Tag: war

There will be war

Back in March, about a month after we launched Castalia, I contacted Jerry Pournelle with the idea of reviving his great military science fiction anthology series, THERE WILL BE WAR. He was entirely open to the idea, but he was busy and quite naturally had a lot of more important things to do than be pestered by an insignificant publisher who at the time published a single novella by Tom Kratman.

So, I gave up on the notion, contacted Tom, and we put together RIDING THE RED HORSE instead. That went rather well, as you know, and Dr. Pournelle became sufficiently interested in the project to graciously contribute two pieces to it, one fiction and one non-fiction. I was rather pleasantly surprised when, after he received a copy and had the chance to read a few reviews, he asked if I might be interested in having Castalia re-release the nine volumes of THERE WILL BE WAR in ebook format.

You can probably imagine that it didn’t take me long to indicate that, yes, we might be willing to contemplate the notion. I daresay we contemplated and cogitated at least a nanosecond or two. The result of all this cogitation was the suggestion that with war looming on nearly every horizon, it might be the right time to consider reviving THERE WILL BE WAR as an anthology series, since it had lain dormant since the end of the Cold War. Dr. Pournelle concurred, which made the timing of this Amazon review of RIDING THE RED HORSE more than a little ironic:

Should be called “There Will Be War Volume 10”, February 2, 2015
By Chris Gerrib “Author, Pirates of Mars”

Generally a very solid work, modeled after the old “There Will Be War” military SF anthologies. The difference is that there is a mixture of non-fiction and fiction in this work. I don’t agree with some of the ideas presented (others I do) but everything is thought-provoking and well-written.

On the full disclosure front, Jerry Pournelle’s contribution is “His Truth Goes Marching On” which is a classic but has been reprinted seemingly everywhere. Having said that, it’s probably Pournelle’s best short work. All in all, well worth the time and money.

I say ironic because on that very day, Dr. Pournelle agreed to revive the series with Castalia House, beginning with THERE WILL BE WAR Volume X. The two anthology series will remain entirely separate, as RIDING THE RED HORSE will consist of entirely new material while THERE WILL BE WAR, as before, will primarily consist of high-quality reprints. Tom Kratman and I will continue to edit RIDING THE RED HORSE, while Dr. Pournelle will edit THERE WILL BE WAR.

There have been a lot of military science fiction stories published since Volume IX appeared in 1989. We’re going to want to identify and feature the very best of them in Volume X, so if you happen to have any suggestions in this regard, or believe that you happen to have written one of them, please don’t hesitate to bring them to my attention.

As for the original nine volumes, we intend to release them in individual ebooks and as a set of three three-volume hardcover omnibuses, beginning later this year.

Unready for 4GW

No one serious believed that Obama was even remotely capable of handling foreign policy, but most erroneously assumed that he was smart enough to hand off responsibility for it to foreign policy veterans. That has not turned out to be the case, as Jerry Pournelle notes Peggy Noonan’s recent column in the Wall Street Journal:

No one thinks this administration is the A Team when it comes to foreign affairs, but this is unprecedented push-back from top military and intelligence players. They are fed up, they’re less afraid, they’re retired, and they’re speaking out. We are going to be seeing more of this kind of criticism, not less.

On Thursday came the testimony of three former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger (1973-77), George Shultz (1982-89) and Madeleine Albrigh t (1997-2001). Senators asked them to think aloud about what America’s national-security strategy should be, what approaches are appropriate to the moment. It was good to hear serious, not-green, not-merely-political people give a sense of the big picture. Their comments formed a kind of bookend to the generals’ criticisms.

They seemed to be in agreement on these points:

  • We are living through a moment of monumental world change.
  • Old orders are collapsing while any new stability has yet to emerge.
  • When you’re in uncharted waters your boat must be strong.
  • If America attempts to disengage from this dangerous world it will only make all the turmoil worse.

Mr. Kissinger observed that in the Mideast, multiple upheavals are unfolding simultaneously—within states, between states, between ethnic and religious groups. Conflicts often merge and produce such a phenomenon as the Islamic State, which in the name of the caliphate is creating a power base to undo all existing patterns.

Mr. Shultz said we are seeing an attack on the state system and the rise of a “different view of how the world should work.” What’s concerning is “the scope of it.”

Correct diagnosis, wrong prescription. Observe that these foreign policy experts are more than a decade behind William Lind, who described these extra-state upheavals in both ON WAR and FOUR GENERATIONS OF MODERN WAR.

