There Is A Reason I Don't Take Mearsheimer's "Realism" Seriously.

Realistically speaking he is a second rate geopolitical thinker who loves to claim to be a realist. There are NO world-class geopolitical thinkers in the West today for reasons which I explained on many occasions: most "thinkers" do not grasp the nature of modern military power because they lack background for understanding all technological intricacies and ways escalation dominance affects the balance of power. Yes, there are very few people of the scale of Douglas MacGregor who get it, but these exceptions merely confirm the rule. The actual claim to "authority" in geopolitics by Mearsheimer has nothing to do with geopolitics (of what passes for it today in the West) per se but with his and Walt's famous work on Israeli Lobby in the US. 

Moreover, Mearsheimer was unlucky enough to graduate West Point in 1970 at the height of the America's humiliation in Vietnam and then served in the USAF precisely through the very end of America's Vietnam debacle in 1975. In other words, he was privy only to the US Armed Forces'  doctrinal confusion and the early start of third stage of technological development of warfare which would manifest itself only in 1980s and into 1990s. So, speaking plainly, he missed most of it and his pseudo-academic trope of "offensive realism" is nothing more than a euphemism for American exceptionalism based on ignorance of the outside world and, as a matter of fact, America's main geopolitical rival today, Russia. Here is his today's piece about escalation. 

I can easily answer his question about "where it all stops"--it is stopping now and those deliveries from NATO (and the US) make no difference whatsoever for the outcome and many in Washington begin to get it. But it is not what really makes it funny, no, it is the fact that he still uses beaten to death BS about "democracy". The fact that he doesn't understand how risible those statements about "democracy" and America's "desire to spread it" are, testifies to his lucid moments and grains of the common sense appearing periodically in his talking being merely sporadic, if not accidental altogether, touches with reality. The United States spreads not "democracy" but chaos and puppet regimes serving US' interests. He also needs to accept a simple fact of which I speak for many years now--NATO cannot fight the conventional war in Russia's geographic vicinity and hope to avoid catastrophic losses. Because of that the US will escalate to nuclear threshold because it is incapable of sustaining such losses on the battlefield and war effort economically. Mearsheimer doesn't understand that, as he doesn't understand the nature of escalation dominance. 

About it. Get this:

ST. LOUIS — The Biden administration's plan to sell four large, armable drones to Ukraine has been paused on the fear its sophisticated surveillance equipment might fall into enemy hands, according to two people familiar with the matter. The technical objection to the sale was raised during a deeper review by the Pentagon's Defense Technology Security Administration charged with keeping high value technology safe from enemy hands. Previously the plan, which has been circulating since March, had been approved by the White House, three people said. The plan to sell Ukraine four MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones that can be armed with Hellfire missiles for battlefield use against Russia was first reported by Reuters earlier in June. The objection to the export of the drones arose due to concerns the radar and surveillance equipment on the drones could create a security risk for the United States if it fell into Russian hands.

No, the concern about this "sensitive technology" falling into Russian hands" as a reason for snag is a complete malarkey, albeit I do not state that there are no such concerns, they do exist but they are not about "security" primarily. 

They are primarily about the fact that MQ1C Grey Eagle is not survivable in the real combat environment against Air Defense, Air Force and EW capabilities of Russia. Delivering those will simply add to an embarrassing "performance" of the US technology in Ukraine against Russian forces, with the latest US wunderwaffe such as vaunted Switchblade loitering munition which became a butt of jokes in Russia now because of its dismal combat "effectiveness" or, rather, lack thereof, amounting by different sources of SMO to a whopping... 20%. Clowns at Forbes rushed to do a damage control on the account of this munition, but the data (however incomplete) is already in and it is not good across the board for practically any type of the Western combat technology fighting in Ukraine. But then again, the problem is systemic and it cannot be resolved within present framework of America's combat technological culture which grew out of wars with grossly inferior enemies. One cannot buy this with money, period. 

