It is the end of the year and many resources begin this routine of predicting shit for the next year and procure all kinds of "Top" 5, 10, 25, "events", "economies", "militaries" in the world, lists. This one, however, is from September and it was done by the U.S. News and World Report magazine. I am not 100% sure what criteria have been used but here it is:
And here is where one has to question "tech expertise" of Singapore and Switzerland. While there are many worshipers of Lee Kuan Yew in the West and among candidates for McDonald's (Now, Tasty, Period!) and Burger King employment among graduates of economic departments of Russian universities, one has to question the entry of Singapore in this, let's face it, very prestigious list. While there is very little doubt that Singapore is a very important port and set up policies which are conducive for many companies of note moving some of their manufacturing, such as electronics, to Singapore, I still don't get what is Singapore's Technological Expertise beyond that?
Even United Kingdom has a claim to its place in this list due to its still significant remaining real expertise in many fields such as aerospace, advanced shipbuilding and in producing Mini Coopers, and being electronics producer is by far not enough for placing Singapore in this list. Can Singapore produce a modern cutting edge submarine? Of course not. But Italy, as an example, can. Granted that Todaro-class is a German Type-212 adapted for Italian Navy. But then again, Italy has Fincantieri, which apart from being Europe's largest shipbuilder, also is the main contractor for US Navy's FFGs.
It will take several large volumes just to list the required expertise and all technologies which go into manufacturing modern warships. But then again, does Singapore have aerospace industry? But then again, do you see France in this list. Yes, yes, this funny country with a city of Toulouse, where they produce those Airbuses. You know, the ones Singapore Airlines loves to buy and fly. Yes, like this A-380, designed and built in Toulouse.
And while I by no means try to disparage Singapore's achievements or the expertise, it has to be understood that the country the size of one city with a population of roughly 5.7 million people simply has no size to have technological expertise across the whole spectrum of productive and creative activities which warrant being placed in such a list.
Can Singapore build a nuclear sub, which requires a monstrous volume of technological and engineering expertise? Here is a French one, the Triomphant-class strategic missile submarines which are fully designed and built in France, including their SLBMs M-51 and nuclear reactor.
Not too shabby, right? Do I have to go into the expertise required for nuclear energy in general, and nuclear propulsion in particular?
Well, here is my point--the reason I elaborate on this issue (the list, you know) is because it is getting tiresome to constantly keep everything in the perspective and TO THE SCALE. Singapore simply doesn't have and will never have all required resources to be a truly technological power-house, and it takes an enormous effort to explain to a lay person the economic, scientific and industrial depth the nation has to have in order to be introduced into all kinds of Top-10 or Top-15 lists. It is a completely different game at the top. Can Singapore, or Switzerland build the International Space Station? Can they launch and operate something like GPS or GLONASS--this is as hi-tech as it comes--we know the answer.
It is a tragedy that modern economy and true technological expertise has been trivialized and reduced to merely bean counting of "investment" and stock market, and ignores completely an immense volume of technological expertise which goes into producing space stations, commercial and combat aircraft, ships, automobiles, modern extracting industries and massive machine building complexes. A precise set of expertise which defines those very Top-10s. But, what do I know, right? Meanwhile backward Rooskies started flight tests of another Russian engine, PD-8 and it will get the certificate in 2023 (in Russian).
Yet another piece about things going wrong with an expertise
in the US, this time from (yet another) Professor Of National Security Studies
from US Naval War College, Tom Nichols. It is very symptomatic that the latest
stream of thoughts on expertise originated in the US military community, be it
already many times mentioned here Nicholas Gvosdev or Harlan Ullman. Any developed military knows
about surrounding world more, even when it is not aware of it, than most so
called civilian institutions claiming to be the seat of the expertise. Why it
is so--is a separate matter, but there are serious, in the case of US
"elites", reasons to state, as it was stated here many times
before--US "elite expertise" is reminiscent of Lieutenant Frank
Drebin who returns home and does the routine against imaginary bogeys:
This is the visual representation of current US
"expertise" in the modern world. Nichols complains:
It’s not just that people don’t know a lot about science or
politics or geography. They don’t, but that’s an old problem. The bigger
concern today is that Americans have reached a point where ignorance—at least
regarding what is generally considered established knowledge in public
policy—is seen as an actual virtue. To reject the advice of experts is to
assert autonomy, a way for Americans to demonstrate their independence
from nefarious elites—and insulate their increasingly fragile egos from
ever being told they’re wrong. This isn’t the same thing as the traditional American
distaste for intellectuals and know-it-alls. I’m a professor, and I get it: most
people don’t like professors. And I’m used to people disagreeing with me on
lots of things. Principled, informed arguments are a sign of intellectual
health and vitality in a democracy. I’m worried because we no longer have those
kinds of arguments, just angry shouting matches.
