Now We Are Hearing This More.

Larry already marked the start of the discussion which needs to be held. Fact is, already in 2017 he made statements which I quoted in my first book. Now, since the last year I cautiously, but increasingly loudly, started to state what now rises to the surface. The US Army, its operational-strategic level, is simply not competent in real war. We may beat around the bush whatever we want, but not taking anything from heroism and dedication of Western Allied personnel, they have been fighting the pale shadow of Wehrmacht in WW II. I do not want to even discuss here all those "operations" in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. 

So, now Colonel and Judge finally bring up what I am writing about for a long time--US Armed Forces command corps is subpar, to put it mildly. 

US Military Academy at West Point academically is not even at the same level as any combined arms officer school of Russia, not to speak of Combined Arms Frunze Academy. Forget about Academy of the General Staff. Not to mention the fact that what is taught in the US military academies about XX Century ground warfare is primarily a confabulation. But that doesn't stop here. Russia also has her share of general officer creeps such as media prostitute and now becoming a meme General Gurulev. But that's the point--it is all about statistics--Gurulev's instances are much rarer in Russia than Ben Hodges and Petraeuses in the US. Going back to Mattis--the guy wouldn't be allowed to command a fucking regiment in the Russian Army, he wouldn't know how. 

If that hasn't been humiliating enough, look at the Royal Military "Academy" Sandhurst. Look at their courses and programs. 44 weeks, really? You cannot prepare a pole dancer and a competent porn actress in this time, let alone competent officer for ground forces and combined arms operations. No wonder then, that what British cadre military talk about sounds like a cross between Benny Hill Show and Monty Python trying to explain what Operational Research and Strategic Planning are. I reiterate--Russians are shocked by the sheer incompetence of NATO militaries, their top brass and political leadership. Maybe it is the Bus to Abilene as Doug says, but it is much more than that--"the finest fighting force in history" didn't win a single war since 1945. But I stand by my main criterion of any Army's competence--the force which venerates Patton is not ready to fight a real war, it never will be. It is as simple as that and, then, there is this STEM background one needs to fight real war on higher tactical and operational levels. 

They may start to address the malaise with a proper study of the history of WW II, but even this is too much to ask. I spoke about this for so long--Russian General Staff is older than the United States as a nation. Russians fought and defeated enemies which the US military never faced in its history. Yes, Russia's military history dwarfs that of the United States and even David Eisenhower writes about Western Allies shock and "the reaction which would interest a psychiatrist" on Operation Bagration. He elaborated:

And we can sit here and list all these occasions non-stop, but the point is--the cancer is incurable and SMO, like this proverbial litmus test, has exposed the depth of a problem. It is metaphysical and it stems from the fact, as many pointed out many times, that the American greatest contribution to the world was when America was behind the plow, not trying to fight wars she has no experience of fighting. But for parasitic political and pseudo-intellectual class it was important to realize the United States as continental warfare nation. It is NOT, and it is impossible... and this is what is in the foundation  of the rampant Russophobia of Washington. I repeat.

It is as simple as that. But then again--it goes back to culture which is in the foundation of dignity, an unknown quality for US top brass.

When Everything Points To...

What Senator Kennedy stated yesterday. 

You know, I am on record that for all my revulsion towards GOP, I consider Democratic Party to be clear and present danger to what's left of the Republic. And yes, I agree with Kennedy that the United States was founded by geniuses and now is run by a bunch of idiots. I am not alone in that, albeit I wrote two books on this issue and write for years about sheer incompetence of US "elites". 

Now Stephen Walt provides this:

A third pillar, however, is broad confidence in U.S. competence. When other countries recognize the United States’ strength, support its aims and believe U.S. officials know what they are doing, they are more likely to follow the United States’ lead. If they doubt its power, its wisdom, or its ability to act effectively, U.S. global influence inevitably erodes. This reaction is entirely understandable: If the United States’ leaders reveal themselves to be incompetent bunglers, why should foreign powers listen to their advice? Having a reputation for competence, in short, can be a critical force multiplier.