So, in this case Colonel Douglas MacGregor, a man who actually, unlike Mearsheimer, not only lived through but fought within new technological paradigm, contradicts Merasheimer dramatically, being, indeed, a true realist and a competent military observer. 

However, the effects of repeated strategic failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria are cumulative. In the 1980s, General Motors wanted to dictate the kind of automobiles Americans would buy, but American consumers had different ideas. That’s why G.M., which dominated the U.S. market for 77 years, lost its top spot to Toyota. Washington cannot dictate all outcomes, nor can Washington escape accountability for its profligate spending and having ruined American prosperity.

Succinct, and that is why I am on record that the United States loses its wars due to ignorance and a systemic flaw in its strategic thinking and R&D and procurement philosophy, that is why I stated a few years ago that the United States lost the arms race to Russia, because it failed to adapt to fast changing realities of modern combat.

Lavrov Verbatim.

Here is he in Russian:

"К санкциям мы привыкли. Принципиальная геополитическая реакция заключается в том, что мы убедились за эти годы в ненадежности наших западных партнеров, включая, к сожалению, членов Европейского Союза."

Translation:  We are used to sanctions. A principle geopolitical reaction is that we develop a conviction that our Western partners are unreliable, including, sadly, members of European Union."

He elaborated further on Russia using "safety net" when dealing with Europe and this safety net, as one might have expected, includes but is not limited to, is tying Russia's European gas pipe-lines to her East-bound pipe-line systems. I mentioned it already several times before--Russia now views Europe as a secondary energy market and Lavrov's statements today are pretty explicit in terms of saying to Europe to go and fvck itself. Russia today can afford that. In fact, come to think about it, US devouring EU plays into Russia's hands. Many in the West still cannot grasp a simple fact that pipelines such as NS2 are not crucial for Russia anymore. They are, however, crucial to Europe, but EU is on a straight path to economic suicide and one does not negotiate with a patient of asylum. 

After that Lavrov delivered a knockout blow:

"Без реакции это оставлять нельзя. Это, во-первых, неправильно, с точки зрения законов дипломатии. Во-вторых, мы хотим просто ограничить негативное влияние различных западных структур и государств и многочисленных так называемых                                     неправительственных организаций на те планы, которые существуют в нашей стране, которые существуют у наших союзников"  

Translation: We cannot leave this (sanctions) without reaction. First, it is incorrect from the point of view of diplomacy. Secondly, we simply want to limit a negative influence of various western structures and states, and numerous NGOs on those plans which exist in our country and our allies. 

What are those plans, you may ask? Look at Russia, from aviation, to space, to high power gas turbines, to shipbuilding--Russia was in import-substitution and localization (re-industrialization) mode for years now and she does it as if there is no tomorrow. Rightly so. I guess, many NGOs, companies and other "structures" will be thrown out of Russia now--long overdue. I know reaction among majority of Russians was "finally". Russia is parting her ways with EU. All this is for:

«То есть обеспечить себе все возможности, чтобы, если ЕС останется на своих негативных, деструктивных позициях, мы не зависели от его прихотей и могли обеспечивать свое собственное развитие самостоятельно и в партнерстве с теми, кто готов к сотрудничеству на равноправной, взаимоуважительной основе»

Translation: In other words, to provide for ourselves for all possibilities, if the EU remains on its negative destructive positions, to be independent from its whims and that we can ensure our own autonomous development, as well as in partnership with those who are ready to cooperate on equal basis and mutual respect.   

I am on record for years that talking to Europeans is useless, Europe has no real international subjectivity and is in full blown decline mode which is irreversible. Something "clicked" in Kremlin and I have an idea what. The preparation for this "click" was happening for years now and only blind couldn't see the end result of it. Strategic ramifications for statements made on this level are gigantic and it all comes down to Russia having enough wherewithal to abandon EU to the US, which will make sure that it is not competitive with its suicidal energy policies. But we don't see the whole game yet, what is clear is that some new chapter is being written in Russia. Germany should prepare now for giving some explanations about Navalny and those better be a really damn good ones, which Russia knows with absolute guarantee Germany doesn't have.What a lovely Sunday. In related news, wink, wink...