While I may or may not agree with the starting point of this
argument by Nichols, he answers himself well why current US
"expertise" is not in demand:
1. So called US "experts" ARE "elites",
or at least they try to sell themselves as such, and Nichols gives a correct
definition to those "elites"--nefarious. There is an overwhelming
empirical evidence to support such a claim. If I would end up in the chair of
some dentist who promised me a good anesthesia during root canal procedure on
one of my teeth and, instead, would have my root canal cleaned as is, without
any anesthetic, would I trust such a dentist? What if he did this to me on
several occasions? How such an "expert" in dentistry could be
characterized? Of course, as nefarious or, in layman's lingo, a complete
ass-hole worthy of, at best, declaring independence from his services, at worst
(or vice-versa)--beating the shit out of him for acts which are not only in
full violation of Hippocratic Oath but are completely inhumane. How else can
one describe what those US "elites" and "experts" who serve
them have done both to the world at large and to the United States herself?
Nefarious is a good, however not the most powerful, term, which fits the
description of the results of those "elites'" activities; this plus
"an unmitigated disaster". There is no surprise then that very many
Americans, both under and well-educated, refuse to take this shit anymore. Why
would anyone continue to visit a dentist who consistently puts one into excruciating
pain for no reason? It is akin to Frank Drebin's excessive acrobatics--useless,
however funny under the circumstances of a spoof comedy. People react to pain
and so do societies which are still alive. Otherwise the approval rating, as an example, of US Congress,
among many other "elite" American institutions, wouldn't have been
slightly higher than the approval rating of Al Qaeda.
2. As per second underlined thesis, it has to be understood
that claiming "democracy" for the country which basically is run by
oligarchy, or, rather, several oligarchic groups, you know, those same
nefarious "elites", is really redundant, not to say tasteless. It is
yet to be seen, even despite democratic victory by Donald Trump, where the
society which is being constantly spied on and brainwashed by US media, who
make Goebbels' propaganda machine tamed in comparison, will evolve. Nothing is
settled yet in the fate of a dying Republic, hopefully it will be settled soon
with US media and their "expert community" being completely rejected
by the majority of Americans. For political "elites" the process
could be protracted. There are NO "principled, informed arguments" in
the US anymore, a thin veneer of civility and pretense of "expertise"
has been torn away and what has been revealed is not exactly a pretty picture.
In geopolitics, in economy, in warfare--the outcomes are in the open for
everyone to see and judge for themselves. Those disasters are a direct result
of a complete lack of those very "principled, informed arguments"
which have no place in the country which till recently lived in the state of a
perpetual Chalabi Moment and coming to own senses is not an easy task. People
do lose a nerve, they do get aggressive and get into the shouting matches
(better that than shooting ones) when things do not go as planned and they
certainly do not go as planned. The pressure is mounting and the time is
running out--hardly a good condition for learning lessons. It seems that
Nichols fails to learn his, despite an honest (??) attempt.
Experts
are often wrong, and the
good ones among them are the first to admit it—because their own professional
disciplines are based not on some ideal of perfect knowledge and competence but
on a constant process of identifying errors and correcting them, which
ultimately drives intellectual progress. Yet these days, members of the public
search for expert errors and revel in finding them—not to improve understanding
but rather to give themselves license to disregard all expert advice they don’t
like.
Part
of the problem is that some people think they’re experts when in fact they’re
not. We’ve all been trapped at a party
where one of the least informed people in the room holds court, confidently
lecturing the other guests with a cascade of banalities and misinformation.
This sort of experience isn’t just in your imagination. It’s real, and it’s
called “the Dunning-Kruger effect,” after the research psychologists David
Dunning and Justin Kruger. The essence of the effect is that the less
skilled or competent you are, the more confident you are that you’re actually
very good at what you do. The psychologists’ central finding: “Not only
do [such people] reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but
their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.”
I have to go with Clausewitz yet again--the outcome is
"the soundest criterion". There is no escape from this
criterion in the real world. From business to medicine, to war--results matter.
Cristiano Ronaldo or Michael Jordan are or were paid astronomical sums of money
for a single reason--both could deliver a result through their talent, skills,
determination. It is what you can actually deliver, not just promise, which
matters in life. You are judged by the results and so are nations. Unless, of
course, it is this very US "expert community" which is not simply
"often wrong" but, for a number of reasons, is wrong most of
the time on the key global issues, no more important of them a foreign policy,
which is an unmitigated geopolitical disaster. I omit here Europe--those
are more than just wrong, most of Europe's "expertdom" is completely
delusional as is Europe's political class. Since I am Russian, it is only
natural to review an utter collapse of the American Russia
"expertdom", which couldn't understand what and how hit them. This
whole blog, from the inception, is dedicated to this complete academic and a
professional failure. It is my academic position today that it is not part of
the problem but IS the essence of the problem "that some people think they
are experts when they are not". The problem is with the American
scholarship. It is also a cultural problem and it is also a problem of
"democracy" which sees no difference whatsoever between consumer
opinion on diapers and consumer opinion on complex military-political issues.