As Daniel Larison goes on to observe:

The U.S. has had the luxury of being able to bungle things for decades at relatively low cost to ourselves, but that time is coming to an end. Ever since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been able to make some staggering blunders without significantly compromising its position in the world, but over time all of these blunders have had the cumulative effect of proving that U.S. “leadership” is neither stabilizing nor wise. 

Well, I am really pleased that someone reads my books, but, as was pointed out non-stop--a main formative geopolitical factor which creates crucial conditions for growing of competent national elites, Continental Warfare on a major scale, a conditioning by war that is, is an unknown entity for the United States. Sure, there was a Civil War which devastated primarily South but as I wrote:

Scales and proportions always mattered, still matter and will continue to matter a great deal, especially once warranted comparisons are made. One of the pivotal moments of the American Civil War was Sherman’s burning of Atlanta, which at the time had a population of barely 9,500 inhabitants, that is more than 27 times smaller than Moscow of 1812.  Even Smolensk with its 1812 population of around 13,000, which saw a ferocious battle around it and was set on fire by French artillery, was still considerably larger. In the end, Russia’s population in 1812, which was around 35 million, matched roughly the American population of 1860 which was 31.5 million. Yet, the difference couldn’t be starker—Napoleon attacked Russia with what then was the largest military force in history, which represented much of Western and Eastern Europe. Napoleon’s Grande Armee, which numbered 685,000 troops, had under its banners French, Saxons, Poles, Prussians, Italians, or what Tolstoy called a “force of a dozen European languages or nations.”     

Until things are put into proper context and scale, one will not stop failing in explaining why the United States finds itself today in the state of being de facto ungovernable and with its "elites" which increasingly become the laughing stock around the globe. Larison arrives to this conclusion:

Because the U.S. has been able to get away with making such major blunders, there have not been enough demands for accountability for the policymakers who led the country into one failure after another. There has been no real penalty for costly incompetence, and so many of the same people that led us down the wrong path before are still in positions of influence and authority now. Trump’s election just accelerated the process by putting grossly unqualified yes-men into top positions in government to serve an even more unqualified president. For most of the last twenty years, the U.S. has been poorly led. For at least twelve of those years, we have had presidents who knew nothing and didn’t care to learn more. Administrations that promote ideologues and disparage expertise are bound to be tripped up by obstacles that they fail to see, and they will drive the country into a ditch over and over again while congratulating themselves on their fine steering. 

Here, Larison describes the effect not the main cause--the main cause, and Larison, having a Ph.D in History, should know this is in the fact that US political elite as a whole was never shaped by the realities of Continental Warfare, unlike it is true for the rest of the word. North American Continent, due to it being a "World's Island" was simply spared the scale of a violence which shaped the modern world, including modern West, which carried the seeds of self-destruction inside itself the moment economic and ideological realities of post-WW II Europe became evident. It was, to a very large degree, a reaction, both intellectual and cultural to a life-changing wound sustained in WWII. United States didn't get wounded in WW II--it emerged as the only nation standing in the midst of the global ruin and profited greatly from that. What's not to like? Studs Terkel was correct--it was "The Good War" for America. And, inevitably, wrong lessons have been learned. This is what in the foundation of the American incompetence--wrong lessons, all around. The collapse of the Soviet Union reinforced already grossly distorted American view on history and on its own "liberal model". 

We thought the Cold War vindicated our political system. Instead it only began an age of illusions.

The reinforcement, due to a delusional view of the world and of itself, of American exceptionalism is in the foundation of the modern American incompetence. What Larison describes, including the lack of accountability for non-stop failures, is just the the method of further idiotization of the American "elites" (or government, or political class, what have you) and this process is unstoppable within existing American political, economic, educational, intellectual and cultural paradigm. It is a cold hard fact of life. It is also a fact of practical geopolitics and of the systemic crisis of liberalism. Covid-19? Just an excuse for the economic collapse which started long before the world even heard about this virus and forecasts of the American decline were made based on a much larger number of contributing factors than economy, or what passes for it at the Wall Street, alone.  

