Tag: war

The USA is graciously offering to protect the freedom of the seas and the financial integrity of several Pacific island nations, whether they want US protection or not.

The US has said it will join Australia in the development of a naval base on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island to “protect the freedom of the seas,” in a move apparently aimed at curbing China’s presence in the Pacific.

Australia, a staunch US ally in the Pacific, had already set its sights on Papua New Guinea’s Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island earlier in November, seeking to build a deep-water facility for its Navy. Now, Washington apparently has also decided to join the effort, in a move clearly aimed at sending a signal to Beijing, which is already locked in a trade war with Washington and in disputes over the South China Sea.

It is no surprise that the US decision apparently came on the heels of rumors that China might also emerge as the eventual developer of the deep-water base. Some other reports suggested that China approached another Pacific island nation, Vanuatu, seeking to open a military base there.

Apart from that, the US also seems to be concerned that Beijing might use its growing influence over the Pacific island nations to get access to some military infrastructure in the vicinity of major maritime routes in the region. Pence even engaged in an indirect verbal duel with China’s President Xi Jingping at the APEC summit, where the two apparently fought for the attention of the smaller Pacific nations.

“Do not accept debt that could compromise your sovereignty. Protect your interests,” Pence called on the island nations, referring to China’s active policy of giving loans to the Pacific states, which might turn it into a major bilateral lender to island economies.

He then called on the Pacific nations to stick with the US as it allegedly offers a “better option” because it would supposedly never “coerce or compromise your independence.” Xi, in turn, said that “no one has the power to stop people from seeking a better life,” while calling on the Pacific nations to “strengthen development cooperation” as well.

However, in its attempt to outplay Beijing in its supposed rush to gain control over strategic locations in the Pacific, the US and Australia seemingly completely forgot to ask the locals about their take on the prospect of the base re-development.

No one has sought support from the locals, Manus Island Governor Charlie Benjamin said, as cited by Reuters. The project was also criticized by a former Papua New Guinea MP from the island, Ronnie Knight, who said that “there is lot of questions to be answered” first.

“There was no discussion with any of the locals, it has just been bulldozed through again and that is what makes people cross,” he told Australia’s ABC broadcaster, expressing his concerns about potentially “having a foreign base on our soil.”

See, they’re the BAD empire. We’ll save you from them, and all out of the goodness of our hearts. Now, shut up, stop talking to them, and do what we tell you to do. While we’re at it, can I interest you in an offer of some loans at an interest rate you can’t possibly refuse? No, I mean, you literally can’t refuse them. Or else.

Don’t mind us just doing a little construction over here. It’s just a teeny, tiny, little military base. You’ll hardly notice it.

The USA is no longer capable of imposing its will on a global basis due to the relative erosion of US military power vis-a-vis the regional powers of China and Russia.

The United States has lost its military edge to a dangerous degree and could potentially lose a war against China or Russia, according to a report released Wednesday by a bipartisan commission that Congress created to evaluate the Trump administration’s defense strategy.

The National Defense Strategy Commission, comprised of former top Republican and Democratic officials selected by Congress, evaluated the Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which ordered a vast reshaping of the U.S. military to compete with Beijing and Moscow in an era of renewed great-power competition.

While endorsing the strategy’s aims, the commission warned that Washington isn’t moving fast enough or investing sufficiently to put the vision into practice, risking a further erosion of American military dominance that could become a national security emergency.

At the same time, according to the commission, China and Russia are seeking dominance in their regions and the ability to project military power globally, as their authoritarian governments pursue defense buildups aimed squarely at the United States.

“There is a strong fear of complacency, that people have become so used to the United States achieving what it wants in the world, to include militarily, that it isn’t heeding the warning signs,” said Kathleen Hicks, a former top Pentagon official during the Obama administration and one of the commissioners. “It’s the flashing red that we are trying to relay.”

