America Doesn't Do Real War...

 ... period. The reason it doesn't do real war is because she doesn't know what it is. Because she doesn't know what real defense is, apart from tropes of "national interests", "we need to fight them there, to not fight them here", "democracy" and other bullshit to cover up expeditionary and imperialistic nature of the US military.  So, Gregory Daddis asks a reasonable question and raises a proper issue:

While much of the book is heavy with dense, analytical prose, “How Much Is Enough?” still asks useful questions that remain relevant for us today. How well are DoD budget practices aligned to U.S. foreign policy objectives? Are spending ceilings logical or “arbitrary”? Are some military services “entitled” to a certain percentage of the defense budget, and, if so, why? What is the relationship between spending on social programs versus national security? Perhaps most importantly, Enthoven and Smith argued for a “central plan” to drive resource requests and avoid duplication of effort. Once more, they encouraged spending criteria that supported the “national interest.” In evaluating forces structures and strategic mobility, weapons systems and nuclear stockpiles, analysts always had to keep in mind a central question: “for what purpose?”

Well, the issue, of course, is WHAT IS American nation and how its "national interests" are formulated? I agree--US "defense budget" is nothing but a jobs program and defrauding of the US economy. Moreover, I agree, that for all this spending the US continues to fall behind technologically and is incapable of REAL, as in large scale combined arms operations. Condescending references to "peer" or "near peer" warfare is an absolute BS. What is not a BS--it is inability, especially at the political level to grasp what COFM is. 

Senator Roger Wicker--a lawyer and a journo who was JAG, who penned this somnambulic BS in NYT in May...

America’s Military Is Not Prepared for War — or Peace

... has about zero grasp on how wars are planned and executed. JAGs, especially with "degree" in journalism are not educated on the virtues of Combat Effectiveness, Combat Stability and Force Designs. But these are crucial in order for him to understand why the United States lost the arms race and why the "rebuilding of the US Armed Forces" as he puts it this way will be mostly about "more cowbell"--same BS about replicating the TOE from 1990-s, the attempt to repeat the halcyon days of beating the crap from people who cannot shoot straight. And Daddies concludes the piece with seemingly common sense: 

In 1971, Enthoven and Smith were asking similarly hard questions because they believed it served the nation’s best interests. Undoubtedly, Senator Wicker feels similarly. But it’s worth voters engaging in this moment when the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East seemingly demand more, more, more. Of course, we shouldn’t underestimate the threats we face. But surely now is the time to ask both our presidential candidates, “how much is enough?”

What can I say, the whole US military thinking is not about real wars, it is about who gets what domestically. It is a gravy train, for now. But changes are coming. In fact, they are already here.

What Interests?

I am often critical and sometimes outright dismissive of US foreign policy and a "doctrine" which is in the foundation of a disaster which US foreign policy is. I still remain on this position and I can justify it; it is not very difficult to do. Having said all that, when looking at the sorry state of today's world and understanding that it is undergoing profound changes, there are constants one must consider when analyzing those changes. Among those constants are legitimate national interests of the United States of America. The United States does have national interests which she absolutely must protect and her livelihood depends on protection of those interests. But what are those interests? What is "legitimate" in this case, what is worth for the US to draw real red lines and fight for? This is not an easy question to answer. Once pathos-ridden globalist rhetoric, which permeates most of American geopolitical documents, is discounted, one has to recognize that far from being self-proclaimed guarantor of "world order", the United States not only contributed greatly to its destabilization but ran out of resources to even barely maintain this order, let alone take on what US considers her main geopolitical rivals: Russia and China. 

As Bronislaw Malinowski wrote in his An Anthropological Analysis Of War in 1941:  

Another interesting point in the study of aggression is that, like charity, it begins at home. 

In 1951 Daniel J. Levinson in his Authoritarian Personality And Foreign Policy went further: 

America has only recently come of age internationally; the understanding of international relations requires an ability and a readiness to think in terms of institutional abstractions to which Americans are only just getting accustomed; our newspapers and other communications media tend to perpetuate the existing confusion and ideological immaturity...  The American nation as a symbol is glorified and idealized; it is regarded as superior to other nations in all important respects. Great emphasis is placed on such concepts as national honor and national sovereignty. Other nations are seen as inferior, envious, and threatening. At the worst they are likely to attack us; at best they seek alliances only to pursue their own selfish aims and to "play us for a sucker".