Well educated and truly cultured person will not offer his or her opinion on
the issue he or she do not understand or know--and that is the meaning of being
genuinely cultured, not some humanities degree from US Ivy League madrassas,
which are the embodiment of an academic failure. It is also why cultured people
"lose" in the shouting matches with, in our particular case, Russia
"experts" who, basically, know shit about the subject and very often
go for direct falsifications when presenting their "arguments".
Moreover, in scholarly debates it became more important to be more
"sophisticated", "know" more facts, many of which often are
irrelevant to the case to be made, to be more "informed", than
actually know the subject or, what is more important, to know the TRUTH.
Late Father Robert Tobias stated:
But what is truth. In the West, truth has tended to be
identified with the accumulation of non-contradictory data, or verifiable,
repeatable, compatible correspondences between appearances, events, data, and
concepts. Is it true (a Western mind asking) that in Orthodoxy Truth is not a
collection of logical propositions and conceptual conclusions that by virtue of
their noncontraditction are correct, i.e. "true", but that Truth is a
matter of unbroken relationship, in particular with God...
It is a profound observation, even for me--a man who can
hardly be called religious. For some people it is God of scriptures, for
others--it is an order of universe, a justice, for others--it is a beauty,
morality and ethics but there is always a unifying super-factor of these
relations which make the world so complex. As of lately (decades), in the US
the whole notion of the Truth as knowable was rejected completely. Truth became
the matter of expedient "interpretations" instead of the
objective to be attained through study and learning. But not only through
academic endeavors; without culture, without understanding it and applying it
to otherwise purely scientific method of study it all goes to waste. Not the
"culture" of a refined living where the more expensive is the
Scotch the more "cultured" one is considered, but the culture of a
behavior, shaped by factors way more significant than the value of real estate
one possesses or the car one drives. Understanding this culture is sorely
missing today. Nowhere it manifests itself more than in the field of the so
called humanities where causality is sacrificed on the altar of a desirable
result which is always dictated by the political and ideological agenda. The
very notion of intellectualism as a state of understanding phenomena and making
correct conclusions about them, that is stating the TRUTH, is being substituted
with the sophistry and outright demagoguery, which passes for a scholarly
work, as long as it makes "sophisticated", not correct, truthful
conclusions.
Enough to review American field of geopolitics (or whatever
passes for it today) in the last 70 years. No serious academic work of a global
significance, with partial exception of Huntington's seminal work, which
can be judged as truthful in any meaningful way, came out of the United States.
From Fukuyama, to Brzezinski, to Kissinger to altogether a delirious propaganda
trash such as Dinesh Sousa's or Fareed Zacharia's "works"--American
"intellectual" or "elite" class has paraded itself as at
best "under-performing" and intellectually bland, at
worst--intellectually impotent. Nowhere it manifests itself more than in this
class' failure to understand the nature and application of the military
power, especially in the real historic context. It remains simply beyond the
grasp of these "intellectuals" and "experts". Since we are
talking about Russia here, the inability of all those "experts" to
have any foresight of what may come out of US (and EU's) instigating a neo-nazi
coup in Ukraine was stupefying, nor could they interpret properly, all in the
open, Russia's steps in economy, military and other fields after aggression
against Serbia and then, after "democratically" (again, coup) elected
Saakashvili's military adventurism in South Ossetia. The real wowser here,
however, is not even a dangerous inability to see the world for what it is,
that is to see it in realistic, true light--the real wowser will be the real
history of the Cold War 1.0 which only now is beginning to have an impact with
the world reaching the era of a fast and global information (and knowledge)
exchange with the ascendance of the broadband internet. When real history, not
ever changing "ranges of interpretations", of the Cold War will be
presented, with all correct accents, the picture which will emerge (and it is
emerging as I type it) will not be commendable to the most (not all, I
underscore it) American Cold War "experts", to put it mildly. It will
be an indictment.
Nichols makes an important, however generalized, point:
As a result, unable to see their own biases,
most people simply drive one another crazy arguing rather than accept answers
that contradict what they already think about the subject—and shoot the
messenger, to boot.
