What Worries Me, Really...

No, it is not even the fact that Rep. Adam Kinzinger is a corrupt neocon and his main degree is in political "science", and that despite him earning his "wings" and flying safe tanker and, later, recon missions over Afghanistan (known for its world-class air force and air-defense, s/) as a member of Air National Guard, the guy has zero understanding of real war and operations. So, he pushes now a legislation on AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) should Russia use WMD in Ukraine. This boy Kizinger should ask first if he wants to take part in such a war, and then kiss his family and property goodbye, because it will be the US (always nuclear-biased) which will initiate nuclear exchange once it will meet realities of such a war. But then again, modern US establishment, including very large portions of military-intel community do not have a clue what war with Russia, even conventional one, means. It is expected from the US political elites.

This is what Douglas MacGregor and some alternative media person discuss here. MacGregor, as always, being to the point, professional and realist. 

But it was not Kinzinger, who should be checked (together with his donors) into mental institution, and his sick initiative, it was the fact that the host asks MaGgregor at 8:00 minute mark. He asked if it is true that Russia has weapons which can obliterate something like France. I almost choked. The reason I had this reaction is because even well-wishing, good people in America, like this host, reside in a complete obliviousness to the fact that even at the height (or bottom depending on the point of view) of her national catastrophe in 1990s, Russia still could wipe not just France, but the whole United States and NATO in the "first" second strike. And I mean literally--wipe off the map. 

A salvo of a single pr. 941 Akula (NATO Typhoon) SSBN without leaving even its base would unleash around 200 MIRVs at the US Eastern Sea Board and would wipe out all major (from Philadelphia, New York, Boston to Charlotte, Jacksonville, Miami--the list is too long to read) cities and military bases wrecking a chaos and losses of unimaginable scale in the first 30 minutes of the US attack of Russia. And that was just one of many Russian subs, not to mention other means of delivery, which would literally eliminate the US and NATO countries as nations and functional states. That was at the height of Russia's destitution of 1990s. It was then a common knowledge that Russian nuclear arsenal was functional. Why this knowledge evaporated is the main point--it is the matter of incessant US media propaganda and BS by its policy-makers who really took a beating of the third rate Arab military of Saddam in 1991 for a real war.

Today is 2022, Russia not only fully retained but perfected her strategic arsenal which makes US nuclear forces look like a backwater. Moreover, unlike it was the case in 1990s, the United States cannot fight Russia in her immediate geographic vicinity conventionally and hope not to sustain a defeat. As I am on record for many years, the US simply has no experience in modern times with the scale of losses and warfare it would experience if it decides to fight Russia. Russia is also fully capable to wreck havoc in the US proper without resorting to nuclear. These are the facts that neither Kinzinger nor the most of the US Congress know, not to speak of having a good grasp of it. None of them ever fought in defense of their motherland and have no clue about real consequences of a continental war with modern "peer". MacGregor does, but that is why he is not in the US Armed Forces anymore. 

But it was this question of the host which struck me: both the United States and Russia have and had for the last 50 years enough firepower to turn the whole planet into a cinder rock--it was and remains the common knowledge. Another matter, a purely technological one, that the balance is shifting radically in Russia's favor both in nuclear and conventional technology and that creates challenges for the US it is incapable to meet precisely because the US Congress has zero understanding of modern military power and formation of the geopolitical balance. And, of course, as always they have no clue about Russia and what she is today. But that is a given in modern US politics.

Being Bombastic.

This is what Donald Trump is known for and, in fact, it is his defining feature. Recall his, now famous, "very smart missiles", or him touting his economic "achievements" non-stop. Exiting crucial arms limitation treaties is also a part of Trump's MO, such as ditching Open Skies Treaty and now promising to resume testing of nuclear weapons:

US authorities considered whether to carry out a "rapid" nuclear test – the first for almost three decades – to use as a bargaining chip in dealing with Russia and China, according to media reports.The proposal to cause a controlled nuclear explosion is "very much an ongoing conversation," a high-ranked official within the administration of Donald Trump told the Washington Post on Saturday. It was assumed that a "rapid test" could prove useful in making Moscow and Beijing negotiate a nuclear-weapons-related trilateral deal with Washington, the paper's sources said.

