2022/03/06

Illogical responses to the aggression against Ukraine

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I've shown multiple times that logical thinking is *a bit* in short supply when it comes to military affairs and military policy.

So first, the background to what I'll write about this time: Warfare is destructive, not productive. It could only be profitable if you take much away from others, which de facto requires a war of aggression. Hardly any war of aggression is profitable, though - the annexation of the Crimea a few years ago is an extremely expensive affair for Russia (a loss, not profit), as the region requires many subsidies, for example.

It thus follows that the main (and noble) purpose of a military shall be deterrence & defence; keep the peace, and if that fails protect from avoidable damage. This applies to the own country and to allied countries (defensive alliance, "collective security"). I accept intervention in genocides (a very tricky affair, as it can be misused to lie a country into war), intervention to liberate a recently invaded country and interventions to stop an aggressor in a non-allied country as acceptable motives as well.

This background clearly justifies some military spending inside NATO, primarily for deterrence. That worked just splendidly for NATO so far, albeit at high and certainly higher than necessary costs.

We had post-1992 very little outside threat to deter, mostly it was Russia once NATO accepted the Baltic countries as new members.

So the status quo as of late 2021 was a certain amount of military spending, a certain amount of planned military spending, a successful deterrence so far and a threat country Russia (Belarus is negligible) that had known conventional military weaknesses and its military power was somewhere on a spectrum ranging from "dysfunctional 2nd to 3rd rate military" to "the military reforms worked, they could overrun the Baltics + Poland + Iceland before NATO could counter-concentrate".

Again; our deterrence worked, there's no new evidence to suggest otherwise.

Now Russia attacked Ukraine and is obviously embarrassing itself. They may eventually "win" conventionally, but a long list of embarrassing details has surfaced that showed that the Russian Army and the Russian Tactical aviation are rather on the lower end of the aforementioned spectrum.

The rational conclusion is thus that Russia is much less scary to us in the short and medium term at least than was previously thought possible.

The rational consequence should thus be to re-evaluate our military spending. We obviously intended spent more (believing in a potentially more scary threat) than what a rational spending decision should look like now.

Instead, panicky spending increases (especially in Germany) can be expected.


This panicky reaction can fairly easily be explained by surprised politicians waking up from slumber and finally paying attention to the deterrence topic, which reflects terribly on their competence. It also reflects terribly on their competence that they don't seem to be able to make the rational call. Moreover, the media is primitive and irrational as usual and totally goes along with that nonsense.

No, having personally neglected the topic does not mean that the nation spent too little on the topic in the past.


For clarification; I am not against military spending increases in all cases. It might make sense to temporarily (for about five years) increase military spending to enact some reform. The sad reality is that the military bureaucracies don't use budget increases like that due to incompetent and/or ineffective political oversight. The first (and powerful) instinct of these bureaucracies is to grow instead. Hardly ever does a military bureaucracy disband some irrelevant unit without replacement while the budget is big. We could spend A LOT less on the military in Europe and still be extremely good at deterring aggression against the alliance. Germany wastes much money on a useless navy, on small/occupation wars nonsense, on excessive staffs, on predictably irrelevant procurement programs and on a ridiculously inflated medical branch. We could cut that nonsense to reduce our military spending without the slightest bit of net disadvantage and could at the same time afford more effective land forces and more survivable air power.

related:

/2019/04/fair-burden-sharing-in-nato.html

/2018/04/narratives-as-sustainers-of-excessive.html

/2018/04/patterns-of-propaganda-for-higher.html

/2017/02/stephen-m-walt-on-2-debate.html

/2017/01/human-sacrifice-and-military-spending.html

/2016/07/deterrence-and-defence-efficiency-in.html

/2016/07/warsaw-summit-communique.html

/2015/07/why-military-budgets-are-as-big-as-they.html

/2015/02/the-stupid-is-strong-in-german-navies.html

/2015/02/the-miracle-of-greeces-defence-spending.html

/2014/12/conquest-is-for-losers.html

/2014/07/a-guide-for-demanding-higher-military.html

/2014/04/parkinsons-law.html

/2014/03/appropriate-military-strength.html

/2013/08/niskanens-bureaucrats.html

/2013/05/what-does-this-tell-about-west.html

/2011/11/quick-lecture-on-military-budgeting-in.html

/2011/10/national-security-policy-rational-way.html

/2011/07/about-crazily-warped-interpretations-of.html

/2011/05/military-budgets-attempt-to-create-sane.html

/2011/01/bacevichs-takedown-of-military-spending.html

/2009/06/marathon-is-over.html

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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22 comments:

  1. One possible counterargument: the invasion of Ukraine shows that Putin is less "rational" and more belligerent than we/you thought and therefore harder to deter?