The picture of the national security landscape that the 12-person commission sketched is a bleak one, in which an American military that has enjoyed undisputed dominance for decades is failing to receive the resources, innovation and prioritization its leaders need to outmuscle China and Russia in a race for military might reminiscent of the Cold War.

The military balance has shifted adversely for the United States in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, undermining the confidence of American allies and increasing the likelihood of military conflict, the commission found, after reviewing classified documents, receiving Pentagon briefings and interviewing top defense officials.

“The U.S. military could suffer unacceptably high casualties and loss of major capital assets in its next conflict. It might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia,” the report said. “The United States is particularly at risk of being overwhelmed should its military be forced to fight on two or more fronts simultaneously.”

Those who confidently proclaim the superiority of the US military power simply don’t recognize that the USA no longer possesses ANY of the five advantages that allowed it to become a global superpower after World War II.

1. Monopoly on nuclear weapons
2. Limited geographic accessibility by enemies
3. Dominant industrial infrastructure
4. High-average-IQ European population
5. High-trust, high-moral Christian society

Scott Cole conducts a fascinating interview with wargaming historian George Nafziger at Castalia House for Wargaming Wednesday:

SC: David Hamilton-Williams’ Waterloo New Perspectives argues that one of the main influences for the modern understanding of the Battle of Waterloo is Captain William Siborne and his research conducted while building a topographical model of the battle field, all heavily influenced by interviews with British veterans while neglecting the role of minor Allies and, of course, the Prussians.

GN: One thing about published authors – Just because you find it in print doesn’t mean it’s correct. I found a book on Leipzig where the author gave an OB for Leipzig that had the 1st & 2nd Westphalian Hussars present at Leipzig, but both had deserted the French army in late August or early September 1813. This author simply assumed. He also listed Vandamme’s I Corps as still existing, but it was destroyed after the battle of Dresden at Teblitze

When I said that I found English literature on the Napoleonic wars unsatisfying, it was because English speakers are notoriously monoglots – reading only English and only repeat the mantra of “The English won the Napoleonic Wars because they were wonderful.” Let me ask you a rhetorical question: “How many English works go into any detail on Austrian, Russian, or Prussian actions on the battlefield?” I knew of very few.

Anyway, I’ve digressed. English-reading authors cite only English sources and you get the same stuff over and over again. When I buy a book on the Napoleonic era I look at the bibliography. If 50 percent or more is English, I figure the non-English citations are purely filler to flesh out the bibliography and it is purely a rehash of the same old Anglo-myopic stuff.

As for Siborne, he was an Englishman whose natural pro-English biases were accentuated by his desire to get subscriptions for his model, so he amplified the actions of those rich nobles he was soliciting for money. That said, he provides valuable information concerning the British (which must be evaluated for overstatement) and scanty details on the French. As for the Allies, they weren’t making donations to his model project, so they got left out.

 SC: Do you have examples of common misconceptions amongst the English reading public?

GN: Yes, the idea that Wellington invented the two rank line. In fact, in the Dundas infantry regulation you will find it mandated WHEN the battalion did not have sufficient men to fill out the three rank formation. I did an analysis, which can be found in Imperial Bayonets, where the British Army in the peninsula was so under strength that it had no choice, but to be in two ranks as prescribed by the Dundas regulation.

SC: You were a professional wargamer playing OPFOR at the Battle Command Training Center in Fort Leavenworth. Could you describe the similarities and the differences between the war games employed in the Battle Command Training Program (BTCP) and any commercial wargames you have played?

GN: Dissimilarity – the Army actually knew something about war, where I have often found that wargamers frequently have no practical or personal experience in it. Though I was never in the Army, 25 years commissioned service in the Navy counts for something. In addition, I have experience in naval gunfire support off the coast of Vietnam. I also wear the combat action ribbon, for having been in combat, i.e. exchanging fire with the enemy.