Stephen Walt may write whatever he wants on the American future:

Americans will need to rethink a political system that recruits and rewards those who are most adept at selling themselves to the highest bidder. And there has to be something seriously wrong with a political system that has devoted many months and spent billions of dollars preparing for the 2020 election and ends up giving the country a choice between three old white guys. For that matter, Americans ought to rethink whether spending a full year electing someone to a four year term makes any sense at all. No other advanced democracy does it this way. And while we’re at it, let’s scrap the absurd Electoral College, an indefensible relic that systematically disempowers voters in most of the country.

And I don't see anything wrong with "white guys", them being truly old, that is another thing. It is not about the race, it is about competence. Obama was a first black two-term POTUS and it will take some time before competent historians will write a work on a catastrophic impact on the United States Obama Administration had. But here is the problem, the well of the American statesmanship is dry, it was for some time now, because mechanism which produces real leaders is broken and it cannot be fixed without massive, fundamental changes to America's "way of life"--a change America is not ready to implement... yet. The operation is very serious and dangerous and may result in patient dying but without it, the patient is dead anyway.   

UPDATE: Just stumbled upon excellent piece by Paul Craig Roberts. Totally relevant to what is being discussed. 

The only solution for the economy is debt forgiveness for the ordinary people and nationalization for the companies. Trump indicated that aid might be given in the form of an equity stake, and later sell the government’s stake for a profit in a privatization when things return to normal. This would be a partial nationalization. Much better to go whole hog as it allows a cure for concentration and deregulation. The pandemic has made it clear that a society of self-seeking individuals is not a society. A society is a social system. A successful social system is one that can support its members. Once a self-sustaining social system exists, then there is a basis for people to branch out on their own. But without a sustainable social system, there can be nothing. 

Military Power (Cont'd 3)

Previous parts of this Military Power "thought-stream" by me are here:

Military Power, Start 

here:

Continued 1 

and here:

Continued 2 

Culture. As was stated not for once by many military people--brains are not enough. Of course, they are necessary condition for any successful military but, alone, are not sufficient. Culture, defined as behavioral matrix, based in values, in perception and feeling of right and wrong, the way duty is defined, societal attitude towards the war, among many other factors, that is what makes a huge difference. In the end, the war itself is a cultural affair. Even the way morale (high, average or low) asserts itself within military is a cultural matter, esprit de corps'  is a derivative of culture. It is only when "brains" and culture coalesce into a single entity, the assessment of Military Personnel could be given with some degree of accuracy. It is then, that some, however conditional (and inaccurate), numerical value  can be assigned to this coefficient "C", and even then, this number being a mathematical expectation, that is weighted average of all possible states of, say, military morale. Let us get back to Napoleon's maxims: "An army's effectiveness depends on its size, training, experience, and morale, and morale is worth more than any of the other factors combined". 

We can review a simple example of such mathematical expectation of morale. Other factors which go into this coefficient "C" could also be viewed through the prism of mathematical expectations since the war...well--it is probabilistic in  nature. Nothing is certain in war. Consider this: let's say we have an abstract army which fights a prolonged campaign with different outcomes. Throughout the campaign all sub-units of this army, from platoon, company and way up to a division level, provide honest (good luck with that) reports on the morale (or fighting spirit) after each engagement with the enemy. This sum is then calculated and averaged, in the army's staff, for the whole army. If we to assign (for the sake of experiment, it could be useful later for other applications) three different values to the morale's states, we can get something like that: 

Low Morale: 3
Average Morale: 5
High Morale: 7 

Calculating the average of these three values (which is 5) makes absolutely no sense until we can really figure out how to get this army's performance based on weighted morale values. But let's say, that this army fought a total of 10 battles in this campaign. In 2 of these battles, the army performed poorly and exhibited a low morale, that is 3. So, we can calculate now the probability, based on this campaign, of low morale: it is 2/10=1/5 or 0.2, that is 2 battles fought with low morale divided by total number of battles in this campaign, which is 10. Say, in 4 of these battles, the army exhibited an average, that is 5, morale. By analogy, the probability of an average morale, based on this campaign, is 4/10=2/5 or 0.4. What is left are 4 battles fought with high morale and that gives us the probability of high morale as 4/10=2/5 or 0.4. Now, we are ready to calculate our mathematical expectation for morale:


