A-ha-ha, LOL)))

Well, obviously the scene when Wendy discovers what Jack was "writing" all this time while in the Overlook Hotel in Kubrick's immortal version of King's The Shining, is one of those moments which terrifies anyone who watched this movie. The effect is astonishing, but then again--that's Kubrick for ya, plus acting genius of Jack and, sadly mentally diminished today, Shelley Duvall. 

But Ukies wouldn't be Ukies, especially after Hollywood declined the appearance of Mr. Ze at Oscars--why, they are worth each-other and it would have been proper for Ze to entertain tinsel sewer of mostly human excrement--so, they got one up on Jack.
 

The new book from 404: Fucking Roosnya, the book which gets every Southern Ukrainian heart high. I don't know if it is a joke but the funny part is that I wouldn't be surprised if that they did "write" such a book. After all, for them it is "All work and no play", or, rather, Fucking Roosnya, Fucking Roosnya... repeat after me--Fucking Roosnya))). 

In related news, Iran just now finally officially confirmed (through IRNA) the purchase of SU-35s from Russia (in Russian). Ahh, Fucking Roosnya... LOL))  

Broken Record.

Oh, goodness. More than four years ago I reacted to Captain Hendrix's statement when he proposed that: 

Investing in the airwing gives aircraft carriers utility going forward, Hendrix said, noting that long-range strike aircraft would allow the carriers to sit out of range of Russian and Chinese anti-ship missiles. 

Of course, this statement was utterly false already in 1980s with SS-N-19 Shipwreck (P-700 Granit) and P-1000 Vulkan being main strike anti-ship weapons of the Soviet Navy, capable of ranges in excess of 600 kilometers, with Vulcan being capable of the range of 800 kilometers (in Russian). But that was some time ago. Since then, Captain Hendrix had to face some serious, in fact revolutionary, changes in the whole outlook of the naval warfare and he wrote a book, which was reviewed in a good ol' neocon rag National Review, which never ceased on this nauseating narrative of the United States being the best thing ever in the universe. But this time, Hendirx, who employs a Mahan's template in justifying his thesis based on the "lessons" from history, has a much more somber tone. Jim Talent, who reviews Hendrix's book, notes that Hendrix offers "the best explanation of "naval presence" Talent has ever seen:

US Navy ships . . . possess a distinct advantage over their land contemporaries in that they can exert influence ashore without having to be physically tied to the land. Not only does sovereignty move with each commissioned ship but also through the effects of its sensors and weapons; it can project influence simply by being present offshore. Think of this influence as an incandescent lamp moving about upon the sea. As it approaches an object, its influence can be understood as the degree to which [its] sensors and weapons fully “illuminate” or make clear the local strategic environment while demonstrating US interests at the local area. . . . Ships moving toward an area of interest cast a “bow wave” of influence ahead of them as they approach, projecting their capabilities and potential for action well prior to their arrival, yet ships departing an area also leave behind influence in the good will and stability they fostered but also because of the implicit promise that they can, and will, return.

Sure, this works, for nations which have no viable armed forces and are primarily small economically and geographically. Moreover, the US navy today has no monopoly on sensors and, in fact, some nations (wink, wink) can see and track Carrier Battle Groups before they even form, let alone set sail to "local area" to "demonstrate US interests". After that, Talent notes:

Unfortunately, as Hendrix explains in lucid detail, American naval primacy is now largely a thing of the past. The defense budget was reduced by over a third in the 1990s, forcing the Navy to cut 200 ships. The situation got even worse in the first 15 years of this century. All pretense of meeting naval requirements was dropped, and the Navy lost another 100 ships. Our NATO allies reduced their fleets even more than the United States did during the same period.

This is where both Talent and Hendrix make a huge mistake. US Navy's problem is not fiscal. Or budgetary. It is doctrinal and technological. It is doctrinal because this "bow wave" of interest, as Hendrix puts it, is not that large anymore thanks to this little teeny-weeny fact that it is only Missile Technology Control Regime which kept the range of, say, Russian-made export variants of anti-shipping missiles to 300 kilometers. Obviously, nothing prevents Russia to consider a sale of her 800-km range capable P-800 Oniks to China, or, depending on how Russian-Chinese relations develop, even 1,500 km range 3M54M Kalibr, if China asks Russia pretty-pretty please. I doubt Russia will sell, for now, any 3M22 Zircons, with their 1000+ kilometer range, to China. But who knows. Under all these conditions, including Indians who have their Brahmos capable of 800 kilometers, who knows what else is out there and with what ranges. 