General Electric Company’s GE unit GE Power recently clinched a contract to deliver power generation equipment for the Zainskaya State District Power Plant’s expansionary project in Zainsk, Tatarstan, in Russia.  Financial terms of the deal were kept under wraps. For the new 858 MW power plant, General Electric will be responsible for providing its state of the art gas turbine 9HA.02 and a STF-D650 steam turbine. Apart from these, the company will deliver H78 and A78 generators as well as RH Heat Recovery Steam Generator.

Why this news are important? Well, because not only Russia now herself produces high powered gas turbines completely on her own, but because localization of 100% was agreed upon by GE (in Russian) and, as Russians point out, Siemens suddenly (yes, in the last two days) gets not only extremely stiff competition from Russians themselves but from GE, which is only happy to work with Russia (in Russian).  I told ya, Russia is a hot commodity and is not cheap, not at all. Miss a step and you are gone. But then again, it is EU's business what they decide to do, Russia is too busy developing herself. 

Another One Bites The Dust (c).

Oops, here comes Johnny! As Turkey goes, so goes Azerbaijan, which still is a complex issue on its own. 

(Bloomberg) -- President Ilham Aliyev said Azerbaijan won’t seek closer integration with Europe, which he accused of discriminating against Muslims and undermining his country’s traditional values. “Where shall we integrate?” Aliyev said in a rare public criticism of the West in a speech to university students and teachers in the capital, Baku, on Tuesday. “Shall we integrate with those who are saying ‘Stop Islam’? Shall we integrate to a place where there’s no difference being made between men and women? We definitely shall not.” Aliyev’s remarks mark a departure from the national security strategy he approved in 2007, which said energy-rich Azerbaijan targets membership in European and Euro-Atlantic alliances. The majority Muslim but secular nation of 10 million people sandwiched between Iran and Russia forged close political and economic ties with the U.S. and the European Union after declaring independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. The president’s speech “was his acknowledgment of the failure of secularism and western values in Azerbaijan,” prominent Azeri journalist Khadija Ismayil wrote on Facebook. Ismayil, who’s known for investigative reports into Aliyev’s undeclared family businesses, was sentenced to prison in 2015 and freed the following year after international criticism of her detention and trial.

First, let's start with debunking the point about "failure of secularism". Oh, please! Ilham Aliyev had absolutely different thing in mind. For starters, even in Soviet times it was a normal occurrence for some deceased Party bureaucrat to be buried in Muslim tradition, with Mullah present and all that. Azerbaijan was always a Muslim country but initially Russia imperial and, later, Soviet rule provided an extremely serious boost to Azerbaijan's development which fused with a rather rich and colorful Azerbaijani culture. Among all former Soviet Caucasus republics, now independent states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan in 20th century was most genuinely multi-cultural place, with the capital of Baku being an extraordinarily cosmopolitan city with very large, almost equal in size,  Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian diasporas populating it, with yet another smaller diasporas of Jews, Germans and heirs of Russian Molokans constituting the rest. That gave the rise to a unique recognizable identity and even lingo of Bakunians (Bakintsy) who were Bakunians first, and Azerbaijani, Russians or Armenians second. In other words, Azerbaijan has a vast and, with the exception of tragedies of connected to the collapse of the USSR, positive experience of true integration. Enough to mention that even today a huge share of Azerbaijani public schools teaches students in Russian language, despite Russian diaspora in Azerbaijan dwindling to few tens of thousands after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Just to demonstrate. Here is 2018 graduation ceremony in Baku's school # 145 (my wife graduated it)--it is still school with in depth physics-mathematics curriculum. Pay attention--all of it is in Russian, and in fact repeats to the smallest detail almost Soviet, and, in general, modern Russian graduation traditions. 

