minute silence and remember that those who died did not die for nothing. Their memory may have been hijacked and the truth tainted but that makes it all the more important to keep that memory alive.
True:
In this handout picture made available Tuesday Oct. 28, 2003 by the Israel-based Cornershot Co. in Tel Aviv, Israel, a rifle is seen composed of two parts; the front, that can swivel from side to side, containing a pistol with a color camera mounted on top, and the back section which consists of the stock, trigger and a monitor. According to a report by the Israeli daily ‘Maariv’ newspaper, the pistol, produced by the Florida-based Cornershot Holdings, is being tested by the Israeli military and has already been bought by a number of special forces around the world. The unique weapon allows a soldier to remain behind cover, with only the barrel of the rifle exposed in the direction of the hostile fire. (AP Photo/HO, Cornershot)
If you’ve already seen and heard about this days ago, apologies from me and only me. If not but you’re glad to see and hear of it now, you also have Chris O’Donnell to thank.
Update from the editor: As it happens, this innovative Israeli weapon is just a more sophisticated development of an idea implemented by the Germans in World War II… a version of the MP44 with a ‘shoot-around-corners’ attachment using a mirror.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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