As is observed by many, often being bombastic is a cover for the lack of strength and substance. We have exactly this case here exacerbated with a very low level of understanding of modern geopolitics and international relations by US "authorities". They, those "authorities" want to abandon a 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty CTBT), evidently, based on this clause:

Each State Party has the right to withdraw from the CTBT if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of the Treaty have jeopardized the State Party's supreme national interests.    

One may ask, then, upon discounting totally delusional assumption of those "authorities" that Russia will tremble in horror and will offer an unconditional surrender upon US exploding some device, and what those "supreme national interests" might be? The answer, apart from Trump's propensity to do a lot of chest thumping, is simple enough:

1. Nuclear weapons are not war-fighting weapons but are primarily deterrents to avoid a war;

2. Nuclear weapons are considered the last resort weapons and by all metrics, as is a terrorism, are weapons of a weaker side. 

Recall what I wrote two years ago when speaking about China:

China is (relatively) weak militarily NOT because she doesn't have enough nuclear weapons—this could relatively fast, with Chinese financial wherewithal, be addressed. Chinese relative military weakness comes from a huge technological, cultural and organizational issues of her conventional capability, which, despite its polished outward appearance,is nowhere near with that of the United States or Russia. It is technology—always was, always will be. It is also an operational experience and the way conventional forces are deployed, which matters great deal—China has no real operational experience here. There are reasons to believe that some technological gaps will never be closed—China continues to struggle mightily in aviation, submarine, space technology and other key technological and operational concepts. 

This applies fully to the United States today who lost a conventional arms race finding herself a generation or two behind Russia in technologies which are in foundation of the Real Revolution In Military Affairs. It is preposterous to even contemplate the fate of US (NATO) forces in Europe, let alone in the immediate geographic vicinity of Russia, in case some "authorities" in the US decide to commit a suicide and attack Russia. NATO forces and their decision centers will be dramatically degraded and ultimately defeated without the use by Russia of any nuclear weapons. That is not me talking, even RAND's big honchos admit that. In this case abandoning CTBT is merely another manifestation of Trump Admin's bombastic style, designed to cover up for the fact of a loss of the conventional arms race. Luckily, not all "authorities" in D.C. are bat shit crazy and some real professionals made their voices heard:

“There are still some professionals in the room who told them this is a terrible idea, thank God,” an unnamed congressional aide told the Guardian.

But, the truth to be told, it doesn't matter. Already in late 1970s Soviet military thinkers considered Stand-off High Precision weapons approaching levels of operational and strategic impact close to nuclear weapons. Today, in the age of hypersonic missiles, combat networks, advanced electronic countermeasures and instant propagation of tactical, operational and strategic information, and instant decision-making, we are looking at the warfare of unprecedented precision and violence. In the end, who is to say that Poseidon is only for delivering a nuclear payload? With the internal volume capable to accommodate a monstrous payload of the conventional explosives, this system will have little trouble reaching and positioning itself underneath a keel of the aircraft carrier and literally blowing her out of the water without any nukes. So, resumption of nuclear testing may only create a sense of amusement in Moscow, whose nuclear and, especially, conventional war-making potential keeps the US from unleashing conflicts all over the globe. As per being bombastic--old news.

P.S. In related news:

The New and Improved Tomahawk Missile Now Runs on Corn

That, sure as hell, should make those nasty Russkie Ivans and Chinks tremble in horror. Did they try to build a new missile? No? Well, there you go....

Facepalm Of The Week.

Richard Haas wrote yet another (many others wrote similar crap, see Fukuyama's recent piece in this very same Foreign Affairs, among others) pretentious meandering piece on, what else, global "order", or disorder if one wishes, and continued a glorious tradition of American political "scientists", "diplomats" and other former bureaucrats in avoiding speaking about real reasons for decried by them "decay" or this global order. Haas starts with a wowser of generalizations in his piece titled How a World Order Ends:

• A stable world order is a rare thing. When one does arise, it tends to come after a great convulsion that creates both the conditions and the desire for something new. It requires a stable distribution of power and broad acceptance of the rules that govern the conduct of international relations. It also needs skillful statecraft, since an order is made, not born.