Same goes for higher education and with many Azerbaijani youth doing their higher ed. in Russian. So, Aliyev's speech is not about "secularism" or its "failure"--quite opposite. Ilham, who himself is a graduate of famous MGIMO and a son of possibly the only one man in Politburo who could stop the collapse of the USSR, Geidar Aliyev, knows where the actual Islamization stops. Here is Ilham's wife and mover and shaker of Aliyev's business, Mehriban Aliyeva, with Putin four days ago during inter-regional forum in Moscow. 

I dare to say, that Azerbaijan's moves are precisely against talibanization and recognizing the fact that, especially after Turkey's moves, it will be a traditional, and dear to many good honest hard working Azerbaijanis, Moscow (and Russia in general) with who the fates of their country lie. I deliberately omit here the issue of Nagorny Karabakh--it is a separate and a very complex topic on its own--but the number of Azerbaijanis living and doing business in Russia is large and yes, by far not all of them are selling vegetables and fruits at the markets, nor are involved in the ethnic organized crime--an inevitable "benefit" of multi-ethnic state. Many are excellent doctors, engineers, people of art and culture and, in general, well-educated and highly socially adaptable people. In the end, it is all about geopolitics. For Azerbaijan, the West is far, Russia, on the other hand, is a few hours of drive north from Baku to Dagestan, same goes for Iran to the South. Plus, Baku commands serious reserves of oil and gas, plus, so called modern Western "values" are equally rejected in Moscow and Baku. 

But even more importantly, Azerbaijan is a pivot state of the region and, speaking in a very simple language, she gets it one way or another if the "reputable" (/sarc) United States decide to commit suicide and go for Iran's jugular. There are 20+ million ethnic Azerbaijanis living in Northern Iran, including in the province symptomatically called Azerbaijan. Boy, talk about the complexity of the region. Of course delusional "opposition" people in any nation sound all the same and read from the same script written either by Soros or CIA and they do sound stupid:

The president is “quite sincere” in his opposition to European integration because “Europe means democracy, free elections, rule of law, universal human rights and social welfare,” Altay Goyushov, an opposition politician who heads the Baku Research Institute, a think tank in the city, wrote on Facebook. “Aliyev wants to see a medieval monarchy in Azerbaijan,” he said.

That's the definition of being delusional. Especially when one talks about "democracy" in Europe which is run by corrupt homicidal EU bureaucracy and is dominated by political parties whose agendas are anything but "human rights" driven and have very little to do with "free" elections. In general, it all comes down to who will have better economic prospects with all that follows politically in the mid to long term future. It is Eurasia--pretty much no-brainer. As for Azerbaijani Armed Forces, guess who is in charge and what institutions many of them graduated from?  Well, including my naval academy. Those people are not stupid, they can count and plan. They also can assess geopolitical situation and deduct power balance. I am sure they do it professionally and do identify trends well. Talk, especially about "human rights" and "democracy" (not to mention "rule of law") is cheap. The only things that matter are actions and things that work. Europe doesn't. So, it is not about Islam, or, rather, not about it primarily. It is about pure national interest and elites seeing future for themselves. Prosperity usually produces stable political situation, especially when one has to consider what neighborhood he (she) resides in. And, frankly, I would (and probably will, inshallah;)) rather visit Baku than Paris or Madrid.  Beaches are good and the food is out of this world--I know, I was born there. In a sense that I have a slight idea about how it works.

   

Here are some additional views of modern day Baku. A warning, do not try to compare it with glitzy and tawdry Arab Gulfie newbie playgrounds such as Qatar or UAE.      
                                       

Military Newspeak, Same As Oldspeak.