    If I think my neighbour is a martial arts expert but keeps his temper under reasonable control, and then I see him get in a stupid fight and fight badly, it's not obvious I want to reduce my defensive precautions.

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    1. Putin needs to be much more than just irrational to go to war with NATO after this (so far) debacle by Russian land forces and tactical air force.

      Your analogy would apply if your neighbour was beaten up by a 16 year old girl and you seemed to be a stronger martial arts expert all along.

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  2. They don't have to actually spend the money... the announcement has a deterring effect

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    1. The German government will spend the money and my feeling is the result will be not very impressive only the same shit as before with more input.

      If for half the money 20 GW offshore wind turbines were built the strategic damage for Russia would be much higher.

      And keep in mind, 1990 the German Bundeswehr had 500000 soldiers and the army had 36 brigades, 2020 the Bundeswehr had 1/3 of the man power and but the army had only 1/6 of the combat units.


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    2. "If for half the money 20 GW offshore wind turbines were built the strategic damage for Russia would be much higher."

      Amen

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  3. The Russians had a less corrupt defense minister with Anatoli Serdyukov, who reformed the Russian military after the problems in Georgia in 2008. He ruffled a lot of feathers of Russia's kleptocracy and was replaced with the conformist Shoigu, who was longer in government than Putin. If bad military performance threatens internal security, Russia can reinstate a reformer and become a more formidable enemy. It's easy to underestimate them.

    In Russia martial law is being instated, the death penality is reintroduced and 1 million are being mobilized. So the war is here to stay. Critical Russian voices on social media have said farewell, because they expect a purge of dissenters and they aren't suicidal. The critical TV station Dozhd also closed. I would argue that this war put the FSB in a comfortable spot, where they want to have Russian society. For internal suppression the Russian system might be capable of a sustained military effort, while turning into a large copy of North Korea. Such a system might be the safe option Putin and his siloviki envision to keep their families alive and wealthy when biology strikes and a new leader is necessary.

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    1. Mobilised reserves will be even less trained and less motivated than the troops who blundered in the past days.
      Industrialising this conventional war is no winning strategy for the Kremlin either, as the West can easily counter it with deliveries to Ukraine.
      Even a single "Stop, that's enough!" tactical nuke explosion would be less stupid than trying to win this campaign with mobilised troops.

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    2. "If bad military performance threatens internal security, Russia can reinstate a reformer and become a more formidable enemy. It's easy to underestimate them."

      Sorry, that does not make any sense: Loss of internal security is a short term issue for Putin, reforms are a long term project,therefore, do not help him.

      The other aspect is of course that more men in the medium term may only increase the logistic issues as long as the Ukrainians fight the supply lines....

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  4. Last Dingo:

    To quote yourself, you supposed prince of peace:

    >>>Now if the Americans wanted to make a statement, then some B-2s could at night drop hundreds of Mk 83 bombs with JDAM kit along that road, but the American military is good only for beating up poor brown people and then withdrawing.>>>

    I wonder if you're actually listening to yourself.

    Also there is no panicky spending increase in german military budget, instead even the 100 mrd would only deliver at least enough ammunition, spare parts and some modest modernisation in critical areas.

    But you have a completely immovable political agenda that you are spreading here and you are therefore more subject to the confirmation error than others. You interpret everything that is in such a way that it fits your already established opinion and in truth this does not result from logic and ratio, but only from a political ideology which you hide behind supposedly logical thinking.

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    1. I wrote "if the Americans wanted", not that it's a good idea.

      Explain what exactly would be panicky spending if the recent announcement doesn't indicate one.

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    2. I wonder that you do not seem to know the true current status of the bundeswehr. 100 mrd over several years are not panicky spending, but the absolut minimum to make the bundeswehr at least in some parts functionable and able to fight, so worse is the current status. One have to realize that over the last two decades unbelievable sums of money were wasted and the armed forces were under-financed at the same time in an absolutly breathtaking way.