Similarities – the generals frequently have ideas, and facts can be an annoyance to those fixed ideas. By this I do not intend to sound like I’m a know-it-all, and some of what I know is classified so I cannot discuss it, but let me relate one story. After the invasion of Iraq, I was writing scenarios for brigade-level exercises. I wrote one where I had the terrorists seize a water works and release the chlorine gas. The generals threw my scenario out saying that the terrorists would never do that. Within a year the terrorists were putting cylinders of chlorine with their IEDs. I rest my case.

There is one major difference between the BCTP games and any type of hobbyist wargame, and that is that the BCTP game had no “eye candy.” Visually it was very sterile. Commercial games have a necessity to make their games visually appealing.

I don’t often post links to them here, but rest assured that I never miss reading a Wargaming Wednesday post. They are reliably an excellent and informative read.

Fred Reed is alarmed by the recent preparations for war on the part of the USA, China, and Russia:

The United States seems to be contemplating war with Russia, Iran, China, or all three. Washington pushes NATO ever closer to Russia, leaves the nuclear-missile treaty and tries to destroy both countries and China economically. Why the push for war?

Simple. Asia is awakening. China grows economically at a scorching pace–and all power rests on economic power. China is a large country, America a medium-sized one. America’s roughly two hundred million whites do virtually all of the scientific work on which national power depends. China has a billion increasingly educated Han Chinese, a five-to-one advantage. China’s stated aim is to united Eurasia among other places in one vast commercial union. Washington’s pugnacity has pushed China, Iran, and Russia together. The chain of nations, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey all totter between looking east and looking west. If Washington doesn’t stop this growth, the American Empire will be marginalized within decades.

This doesn’t threaten the American public. It threatens the Empire and Israel.

The USA has to give up its empire and its Israel First foreign policy or it is going to be militarily defeated within the next 15 years. In fact, it is now possible that the breakup in the 2030s that I have predicted for nearly two decades will be triggered by that military defeat rather than by the economic collapse that I assumed.

In addition to the misuse and abuse of the US military for the last 17 years, China has systematically weakened the US military infrastructure under the aegis of US trade policy. The Red Army has clearly learned the lesson of WWII, which is that industrial infrastructure will defeat training, esprit de corps and tactics. The Pentagon has belatedly realized that this is a serious problem, but the dumbing down and demoralization of the US population due to immigration renders it largely unable to even begin addressing it.

In the declassified part of the research of the American Department of Defence it is mentioned that in the US there are difficulties with future deliveries of the power switches that nearly all American missiles are equipped with. As officials of the Pentagon report, the producer of these switches was closed down, but the highest military ranks learned about it only after it became clear that the power switches ended. And there is nowhere to take new ones from, because the producer disappeared into thin air a whole 2 years ago. One more striking example: the country’s only producer of solid rocket motors for “air-to-air” missiles, as the American officials write, “encountered technical production issues”, the reasons for which couldn’t be found even after government and military experts were involved. Attempts to restart production failed, and the Pentagon was obliged to employ a Norwegian company to ensure uninterrupted deliveries. Obviously, this indicates a certain technical degradation of the entire American system, because only the loss of some key competencies can explain a situation in which production cannot be restored and the problem cannot even be determined.

Whilst becoming acquainted with the complaints of the leadership of the American army it is difficult to rid oneself of the impression that it isn’t a document of the US Department of Defence dated September, 2018 that is in front of your eyes, but a description of the problems of the Russian army from the era of the dashing 90’s. Literally there is no direction in which there would be no serious or very serious problems, and often they even can’t be solved at the expense of the bottomless military budget.

In the section on nuclear weapon problems the Pentagon complains that in the US there isn’t the necessary number of engineers and technicians who would have the corresponding education, training, and US citizenship that are necessary for working with army nuclear objects. The mention of nationality is of importance, because American higher education institutions produce enough engineers, physicists, and representatives of other technical specialties and exact sciences, however a disproportionately large number of these graduates are foreigners, most often from the People’s Republic of China.