And Lind is also correct to assert that America MUST disengage from “this dangerous world”, as the very danger is primarily the result of disastrous Anglo-American meddling in the Middle East. Islam is what it is, but it would not not be resurgent and aggressively expansionary if the British, followed by the Americans, had not made it possible through their insanely inept Middle East policies.

The West needs to adopt a siege mentality, expel the non-Westerners, and let the fire burn itself out. Continued engagement only guarantees that it will be necessary to fight an indefinite number of fires within the West itself.

The Iron Law in the USAF

Jerry Pournelle posts an informative and timely explanation of the US Air Force’s self-assisted decline into military irrelevance:

The heart of the USAF’s institutional culture was Strategic Air Command (SAC). It was where the pilots that learned how to do teamwork, logistics and (nuclear) strategy. That was where officers were groomed for senior flag rank command slots.

When SAC was stood down, Tactical Air Command (TAC) took over in the form of the renamed Air Combat Command (ACC). We are talking fighter jocks, the prima donna’s, the cowboys. The anti-intellectuals who are scared to death of people smarter than they are. Look what happened after the Gulf War when ACC was in charge.

Col. John A. Warden, the architect of the Gulf War air campaign was black balled by Gen. Horner. He retired a thrice passed over Col. at the Air Command and Staff School.

Gen. Corder — the man who put together the 1980’s USAF SEAD doctrine used so well in the Gulf War — was effectively sacked by the USAF chief of Staff (CoS) for disobeying a “strong suggestion” to lie to Congress about the need to retain the F-4G Wild Weasels. (The then CoS was trying to retain more F-15C’s in the force structure.) His efforts to deploy a missile warning system** to protect USAF planes was cancelled partially in retaliation.

When Corder’s allies in Congress started making noise in 1993 about the draw down of F-4G Wild Weasel and EF-111’s, the USAF put the recently retired Corder on a special six month SEAD study to satisfy them. Then the Air Staff sat on the results for close to three years. Corder, under the legal restrictions of the Reagan era secrecy laws, was thus effectively silenced while the deed was done. The downing of Capt. O’ Grady in Bosnia was a direct result of the purging of F-4G Wild Weasel and EF-111 Spark ‘Vark’s from the USAF force structure and senior ACC staff’s willing EW incompetence.

USAF CoS Fogleman, for all his faults, recognized the lack of institutional professionalism. His support of the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Alb. and attempts to create a USAF doctrine codifying entity like the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) were what was needed.
Unfortunately, Fogleman could not delegate and his reforms died with his military career. The inability to delegate is a defining fault of USAF fighter pilot culture. Fogleman’s successors haven’t tried to address these core institutional issues since then. The F-22 budget wars and the real wars since 1997 have left the USAF CoS no time for anything else, assuming they were interested.

Jerry adds: The Iron Law even in the military, dammit. The purpose of warriors is to
win wars.  It takes one force to gain and keep air supremacy, another
to support the ground army.  The army can win without ground support if
the other guy also has none, and we used to plan Cold War battles in
which neither side had supremacy.  That was tough and the obvious
conclusion is that air supremacy is vital; but that does not mean that
support of the ground forces is not important. If the Air Force won’t
give it, take the mission away; and if USAF blocks that, abolish USAF
and bring back USAAF.

There is real evidence surfacing that the Iron Law has taken over to such a degree that the bureaucrats in the USAF are literally more loyal to their bureaucracy than to the country they are sworn to serve:

The Air Force is investigating allegations that the No. 2 commander
at its prestigious Air Combat Command told lower-ranking officers that
talking to members of Congress about the capabilities of the A-10 attack
aircraft is tantamount to treason.

The alleged comment by Maj.
Gen. James Post has stirred concern in Congress about the Air Force
muzzling officers in violation of their legal rights. “This is
very serious, to accuse people of treason for communicating with
Congress,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, told Gen. Mark Welsh, the
Air Force chief of staff, who testified Wednesday before the Senate
Armed Services Committee.

Post is reported to have told Air Force
officers attending a recent weapons and tactics conference in Nevada
that it is their duty to support the service’s budget priorities by
refraining from offering opinions inconsistent with those priorities.
Air Force leaders have proposed retiring the A-10 fleet but Congress has
refused, and some inside the Air Force have sided with Congress.