What he describes here (granted that we all are biased to
some degree) when applied to most modern American "expertdom" is more
than just a bias--it is a failure of a scholarship. Yes, real
experts ARE experts not just because they understand a lot (that is a
requirement), but because they are able to control their biases. This IS NOT
the case with American "experts"; overwhelming majority of these so
called experts operate on the premise of an American exceptionalism, if not
outright narcissism. This IS NOT a mindset which leads to Truth, quite to the
contrary--it is the path to academic ruin which does have very serious
consequences. We observe those dangerous consequences today all around us: from
unprecedented creeping coup against democratically elected American President
to an unmitigated geopolitical disaster--all of that bearing the seal of
"approval" or being instigated by the so called US
"expertdom" with all of its numerous think-tanks and media. Here,
Nichols delivers the most potent segment in his piece:
Other forms of expert failure are more worrisome. Experts
can go wrong, for example, when they try to stretch their expertise from
one area to another. This is less a failure of expertise than a
sort of minor fraud—somebody claiming the general mantle of authority even
though he or she is not a real expert in the specific area under discussion—and
it is frequent and pernicious and can undermine the credibility of an entire
field. (I recognize that I myself risk that transgression. But my
observations and conclusions are informed not only by my experience of being an
expert in my own area but also by the work of scholars who study the role of
expertise in society and by discussions I have had with many other experts in a
variety of fields.) And finally, there is the rarest but most dangerous
category: outright deception and malfeasance, in which experts
intentionally falsify their results or rent out their professional authority to
the highest bidder.
Why "can undermine the credibility"? It WAS
already undermined. I don't know if Mr. Nichols is aware of it but when dealing
with US "expertise" in geopolitical or military fields very little
credibility is given not only to US geopolitical doctrine-mongering but to the
very process of academic training of all those "experts" is put in
doubt by (periodically) idle amateurs like me to a serious professionals, i.e.
real experts. "Western" system of public education, starting from the
high school and well into the undergraduate and graduate degrees' programs is
simply not that good, especially when it deals with vague faux-applied
"sciences" such as Political pseudo Science, Economy, Russian or any
other "studies", History, including military one--fields where
deception, falsification, biases, lies dominate. Of course, the case could be
made that very many of those "experts" or "academics" do
know the Truth but ignore or hide it for a larger political ends. True, this
often was the case during Cold War, it is most likely not the case today--very many of those "experts" did buy their own
narrative and that is dangerous. But then again, I warned about it from the very first days of this blog.
One can live in the make-believe world for only so long.
My personal experience with communication with a number of
Ph.Ds from these fields left me often speechless. No more so when I had a
discussion with one of the College History Professor with Ph.D from Princeton
in no less than... Russian/Soviet-American Relations. He was convinced that
Western Allies could drive Red Army back to the Soviet border (Patton's wet
dream, anyone?) in 1945 based on a single myth that Allied Air Forces
were simply superior. He was stunned, however, when I had to point to a simple
historic fact that Red Air Force by 1945 was the largest and most experienced
tactical-operational air force in the world. I suggested him to read Von Hardesty's good book as a primer. Needless to
say, that the guy didn't know the Russian language that well--a good summary of
the most American (that is not "Russian", mostly Jewish, emigre
"scholars") "experts" in USSR/Russia. Yet, today, as never
before, cross-discipline expertise is a must not just desirable. It is
preposterous when some humanities or "political science"
"educated" expert, who didn't spend a day in uniform, passes
judgements on a host of a complex tactical, operational or technological
issues. I also had a personal experience with such "experts" and not
in US only, I spent some good chunk of time exposing outright lies of one...
Russian "naval expert", who graduated the Institute of Culture with
degree, if my memory doesn't fail me, in screenwriting or something like that.
But then again, in US late Tom Clancy--a major in English and an insurance
agent--is still hailed as an "expert". Reading his
"literature" or even watching The Hunt For Red October, despite two
of my favorite actors in it, Sean Connery and Sam Neil, are a cringe-worthy
experiences, because most of it, in layman's lingo, is a BS.
Nichols concludes his piece with this:
Meanwhile, Americans have developed increasingly unrealistic
expectations of what their political and economic systems can provide, and this sense of entitlement fuels continual
disappointment and anger. When people are told that ending poverty or
preventing terrorism or stimulating economic growth is a lot harder than it
looks, they roll their eyes. Unable to comprehend all the complexity
around them, they choose instead to comprehend almost none of it and then sullenly blame elites for seizing control of their lives.
I have other news for Nichols, many Americans developed
those unrealistic expectations not just by themselves. Those expectations,
compounded with traditional American exceptionalism, were greatly encouraged by
the American "expert" community which found it to be very expedient
to further the cause of an American exceptionalism by means of fraud,
incompetence, lies and manipulation. Doing so, this very "experdom"
itself became the prisoner of own illusions and a false narrative.