      The attempt to fix this with this spending is only to pay now what was not payed / invested in the last years.

      Panicky spending would be to invest 3% or more (for example 4 - 5 % ) of the BIP, but not the actual 2% and this one time 100 mrd.

      As a historical reminder / fact: from 1953 to around 1983 the spending was always above 3 % of the BIP for the bundeswehr. And in its peak (around 1963) it was even above 5 % of the BIP.

      And now 2 % is panicky spending ? After three decades of an breathtaking military decline and underfunding ? Seriously?

      PS: of cause an high amount of the 100 mrd will be misused and wasted and used for enrichtment of the industry etc. That is of cause true, but it is an complete different area.

      We need much more money than now, that is an fact. And it is also an fact that you cannot establish the efficency you want, because this is practically impossible. Your demands about efficiency and intelligent spending are theoretically the solution to the financial problems, but in reality you cannot make them happen. So you need more money in every case.

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    3. It's not 2% at all. 100 bn over 5 years (assumption time frame on my part) + 2% baseline = 2.5%

      The Cold War is a laughable reference here, as we face a decrepit Russia, not the full Warsaw Pact AND we acquired additional allies.

      I showed many times on this blog that our absolute and relative spending isn't the problem. The problem is the waste, and experience shows that waste is only going to become worse with huge budget increases.
      Disband the useless navy, eliminate most of the inflated medical branch, get rid of most helicopters, cut staff officer jobs above battalion by 50%, buy no additional combat aircraft (certainly no F-35), hire qualified project managers for procurement and we can safely cut the Einzelplan 14 in four years to below the 2020 level.

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    4. >>>The problem is the waste, and experience shows that waste is only going to become worse with huge budget increases.>>>

      I can fully agree with that, but despite this 2,5% is not panicky spending. And the comparison to cold war levels of other 5% (!) i made because you asked what i would regard panicky spending and i wrote: such levels of spending would be panicky spending. But 2,5% is not.

      You first have to compensate for all the damage, undesirable developments and the immense waste and wastage of the last 20 years. It's all about this! We must now make up for what has been done wrong and wasted and inefficiently squandered over 2 decades. For this you need (temporarily) more money.

      Unfortunately, I also fear that the immense funds will now be wasted in exactly the same way. So spending more is only one part of the solution.

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  5. "Also there is no panicky spending increase in german military budget, instead even the 100 mrd would only deliver at least enough ammunition, spare parts and some modest modernisation in critical areas."

    When the rest of the money is still spent in the same stupid way. Again and again:

    In 1990, the German Bundeswehr had 500000 soldiers and the army had 36 brigades, 2020 the Bundeswehr had 1/3 of the man power and but the army had only 1/6 of the combat units.

    That with 3.1% of WEST German GDP. 170.000 soldiers should be possible with 1.5% of the GDP of the unfied Germanies.

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  6. "rom 1953 to around 1983 the spending was always above 3 % of the BIP for the bundeswehr. And in its peak (around 1963) it was even above 5 % of the BIP. "

    That was GDP of WEST GERMANY, Germany is 1/3 larger, the same (250000 professional soldiers, 250 000 draftees) could be done with 2.4% of German GDP if the soending efficiency were the same.

    And we have only 180000 professional soldiers, therefore, 1.6% of the German GDP should be enough.

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  7. >>>That with 3.1% of WEST German GDP. 170.000 soldiers should be possible with 1.5% of the GDP of the unfied Germanies. >>>

    That was a conscript army. Also the weapon systems and their respective costs are not comparable. So apples and pears. But regardless of that, of course, with increased efficiency and an end to waste, one should also change the size of the army. The goal of 2.5% should not be to have only 180,000 soldiers in the future. We need more, according to my estimate about 250,000, with a full equipment. Without a doubt, the aforementioned 2.5% of GDP is required for this, even with significantly higher efficiency.

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    1. "We need more"

      Look, mil fanboi feelings don't matter. Those billions of Euros (and the effort of people they represent) can do much good if used for different purposes.

