On Delegation (The Core US Military Strategy) and Future Military Conflicts

Greetings friends, So we have another burst of inspiration here this time on core strategic and tactical principles in the US Military and how they interact with the modern military thesis vis-a-vis Ukraine, Taiwan, and the Philippines. A very prevalent thought in the US Military is delegation which works extremely well for small tactical groups from JEB Stuart to the Navy Seals but does not aid in overall strategic decision making or willingness to finish a long, bloody (and potentially tedious) campaign successfully, as evidenced by the failures in Vietnam and Afghanistan. This doctrine is older than WWII but WWII was not fought in this vein especially and the Korean War also wasn't (probably due to Macarthur's influence), I suspect the Korean War would not have been a stalemate if the general strategic outlook was focused on small tactical units and so on instead of a series of massive battles a la WWII; most likely North Korea would have won decisively. So in a roundabout way I guess I'm defending Macarthur here despite the silliness of nuking China.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... In the case of Ukraine we do have delegation working successfully (at least at the moment, 4/13/2023) but there is also a cohesive strategic military objective on the part of the Ukranians that is working in their favor so despite the massive losses on both sides and the warfare style not seen for 65-70 years (and the diplomacy not seen for over a hundred); the case of of the Kharkiv offensive is generally where you can see delegation working well again reminiscent of a Civil War small unit campaign; in general the war is very similar in scope to the US Civil War, there's also the notions of brother vs brother as well as we must defend to survive and massive casualties with trench warfare; but for the time being the war is still going relatively well for Ukraine; time will tell whether that is the final conclusion or not.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. As far as Taiwan there is definitely a much more jingoistic approach from the media and the Presidency/administration focusing on the threat that China poses but I don't think there is a particularly strong willingness to fight and die personally for individuals born in the post 9/11 world; especially not compared to China (or India) who have a roughly 70% willingess to fight compared to the US' 44% (2015 Gallup Poll); ultimately China and Russia are not especially comparable as opponents because one is a transcendent power and the other is a clearly declining (especially demographically) power. If China simply waits like 10-20 years then they may get Taiwan without fighting, however there is enormous prestige on the line were they to win a war, essentially completely disconnecting the European and American apparatus from the rest of the world (or at least the non Western hemisphere, it does seem like Brasil is more likely to align with the "Global South" (formerly phrased as "Third World") and probably splitting the world into two or three globalization economic spheres instead of just one. China can't really get more economically powerful but they can certainly get more militarily powerful, strategically powerful, and prestigiously powerful; so their objective set will likely be more reflect of Putin's world view then the post Cold War world view (which obviously has proven inaccurate at this point)................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... At present the odds of American/Taiwanese victory in a defensive conflict are fairly high, as much as 80%; but even if the event that China lost the war they would probably be willing to go again whereas the US losing multiple Aircraft Carriers and say 20,000 men would have a devestating effect on the home front; but even if China lost 200k-300k soldiers that's still a relatively small part of their population and they have the cohesive societal outlook necessary for a longer, bloodier campaign (as does Russia incidentally though possibly not the raw resources or manpower); after China does acquire Taiwan in some way (which might take 25 years and may or may not be extremely bloody or bloodless) they will almost certainly go after the Phillippines immediately (which they are already making plays at it in diplomatic/economic ways) because the Philippines are the linchpin of the entire Pacific Theater just as they were in WWII; the Philippines are the most important strategic piece of territory in the world by far and thus will continue to be a conflict center between Great Powers moving forward; it is abundantly clear that this kind of conflict is very real and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future just as it had been for hundreds of years before 1989.

Ranking the Top 10 Movies Per Decade Since the 1960s (Mental Exercise)