I see no point in a separate air force anymore. It has an insulated and myopic perspective on war that is entirely backwards, it is on the verge of being technologically irrelevant, and it simply cannot deliver the results it promises. Give ground support to the Army and Marines, give air and space supremacy to the Navy, and be done with it.

Abolishing the Air Force

Jerry Pournelle wants to get rid of the Air Force:

I also intend to do an essay on why we should abolish the Air Force
and return to an Army Air Force which is not a separate service. The
purpose of military forces is to win wars. The purpose of the Air Force
is—well, they no longer know. When we had SAC we knew – “Our profession
is peace” was not just a slogan – but that too is neglected in the
Modern Air Force. Deterrence and maintenance of nuclear weapons, being
ready to use weapons when your fondest wish is that they will never be
used – that does require a different kind of military. We once had that
in SAC but the end of the Cold War was the end of SAC, and the nuclear
deterrence force is, well not what it once was. It is subject to the
Iron Law now.

As to the rest of the Air Force, it is more interested in the Air
Force than winning wars, and considers supporting the field army as
beneath contempt. A slow old Warthog does a much better job, but there
is no glory in that. Best to use fast jets… which of course are
imprecise and cause a lot of collateral damage. Everyone knows that a
force of propeller driven P-47 fighters of WWII would be more effective
for supporting the field army than what we use. And the Army must be
crippled, not allowed to have effective air power in taking territory.
You must use modern jets at high speed.

Now the Air Force has a mission that the Army at present does not
have: Air Supremacy. And that is a different mission from supporting the
field army. It involves engagements with Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs)
as well as strikes against the enemy base of operations. The glory is
in air to air combat, but that is not the effective way to air
supremacy.

That is the main argument for an “Independent Air Force” and the
bitter fights that ended with creation of USAF. It is true, ground army
commanders tend to select the wrong targets to sortie against, and
endanger air supremacy; thus the argument for independence, which USAAF
eventually won (before SAC existed or any but a few knew would be
needed.) Hiroshima ended the debate. But now the Cold War ended and USAF
killed SAC as not glamorous – not career building any longer. As to the
Warthogs, give them to the National Guard! Real pilots don’t need them!

Sure, I exaggerate but not much: the Air Force keeps trying to get
rid of the Warthogs, but never by giving them (and the ground support
mission) to the War Department. Better that GI’s die than USAF give up a
mission even though it does not want it.

Drones will change all this, but why wait?

Actually, as Eric S. Raymond demonstrated in both “Sucker Punch” and “Battlefield Lasers”, the Air Force is very close to obsolete anyhow. My expectation is that they’ll try to survive by moving their mission upward, to space, in order to compensate for the vanishing ability of their planes to survive in the atmosphere.

Today Yemen, tomorrow the West

I have no doubt that the governments of Egypt, Iraq, and Yemen didn’t think it was likely that jihadists would manage to topple them either:

Shiite insurgents tightened their grip on Yemen’s capital Wednesday, seizing control of a missile base and keeping the president as a virtual hostage in a showdown threatening a key American ally in the fight against al-Qaeda.

Days of fast-moving advances by the Houthi rebel faction — believed to be backed by Iran — has left the Western-backed government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi backed into a corner with rapidly diminishing options.

Just hours after storming the presidential palace on Tuesday, the Houthi leader gave what amounted to an ultimatum: Hadi can either move ahead with reforms that include giving rebels more power or risk intensified attacks that could topple his government.

The brinksmanship and uncertainly has pushed Yemen closer to a full-scale political breakdown that could resonate deeply in Washington and among its key regional allies, including neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Fortunately, we’ve been assured that Islam is a religion of peace and jihad is a personal, spiritual struggle, so there is no chance that a second Islamic State will aggressively seek to foment jihad in its neighbors. And even if it did seek to so, what could be more stable than a neighboring monarchy ruled by a 91 year-old man?

It’s an Arab Spring in the making, it’s just not a secular Arab Spring.

War is coming

Whether the West is ready or not. As with the National Socialists, the frightened appeasers of the West are unwilling to listen to what their self-proclaimed enemies are saying:

Jurgen Todenhofer, the first Western reporter to embed with Islamic State fighters and not be killed in the process, spoke to Al Jazeera about his time with the terror group. Todenhofer lived side by side with the jihadist fighters for ten days in the Islamic State-stronghold city of Mosul, Iraq. He was accompanied only by his son, who served as his cameraman.