  E[Morale]= 3 x 0.2+5 x 0.4+7 x 0.4=0.6+2.0+2.8=5.4

In other words, when comparing this imagined army to other armies which were judged by the same, or similar, metric we can say that we can expect, based on described campaign, the morale in our army to be slightly above average, 5.4, which, in the end, can be used as an element while calculating our coefficient "C', being one of its constituent parts. Of course, this example is just that--an extremely simplified, to the point of being vulgar, example, but what this example opens for us is a window into the importance of history. After all, we calculated our expected value based on historic performance of the army in 10 battles of a campaign. Of course, we can play with mathematics and metrics all we want, we can expand our sample space, we can give different values to morale and expand grades from low-average-high to twenty or even thirty grades. In fact, we can tie morale to outcomes and even create some graphs (with the best fit) but none of it ever will give number to this "unquantifiable", in the words of Israeli flight leader, connection to own culture and history which, in military terms, define WHAT FOR and HOW TO. 

In immortal War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy came up with the idea of differential of history. Yes, I know, damn calculus again. Tolstoy writes: "To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved.....Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history....To the imperfect human mind not all information can be available in a snapshot, and so it is reduced to ignorance or at best probabilistic reasoning." Indeed, Obercommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) thought that in 1941 it would have to merely, in the words of Hitler, "kick the door" and the whole building of USSR would collapse. The probabilistic reasoning was so strong, especially after the lightning victory in the West and gross miscalculations on the issue of Soviet morale and combat qualities, which provided Wehrmacht with cultural shock of facing the enemy who simply refused to give up. But then again, the outcome was per-determined by Nazis' refusal to see Russians (and other peoples of the USSR) for what they really were, not untermensch as overall Third Reich's state doctrine prescribed. But the issue of the Eastern Front and quality of military personnel on both sides in WW II (or Great Patriotic War as it is known in former USSR) is a separate topic in itself and it is NOT within the "Western" military paradigm for a number of strategic reasons, among which is "West's"  having nothing of like in its history is one of the most important ones. It is this reason which gives a very good explanation to "West's" infatuation with some of the most despicable a-historic propagandists and hacks of Solzhenitsyn or Victor Rezun (aka Suvorov) "caliber" who "interpreted" Great Patriotic War into the only lingo which "western elites" understand--self-congratulatory mythology of own might and self-righteousness. Where it all led to we can observe today all over the world and the picture is not pretty. But then again--this is what happens when prescriptions on how to fight wars are written by incompetent triumphalist lawyers, journos and "political scientists" who have no touch with military realities or real history. But, to be fair, a significant number of "Western" military scholars DID attempt to study war for what it is and, when speaking about  real war, that is war of nation-states, came up  with or, rather, noticed one determinant of Military Personnel which Russians discovered long ago and which is an axiom, whether seen through the eyes of Marxists or  Herbert Spencer's liberals--The Social Dimension Of Strategy.

 In 1984, Michael Howard noted in his "The Forgotten Dimension Of Strategy": "But Marxist military thinkers, without differing in essentials from their contemporaries in the West, naturally devoted greater attention to the social dimension of strategy--the structure and cohesiveness of the belligerent societies....Their picture of the world in which oppressed peoples are kept in a state of backward subjection by a small group of exploitative imperialist powers bears little resemblance to the complex reality...But the West is in no position to criticize. The stereotypes which we have imposed, consciously or unconsciously, on the political structures that surround us, have in the past been no less misleading...We appear to be depending on the technological dimension of strategy to the detriment of its operational requirements, while we ignore its societal implications altogether. "
"The Art And Practice Of Military Strategy", National Defense University, Washington D.C., 1984, pages 88-92. 