Greetings sillies,

This is purely a mental exercise for my own enjoyment, the only parameter is that I've seen the movie in question but it could be fun to look at in 20-30 years assuming no nuclear apocalypse. My Top 5 movies as of this writing are Unforgiven, Taxi Driver, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, Seven Samurai, and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. 1960's: 1. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly 2. Once Upon a Time in the West 3. Dr. Strangelove 4. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 5. Cool Hand Luke 6. West Side Story 7. The Apartment 8. Sanjuro 9. A Fistful of Dollars 10. Goldfinger.................................................................................................................... 1970's: 1. Taxi Driver 2. French Connection 3. The Deer Hunter 4. Josey Wales 5. The Sting 6. Silver Streak 7. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 8. Alien 9. Chinatown 10. Monty Python and the Holy Grail.................................................................................................................. 1980's: 1. The Princess Bride 2. Once Upon a Time in America 3. The Shining 4. Blue Velvet 5. Raging Bull 6. The Untouchables 7. The Terminator 8. Robocop 9. Die Hard 10. Willow............................................................................................................................ 1990's: 1. Unforgiven 2. Total Recall 3. Starship Troopers 4. Terminator 2 5. Goodfellas 6. The Usual Suspects 7. The Truman Show 8. Reservoir Dogs 9. Groundhog Day 10. Shawshank Redemption................................................................................................ 2000's: 1. No Country For Old Men 2. There Will Be Blood 3. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans 4. The Fellowship of the Ring 5. The Prestige 6. In Bruges 7. Oldboy 8. Training Day 9. The Dark Knight 10. Road to Perdition................................................................................................................... 2010's: 1. Mad Max Fury Road 2. Blade Runner 2049 3. Parasite 4. Edge of Tomorrow 5. Logan 6. Inception 7. Mud 8. Shape of Water 9. Annihilation 10. Sorry to Bother You.................................................................................................................. 2020's: ??? Dune, Top Gun, Banshees in some order I suppose........................................................................................................................ I did write reviews for a decent number of the 2010s movies, 80s and 90s I can come up with like 25 that are worthy but arbitrary restrictions and what not.

A Refutation of Alexander Stubb vis a vis Short, Medium, Long Term Scenarios following the ongoing War in Ukraine

Greetings Friends,

This is predominantly just a resposne to this video:

I will say in general Prime Minister Stubb's work has been very informative and interesting especially in the early days of the war and I'll also say that my particular understanding of the war has declined somewhat over time as information has become more and more propagandized and harder to parse on a literal level. The best source for information on Ukraine by far is Colonel Marcus Reisner's videos for the Theresan Military Academy (an institution older than the United States); but his videos too have become more infrequent of late. As far as the current situation in Ukraine it does seem to be favoring the Ukrainians but moreso in a WWI ebb and flow sort of way; the line is moving but not very quickly and a lot of the territory being fought over has changed hands multiple times in the course of the conflict............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ This style of fighting leads to tremendous casualty rates so assuming the war goes for at least another year we're probably looking at another 250,000 deaths or so, possibly many more than that (general estimates are already in the vicinity of US casualties in the Vietnam War; but doubled since they're on both sides); this is still a war of attrition; Ukraine has the morale and clear intelligence advantages but Russia still has an overwhelming advantage in terms of sheer firepower. I guess it should be noted that any intervention on the part of NATO would easily conflict instantly assuming no immmediate nuclear response from Russia, though this has been true for the entire conflict and it is essentially a proxy war for Nato and the US; we'll send you munitions and you Ukrainians can die for us; well fought kind sirs thanks............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... As far as general strategic suggestions Ukraine can probably win the war within the next 3 months if they simply go into Russia; Russia is not prepared for this and most of their supply depots are within like 100 km of the front line in Russia; all Ukraine has to do is seize or destroy those depots and the Russians will fold at least on the eastern front very quickly; probably causing a cascading loss except for territory held before the war started. I don't think the chance of Russian Nuclear response changes if you do this as opposed to simply very slowly winning the war through pure attrition; you've probably got like a 10-15% chance of being nuked either way, this is just an expedient method of figuring out whether that will happen. I also don't think there should be any moral issue with entering Russian territory; Ukraine has already attacked Russian Territory directly so having troops there for a couple weeks is not really a big deal, it doesn't change who the aggressor is but nonetheless NATO and the US would not approve so they will not follow an optimal strategy in this case................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ On to Stubb's video; he presents Short, Medium, and Long term prospects but only one variation of each; at the start of the war Stubb and others were discussing many different potential outcomes but now the only outcome discussed is Ukrainian victory (by no means guaranteed at this point, certainly not the total victory and retaking of Crimea that seem to be the envisioned points); so that's the first weakness of the video................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ For Medium he addresses regime change, I do think if Russia loses the war in humiliating fashion there will be regime change but anything in between there probably will not be unless Putin dies of natural causes (should be noted that whoever replaces Putin will probably have Putin's foreign policy a la the United States inheriting foreign policy between presidencies regardless of political alignment); which can't be an anticipated outcome. He also lightly touches on Russia becoming a democracy; unless Russia is invaded and Moscow occupied (a laughable scenario) this is not going to happen................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ For Long Term the things discussed are more practical and relevant, especially if you're looking into investing in BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Huntington Ingalls etc. in Eastern Europe no matter what happens in the war, whether it ends or not there will be a massive military buildup focusing on drones and artillery and that will likely be the case for the next 25-50 years; that kind of buildup tends to lead to war in the future but it could theoretically simply become another Cold War as is often discussed. In Asia we are probably getting a hot war at some point and assuming China succeeds another one after that so ship building companies and naval infrastructure companies are also interesting to look at in that regard. The academic thought that everyone will magically embrace all Western Traditions and values and there will be mystical peace and harmony universally worshipping at the throne of capitalism and globalization is decisively dead and a split or multiple splits with economic spheres of influence will replace it; that doesn't mean all world spanning trade will cease but more reliance on closer trading partners is the presumed outcome.