“I always asked them about the value of mercy in Islam,” but “I didn’t see any mercy in their behavior,” explained Todenhofer. He added, “Something that I don’t understand at all is the enthusiasm in their plan of religious cleansing, planning to kill the non-believers… They also will kill Muslim democrats because they believe that non-ISIL-Muslims put the laws of human beings above the commandments of God.”

The German reporter then elaborated on how shocked he was about how “willing to kill” the ISIS fighters are. He said that they were ready to commit genocide. “They were talking about [killing] hundreds of millions. They were enthusiastic about it, and I just cannot understand that,” said Todenhofer.

At this point, the Western governments are more interested in suppressing the only forces that will save them, the Christians and the nationalists. But they will go, one way or another. Either they’ll be thrown out democratically by the pro-survival Western elements, or they’ll eventually find themselves in the position of the Yemeni Prime Minister.


Armed Houthi militia have encircled the Prime Minister’s residence in
Yemen just hours after gunmen opened fire on his convoy, according to a
government spokesman.

Underlining their case

We don’t appear to be dealing with strategic masterminds here:

Foreign intelligence agencies have intercepted discussions by Islamist militants about possible attacks on weekly marches organised by Germany’s new anti-Islamic movement, a news weekly reported on Friday, without citing its sources.

Der Spiegel magazine said that foreign intelligence services had picked up the content of communications by some “known international jihadists”, without giving specific details.

The intelligence, which was passed to German authorities, indicated they had discussed possible attacks on the rallies organised by the so-called group, “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident” (Pegida), the magazine said in a pre-released story to appear in this weekend’s edition.

I can’t think of a better way for Muslims to transform the anti-Islamic marchers into anti-Islamic soldiers. Then again, I wouldn’t put it past the European authorities to try to scare the growing pro-Pegida forces into staying home.

And nothing fails like past success. Since intimidation has succeeded so brilliantly for so long in Europe, it may be that this is a case of jihadists with a hammer seeing a nail. Meanwhile the French authorities are already demonstrating that they, at least, are not Charlie:

Justice Minister Christiane Taubira said yesterday the French government was going to tighten laws against racism and anti-Semitism.

It astonishes me how abysmally stupid these people are. Do they really believe placing the cause of free speech in ideological alignment with the most virulent racists and Jew-haters is going to change the way anyone thinks or feels? Especially in light of assertions such as these:

“To laugh at the Prophet… is something very different from “free speech”
as usually understood. It is a violent act.” – Abdal Hakim Murad, the Telegraph

Lind > Mitchell + Douhet

William S. Lind was right. Again.

ISIS has almost doubled the land it controls in Syria since the US-led coalition began airstrikes against the extremist group in the summer, a new map has revealed. The extremist group has continued to expand its ‘caliphate’, despite more than 800 airstrikes hitting targets in ISIS-controlled areas since last summer.

The map, created by the Coalition for a Democratic Syria (CDS), shows just how much land has fallen to ISIS – which now has a third of the country under its control. Before the summer, the militants controlled just half that.

Airpower is nothing more than a supporting arm. Sans nukes, it has never succeeded in accomplishing anything on its own. It’s interesting to see that even in combination with non-US ground forces in Iraq, all it has been able to do is prevent ISIS from expanding further.

Even those with zero interest in things military should keep this in mind, because what it means is that any politician threatening air strikes is essentially promising to do nothing. Note that immigrants, who are a form of boots on the ground, are far more dangerous than air strikes.

Rules of war, and the violations therein

Bill Whittle writes a poignant explanation of the challenge facing a 2GW military that finds itself in a 4GW war:

War is hell, and soldiers have to live there. It is an unbearable burden; unbearable in the sense that not a single man and woman who has been fully exposed to war has ever come back home. Someone else comes back home. Sometimes, it is a better person. Sometimes a worse one. But they are different, all changed in the horror and crucible of war.

And so from the beginning of war, there exists between soldiers a bond that cannot be described. There is the obvious connection of a soldier to his comrades, but there is too a strong sense of respect and kinship with the soldier on the other side of No Man’s Land, shivering in cold wet places just the same, under orders and doing his job, too — just wanting to get the thing over with and go home.

Surrender is a mercy in such a place. The idea that certain death may be avoided, that one might be willing to simply give up fighting and still survive, is mercy of the deepest blue. Surrendering enemy soldiers are often greeted with a warmth and understanding that friendly civilians do not receive, for they have shared in the misery and hardship of war in ways that we comfortable and safe civilians can never know.