I am always cranky whenever I see all kinds of taxonomies and "classifications", never more so than when those, mostly vague and, often, propaganda-driven distinction methods are applied to military affairs. Make no mistake, I am not against systematization, generalization and proper linguistic representation of military, or any other, phenomena--I am all for it, when done professionally, after all, there is a reason one of the first books on the table of any officer in Russian Navy or Army, as an example, is the small book called "Command Words" and phrases. Things, any things, need to be named correctly and have a very good reaction "path" to the brains of those to who they are addressed--be it a young soldier or an experienced rear-admiral. Clarity is the main requirement. Hm, maybe that is why I am published by Clarity Press. Maybe it wasn't accidental that I decided to go with them. 

Well, here I am again, ranting. This time I had it with the term Blue Water Navy. I opened Yahoo News feed today and, bang--Dmitry Gorenburg of Center for Naval Analysis writes this:

In the near to medium term, the Russian Navy’s role will be to serve primarily as a deterrence force to constrain U.S. and NATO operations in the eastern Mediterranean and to provide forward defense for approaches to the Russian homeland through the Black Sea. It will have some power projection through its ability to hold opponents’ territory at risk with its cruise missile capability, rather than through traditional naval strike groups. Out-of-area deployment capability will increasingly shift to smaller patrol ships and to submarines as Russia’s remaining Soviet-era large surface ships become increasingly less reliable. Over the last decade, there has been a transition in the Russian Navy’s future planning from unattainable blue-water aspirations to establishing a fairly capable green-water force. Its overall focus remains defensive in the near term, with the possibility of greater emphasis on power projection in the medium term as more Yasen-class nuclear attack submarines come online and older Soviet submarines are armed with Kalibr cruise missiles as part of ongoing modernization plans.

While Gorenburg's piece, surprisingly more-or-less balanced (for "American" analyst), is not wrong in a matter-of-fact way, passage highlighted in yellow makes by eyebrows being raised pretty high. For starters, what are "blue-water aspirations"? Let's see. We go to WiKi, and why not.

In public discourse blue-water capability is identified with the operation of iconic capital ships such as battleships/battlecruisers, aircraft carriers, and nuclear submarines.  

Public discourse, of course, is important but I was getting away from this term for a long time now, since it makes NO operational sense whatsoever if it is not judged relative to its mission against PROBABLE adversaries.  Here is how some people define these Blue-Water, Green-Water, what have you, capabilities. 

So, is the United States Navy a Blue-Water Navy? Absolutely--it is large, it can sail globally, it single-handedly can destroy some countries and in a civilian logic which still exists at the power-balance configuration circa 1999-2003 it is, it MUST be, a Blue-Water Navy. Well, I have issues with this statement in October, 2019. For starters, I took Stansfield Turner's (and not his only) operational truism to heart, long time ago. 

“It isn’t the number of keels, or size of ships that count. It is the capacity to do what might be decisive in some particular situation.”(c)

Blue-Water Navy's definition is as operational (or strategic, if one wishes) as it is a geopolitical qualifier and here is, where Gorenburg, while making his point within old, and, I would dare to say, obsolete cognitive apparatus, born primarily within deep recesses of Pentagonese Newspeak and fantasies taught as "science" in the Political Science courses in US Universities, is wrong. Blue-Waterness or lack there of is defined primarily by such tactical, operational, strategic and geographical term as the RANGE, distance that is. The further one's navy sails, the bluer this navy becomes. But as of lately, this range thing turned into a peculiar category. Just on this merit alone, as in the distance one's navy assets sail, we cannot be particularly sure, or otherwise, that Russian nuclear subs are not hanging out somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska, or at the entrance to Gibraltar. Who knows, but if the prior experience is any indication, chances are that they are there. So, in this respect, Russian Navy is a Blue-Water Navy because ANY Navy which has nuclear submarine forces equaling in capability Russian one is a Blue-Water navy by definition, since it sails its serious assets globally. So, Gorenburg, basically contradicts himself immediately following what I highlighted in yellow. This is not the way to conduct analysis by contradicting oneself immediately after making statements.