Common for all those missiles from Oniks to Zircon, apart from their velocities, are the ranges which are either equal or exceed, and by far, any ranges of carrier aviation when considering this carrier aviation operating in the dense ECM and modern Air Defense environment. This means only one thing--carriers will be stationed outside of zones where they can deploy their airwings. In case of the nations capable of deploying the long-range aviation, carriers will be pushed not only out of the near sea zones, but way out into the ocean where they represent nothing more than fat juicy targets and are absolutely useless in any "power projection" role. Hendrix recognizes this, however grudgingly and under utterly wrong title of "filling the gap":

America’s armed forces aren’t and shouldn’t be the main tool of our foreign policy, but they are the foundation of all the other tools; they give credibility and energy to the diplomatic and economic influence of the United States. As American naval presence has declined, Russia and China have been quick to fill the gap. Although, as Hendrix notes, Russia and China have traditionally been land powers, they have developed modern naval forces fully capable of challenging American power. They are using their navies, along with their arsenals of land-based precision missiles, to extend their influence and even their sovereign control over the seas far beyond their shores.

1. I don't see Russia "filling any gap" with moving around Middle East and Maghreb and blowing legitimate governments out of the water. Russia projects power in a very different way than the United States ever did. 

2. Hendrix is also wrong that Russia and China have been traditionally "land powers". Chinese sea fairing started millennia before the United States came into existence, same goes for Russia, whose Navy is older than the United States as a country. 

The fact that Russia can sink anything, including any combination of large surface combatants, including aircraft carriers, in the distance of 2-3,000 kilometers from her shores doesn't mean that Russia somehow "extends her influence". In fact, what Russia does, based on historic record of America's aggression around the globe, she limits America's influence. Simple as that. That is why those weapons have been created in the first place. Not to "extend the influence" but not to allow to be "democratized" and have modern Western "values" shoved down her throat. Then, of course, comes the issue of Arctic, but I am not going to delve too much into this issue, because for now the United States is irrelevant in the Arctic and bar patrols of the US SSNs in the near-Russia Arctic waters and under the polar ice-cap, has little influence over Northern Sea Route, which Russia claims as its own. But Hendrix finds the way to address it, as he thinks:

Hendrix’s solution to this challenge is, unsurprisingly, a large expansion of America’s Navy from the current 295 ships to 456. He does not shy away from the cost of that, but Pentagon reformers will be pleased to read that he wants to re-envision the structure as well as the size of the fleet. He thinks we need lower-end, less costly ships that can sustain presence even in smaller and shallower ports around the world. And those who are frustrated by the long and costly land engagements of the past 20 years will be pleased to read that Hendrix sees the new Navy as the linchpin of a new maritime focus in American involvement in the world. 

Here is where Hendrix misses the whole point. Modern day and age, numbers alone in case of conflict mean very little. Even if to assume that the United States is able (it is not) to produce "lower-end, less costly" ships which he thinks are needed "for presence". Modern weapon systems are capable to destroy highest-end and astronomically expensive US Navy's surface assets at the cost of a few million dollars. It is a simple engineering and industrial truism that, say Russia, or China are capable to produce something like Oniks with the rate of production orders of magnitude greater than construction of new "lower-end, less costly" ships. They will be detected, tracked and sunk in case of any serious conflagration and this should be avoided by all means. As for numbers, boy, I heard this story before, legendary Arleigh Burke while talking to Elmo Zumwalt stated that "we need numbers". Burke wanted at that time 900 major combatants, which was beyond whole America's industrial capacity. Now, the story repeats itself. Or, maybe not. Modern America is not the United States of 1950s and 1960s, nor building ships just for "presence" makes any military sense other than providing modern states with a variety of targets in the areas where the United States and the US Navy have no business to start with. 

The warfare changed. It changed dramatically, in a revolutionary way. High-supersonic and hypersonic anti-shipping missiles with mind boggling ranges are already here. Even longer range missiles are coming. This changed everything tactically, operationally and strategically, but still many in the US are trying to grasp the last straw of hope that the halcyon days of gigantic CVNs and carrier aviation were perceived as the embodiment of the American military might and global influence could still be prevented from fading into the obscurity. Sorry, folks, this cannot be done. Swarms of hypersonic AI-driven missiles, forming own instant combat networks, plugging into the globally positioned and space-based reconnaissance and targeting assets, with immense signal processing power and augmented reality of the global battle-space, these are not fantasies anymore, it is reality which spelled the doom for Pax Americana and with it to the United States Navy as we know it. Time to rethink both military and security strategies away from a delusion of American exceptionalism and aggressiveness and a broken record of America's greatness. If not, the country itself is lost and that is a much bigger problem than the number of the ships. 