This was written 66 years ago. Most of it applies today easily to current America and it is precisely a set of the US' recurring attitudes which prevents her from both formulating her vital national interests and defending them. I could go deep into American Founding Fathers ideas and wax historical here but those points of view and ideas are so well known that it simply makes no sense to repeat them again. Maybe with the exception of John Quincy Adams' reminder to US Congress in 1821 that America:

But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

Adams was prescient. But the problem of modern day America turning into "empire" is the fact that US fails miserably as an empire to start with and, for all intents and purposes, is not very good at fighting those "imperial" wars. Not to speak of Adams' warning which came true completely--"enlisting under other banners", those banners being, of course, first of all banners of Israel and of Arabian Peninsula medieval satrapies. A catastrophe in the Middle East was not in American national interest, not to speak of the millions upon millions killed, maimed, displaced innocent Arabs, Christians, Alawites etc. But then again, how US can define her real national interest when she fights constantly for someone else' interests, many of which far from being merely economic ones, are very often genocidal, such as the case of Saudi Arabia's (with US support) behavior in Yemen or Israel being more interested in the existence of Al Qaeda and ISIS than of secular Syrian government. 

One may wax anti-colonial and anti-imperialist whatever one wants--yes, Belgian behavior in Kongo was inhumane--but British imperialism didn't leave just negative marks on its colonies. It left after itself often whole government institutions which worked, it also left skilled administrative, technical and intellectual local elite, it also provided a developmental impetus in places where such a development was greatly retarded. It is not a secret that many in current political and military elite in India went through Oxford and Sandhurst. Friedrich Engels, hardly a Russophile, defined Russian imperial expansion as:

Despite her Slavic dirt and baseness, Russia provides civilizing influence on her Asiatic subjects.      

But this is not what US does with her "empire". Whole Middle East is on fire, Western Europe which was liberated by Allies in WW II is in a cultural death spiral and economic troubles, US involvement in Indo-China in 1960s resulted in utter destruction of the region, with millions of people dead. Building "democracy" in Afghanistan or even Iraq--places which never had a culture even remotely compatible with "democracy"--is an unmitigated disaster. In the end, the so called "liberal democracy" practiced in US resulted in cultural and political trends which completely torn the nation apart and threaten to bury it completely under the rubble of cultural, racial, economic, ideological and political warfare. How can one possibly formulate sensible national interests when the subject which must generate these interests is in a state which is hardly conducive for calm and productive discussion on what real American national interests ARE? 

Are American national interests "large" in economic sense? Absolutely they are--US is still second economy in the world and has a huge internal market and it shouldn't have surrendered her industry to China to start with. What are REAL military threats to the US? Is North Korean missile program a threat to the US? Potentially, yes but how serious a threat? The Fat Thing in Pyongyang is not suicidal. Is Russia a threat? Militarily--only within US globalist world view, since will keep US from global military "dominance" (greatly overrated and talked up), once globalist (and treasonous) US "elite" is discounted, Russia becomes a natural ally, but what about China? Is US maritime dominance under challenge? Only in littorals of the nations US wants to attack, Russia included. US ocean dominance is not under threat and nobody really cares to challenge it there--overwhelming majority of nations are for safe navigation and movement of the goods. Is Latin America a US' "backyard"? Objectively it is but what is US' game plan there? Is globalism a national security threat to US herself? Absolutely--it is poison which kills US slowly but surely. Those questions are numerous and they must be first stated and then answered before one can even start formulating real national interests of the United States. Donald Trump started doing this during his campaign but we all can chip in.  Will we? 

UPDATE: what a coincidence, Pat Buchanan, whom I respect deeply, despite not always agreeing with  his point of view, published today (a day after my post) a piece with telling title: 

             What Is America's Goal In The World. 

There Pat discusses a lot of issues which I posted about yesterday. As I said, I do not always agree with Pat but he is always worthy of listening to.   

Kazakhstan, Nothing Personal--Just Business, That Is Geopolitics.

As was expected, with Vostochny(i) Cosmodrome coming on-line, Kazakh expert community, and, evidently not only them, got upset. And why are they upset? The answer is obvious--introduction of Vostochny will have a direct and very negative (for Kazakh side) impact on legendary Baikonur Cosmodrome. In plain language it means the transfer of the majority of launches to Vostochny, with that the juicy river of the rent which Russia pays to Kazakhstan has a prospect of shrinking down to a small stream. There are two aspects to this situation, both of them tightly intertwined.