Americans are correct in blaming their so called "elites" for a
decades of criminal wars, instability, deindustrialization of the country,
economic collapse and almost getting into the hot war with Russia--these were
"elites" and "experts" who made those decisions. It is an
American "expertdom" and "elites" who are unable to
"comprehend all the complexity around them" and for that they bear a
lion share of responsibility and blame for what is happening now both globally
and domestically. I mentioned not for once, that the so called American
"elites" betrayed Americans. The only way of the United States out of
present day pitiful state will be only with removal of most of current
"elites" and "experts" who served them for so long. Thus
America's losing the faith in this kind of expertise is a good thing. The
removal may happen only with Donald Trump claiming the victory in his epic
battle with these "elites" in order to finally tell them what he was
elected for: "You Are Fired!"
Because they used the "advice" from McKinsey & Company. I am being facetious, of course, but there is a grain of truth in this otherwise exaggerated claim. I ran this morning into Tucker's rant about them:
While Tucker uses those many tropes about American Century, he, actually, is correct in pointing out not just McKinsey & Company's "consulting practices" but in general giving a bottom line of most US "consulting" services and think-tanks because their "consultations", almost without exceptions, tend to end in disasters. It is inevitable when consultations are produced by people who have a single frame of reference and this one is of sheer incompetence planted into the fertile soil of American exceptionalism and profit only driven "economics".
At this stage, one has to ask the question of why anyone in their own mind would ever need any "consultation" from any US consulting service, when these people are not able to consult themselves on proper bowel movement, forget developing any strategic concept grounded in reality which would allow to produce valuable suggestions which do not end up in some mess on a massive scale. Enough to take a look at the current state of the United States to recognize that American "expertise" across the broad range of issues is simply non-existent, in policy-development field it is a down-right fraud. Even some American observers who could hardly be called revisionists towards the United Sates can not deny this fact anymore, including sheer incompetence of US media and, especially so, people who can develop a viable foreign policy towards such nations as Russia. Recall:
This is the point I am trying to convey for years. Russians know that US "expertise" is a shady concept, as a result there are no American "consulting" on any serious policy issues in Russia. Especially policies related to serious national security issues, among which is real economy. But why China did employ and continues to do so such "advisors" as the company Tucker is talking about? I think we need, for that, to take a look at still very considerable "Americanization" of Chinese view of the world which still continues to manifest itself in different facets of China's activity. I can, with moderate degree of competence, state about manifestations in military and scientific field in regards to China. Enough to take a look at Chinese efforts to build aircraft carrier-centric navy when having no experience or technologies to do so properly, this is if to avoid talking about overall fallacy of Chinese maritime strategy since China lags dramatically behind the US Navy in submarine technology and Russia is not selling her latest to China. I wrote about it. Yet, military is not the only field in which China actually copies the United States. How about recalling this absolutely bizarre fact.
It was my contention for years that China, for all her very real impressive economic achievements, will be struggling at finding her own self at the global arena where details matter. Did anyone here check when was the last manned space flight by China? I did--4 years ago. Anyone here has an idea about the fate of COMAC-919? Don't expect it entering service any time soon. These are China's weak spots, strategic weak spots, of which very few people are willing to talk openly with facts on hand. China could not have emerged in the last 25 years other than a some iteration of the United States, which willingly transferred American industry to the Chinese shores, with it came a necessity for China to be consulted in the "American ways" of doing business which was and still is in place despite China's final recognition in 2019 that the United States is an enemy. This will require China to seriously reconsider many practices and views which were imported from the United States, thus reducing dependence of the American "expertise" and advise, especially when given by such frauds as McKinsey & Company, who are, as most US think-tanks into making money selling BS, while having very little, if any, real expertise.This calls for thinking for themselves, a good practice for new world which emerges.
I am on record, I do not hold much of the Moscow's "think-tankdom" in high regard, because as any "geopolitical" think-tanks anywhere they are staffed (and stuffed) with good ol' boys and girls whose only claim to any expertise is that of being from the "right" Moscow families and social circle, and their social agility when swimming in the murky waters of Moscow's "intellectual" Parnassus. Fyodor Lukyanov is one of them and he is a darling, together with a number of clueless humanities educated "experts", of RT. You can take a look at Lukyanov's bio and "credentials" here. Yes, yet another Kreakl who still didn't recognize that political science is not a science and that any discussion on contemporary geopolitics without a firm grasp of real economy and military power--two fields which require way more than a degree in philology--is nothing more than a demagoguery using big words. And here is the issue.
Mr. Lukyanov, narrating beaten to death headlines, concludes:
It is one of those "Duh" or "No Shit" moments but I want to send you back a few years ago, namely 6 years ago, and remind you that I wrote and warned on the danger of Western, and Moscow's Parnassus, delusions about real economy for more than a decade.