New Book.

I reached an agreement in principle with Clarity Press to start writing my third book. This one will be about what is known as geopolitics, geoeconomics and culture.  But don't expect it fast:

1. I need to take account of what unfolds in a front of us and this process inevitably will be throwing curved balls at any plans or ideas I wanted to express initially. So, many corrections and adjustments to manuscript thus become inevitable;

2. The process will take a longer research, especially in geoeconomic sense and that involves a lot of reading and processing of information; 

3. This book should be considerably "thicker", that is larger, than my previous two books. I promise very little, if any, math.

So, this means a somewhat reduced posting (nothing drastic, really) at this blog. I'll try to keep everything normal (usual) as much as I can. Some of the points of this upcoming book you are already well acquainted with, others will require additional development and elaboration. So, it looks like I will be getting myself back into the writer's hell (or agony) trying to collect my thoughts and experiences for greater public awareness.

Looking From The Inside.

The moderate success of my first two books--they did hit the rank of Number One Bestsellers separately in a few military history-policy categories, and once ended both on the top sellers list (one of them), was largely due to fairly good publicity and reviews and one feature of those books which was extremely important. About it--below.

 

I wish they could hit Number One in fiction--but I don't do one, maybe I should, or at least try the art of erotic novel--sure as hell more money in those categories. Yet, all things considered, both were written from the point of view of the outsider, who (me, that is) had to lay out a variety of historic and scientific facts to describe a complex reality, both geopolitical and that of a person who had to face a complete collapse of what remains of the Republic through wars of aggression and a complete mismanagement. I know, I know, my background matters here, but it was also a hindrance of sorts because I could point out only to fairly obvious, or laying on the surface, facts of Western in general and American in particular history--I could not cross the red line of passing detailed judgement of, say, US military. Increasingly, it is becoming easier. It is one thing to be an outsider with everything that comes with the territory, totally another--seeing insiders losing the shackles of political correctness and undue politeness and letting it fly.

I am talking about upcoming Tim Bakken's book: 

The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military

Bakken IS an Insider, he is a professor in USMA at West-Point. Yes, he is not the first one and, most likely, not the last one who raises the voice on the hot bloody mess that characterizes US Military today. But what did really catch my eye was a description of the upcoming (February 18) book:   

Tim Bakken has come to understand how unquestioned faith isolates the U.S. armed forces from civil society and leads to catastrophe. Pervaded by chronic deceit, the military's insular culture elevates blind loyalty above all other values. The consequences are undeniably grim: failure in every war since World War II, millions of lives lost around the globe, and trillions of dollars wasted. Bakken makes the case that the culture he has observed at West Point influences whether America starts wars and how it prosecutes them. Despite fabricated admissions data, rampant cheating, epidemics of sexual assault, archaic curriculums, and shoddy teaching, the military academies produce officers who maintain their privileges at any cost to the nation. Any dissenter is crushed. Bakken revisits all the major wars the United States has fought, from Korea to the current debacles in the Middle East, to show how the military culture produces one failure after another. The Cost of Loyalty is a powerful, multifaceted revelation about the United States and its singular source of pride. One of the few federal employees ever to win a whistleblowing case against the U.S. military, Bakken, in this brave, timely, and urgently necessary book, and at great personal risk, helps us understand why America loses wars.

This book promises to be a fascinating read and its description has some key phrases which are so reminiscent of the description of this one. I think this is indicative of commonality of the observations made by outsiders and insiders, who try to not only point out to failures but know for sure and warn that the history of non-stop failures is having a debilitating influence on the American society and will lead, eventually, to a complete loss of any liberties remaining in the US and will bring a final collapse of the American Republic. I know this as an outsider who can compare, it is absolutely fascinating what an Insider has to say. 

Note: this is neither endorsement nor review of the book which will only be released in a week. But I would love to hear from my readers, when and if they read it, what is their opinion on it. While at it, I may consider writing an erotic novel, enough with this geopolitical mambo-jumbo;))

Coupon For New Book.

Guys and gals, my publisher, Clarity Press, was kind enough to develop a coupon for my new book in order for people who visit this blog to buy it directly from them at good discount. Here are the instructions:

To get a 50% discount on buying The(Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, click on link, then click on Paperback option, then add to cart.  View cart.  There will be an option to enter the coupon.  The coupon code is:                                     

                                Martyanov2-469

No points or commas. Just that.  

A Teaser.