1. Pure (almost) geopolitics. Remember Friedrich Engels: "Russia, despite her Slavic dirt and baseness provides civilizing influence on her Middle Asia subjects". Mind you, this is from the guy who couldn't stand Russians because he thought them to be too backward to launch a proletarian revolution. Boy, was he wrong on Russian account, but then again, as was stated by me many times, Western Russia's "expert" community was always not much of an expert one. Russia, indeed, for centuries was building schools, hospitals, libraries and industrial plant in her Middle Asian (and not only) underbelly. With the rise of the Soviet Union in place of Russian Empire, the process shifted into overdrive. Old backward villages became cities, metallurgy, machine building, universities, scientific labs, hydroelectric dams, massive agricultural complexes sprung up in what became the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Lastly, most important Soviet Space Port of Baikonur was built in Kazakh steppes.

Make no mistake, the unprecedented growth was not without its price, sometimes tragic--enough to look at the fate of Aral Sea. But truth is, with this growth came the  real nationhood of Kazakhs, not least through appearance of their own intelligentsia, which was nurtured by Russian/Soviet effort. Well, times changed, USSR dissolved, Kazakhstan became its own state but some very important ties with Russia were preserved, not least through the efforts of Nazarbaev and of massive ethnic Russian diaspora (27% of Kazakhstan population). But Nazarbaev is getting old and by far not all of Kazakh ethnic elite sees itself as a part of inevitable Russia's sphere of influence. History of Middle Asia (and Caucasus) has many, including very recent, records of shallow civilized veneer falling off in an instant and the mayhem of ethnic cleansing, "De-Russification" and even outright genocide breaking out in what seemed to be rather calm places. I am not saying that this is the fate of Kazakhstan but there are some worrying signs and, in the end, if to factor out the Soviet period of, sometimes genuine, Soviet internationalism, there is no reason to believe that new generation of Kazakh elites would want to stay "Russified" at all.  That means only one thing--NO RESURRECTION OF THE SOVIET UNION. Not only Kazakhs do not want that but, most importantly, overwhelming majority of Russians doesn't want it too. 

No doubt, ODKB and Eurasian Customs Union structures will endure, if anything else out of pure economic and security necessities of the smaller members, Kazakhstan included, but cultural drifting apart will continue and nothing can stop it, short of the resurrection of Soviet internationalist model--but that ship has sailed. With this cultural drifting apart comes inevitable cooling and possible volatility between Russia and Kazakhstan, this automatically translates into "Ukrainian scenario" in terms of crucial economic ties and infrastructure. Russia finally learned her "Ukrainian" lesson, when she was blackmailed for 20 years by threats (however impossible to realize) of evicting Black Sea Fleet from Crimea and when Russian Navy recently got burned by relying on Ukrainian ships' power plant producers. There is absolutely no reason to believe that any reliance on Russia's "allies" (bar ever wobbly Belarus, but here the cultural commonality is huge) in Middle Asia will pay off. After all, who knows who will come to power in Astana in 10-20 years. It could be some moderately well-disposed to Russia leader or it could be some radical and irrational Russophobe and those are plentiful in Kazakhstan (and Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan). So, Russia cuts her risks and possible losses--nothing personal, folks, just pure geopolitics (and business). As Russian Emperor Alexander III succinctly observed Russia has only two allies--her Army and her Navy. In the end, Russians have gotten fed up with keeping silent while the insults are being hurled at them by people, who, if not for Russia, would have been today in the state reminiscent of contemporary Afghanistan. 

2. This aspect is very obvious--development of the Russian Far East, of which Vostochny will be one of the major economic, scientific and infrastructure pivots. 

So, here it is. Russia seems to be finally learning her lessons. For decades, Russian Federation, being a central part of the USSR, was a milking cow for Soviet fringes. Very often it was at the expense of Russian and other peoples of Russia. History dramatically demonstrated Russia's pivotal role in Eurasia. Looking at the death of Ukraine's economy, or at the deindustrialization of some of the former Soviet Caucasus republics, looking at de-facto economic death of Baltic States, and, especially, looking at what Middle Asia is becoming--just to give an example, Tashkent had, among many other industries, a whole aviation plant which produced Il-76 planes--with most of real industries gone, it is an undeniable fact that Engels was right about Russia at least once.  It is easy to built a shopping mall or bank. Building massive industrial, scientific and military infrastructure, such as Vostochny, is a different game altogether. With Vostochny coming online yesterday Russia demonstrated who is the real superpower, together with China, in Eurasia and that Russia will make her moves the way she thinks are to her, not to someone's, advantage and serve her national interests and that is a very healthy development.