I don't know if Haas senses a deep sarcasm in this his statement but the point is--those who proclaimed themselves the enforcer of this "order" succeeded gloriously in destabilizing the world they thought they "won" by the end of the Cold War. Since the times after late George H.W. Bush, that is starting from Clinton getting to power, terms "skillful statecraft" and the US can not be used in the same sentence since the degradation of American elites responsible for this alleged "craft" is nothing short of catastrophic both for the US and for the world. Haas is one of those "elites". So, to prove that he is "elite" and "intellectual" he, of course, waxes "historical". He gets to the point by predictably asking:

What lessons can be drawn from this history? As much as anything else, the rise and fall of major powers determines the viability of the prevailing order, since changes in economic strength, political cohesion, and military power shape what states can and are willing to do beyond their borders.  

He goes onto drawing parallels and looking for power balance symmetries in the events of the 19th century and this is where most American "thinkers" make huge mistake. History really teaches very little (albeit some generalizations, of course, are possible and even necessary for human nature is slow in changing), it certainly taught very little people like Haas, or Fukuyama who time after time buy into own pseudo-intellectual constructs trying to rationalize a subject which neither Haas, Fukuyama, Allison and most of the crop of the American, ahem, scholars have no clue about--the nature of military power and its application. It is simply not there; not having this clue about what, actually, always defined, defines and will continue to define balance of power, global "order", what have you in the foreseeable future, is rather peculiar feature of American (and Western) political scientists. Of course, appeals to history are cute, knowing few facts more about Metternich or about wording of some 19th Century treaty than your opponent makes a good background for "intellectual" exchange, debate and, eventual arrival to some form of intellectual "discovery" (especially if a good Scotch and cigar are involved) but in order to learn actual history one must learn real military history with all that it entails.They also must understand this simple (can I be arrogant and claim it?) Martyanov's axiom--world class military power is a function of the world-class nation-state, especially its economic and scientific potential. Both cannot exist without each-other.

Once such a commitment to actually learning stuff is made, one inevitably will arrive to conclusions on HOW and WHY "rise and fall of major powers" happens and this is a tricky and very sensitive issue for the United States because she is NOT a continental warfare power. With the exception of a turkey shoot of a third rate Saddam's Army in the Gulf and, granted, a magnificent victory in the Pacific during WW II, all other military events in the American history were of secondary importance when ranked against the background of a global military history. US "victories" in both WWI and WWII were coalition victories with the US arriving very late to the fight. American Civil War, while of importance as a first bona fide war of the industrial age (well, Crimean War certainly qualifies too) was primarily internal US and, to a degree, British endeavor. In other words, America's rise as a global power was predetermined primarily, apart from undeniable American technological and industrial genius, by a combination of very unique favorable circumstances in which NOT fighting a continental war with all it entails was a defining factor in American emergence as a true global player after WW II. Hence a rather foolhardy attitudes towards a war in the US because people who call on it all the time, including Haas (he wanted the US to be a global sheriff), Kagan cabal, US policy-makers and other public "servants" know extremely well that in case of war their asses will still reside in the safety of the America-proper while American GIs will die for whatever BS doctrine is a fad any given day in D.C. 

Haas needs, however, to justify the failure of the American doctrine-mongering (he knows about this failure, if he doesn't--then it is the case for medical psychology, not history) and he does what most of them do, he deludes himself with this:

Although Russia has avoided any direct military challenge to NATO, it has nonetheless shown a growing willingness to disrupt the status quo: through its use of force in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014, its often indiscriminate military intervention in Syria, and its aggressive use of cyberwarfare to attempt to affect political outcomes in the United States and Europe.   

It is a very telling (false through and through) passage since it discloses a nagging, barely hidden under the surface, complex of inferiority they feel. It is schizophrenic really, akin to Russophrenia--when one has to both proclaim the US the "greatest" power that ever was, while having zero evidence of this power's military successes in the second half of the 20th and, especially, 21st centuries to support such claims. So, Haas and his keen of "intellectuals" who influence US foreign policy need to use a mental therapy by inventing things which are not there:

1. For starters, there is nothing, zero, "indiscriminate" in Russia's participation--Russia was invited to Syria by this country's legitimate government, does Mr.Haas know this? Russia kills in Syria, using a lot of SMART munitions, a Jihad Internationale ranging from ISIS, Al Qaeda to other unicorns ("democratic" head choppers supported by the US and her allies). US desperately wanted Russia and Assad government to fail--but since they didn't study military history they knew very little about what Russia's objectives were and how she fights in Syria. So people like Haas are really pissed--yet another of their forecast didn't pan out. 