The Strategic and Economic Implications of the New Cold War and the Spheres of Influence created by it

Greetings Friends, I guess this would theoretically be another email to write but I don't really anyone to write to so I'll just send it to the void of the internet instead; maybe someone will plagiarize it and do something useful with this information or something. So It is kind of stupid to call the present global situation a cold war when there is a hot war (the hottest war since Korea or Vietnam pretty much) going on but that's the closest terminology that we have. A lot of people have suggested that the primary result is the regionalization of globalization; i.e. the entire world will not participate in one global economic system instead they will choose to participate in one of two or three economic global systems; in the short term this will likely cause a recession and exarcerbate the inflation caused by speculative investments (cryptocurrency mostly) and the war itself; in the long term I don't really think it must be bad or even is likely to be bad on a basic level. Having two giant competing economic systems will probably create much faster innovative technologies and so forth overall (a la the Space Race)....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Unfortunately I think a big focus of those technologies will be militarily based. Since the war in Ukraine has devolved into an attrition based artillery duel and Russia fires 10-20 times as many shells as Ukraine there should theoretically be a requirement by each government on Russia's border to both bolster their artillery technology itself and the reserve of simple ammunition and related resources just in anticipation of future wars. This is very similar to the pre WWI arms race and also the alliance systems created at the time; it does not guarantee a larger major war but it does imply a high likelihood of that happening. I think the only way to stop such a war is place nuclear weapons in all of those countries essentially (which winds up being around 60% of Europe having "Defensive" Nuclear Weapons in them, possibly more than the Cold War but I'm not entirely sure on that front).................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... The other primary focus of military technology that we've learned from the war is that Tanks are no longer offensively viable and drones are the king of the battlefield; this is the same exact thing that happened in Nagorno-Karabakh so we need a new Clausewitz of Drones to emerge to dictate the theoretical strategy in that regard. One thing I've pushed since the early 2000s is that active defense can probably win conflicts in 10-1 or 20-1 odds situations; this apparently has become a more mainstream train of thought (I don't exactly know why but it probably has something to do with Fallujah like battles and so forth); but if the notion of defense being considerably stronger than offense becomes the popular train of thought by military analysts it virtually necessitates a massive arms race of defensive technology both Artillery based and Drone Based; Aircraft is too expensive to develop, use, and maintain (and also hasn't really played a huge role in Ukraine so far) so only superpowers can do so; ergo you fall back on cheaper options. ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... It appears that the urban city is the best fortification in the present world and only countries that are willing to completely flatten them with ungodly amounts of artillery shells can really negate that (still at great expense); so will urbanization itself become a means of fortification in the future? Interesting concept; if you read Ralph D. Sawyer's Ancient Chinese Warfare he talks about this same thing happening thousands of years ago which why China has like 300 cities with over a million people in them now and also gigantic ancient city walls a la the Theodosian Walls in Constantinople.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... It should be noted that all of this implies that offensive wars are very difficult to succeed with unless the opponent is vastly inferior on every technological front; globalization itself has sort of flattened the technological curve worldwide so those sorts of advantages simply won't exist in the future on land (Air and Sea Based Wars can still be dictated by the superior technological force, of course said wars will almost certainly be between two extremely powerful countries in the vicinity of the Philippines); so this would be another suggestion of a Cold War, not a MAD based Cold War because Nuclear Weapons are just not on the table for most nations (Russia may have used Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine had they been pushed back, since that didn't happen it would strictly be a taboo breaking maneuver which doesn't seem that profitable in the long run).................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................Aside for whatever reason the paragraph breaks aren't working for this post so I just put periods instead.

A discussion of Alexander Dugin and being significant as a Philosopher in one's own Lifetime

 Another email I wrote to an ancient professor of mine;

Greetings; I have no idea if you would remember who I am but I took 19th Century Philosophy in 2009ish which was quite an interesting course and that was essentially the last batch of relevant philosophers in a modern context. Soon I imagine there will be a Ukrainian or Taiwanese philosopher who is immediately influential and historically relevant for hundreds of years in the West and already Aleksandr Dugin has attained that role at least in Russia. 