He also forgets to mention that Project-885 (Yasen-class) SSGNs are armed not with just 3M14 but primarily with 800-km range capable P-800 Onyx supersonic anti-shipping missiles with 1000-km range 3M22 Zirkon slated for the first underwater launch from this very same class of subs next year. So, a single Yasen-class SSGN with Zircon creates an exclusion zone of area A=pi x r^2= 3.14 x 1,000^2=3.14 million square kilometers. "Parked"  somewhere in or "near" GIUK Gap a single Yasen creates A2/AD "bubble" from roughly Greenland to UK. That is if this (or these) sub(s) operate there, if it moves beyond GIUK Gap in the  South-Western direction roughly  700 miles (around 1,000 km), two subs of this class can completely wreck havoc on Atlantic SLOCs. If that is not Blue-Water operations, I don't know what is. Mind you, those have nothing in common with "power projection", those will be good ol' classic SLOCs' interdiction operations and, frankly, sinking the enemy fleet. That is how real wars are fought. As we may all know (not from me) US Navy has no viable defense against salvos of high supersonic missiles such as P-800 Onyx and will not have viable defense against hypersonic missiles any time soon. So, where all this leaves us with this Blue-Water thing. Here is what Dmitri Gorenburg thinks:

The Mediterranean will play a key role in Russian naval strategy because of its strategic significance as an access point to southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. For Russia, the Mediterranean symbolizes the larger competition between Moscow and Washington. By building up its naval forces, Russia is hoping to circumscribe NATO access to the region, protect Russia’s southern flank, and assist its current and potential future client states in the region. At the same time, maintaining forces in the eastern Mediterranean is less of a priority for Russian strategy than defending the homeland. Maintaining naval presence in the Mediterranean is a far more effective strategy for the Russian Navy than pursuing a globally active blue-water navy because Russia has neither the resources nor the global ambitions to challenge U.S. naval supremacy around the world.

Here is a conundrum, for Gorenburg and the US Navy--Russia does not need a clone of US Navy to deny its "supremacy" which was, apart from being grossly overstated, dramatically reduced by consecutive denial its "Bluishness" by means of creation of vast impregnable exclusion zones around Eurasia. What's the point of moving enormously expensive assets, such as US Navy's CBGs, into such zones where they (CBGs) are simply not survivable, forget any effective use of their weapons. With Russia's M=10+ capable Kinzhal having own range of 2000 km (up to 3,000 with MiG-31K range), or X-32 with own 1,000 km range with TU-22M3 combat range of 2,500 kilometers, or with recently paraded China's DF-17 2,000 kilometer range hypersonic missiles, what kind of "supremacy" Gorenburg is talking about? What does this "supremacy" even mean? Russia doesn't really care if US Navy exercises its supremacy anywhere other than in a Russia's (and generally Eurasia) vicinity. South Atlantic sounds fine, Pacific Ocean? Sure. Hawaii is a lovely place. Why should one build a vast, ungainly, ridiculously expensive and dubiously combat effective force to meet a challenge, when the US Navy, for all its glorious combat history and impressive visuals was turned obsolete for a minute fraction of a price by introduction of weapons, force structure and operational concepts which created a synergistic effect? The answer is obvious--there is no justification for such a ridiculous waste of money and resources, not to mention the fact, which Gorenburg accurately omits, that the United States itself has no resources to support its grossly unrealistic ambitions. The nation is simply bankrupt and demoralized. But sure, US Navy still maintains "supremacy" in numbers of platforms most of which are fat and prestigious targets for new weapons which drive Real Revolution in Military Affairs.

So, what is a Blue-Water Navy then? The answer is simple--it is not what one may think or try to express it in Pentagonese or Political Scientinese. It is really sad that many complexities of modern warfare (and of geopolitics)  have been reduced to a couple of obvious, to just about anybody, traits and memes while Turner's brilliant operational truism 'It is the capacity to do what might be decisive in some particular situation' was discarded in favor of propaganda expediency and inherent ignorance of political "scientists", which is in the foundation of the American economic, military, moral and intellectual decline. As per the American field of the so called "Russian Studies", as I stated it not for once--it is a wasteland of pseudo-"science", pseudo-"history" by pseudo-"academe" about the country which realistically never existed and which continues, being a civilization, to masquerade itself as a nation. As per warfare and "supremacy", reduced to a simple truism (or meme), this is how it is done, too bad few people took the lesson to heart. Maybe they need to learn a new language?