2. Russia didn't really use her force in Ukraine. Yes, Russia, obviously, supports LDNR republics but I wouldn't call it use of force since if the force would have been really used, Ukraine would cease to exist as a state really-really fast with NATO getting a western rump of this largely failed state, while LDNR with Russia's help would reconstitute something new in the East and South of present day Ukraine. So, why Haas writes an obvious BS in supposedly scholarly magazine is a mystery. Self-medicating mentally? Possible.   

3. Ah, yes, Russiagate, Russians "meddling" in Western "democracies". Surely both Russia and US conduct cyber operations but this whole circus with Russia "influencing" outcomes is really pathetic (did Haas call Muller recently, I am sure after two years of "investigation" we all will get "evidence" about Russians subverting US "democracy" any minute now) and characteristic of a lack of any self-respect and huge insecurity of US "elites" who long ago hit the bottom and are on the level of travelers to Roswell in their attempts to connect spiritually with aliens. 

In general, there is nothing scholarly in this continuous, often murky, stream of recent American "thinkers" theses, ranging from magazine articles to books, since in their continuous lament about collapse of Pax Americana, or "global order", or "liberal order", whatever the moniker they want to slap on the global chaos the US is trying to perpetuate in an attempt to save its hegemony, they continuously forget to mention one simple military fact. This fact is the loss of American insulation from conventional warfare (who wants to fight a nuclear war, no, really?) she enjoyed since WW II and facing a very grim reality of getting conventional strikes on US Command and Control and military industrial infrastructure in case of igniting conventional conflict with, say, Russia. It is this massive change in military-strategic paradigm, driven this time by a very real, not contrived, Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) which the US appeared to be not ready for. This is what drives this mass hysteria among those who want to blame their own lack of knowledge, education, foresight and of this proverbial statecraft on everyone else but themselves. Indeed, with "scholars" and "thinkers" like Haas (or Fukuyama, or Allison, or.....theirs is the army) there is very little surprise that the United States finds itself where it is. In other words, those "scholars" should have known better but they haven't and for that they have only themselves to blame, even if hiding behind pseudo-scientific rhetoric about "global order", because in the end one reaps what one sows.        

The Discreet Charm Of The American Academe

I stated many times (in fact, this was one of the main reasons I started this blog) that most of what passes in US as Russian Studies field has to be either 90% cleansed of those, mostly self-proclaimed, "Russia experts" or this field has to be completely closed for good. The reason for that drastic measure being, to put it straight, inability of most (with some few exceptions) US "academe" to have even remotely objective and knowledgeable view on the subject of their "expertise"--Russia. Enter John Mearsheimer, whose academic credentials are indisputable and who is well known in the US and abroad, to some audiences, as an author on mostly foreign relations and big power politics and, of course, as an author of The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy. Mearsheimer is a former US Air Force officer, a graduate of the West Point. Now that we cleared this, let's get to the point(s). 

1) There is no such thing as political "science"--it is a figment of imagination of humanities "educated" bureaucrats for growing their own field and providing more and more tenures (or sinecures) for people who have difficulties with differential equations and salvo model. The so called "political science" is nothing more than a collection of some postulates and theories all of which separately are wrong because they can not be right for reasons of a stochastic nature of human life. In the last 30+ only one (single) theory on foreign relations and geopolitics came more or less relatively close, and even then with some major mistakes, to describing our complex world's reality, it was Samuel Huntington's magnum opus "The Clash Of Civilizations And The Remaking Of World Order". The rest produced in this field is basically nothing more than a collection of pretentious pseud-academic crap which was debunked already by overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary: be it Fukyama's The End Of History or Brzezinski's  take on geopolitics--all of those "theories" turned out to be a complete crap, all of this crap is produced mostly by Ivy League "educated" political "scientists" such as... Mearsheimer. Ideologies? Well, that is another game and that is the only field where "political science" has any meaning since it is good only for justification of one or another delirious political idea. Or, in layman's lingo--good for bullshitting people.

2. There is also no such science as "history", it never existed and today, in the unfolding new technological paradigm it ceased to exists as we know it. Why? Because for history to become a "science" it has to have its causalities right. Well, getting causalities right sometimes is difficult even in precise sciences (which, incidentally, require an intellectual effort on several orders of magnitude larger than in "humanities" field) and in order to be serious modern historian one has to have a wide range of competences ranging from military history to economics, languages to serious technological expertise. One especially has to get military history right. All this is required to get more or less objective picture of the world and here is the catch: 

Mearsheimer's mantra is the "decline of Russia".  Not for once did I note his this, supposedly very "academic", assessment of Russia and I did ask not for once myself a question: is it a lapse of judgement by otherwise well recognized academician or is there something more sinister in all of that? Well, I have got my answer yesterday. 