The neo-liberal world order has failed. The US reign as the only global superpower is already over. The world is changing, so be prepared for new developments in foreign affairs that were beyond imagining only ten years ago. The core problem, as far as I can see it, is that the financial elite has become addicted to the profits of low-cost war without end; for the price of a few hundred American lives every year, they make vast sums of money.

But after all these years, after all these wars, they can’t imagine the US actually losing a war and the whole system coming to a crashing end without a safe retreat for them and their endless war profits, so they will keep pushing and pushing until they trigger the inevitable reaction from either a regional or a continental power.

The ranking commander in Afghanistan has publicly conceded that the Afghan war cannot be won.

The Afghanistan war cannot be won militarily and peace will only be achieved through a political resolution with the Taliban, the newly-appointed American general in charge of US and NATO operations has conceded.

In his first interview since taking command of NATO’s Resolute Support mission in September, Gen. Austin Scott Miller provided NBC News with a surprisingly candid assessment of the seemingly never-ending conflict, which began with the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001.

“This is not going to be won militarily. This is going to a political solution,” Miller said. He mused that the Taliban is also tired of fighting and may be interested in starting to “work through the political piece” of the 17-year-old war.

But it’s not clear if the Taliban is open to negotiations. Last month, a top Taliban commander told RT, in a rare interview, that the group’s leaders had no desire to negotiate with the Americans.

Congratulations, it only took 17 years for the U.S. military to discover why Afghanistan is called “the graveyard of empires”. That’s some fine military intelligence at work there. Go the hell home. The invasion was bad enough, but the decision to try and occupy Afghanistan was reprehensibly stupid. No more wars without formal Congressional declaration.

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

The problem is that Americans don’t understand that the frontier closed over one hundred years ago. These people are not coming to America to become Americans, they’re invading America to demand tribute. There’s an old saying about the Danegeld: once you pay the Danegeld you’ll never be rid of the Dane. The United States brought in immigrants, brought in refugees, and all they did was encourage more. And that’s why the United States is falling apart.

The average IQ has fallen by as much as eight points. The country is literally stupefying itself, enstupidating itself, however you want to describe it, the country is actively lowering its standard of living and its ability to maintain its infrastructure. It is not sustainable. Trump understands what is politically possible better than me, that’s true, but it’s not about politics. War is not about politics. When Clausewitz talks about war being politics by other means, that’s the whole point, it’s about other means. Once you’re in the realm of defending borders, that’s not something that you need to win support for, you either do it or you don’t, and if you don’t do it then you have failed. It’s that simple.

Gordon says the entire West is infested with that mentality. That’s absolutely true and it’s not an accident. It’s a mentality that has been pushed systematically on the West by a coalition of peoples whose interests are intrinsically anti-Western. It’s not a single group of people. It’s not just the Jews, it’s not just the socialists, it’s not just the various immigrant peoples,  it is a coalition of peoples whose interests are in general opposed to the interests of the Western people.

Now the West has brought it on itself, you know. The fact that the West colonized these other countries, the fact that the West imposed their economic systems and their currencies and their legal systems and everything else on other countries, is now coming back to bite the West. This is a normal reaction to empire. If you study the empires of the past, whether you study the Athenian empire, whether you study the Roman empire, whether you look at some of the Chinese empires, whether you look at the German empire, whether you look at the British empire, all of these empires were fundamentally weakened by the nature of their having established their rule over foreign nations because it’s a relationship that goes both ways. When you set up a colony in another nation you obviously affect that nation, but that nation also affects you. That’s why the Dutch have an issue with the people who obtain Dutch citizenship through living in the Netherlands Antilles.

This is a historical pattern that repeats itself over and over and over again, and the logic of empire is what is now destroying the United States empire. People say, well, you know, the US is not an empire, we don’t have an emperor. Well, who was the emperor of the Athenian empire? You can’t name it,  there wasn’t one, because an empire is not about what you call the ruler or rulers, it’s fundamentally about whether one nation is ruling over a series of other nations or not.