The reason I warned and countered this delusion was and remains very pragmatic--US bullying's fundamental principle is "never get to fight a serious enemy". For decades pseudo-economic Voodoo about US (and West's) actual economy, the same as about that of Russia has created a false sense of both security and entitlement on the American part. The reality that US economy and its capability are vastly smaller than was declared, while Russia' economy and its capability are vastly larger than was declared by geopolitical "experts", never occurred to primarily humanities educated "masters of discourse" on the both sides of the Atlantic and that played a crucial role in the military-economic suicide of the United States which we observe right now. Recall, 8 years ago, and I will continue to repeat that ad nauseam:
I didn't write it because I wanted to exercise my abilities or, rather, lack there of, in global "forecasting" but because I simply know about real economy and technological realities of the modern world just a teeny-weeny more than all those "experts" in Russia who continue to abuse their "intellectual" sinecures and wouldn't know the difference between sine and cosine, let alone between the icebreaker and the ice maker. Today, when some of them begin to wake up to the reality that Russia's economy is not just larger, but much larger than same of Germany--I warned about this fact for years--and that, for example, the United States cannot even develop, let alone produce a completely new Main Battle Tank (MBT) and they recognize that Russia commands an immense share of critical strategic resources, people like Lukyanov begin to write trivial pieces, when the main position and task of all this Moscow "expert community" for the last 10 years should have been a firm delivery to the combined West the facts about the true state and correlations of Russia and the US CINCs (Combined Index of National Capability) and the insistence on framing the academic discussion within those proverbial Barnett's 14 points. They failed miserably, being led on the primrose path by the Wall Street virtual economy and technological "expertise" limited by the knowledge of the brands of luxury cars and iPhones. Well, I am being unjust here: they, probably, have a good expertise in good booze too.
But then again, can you imagine explaining to those people from Moscow's "geopolitical" Parnassus that the guidance and targeting systems of cruise missiles such as 3M14 or X-101, or satellite constellations of GLONASS and Liana, among many other things, the same as economy which creates them, are the main drivers of modern geopolitics and it is them on which the whole of modern Russian diplomacy and foreign relations are based upon, not some BS pseudo-intellectual constructs about geopolitics whose discussion without real solid expertise in manufacturing, including extraction, technology and weapons is the exercise in futility and demagoguery. And here we are today, the Captain Obvious discovered for himself that Russia's "economic role" in the "global" economy is more significant. I, of course, omit here the issue of military power of Russia which rests on a massive manufacturing, including dual purpose technologies. Enough to take a look at Russia's commercial aviation and the development of even SSJ-100 New.
But, of course, these are new iPhones which really matter, right? I am sure UK citizens will have no issues with food and heat since they will have new iPhones, assembled in Asia. It is sarcasm, of course, but when I see such "experts" as Lukyanov making discoveries of what is obvious to anyone with a good mind and serious life and industry experiences, I have nothing but contempt and sadness that those "experts" never got their academic priorities straight. But then again, I wrote three books on this issue. Recall the title of the last one.
The urban dictionary defines Hussler as a person who gets money from other people. In general, a person who hussles. Of course there is another way to define operation of swindling, by using good ol' Hustling, which is:
That's more like it. This is the issue I address on a regular bases when speaking about "expertdom" which both in US, Russia and elsewhere tries to present itself as the only voice of wisdom and which, most of the time has no real expertise in the subjects this "expertdom" tries to preach. Enter CAST, Moscow "Center of Analysis of Strategies and Technologies". The organization also known for maintaining a rather popular in some circles Blog BMPD which is an excellent platform for mutual insults and fanboys' exchanges on military toys. I communicated on some forums with one of the CAST "experts", Mikhail Barabanov, who among some people in Russia passes for "expert" in the navies, and who didn't serve a single day in uniform and has a degree from Moscow Institute of Culture, allegedly in either librarian or screenplay writing fields, something like that. Barabanov is known as a mindless and utterly incompetent herald of US Navy's "ideas" (without knowing anything of substance about them) and his main "expertise" is in memorizing types of weapons and some technical data and parroting mostly Western views on warfare. Just to give you some taste of his "expertise", here is his piece in...drum roll, where else, The National Interest. Generally, CAST is a classic hustler organization which shuffles among military people in Moscow, collects rumors and reads open press and after that calls itself an analytical organization. I read their views on Russian Navy once--a total strategic and operational delirium written by liberal amateurs.