“This (Russia) is a declining great power. The only reason we have problems with it is because we have pursued liberal hegemony which called for running our alliance structure right up to their border. A self-created problem.” 

While Mearsheimer  is absolutely correct in identifying some of the reasons of the US "problems" with Russia he completely misses the issue--great or super powerdom IS NOT defined the way it is defined by the combined West. And here we must recall what late Samuel Huntington predicted in 1996, a decline of the West relative to other emerging powers. So let me not procrastinate and get to the point: Mearsheimer gets it totally wrong since it is the US, not Russia, who is declining power and in fact, last three years saw a great acceleration of this decline. Russia, meanwhile, is in ascension mode, re-emerging from her forcefully induced slumber. And here comes this state of mind of US true elites, people with consciousness, common sense, integrity and real patriotism, such as deeply respected by me Philip Giraldi who in his yesterday's piece in The American Conservative makes the same mistake as Mearsheimer.  

"The reality is that Russia, apart from its nuclear arsenal, is a bit of a mouse that roared. Its struggling economy generates a GNP that is on par with that of Italy, and it spends one-seventh as much as the U.S. on the military. It has one aircraft carrier versus 10 in the American arsenal, one-sixth as many helicopters, one-third the number of fighter aircraft, and less than half as many active-duty military personnel. It has no effective military allies, while the U.S. has nearly all of Eastern and Western Europe in NATO."

As I pointed many times in this blog--it doesn't matter what Russia spends or how many aircraft carriers she has, what matters and this is the only metric which matters is what bang Russia is getting for her buck while spending much less than US. In the end, what matters is the ability to win wars, not the number of aircraft carriers. Russia is not going to fight US Navy's CBGs on the high seas for a dubious and operationally and strategically meaningless victory (or defeat) there. Far from it, Russia would "invite" if push comes to shove those CBGs closer to Russian shores where, as I already delved into here, she will be able to deploy an overwhelming force of aircraft, ASMs, Air Defense, ECM and ECCM that will make any number of CBGs fat targets for a sequence of salvos from the air, land and on and underwater. It doesn't matter how many helicopters or aircraft USAF has, not all of them will be deployed and those which will be in the case of conventional war (I underscore--conventional) will face a collection of threats USAF encountered.... never. Nothing like it experienced in its history. Hence is this hysteria from yet another US general. 

People are missing the most important point: Russia's GDP, which is incidentally much larger than that of Italy or France, is large enough and structured in such a way that it is totally capable (not without delays and setbacks, but who doesn't have those) to produce for a fraction of costs of NATO nations state of the art weapons and operational concepts which will force the enemies to fight the war by Russian, not their, rules. Like with the moving Soviet heavy industry during Great Patriotic War to Urals, beyond the reach of Luftwaffe--the feat without comparison in human history (1500 machine building plant were transferred in several months)--the speed with which Russian Armed Forces rearmed into the state-of-the-art modern fighting force should have served as a warning and a hint that something is missing with all this Russia's expert analysis, but it didn't. But if definition of the superpowerdom in the US rests on this proverbial power projection one has to ask a question, can this US power projection work against Russia? Well, it can't and what is most important neither US, not combine NATO force (what kind of force is that--is a separate story altogether) not only cannot "defeat" Russia in her vicinity but will sustain losses and damages on the scale it never even planned for and, eventually, will be utterly defeated.  If the best soldiers in history--those of the top form Wehrmacht and SS formations circa 1942-43 found themselves signing the capitulation act in Berlin in 1945, I think the conclusion is inevitable. But other, inevitable and highly warranted conclusion has to be made--if self-proclaimed military hyper-power can not win a single war and is doomed to sustain a catastrophic defeat should it try to conventionally attack this eternally declining Russia, what is the conclusion? What does it say about this hyper-power? I guess we all know the answer and no amount of BS or mantras will change anything. We just need to hope that some rogue "exceptional" element in Pentagon will not lose his nerve and will not do a stupid thing which will cost all of us dear. After all, some people do believe fairy tales of their own making but it is time to face the hard cold facts.