As I promised earlier, a short teaser from my new manuscript dealing with balance of (military) power. This one is not edited and is a small part of a chapter on the so called Thucydides Trap, or rather doctrine-mongering and multiplication of essences by political "science" field, and it may not even see the light in this present form. But still, here is some food for thought for those who are interested.                                                                               ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

In March 2018 an influential American magazine, The Diplomat, published a short piece by Francis P. Sempa on Thucydides Trap. In this piece Sempa, citing a collection of articles and essays by US senior military officers titled Avoiding the Trap: U.S. Strategy and Policy for Competing in the Asia-pacific Beyond the Rebalance, noted in amusement that:

The most remarkable aspect of this study is the lack of “hawkishness” among the contributors, most of whom are high-level military officers. Only one article asserts that China intends to become the Asia-Pacific’s regional hegemon and is following a step-by-step expansionist strategy to displace the United States in the region. Two of the contributors emphasize the need to strengthen and improve U.S. defense ties to Japan and India in order to counterbalance China’s military growth.[i]

It is, sadly, not surprising that Sempa, an attorney by education and a political "scientist" by occupation[ii], is surprised by the fact of military professionals being reluctant to take political science white board theories to heart. But military professionals are absolutely correct in their reluctance and they have ample reasons to be suspicious of international relations concepts cooked up in the deep recesses of Western in general, and American in particular, political science kitchen populated by people who, for the most part, have zero military backgrounds and experiences.

But what is this Thucydides Trap? The term was coined by the American political scientist Graham Allison and is a so called geopolitical model based on ancient Greek historian Thucydides conclusion that:

The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.[iii]  

Here, the obsession of contemporary American political science class with Peloponnesian War, an ancient history event in the foundation of the neoconservatives' inspired American foreign policy and military disasters of the 21st century, manifests itself yet again. In Allison's view the dynamics of evolution of power balance between the United States and China can easily be viewed in parallel to relations between Athens and Sparta which led to the Peloponnesian War more than 2400 years ago. It is difficult to completely rationalize American elites' obsession with that war but comparing China to Athens and the United States to Sparta is not only a-historical, it is simply false. There is very little doubt that American political and military elites are concerned with the growth of China's economic, political and military power. This is understandable. But the so called Trap which makes war between China and the United States almost inevitable is for the most part a figment of imagination of people who have, at best, a very vague understanding of real warfare of the 21st century--this ignorance is a defining feature of the American political class.

China's Xi was explicit when stating, correctly, that Thucydides Trap simply doesn't exist.[iv] Moreover, the whole concept of this trap didn't sit well even with some of Russia's most radical pro-Western liberals known for blind uncritical following of most American geopolitical and ideological concepts. As one of them stated, Thucydides Trap is Political Scientist's Trap.[v] Of course, war between China and the United States may still happen, but as even the summary to the Study which so surprised Francis Sempa with its "lack of hawkishness" states:

Long-range success in the Asia-Pacific region will only come from effective international cooperation.  This cooperation must include China. In keeping with the 2015 U.S. National Security Strategy, we confirm the U.S. position to “welcome the rise of a stable, peaceful, and prosperous China.” To that end, the overarching strategic task for the United States is how to accommodate China’s rise. America must not constrain the responsible rise of China in the region and globally, but at the same time should provide a check on Chinese power by protecting U.S. and partner national interests. This check will come through the effective use of a rules-based international order, but ultimately it will be empowered by a position of U.S. strength across the elements of national power.[vi]

The elements of national power is what really matters in this statement and it requires a serious review of such elements in order to understand that war with China, whose power undeniably continues to grow, can only happen within conventional paradigm, otherwise, with the war going nuclear, none of the objectives by either side will be attained and it will threaten global thermonuclear conflict. A nuclear argument is what really makes all talks about Thucydides Trap a foolhardy business, because MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is the factor which makes any parallels to ancient warfare history irrelevant. It is not the only factor, but it is surely the most important one. 

A possible nuclear scenario between the United States and China does not require any serious elaborations since even laymen have enough understanding of catastrophic global consequences of two (or more) nuclear superpowers engaging in nuclear exchange. It is scenario which must be avoided by all means and it seems those who in the United States understand that best of all are American military professionals. Same goes to Chinese military. But while there are few more-or-less competent and influential people who speak about fallacy of Allison's Trap, one has to point out a simple fact that the Thucydides Trap of sorts is known to mankind since the very dawn of human civilization, way before Ancient Greece, and it was observed in animal world, in which aging leaders of a herd are challenged by younger and more ambitious competitors. It was and is also observed in human world all the time, enough to consider sports whose very premise is built on challenging the status quo, be that boxing, track and field or soccer. In general, Allison's Thucydides Trap is known to humanity as competition and not all competitions end up in wars. This is not to mention the fact that Athens, Sparta and Thucydides himself did not operate with the knowledge of nuclear weapons, net-centric warfare, stand-off high-precision weapons and combined arms operation, which even in purely conventional form can paralyze and defeat modern nation-state, or can cause human losses on unimaginable scale. These factors are the ones which must change any kind of generalizations related to military and war. This brings us to more important issue—historical parallels. 