I believe I visited your offices a few times (at least once) and we spoke in a one on one fashion, one of the points I was trying to make at the time but did not have an immediate contextualization for is the clear divide between Western "Liberal Hegemony" (a John Mearsheimer affectation) and pseudo traditionalist or autocratic values in China and Russia (and in much of the developing world); in the West this point of view is just immediately thrown out or the supremacy of Western fundamental concepts like Human Rights, Individualism, and Globalization (which directly led to Chinese dominance ironically), like those points of views are the only ones tolerated at all and any difference is explicitly seditious and vile or what have you. 

Over time I have acclimated more to those concepts so my political compass as it were has shifted slightly to the left, I think I was dead center or so during college. I'm still a moderate and/or think Bipartisanship is an artificial tool of the ruling class (though that is in the process of being disrupted by Populism). But it is nice being able to express former thoughts of mine and have an immediate relevant context in describing the explicit line on a military sphere of influence level in Ukraine (and possibly Taiwan shortly) as well as a philosophical level between Dugin, Realists and the extraordinarily dominant and/or ubiquitous point of view of Western Liberal Intellectuals.

With that we come to Dugin who is a philosopher first and foremost and also someone that has Putin's ear or embodies Putin's Worldview. It should be noted that if Ukraine had fallen immediately instead of being a Western military Bastion as it is now (and likely the strongest national identity in the whole world in sharp contrast to Putin and Dugin's worldview though reinforced by their very invasion) then I think it was very likely that some form of genocide would have occurred in Eastern Ukraine; that has not happened though we have had massive amounts of civilian casualties in a traditional indirect way a la the firebombing of Tokyo or usage of Nuclear Weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; debatable whether you would call those a genocide and I guess more importantly it's impossible to prosecute Putin (also apparently Stalin is still not regarded as a person who propagated genocide in Russia, despite being either the most prolific or second most prolific mass murderer in history with Mao, also still well regarded in China) so the usage of the word genocide is pseudo shock journalism and nothing more so far (this could change).

Thus I don't think Dugin is directly sponsoring that ideology or fascism though admittedly the beginning of WW2 Lebensraum and also the alliance system of WW1 parallels are striking while we move into the later stages of this or these conflicts. Dugin being relevant directly in his own lifetime is interesting to me as someone who has continuous cognitive dissonance about being utterly insignificant due to the scope of population (though it is now relatively easy to figure out a means to become relevant or for one's children to become relevant by simply moving to Ukraine as a volunteer), admittedly a very common point of view. But another issue I have is with the academic consensus and the over proliferation of writing it is impossible to distinguish one's self as an individual thinker.

I have been watching a weekly series on the War in Ukraine from Marshall University which is utterly superb and gets somewhere around a few dozen views on youtube, relative to any random gaming video that could get hundreds of thousands. This is a sort of loose and easy correlation to both human interest in massive geopolitical world shaping issues and producing discourse on them that isn't explicit propaganda, actually frequently the only point of view that gets traction in this regard is the pro russian "Realist" one that condemns NATO (Marshall's videos are almost entirely anti invasion and pro Ukraine, but frequently have a more human context vis-a-vis artists and poets in Ukraine). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j40huhSuCCQ

So this leads back to the fundamental question, if the only way to get traction is to have a contrarian point of view doesn't the academic base having an oppressively forceful conformist identity defeat the purpose of academia existing in a modern context? If academics can only reach dozens of people with years and years of work behind what they create how can they possibly propagate their ideas for longer than the duration of their lifetimes; or even see a modicum of success in anything beyond very sheltered academic circles.

In the case of Dugin he is relevant because on of the most powerful people in the world listened to him; this makes him a sort of modern Cardinal Richelieu. Marx, while unquestionably one of the most influential philosophers in history, didn't immediately see results in his own lifetime. I guess as someone who studies Nietzsche you might have a more informed opinion of how his philosophy transmogrified into the German Nationalist identity of the early 20th century and how that could relate to current Russian Nationalism and aggressive expansion of sphere of influences and so forth; also the development of the "Russian Idea" (Dostoevsky) or Eurasian identity (more modern take on the same concept). 

Sorry if this seemed rambling or incoherent unless it was incoherent on the basis of not being conformist enough; my goal is mostly just to absorb as many points of view as possible to distill a more objective thought on the present state of reality in order to have some basis for understanding the shifting nature of the present world (stagnant for 30 years and now rapidly changing).