      The whole blog post was about such feelings being illogical. The Russian emperor showed up, switched the light on and he has no clothes. They weren't able to make their army functional with years of good revenue, now their economy is crashing and the West is on track to cut practically all trade with Russia (the remaining energy imports are eroding away as well, one political decision after another).
      The Russian Federation won't be able to build a significantly more powerful military anytime soon for internal corruption, crappy economic model and trade embargo reasons.

      It's always a good time to cut nonsense and improve the efficiency of armed services, but objectively this is no time whatsoever for boosting military spending permanently.
      I'll agree to a couple billions more for reform and stocking up on army munitions, but the announced spending boost is irrational and primitive.

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  8. "That was a conscript army. Also the weapon systems and their respective costs are not comparable. "

    You are not very strong in maths: With around 1.7% of the German GDP and the spending efficiency of 1990, a 170.000 army of professional soldiers PLUS 170.000 draftees should be possible.

    In 1990 the German Bundeswehr consisted of 250000 timers and 250000 draftees. Germany (2022) is economically 4/3 of Western Germany (1990) and 170.000 is only around 75% of 250000.

    3.1% * 0.75 * 0.75 = 1.74

    Got it?

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    1. Ulenspiegel:

      Since you're talking completely past me, your whole calculation is just wrong because it's based on completely wrong assumptions.

      I am NOT talking about a conscript army. So it is completely pointless to calculate how many conscripts there were at that time and how many could therefore be set up with this or that defense budget.

      I wrote about a professional army without conscripts because that is and will be the reality. So your number of 170,000 possible conscripts is just pointless. In addition, you would have to make a high initial investment for this as well, because all the structures for deploying conscripts are no longer there. This ranges from the military offices to the barracks and accommodation facilities to the training and structure of the armed forces themselves.

      That means: even if your idea of ​​170,000 conscripts were to be implemented, you would first have to spend more money to rebuild the necessary structures at all. The initially higher costs would only level out over time.

      So you don't seem to be good at reading overall when you come up with some milkmaid calculations about conscripts when I ask how many career soldiers one could support.



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    2. The point stands.
      Deflate the medical branch = one more light brigade.
      Deflate the staff system (highly paid officers) = one more light brigade
      Deflate the Streitkräftebasis = two more light brigades

      There are ways how you could motivate young men for a short military service (6...24 months) without huge pay, removal of bullshit, including (partial) profession training (such as 50% of Mechatroniker Ausbildung done), reduced NC waiting times and counting twice as time worked till retirement.

      I wrote light brigades here because the spares & fuel costs of mechanised troops are complicating matters.

      BTW, it is unthinkable to almost anyone, but there's no reason why you would need barracks for basic training. Every recruit could receive personal equipment by mail and then be trained in the field, living in tents and sheds for months. This approach actually had proponents in the 50's and it would work in at least 7 months per year, enough for a super-thorough 6 months basic training (3 is normal, 4 is thorough, 6 is really 'everyone an infantryman').

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    3. If you think of local units that are supposed to defend a certain region, the soldiers in such a unit could also sleep and eat at home. In addition, of course, they can spend a lot of time outside, bivouacking, etc., but a kind of regional militia (similar to the National Guard) could simply operate from home instead of being barracked.

      And yes, with good pay, an end to all the wasting of time and hanging around and a concentrated and dense education, you could get many young people to decide for such a service or even raise it again as a possible form of compulsory service .

      But what military value would these units have? The real practical benefit would be quite small in relation to the effort. We are not a "frontline state", but other, allied states will first be the target of enemy forces. In this context, such regional formations make just as little sense as an excess of light units.

      What we need is the provision of specific military capabilities in order to be able to optimally support our allies in the areas that they lack (for whatever reason, mostly due to cost or financial reasons).

      The young people would therefore be better off with civil defense and other such uses, even if conscription was introduced, instead of wasting them on mere light infantry.

      It makes no sense militarily to have such large numbers of troops. What are 170,000 conscripts supposed to do militarily in the context of the alliance, especially as light infantry? What we need are professional soldiers in a true professional army, providing essential key military capabilities.

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  9. "surprised politicians waking up from slumber and finally paying attention" not really, they've always paid attention to situations that allow them to authorize more money to their chosen industrialists. MIC (Military Industrial Complex) became MIPS long ago (P=corrupt or easily influenced politicians)

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