A reader is reminded of the historical cycle described in the ancient Chinese classic:

The latest Darkstream immediately brought to mind the famous opening lines of Three Kingdoms:

“Here begins our tale. The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”

The urge to unite speaks to man’s hubris and arrogance, and the eventual division, to the inevitable end of that folly and hubris.

The second migrant caravan crosses violently into Mexico:

Second migrant caravan storms into Mexico: ‘Violent’ group from Central America carrying BOMBS and guns defies a huge police presence to cross the border from Guatemala as Trump deploys 5,200 troops.

The second caravan making their way up through Central America have members armed with explosives. Had gasoline bombs made of soft-drink bottles, and improvised PVC tubes to launch fireworks. Mexican federal police briefly blocked the migrants from crossing the Suchiate River on Monday, but the migrants soon defied the law enforcement presence and broke through into Mexico. Many tried to swim or wade across to Mexico, some while carrying children. Law enforcement avoided a second day of violence, a day after a confrontation left one migrant dead.

Troop deployments are well and good. But they are meaningless unless the President is prepared to actually utilize their firepower when the border is attacked.

That’s the prediction from a former Army general:

The former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe says it’s likely the United States will be at war with China in 15 years. Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges said at a Warsaw security forum on Wednesday that European allies will have to do more to ensure their own defenses against Russia as Americans focus more on the Pacific.

Hodges said: “I think in 15 years — it’s not inevitable, but it is a very strong likelihood — that we will be at war with China. The United States does not have the capacity to do everything it has to do in Europe and in the Pacific to deal with the Chinese threat.”

I put no stock in this general’s grand strategic analysis, but the timeframe is interesting, as well as the tacit admission that the US is no longer the sole global superpower it once was, but is merely the foremost global power now. And the trends most certainly do not favor it retaining that status considering how it has not even been able to maintain the Monroe Doctrine or defend its own borders.

Furthermore, the US is not going to fight a war with China until China is completely ready for it, and when that moment arrives, the US will lose its influence over Asia in much the same way Russia has lost its influence over Eastern Europe whether the war is fought or not.

Ignoring the invasion isn’t making it go away. Quite the contrary, as it happens:

The Mexican El Universal news outlet is reporting that more than 14,000 Hondurans — not counting people from other countries who are marching toward the United States — are leaving that Central American nation to seek asylum here. The news outlet reported that “municipal authorities,” the Catholic Diocese in the Mexican city of Tapachula, and the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) provided the 14,000 figure.

“The first group walked for 37 kilometers from Ciudad Hidalgo to Tapachula on Sunday afternoon and was comprised by 5,333 children, women and men,” El Universal reported. Later that afternoon 3,000 more men, women and children started “to walk under the rain.”

“Meanwhile, there are 3,000 children, women and men in the Ciudad Hidalgo International bridge, shared by Mexico and Guatemala, who are looking to enter Mexico with documents provided by the INM,” the news outlet reported.

The God-Emperor is going to have to ignore the bureaucrats, the negotiators, the moderates, the temporizers, and the fence-sitters on this one.

The lesson of history is simple and straightforward. Always sink the damn ships!

It’s perhaps informative to recall that the US Air Force created a Highway of Death in response to considerably less provocation from Iraqis back in 1991. And those Iraqis were not attempting to physically invade the USA.

If the US military will not defend the borders of the USA, it should be completely defunded and disbanded.

If the US military will not defend the borders of the USA, there is literally no point to its existence at all.

UPDATE: This is what happens when you don’t sink the first ship.

A second migrant caravan is heading for the American border having formed in the wake of an initial group, which has already crossed Guatemala and entered Mexico. The second caravan is made up of 1,000 people and crossed the border from Honduras into Guatemala on Sunday, before arriving in the town of Chiquimula on Monday night. They are following in the path of a much-larger group, believed to number around 7,000, which was sheltering in the town of Huixtla, in southern Mexcio, overnight on Monday.