More Strategic Geopolitical Thinking

This is mostly just for the sake of my own writing it down but naturally I had another interesting video I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkXZYqWJX6k

Toward the end he talks about the basic implications of climate change and political instability, which COVID is kind of a test case for on a smaller scale, that combined with the elimination of the military taboo in Europe (and also Armenia/Azerbaijan) will probably lead to massive political instability in other parts of the world; especially Africa and Southeast Asia; it's even possible that India has a civil war which could easily involve Bangladesh and Pakistan as well (2 of the 3 having nuclear weapons). 

India is not like China; there is not a single monolithic (if apparently somewhat artificial) ethnic group to tie the country together; there are literally hundreds of different ethnic groups and hundreds of kingdoms in different parts of India that have existed historically. Presently there's close to 2 billion people on the Indian Subcontinent which is considerably more than were in Europe during WW2.

As far as Africa goes it seems highly likely that the weaker governments will not be able to deal with Climate Change and presumable famine caused by the Russian Invasion of Ukraine (both heavy grain suppliers to Africa and the Middle East); this will probably lead to a number of smaller conflicts and possibly larger continent spanning ones, and it is predicted mass migrations to Southern Europe which thanks to Syria and Ukraine we have a clear understand of how poorly that will be handled (essentially if you're not "European" enough we might not let you in etc.)

With the greater rise of Chinese economic power and military power the US will probably focus almost exclusively on an Arms Race with China within 20-30 years and will basically no longer care about Europe or NATO due to either isolationism or needing to focus on the bigger (presumed) threat; ultimately this means that Germany (with its greatly increased military spending) will be the central power in that Alliance and in Europe as well; don't really have any basis for figuring out what they'll do with that power but I wouldn't be too spooked by that relative to all the other issues.

Ukraine Strategic Thoughts

 

Greetings Friends,

I won't belabor the point but I talked about Ukraine in 2014: https://fcdisbad.blogspot.com/2014/03/ukrainecrimea-strategic-thoughts.html and referenced my "Russian Sociology" Class (in 2008) where I asked the simple question of will Russia invade Ukraine (circa their Georgia invasion) and was rebuffed. And here we are.

Over the past several days while working I've been listening to numerous academic lectures from Columbia, Yale, Oxford and other Universities and just collected some loose thoughts on implications of the Russia/Ukraine conflict.

"Just sending these so I don't forget them or they're fresh in your mind but the most significant guarantee of our present situation is that we are functionally in a New Cold War; except this time the financial balance is much more even because of China (and our extensive trade ties with China); basically Russia and China can support one another independently of Europe and the US and also Russia may have an economic War Boom a la the solution to the Great Depression globally.

This also means there is a very real spectre of Nuclear Annihilation; of late the doom and gloom scenario has been climate change based and/or corporate based but with the present war state corporations do not matter as much as nations or superpowers which is almost entirely new in my lifetime (corporate control has enhanced in every regard in the US in the past 30 years).

Finally Crypto Currency is an out for Russia to avoid the economic sanctions imposed by the US, Europe, and various private companies; this means that if the Neo Cold War Continues Crypto MUST be destroyed basically which could mean the end of billionaires in a broader sense and also severe restrictions on stock market manipulation; maybe potentially a not free market economy concept within 50 years or so. This also probably means the end of r/wallstreebets' footnote in history, tragically. In the actual Cold War there was a clear free market advantage for the west but there isn't anymore because China has somewhere around 30-40% of the world's financial resources and 60-80% of its loan/country debt ownership."

Aside: Many of the lectures I've listened to have less than a thousand Youtube views, I have 4 million Elden Ring views so far; good times.

Some additional thoughts: What happened after the Treaty of Versailles? The Weimar Republic. What happens if you sanction Russia too heavily to the point that the Russian people suffer immensely? This was probably not Putin's plan initially but there seems to be a clear sign of rationality and adaptability presently in Ukraine (i.e. if you resist we will flatten your cities with Heavy Artillery and cruise missiles); so despite the war not resolving instantaneously a strong show of Russian military might is still an attainable goal in the conflict, despite the preposterously enormous human cost. However if somehow sanctions continue at their present rate for at least 2 years and the Russian economy is truly disrupted then there will probably be a large amount of resentment for the west internally; Putin has already fostered Nationalism (and China is fostering Jingoism and Nationalism); this could easily be a unifying issue in Russia that makes them effectively stronger and more capable of a "War Boom" a la what brought the world out of the Great Depression in the 1930s and 1940s.