But CAST's other big honchos, namely Kosnstantin Makienko, who is a graduate of famed MGIMO with specialty in...drum roll..."International Relations" and then of some French madras, also in some..something-something not really military, publishes yesterday a CAST's "manifesto" on the death of INF Treaty in Russian here. The article by Makienko, whose experience on a tactical, operational, weapons' design, integration and other relevant military issues is exactly zero (with the exception of reading open pop-military media), laments many things. I would have omitted addressing yet another "pearl" of strategic thinking by CAST but this one really interested me as a psychiatric case of utter ignoramuses firmly believing that they have capability to produce something sensible on a rather very complex issue of defense policy of Russia and America, this is not to mention the fact that Makienko, as well as all of CAST enterprise have a very vague idea about US economy and her military-industrial complex.
Here is the opening wowser salvo of Makienko's "lament" from his symptomatically titled piece What is the Threat to the World from INF Treaty's Liquidation.
Крах ДРСМД будет иметь для военной безопасности России чрезвычайно
тяжелые последствия. Главную опасность представляет совершенно
неминуемая разработка и развертывание Соединенными Штатами нового
поколения баллистических ракет средней и меньшей дальности, в том числе с
гиперзвуковыми блоками. Причем эта разработка может быть реализована в
сжатые сроки. Не стоит впадать в прекраснодушное заблуждение
относительно сегодняшнего предположительного американского отставания в
области гиперзвука от России. Учитывая невероятную научную и
технологическую мощь США, это отставание, если оно вообще существует,
будет ликвидировано очень быстро. А принимая во внимание колоссальный
американский индустриальный потенциал, необходимо исходить из того, что
производство таких ракет легко может составить сотни и тысячи единиц.
Translation:the crash of the INF Treaty will have an extraordinarily grave consequences for Russia's security. The main threat is inevitable development and deployment by the US of new generation of the intermediate range ballistic missiles, including with hyper-sonic blocks. Moreover, this development could be conducted within short time-frame. Do not fall for placid delusion regarding current US lagging behind Russia in hyper-sonic technology. Considering incredible scientific and technological power of the United States this gap, if it even exists, would be closed very fast. Moreover, considering colossal American industrial potential we need to assume that production of such missiles will easily number hundreds and thousands of units.
2. My real issue is this: there is very little doubt that the United States will develop new missiles and I stressed this simple fact non-stop whenever talking about hyper-sonic weapons for years. There is one little, teeny-weeny thing, though, of which Mr. Makienko--an obvious product of very "westernized" humanities education simply doesn't know--it is expected from experts in "international relations" who have zero military, industrial and technological background. Obviously, the horizon of Makienko's views on the United States is, at best, that of a tourist, at worst that of a consumer of American economic propaganda. I don't know if Makienko read this:
If he didn't do this yet, I would strongly suggest he and his colleagues from CAST start studying this document in earnest. Because unlike them, I live and work (in real industry) in the United States and know this country quite well. Makienko uses rather outdated categories when speaking about American incredible scientific and technological power. United States still remains an industrial powerhouse but reality is such that it is nowhere near what it used to be in 1970s and 1980s. I'll quote for Mr. Makienko just one thing from Inter-agency Report to POTUS and if they do "analysis", as their title of CAST suggests, they better start learning real industrial economy and what serious manufacturing sector is.
Inadequate U.S. Skilled Labor Supply
The U.S. machine tools sector lacks
assured access to a sufficiently large pool of skilled labor. Many skilled
workers are exiting the workforce due to age, and there are too few technical educational
programs to train those who could take their place. Without concerted action that
provides both a ready workforce and a continuously-charged pipeline of new
employees, the U.S. will not be able to maintain the large, vibrant, and
diverse machine tools sector needed to produce the required number and types of
products when needed. Market Forces Decreasing Domestic Capabilities The U.S.
machine tools sector has been shrinking since at least the 1980s due to a
number of primary and contributing factors with the U.S. standing dropping significantly
since 2000. In 2015, China's global
machine tool production skyrocketed to $24.7B accounting for 28% of global
production, while the U.S. accounted for only $4.6B, after China, Japan, Germany,
Italy, and South Korea. According to the U.S. Census Bureau data, in 2015 there
were 1,028 machine tool firms employing 27,919 people.
I don't know if they taught them in MGIMO what this, among very many other debilitating factors, means but I'll give a hint, if one removes monetary comparison in US Dollars (inaccurate as it is), then the gap between US and others becomes even larger, once one considers high costs of US production, which, when combined with purely FIRE "economy" values inflate US GDP to the absurdity it is today. American economic and industrial reality today is such that it is much smaller than many (Russian western liberal cabal especially) think.