What A Coincidence!

By now many of you know me in terms of most of my views. If you follow my writing--articles, books, this blog--you cannot fail to notice that I don't take kindly to all kinds of social, political  science and national security "studies" academe. First: political "science" is not a science and it used to be known as political history of the world. Secondly: geopolitics as it used to be known in times of its founding fathers, notably Halford Mackinder, is pretty much irrelevant today for a simple reason that it cannot exist without serious, very high academic level, understanding of the warfare. Modern warfare requires very serious knowledge of, both through academic training and experience, increasingly complex technology and the way it interacts with military and political institutions. One needs good level physics and things of such nature as weapons integration and operations theory to get some grip on it. They DON'T teach that in political "science" courses, nor classic geopolitics, born in the times of slow propeller driven bi-planes and main caliber guns of battleships shooting at the distances in excess of 30 kilometers, is applicable in the time when modern supers-sonic and hyper-sonic missiles have ranges in excess of 1,000 kilometers and receive targeting from satellite (among many other methods) recon systems. My book, which is about to hit the shelves, is precisely about it. My first one was also about it to a large degree.

Well, surprisingly, here are opinions at TAC.

For decades, international relations scholars have increasingly worried that American foreign policymakers aren’t buying what they’re selling. From the Vietnam war to NATO expansion to the Iraq war, the Beltway foreign policy elite has frequently ignored the work of academics who study those subjects, often at great cost to the nation. Why do foreign policymakers so rarely pay attention to scholarship on the regions they are bombing and seeking to dominate?Michael C. Desch, political science professor at the University of Notre Dame, lays blame at the feet of the academy. In his new book, Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security, Desch writes that “the privileging of complex methods and universal models over engaging substantive issues…reduced the policy relevance of the work of many academic defense intellectuals.” In other words, by moving toward abstruse ontological questions (“Sovereignty and the UFO” comes to mind) or complex statistics or formal modeling (coefficients or Greek letters), incentives inside the academy have shifted the field in the direction of policy irrelevance.

It became irrelevant because it was irrelevant from the inception, because specifically in the West this field couldn't established simplest causalities--relations between cause and effect--because:

1. Western approach to history, as recent events so dramatically demonstrated, is about feel good, not about looking facts in the face and their proper arrangement which satisfies these very cause and effect. The problem here is deeper, it is in metaphysical view that truth is really unknowable--but that is grossly inaccurate, to say the least;

2. One can not develop policy (or strategy) when one operates on a delusion and profound ignorance of warfare, which defines human history. United States as a society has no experience with that in modern times 20-21st centuries. Hence, as Justin Logan (the author of the piece) motes:

In a country as powerful and secure as the United States, elites can make policy built on shaky foundations. Eventually, the whole thing may collapse. Scholars should focus on pointing out these fundamental flaws—and thinking about how they might help rebuild. 

Removing all this pseudo-academic BS such as "ontological", "epistemic" etc., it all comes down to this: unless one has a serious background in military, one shouldn't be getting into modern warfare, especially with a "method" which distorts grossly a picture of military balance, operational art, tactics, technology, which, as we all witnessed in the last 20 years, is a road to hell. I write about this non-stop for years, especially after it became very clear that the view of war, military history and of real geopolitics Western political "science" produced in the last 30 years is nothing short of a disaster, which unfolded upon encountering global realities, and, with some very few and, frankly, minor exceptions, is mostly a trash. In even simpler words--political "scientist" needs to understand how real geopolitical balance forms, before any of those scientists decide to bless the world with their "wisdom"--a skill long ago lost in the West in "academe" because they don't teach it properly, if at all.