The importance of Howard's succinct observation is in the fact that NO serious discussion of Military personnel (if to follow CINC model which we are following here) is reasonable without overall assessment of the society, which produces the said Military Personnel, as a whole. The quality of this Military Personnel IS the quality of the belligerent society, because REAL wars are fought by societies, not just by armies. Sure, the conventional wisdom must tell us that throughout the XX century, at least, the best Military personnel was that of a Germany. Arguably, Wehrmacht's personnel was the best throughout 1940-1943. But, in the end, be it in WW I and, especially so, in WW II, Germany lost both wars as a nation, as a state, as a belligerent society. In social metric, which covers also this personnel quality, Nazi Germany turned out to be  no match for Soviet people, their tenacity, heroism, sacrifice and  will. Neither were soldiers of Napoleonic France, nor Polish invaders, nor Teutonic Knights and the list is very long.  As David Glantz and Jonathan House observe about WW II:

 The bulk of "Western" scholars of warfare would rather not deal with these conclusions. It is especially true for Anglophone world, which never experienced, nor could it, by the virtue of its safe geographical position, anything comparable in scale. When the issue of the Military Personnel is taken for consideration outside of the social, that is structural, framework it is inevitably reduced to what amounts to fanboys' penis measuring contests in linear comparison of, very often dubious, statistics within particular operation or battle. This is an amateurish approach when dealing with the primary issue of military power since, as was stated already before, it is not linear and it rings especially true for the factor of Military Personnel. In the end, as conventional wisdom goes, winning a battle and a war could be two very different propositions. During WW II, American and British soldiers exhibited more than enough heroism and military professionalism which earned them respect and admiration among peers. But neither British soldiers nor, especially, American ones fought  what would be defined a continental warfare in which soldiers would require, in the words of Chesterton, to not so much hate what was in front of them, but rather love deeply what was left behind their backs. British defeats in North Africa and humiliating escape from Dunkirk did not bring British State down, nor could they in the short run. Realistically, for Britain proper, that is not for the empire, naval warfare, especially  ASW and convoy component, that is keeping SLOC (Shipping Lines Of Communications) open, were way more important for national survival than the fortunes  of the 8th Army in North Africa. No British citizen saw or experienced, despite some of them being bombed, any horrors of the warfare on the grand scale which would require, in Clausewitz lingo, the maximum exertion of force not only on the battlefield but across whole society. This is even more true in the American case, where the United States Army could have never landed in Normandy and that would not in any way endanger the existence of American nation, which never experienced anything on the scale of the siege of Leningrad, mass executions of its civilians, destruction of its cities and infrastructure on the industrial scale.  

Neither United States nor Great Britain fought any real war for the survival of their respective nations. Overwhelming majority of the Anglo-warfare is expeditionary and that requires a very different  set of morals and qualities of military personnel, since fighting in some backward  shithole 7 000 miles from the glitz of downtowns and shopping malls of major urban centers and peaceful safety of middle town USA IS NOT the same as fighting at the outskirts of own burning town knowing what comes to it if the battle is lost. The proof of such utter un-preparadness, and of the lack of social and cultural institutions came on a tragic morning of 9/11. These were not, however horrible, terrorist acts, despite being a major failure of US security apparatus, which demonstrated a complete lack of any real American national experience with real war, this was a knee-jerk reaction which followed. To a nation utterly unprepared and unconditioned historically by the realities of the warfare it was easy, to the point of being surreal, to sell "War On terror" which, after 15 years, produced a global mayhem, destroyed nations who had nothing to do with 9/11, saw United States lose a bulk of its political, financial and military capital and, for all intents and purposes, lose wars. Seeing today totally divided American nation, which is the first and foremost symptom of demoralization, it goes without saying that it reflects on US Armed Forces. Even humiliation in Ukraine, when US Army "instructors" to Ukrainian Army were forced themselves to learn, instead of "instructing" was a case in the point: "Our soldiers are doing the training with the Ukrainians and we've learned a lot from the Ukrainians," said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges. "A third of the [Ukrainian] soldiers have served in the ... combat zone, and no Americans have been under Russian artillery or rocket fire, or significant Russian electronic warfare, jamming or collecting — and these Ukrainians have. It's interesting to hear what they have learned." (c)