Drawing historical parallels is an extremely dangerous business wrought with huge risks of miscalculation and learning wrong lessons. History, certainly, does provide some valuable lessons but at this stage the whole term history, as it was understood even fairly recently, does not reflect an immense complexity of human development and activity for the last roughly hundred years and those developments cannot be described anymore within traditional framework because more and more causalities are being affected not just by human nature but by technology attached to it. Technology becomes increasingly complex and thus remains beyond the grasp of many humanities educated historians who lack cognitive apparatus for understanding and describing it and technology's effect on the events. Modern war is highly technological. What used to be few tactical and operational factors to be considered by a military leader such as Napoleon, Kutuzov or Grant, today becomes a vast and complex set of variables needed to be considered by leaders while making a decision. There is a reason why contemporary military leaders have very strong backgrounds in fundamental sciences and many of them have serious engineering backgrounds.

While general principles of warfare and what is called strategy since the times of Clausewitz remained largely static and generally similar for many modern armies, the approach to application of those principles grew in complexity exponentially.[vii] In times of muskets and linear tactics, an officer commanding a company or battalion would have had little trouble understanding a general plan on the battle or even campaign. Today, such understanding requires long years of highly specialized education and very serious background in military technology. Without this background there is no serious understanding of the modern warfare—it is simply a hard fact of life. This is where drawing historical parallels becomes a very dangerous business. Many even non-military people understand this danger and, in fact, some even reflected this danger in the modern art. 

A 1980 sci-fi Hollywood flick The Final Countdown, with Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen starring in it, is an excellent example of such an awareness. While movie deals with the possible time paradox when nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is transported, due to a freaky storm, from 1980 to December 7, 1941, few hours before Japanese aviation attack on Pearl-Harbor, historic ramifications of such an event become clear immediately. Even the most unsophisticated observer could easily arrive to the idea, without understanding even basic technological principles, that a single US Navy's nuclear aircraft carrier and its air wing which included F-14 Tomcat fighters would have very little difficulty with destroying 360 Japanese piston aircraft due to modern American carrier advanced electronic sensors and overwhelming advantage modern jet aircraft had over 1930s-designed combat planes in speed, maneuverability and weapons. It came down to a complete tactical, operational and technological mismatch, even if portrayed in a fictional settings. I will stop here with disclosing the plot of that movie for those who are yet to watch it.

Thus the irresistible question arises—what lessons could have been drawn from Japanese actions on December 7, 1941 in tactical and operational senses to be applied to modern times? Of course, the lesson of a strategic and operational surprise is valid, but this lesson is as old as the Trojan Horse concept. The truth is, few of those lessons, other than ever present necessity to develop better weapons and sensors, could have been drawn. And here is the point—technology became a main, albeit not only, driver behind tactical and operational requirements. Of course issues of morale, culture, and social dimension of war and, in the end, leadership never lost their significance but it goes without saying that in the fight between even the squadron of Mitsubishi A6M Zero and a pair of Grumman F-14 Tomcat jet aircraft, chances of WW II piston airplanes surviving approach zero. Only answering question why things work one way and not the other can one begin to see why falling back on history, granted it is based on facts, not fantasies, is never a good idea especially when trying to develop rather broad and shaky concepts such as Thucydides Trap.......

---

[i] How to Avoid the Thucydides Trap: The Missing Piece. Francis P. Sempa. The Diplomat. March 07, 2018. https://thediplomat.com/2018/03/how-to-avoid-the-thucydides-trap-the-missing-piece/

[ii] Sempa, Francis.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/sempa-francis-p-1959

[iii] The History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides. The First Book. Chapter One. http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.1.first.html 
[iv]Ловушка для политолога (The Trap for Political Scientist). Alexey Tsvetkov. In Liberty. November 12, 2015. http://old.inliberty.ru/blog/2089-Lovushka-dlya-politologa

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Avoiding the Trap: U.S. Strategy and Policy for Competing in the Asia-pacific Beyond the Rebalance. Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press. February, 2018, pp.  xiv-xv. 
[vii] Principles of War.  https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/principles-war