3. But then, of course, there is purely military (and technological) aspect to all that, since Russia's real security is not limited by the intermediate range weapons only and it must be viewed as a complex of means and measures designed to prevent attack on Russia across the whole spectrum of modern warfare--from informational, to conventional combined arms to nuclear strategic. I thought that CAST which does "analyze strategies" should know that. Let me go out on a limb here and, shamefully, with my head down, assume that Chief Designer of strategic missile systems Yuri Solomonov, while having pathetic credentials of a creator of latest generation of strategic missiles not to mention his clearance, when compared to a monstrous academic and military experiences of Barabanov, or Makienko, still knows just teeny-weeny bit more about subject matter than Makienko. This is what Solomonov states:
But then, there is another issue of CAST's members situational (un)awareness--it is the fact of failing to analyze that:
a) Russia's military and technological record of the last 15 years;
b) US military and technological record of the last 15 years;
For a person with even rudimentary military background it becomes very clear that many Pentagon's military programs are nothing but a technological, hence tactical, and operational disaster. Of course, one may use good ol' examples of F-35, LCS or even new Columbia-class SSBN which even before being built already has some huge cost and technology issues. Sure, when one sub costs as much as the whole 8 hulls of Borei-class SSBNs one is bound to notice. But, the issue is with procurement practices which, being utterly corrupt on practically every level, increasingly fail to deliver any serious capability for even grossly inflated investment in dollars. But here we enter the field which CAST firm is simply unfamiliar with--it is system analysis, analysis of operations (aka Theory of Operations) and other things which require a lot of background in math, technology, physics, tactics etc.--exactly the fields in which CAST has zero competencies. In the end, knowing what Russia's current political and military leadership is, which navigates Russia for the last 5 years brilliantly from one geopolitical, economic, military triumph to another, I would say those guys in General Staff (especially its GOU) calculated a rather impressive number of contingencies before playing out INF Treaty's dismantling. Unlike CAST members who never commanded a single sailor, marine or soldier, those people have the lives of 148 million of their compatriots in their hands and they do not have luxury of going around proclaiming themselves "experts" while BSing, sorry, "consulting" those who are willing to listen and are dumb enough to pay (after all, CAST is very similarly constructed as famous frauds from STRATFOR). This is not how Soviet/Russian military works and it has, unlike CAST, an enormous record of success to back it up. In other words, those people know what they are doing, precisely because they are real experts.
In conclusion. I don't know what's the deal with these CAST people and navies, could it be the fact that they are attracted to a shiny beautiful objects such as ships and submarines? I don't know, I remember Mikhail Barabanov, a naval "expert", about 15 years ago BSing a whole military-historical forum about US Navy's cruise missile developments--mind you, the person saw sea or ocean mostly at the beaches and probably took a tourist tour on some ships--plus expressing some mind-boggling ideas on force requirements (using very peculiar "math"), effectiveness and other broad generalizations on the naval warfare. Now comes Barabanov's boss Makienko and delivers another naval "pearl":
Еще один теоретический профит для России состоит в возможности отказа от
дорогостоящей политики «калибровизации» флота в виде строительства
дорогих и нелепых «Буянов-М» и «Каракуртов» по цене в половину фрегата
при техническом уровне малых ракетных кораблей 40-летней давности.
Строительство дорогих морских платформ-носителей «Калибров» теряет смысл
при отсутствии ограничений на их сухопутное развертывание.
Translation:Another theoretical profit (yes, he says this in Russian) for Russia is the possibility of rejection of the expensive policy of Kalibralization of the navy by means of constructing of ridiculous and expensive Buyan-M and Karakurts with the price of the half of the frigate with the technical level of the Small Missile Ships of the 40 years ago. Construction of the expensive platforms-carriers of Kalibrs loses any sense with the loss of limitations for Kalibrs' land deployment.
The level of ignorance of this statement by Makienko is such that it is simply difficult to even react properly. How to explain to him (he wouldn't know anyway) what could be the "profit" in the littoral, anti-access operations by the KUG of 3-4 Karakurts armed with 3M54 (forget coming Zircons for those types of ships) and shore based aviation against even the group of FREMMs or Burkes at the edge (range) of the launch of TLAMs. I know Makienko wouldn't know shit from shinola when dealing with augmented Salvo Equations, attrition models and combat effectiveness among other things required for professional rough assessment, but here you are. As I said not for once--for some reason these type of "experts" rush into the military field, instead of gynecology or open heart surgery, but it is zeitgeist--ignorance rules. My suggestion to CAST in this case, if they have no human, forget professional, integrity to recognize themselves ignorant pretentious hustlers and to try to get busy with something they actually were taught, be that librarian, "international relations", what have you, humanities-based field, stop spewing an utter unprofessional BS on issues you have no clue about. Do you even understand what an embarrassment and fraud you are? I guess not. For failing to recognize that, one has to be Russia's urban liberal with "humanities" degree and this, I guess, is a diagnosis.