The Real War 
       
Thus the conclusion is not only warranted, but irresistible. Until one fought with the enemy at the gates, facing real extermination of not only oneself but much of what is beloved and treasured, until one faced equal enemy, capable of dealing equal fire impact (ognevoye vozdeistvie), until one has a historic record and culture of defending own nation--NO accurate comparison of military personnel is possible. I know of no such record in Anglo-sphere. In the end, even after 25 years of liberal brain-washing, after years of neglect and open sabotage, the speed with which people of Crimea and Novorossya showed their St.George guards ribbons in direct reference to the heroes of Great patriotic War stunned even me. It took "Western" presstitudes about two months to even notice those ribbons, let alone understand their meaning. A single symbol of defiance against all odds was a testament of high morale and determination. This was confirmed later time after time when much smaller armed forces of Donbass dealt one defeat after another to the Ukrainian Army. A genetic historic memory simply kicked in. 

People of Russia, century after century, fought off one invader after another. After losing some battles, Russia usually won her wars. From the battlefields to the industrial and agricultural rear, to the diplomatic cabinets, no nation in the world has even remotely comparable record of consistent defense of her realm. Despite incessant attempts of the "western" historiography to diminish, misinterpret or openly steal valor or Russia, no citizen or soldier in the world can state that he truly stood as one with his own people with the sword at the gates, against the best the world could throw at him, for thousand years as Russians did. And that is the best testament to the quality of the Military Personnel. It is not difficult, then, to come up with some mathematical expectation of what some values of military personnel quality could be....


To be continued.....  

Bravo, Peter Hitchens!

Peter Hitchens, to paraphrase Correlli Barnett, speaks in broadsides in his wonderful piece in The Spectator. 

Chilcot will change nothing. We should inquire into our own eagerness to back needless wars 

The national puzzle is this: why did so many mainstream, reasonable, informed and sensible non-Trotskyist people readily accept the most transparent twaddle as fact?

What we really need is not Chilcot, but an inquiry into how we, the British educated classes (perhaps above all in my trade of journalism), are so easily talked into wars.

I don't think there is a puzzle here, though. We are witnessing today an emerging dictatorship of mediocrity and incompetence, wrapped in the ideological banners, known as media (see my post about Razib Khan below). We have brain surgeons writing about operations and not of the brain kind, more along the lines of naval and air force ones, we have people with no knowledge operating with information not knowing the difference between the two. There is also no time for reflection between media cycles. We have lawyers assessing intelligence information, we have economists writing about submarines' combat informational control systems. Housewives and househusbands with degrees in literature and gardening are judging force structure of enemys' navies. We finally got it--we leave in Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame paradigm when anyone, without risking anything, without any consequences has a lot to say and they do say it. Everyone is "journalist" today, hey, yours truly included, but at least I do not write reviews on New York theater scene and do not pretend to know everything about quantum mechanics. I also hate war. And then comes this ever important  issue, about which I write for years now--in general,  Anglo-Saxon elites, yes, even British ones, ARE NOT conditioned by the realities of the Continental Warfare. Yes, Britain fought its namesake air battle in WWII and she had London and Coventry, among many, bombed into oblivion, but that was it. No invasions for centuries, no artillery, tanks and urban combat blowing cities to smithereens, no rapes, no pillages, no slaves. There is NO framework in which to grasp the realities and then, of course...there are Precision Guided Munitions which make them all feel good. This is the key to this puzzle.

But I salute Peter Hitchens for his moral courage, for his integrity and hope that his salvo will hit the target. As Leo Tolstoy said in War And Peace:

I want only to say that it is always the simplest ideas which lead to the greatest consequences. My idea, in its entirety, is that if vile people unite and constitute a force, then decent people are obliged to do likewise; just that.(c)