Surrender, in war, is perhaps the ultimate of Sanctuaries. It is a way out when hope and rescue have fled the field. Honorable surrender has never been treated with shame by any American unit I have ever heard of.

And so, when groups of un-uniformed enemy soldiers waving white flags suddenly drop and open fire on unsuspecting, generous and honorable Americans, then the masters of these men have made a terrible bargain. They have destroyed the Sanctuary of Surrender, and eliminated for their own men a deep and abiding refuge in the nightmare of the battlefield.

They have done this to their own men. Not us. We have known of the brutality of the Iraqi army regarding prisoners from at least as far back as those taken and beaten during the first Gulf War, and as far as improvements over the intervening years, we might perhaps call Jessica Lynch to tell us of any newfound magnanimity on the part of the Ba’athists.

False surrender as a weapon of ambush is an abomination. When it is repeated, it is obvious that is not an aberration; it is policy. It is, like the abandonment of the uniform, a tactic to gain a short-term advantage that leads to long-term hardship and misery for their own troops. It is a Devil’s bargain, and they have had the Devil to pay for it — as have we.

They violate the Sanctuary of the Uniform. They violate the Sanctuary of Surrender. And the most reprehensible of all is the violation of the Sanctuary of Mercy.

What Whittle fails to understand is that the Eastern enemy the Western militaries are engaging have NEVER respected the rules of Westphalian war. As William S. Lind notes, uniforms are an aspect of 1GW order.

As long as Western armies insist on attempting to fight a 4GW war with 2GW tactics, they are going to be at a significant disadvantage, and one that likely outweights their various advantages. When the rules change, the players have to change with the rules.

Note that few, if any, Western armies have ever succeeded in causing an Eastern foe to modify its non-Westphalian tactics in imitation of the Western army.

However, Whittle needs to be corrected about this historically erroneous statement: “Honorable surrender has never been treated with shame by any American unit I have ever heard of.”

One incident of which I am aware is when the 45th Division of the US Army killed between 30 and 50 prisoners of war after the liberation of Dachau. It appears they mistook Hungarian Waffen-SS troops who had retreated to the camp with the SS-Totenkopf guards, not that killing the camp guards would have been acceptable under the principle of Sanctuary anyway.

The incident was buried by Gen. George Patton.

It takes two to tango

But only one party to wage war. This is honest, but remarkably stupid commentary on the current European situation from the Mayor of London:

About 10 years ago, the whole Danish cartoon controversy blew up – and I remember distinctly concluding that I would never have published them in The Spectator, which I edited, not just because they were gratuitously inflammatory, but because I didn’t see how I could justify my decision to the widows and orphans of my staff, in the event of an attack on our offices (and I note that one of the German publications to use the Charlie Hebdo cartoons has just been fire-bombed).

It is essential to admit this element of fear (and several editors have been candid enough to do so), because fear is a very bad and corrosive thing. Fear leads to anger. Fear leads to mistrust. Fear can make you irrational, and in the case of Islamist terrorism, the resulting fear can obviously encourage prejudice and division. Fear leads to hatred – and that is exactly what those terrorists hope to provoke. They want to see anti-Muslim marches of the kind that are now appearing in Germany; they want an anti-Muslim backlash; they want war; and it would be absolutely fatal if we were to allow ourselves to fall for it.

Imagine if, instead of his famous call to “fight them on the beaches”, Winston Churchill had said something like this back in 1940. “Fear leads to hatred and that is exactly what the Nazis hope to provoke. They want to see us sending out warships to guard the Channel. They want an anti-German backlash; they want war and it would be absolutely fatal if we were to allow ourselves to fall for it.”

The astonishing thing is that Boris Johnson knows his history. He and other self-admitted cowards know that Chamberlain was wrong to attempt to appease Hitler, just as FDR was wrong to attempt to appease Stalin, and yet they are making precisely the same mistake by trying to pretend that Islam can be won over if they are sufficiently accommodating.

Everything about the multicultural status quo is a lie. The headline in the Telegraph says: “Paris march of unity: after a minute’s silence the crowd roared ‘We are not afraid!'”

They lie. They are most certainly afraid. They are afraid of the Muslims in their midst, and they are afraid of the nationalist forces that are rising. They are right to be afraid, because it is primarily their fault that the Reconquista 2.0 is now both necessary and inevitable.