The West doesn't understand nationalism

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My thesis is that the West doesn't understand nationalism (any more). It understood it until about the Second World War. The First World War almost shattered our societies, the second one kind of did.

Back in 1950 when North Korea attacked South Korea 'we' interpreted that as the spearhead of communist world revolution, but it was an attempted war of national unification.

When North Vietnam attacked South Vietnam 'we' interpreted it as the spearhead of communist world revolution, but it was a (successful) war of national unification (with an additional war for small farmer liberation from rich landowners).

When the Russian federation attacked the Chechens 'we' interpreted it as a great power's attempt to avoid fracturing, but it really was part of Russian nationalism/imperialism.

All the troubles that the Russian Federation caused in its periphery; Moldova, Ukraine, South of Caucasus region; it was (and is) all about keeping the independent countries from drifting away so they can once again become part of a Russian empire.

Likewise, China is understood as being a country, but it really is the Han tribe dominating a big bunch of actually different peoples, some of which have actually been convinced that they're the same as the Han. Having a script that can be read in any language helped the Chinese empire for thousands of years and was probably the reason why "China" is now considered to be a country, not a continent or subcontinent like fractured Europe.

We don't properly understand nationalism at home, either. It doesn't matter to many of us whether immigrants are useful for elderly care and other vacant jobs. Immigrants in our nation states feel like squatters in an inherited family home; they don't belong there, why would they get to enjoy what's ours by birthright? So basically, modern immigration policy (and European unification ideology/policy) utterly disregards nationalism, which has been designated as a harmful relic rather than a source of cohesion and strength.

I suppose we won't get much better policies on immigration, deterrence&defence, trade or plain foreign policy until our Western societies learn to understand nationalism again. It's a thing, it won't go away anytime soon and to disregard it only builds up huge internal friction and tension. A failure to understand foreign nationalism leads to failures in immigrant integration and in foreign, deterrence & defence policies.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Free Europe's security challenge if America turns full fascist (Part II)

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The political consequences.

I wrote in 2016 that one shouldn't quit NATO ASAP when America turns fascist, despite the summer of 1914 experience with Austria-Hungary. 

We should quit eventually (there's a 12 month period between quitting and actually leaving the treaty, see article 13), though. The time should be used to build up deterrence & defence against the United States of America (that would be part III of the series).

 

The lessons learned about Putin's fifth columns in Hungary, Slovakia and kind of (more complicated) Poland point strongly at the EU not being fit for acting as a multinational defence organisation for Europe.

The European unification fanatics, EU politicians and EU bureaucrats would oppose it, but we would have to create a separate and functional European Defence initiative. It doesn't need to be a real alliance; the Lisbon Treaty can serve that purpose. We'd need a coordinating and meetings agency because we'd need to keep Americans, Canadians, Russia's 5th column, America's 5th column and unstable partners who might fall into such a category out of the core consultations and core preparations.

I mentioned the Lisbon Treaty. We really should raise awareness about it now that the "neutral" Swedes have shed their neutrality. Disregard Austrian sensitivities about them wanting to pretend to remain neutral! They signed the Lisbon Treaty as well. The public needs to understand that the Lisbon Treaty is at least as much an alliance as is the North Atlantic Treaty. Perception makes treaties powerful. Just look at Article I of the North Atlantic Treaty, which hardly anyone knows and thus almost nobody complaints about its violations. How many comments in newspapers or on television would point out our EU collective defence obligation if Vienna was hit by a Russian missile? They would probably manage to notice -with Wikipedia's help- that Austria is not NATO member, that's all.

We need to change that! A Turkish attack on a Greek island means the EU members go to war with Turkey. A Russian missile on Vienna means the EU members go to war with Russia. An American missile on Paris means the EU members go to war with America. This should be self-evident to the majority of adults in all middle-sized and large EU countries.

Finally, we need to stockpile strategic raw materials more and develop alternative routes of transportation with enough capacity for very high value but small volume and mass exports and imports. We could not make do with only services & air freight as objects of trade beyond Europe and its periphery. The stockpiling in particular would be difficult (and capital-intensive), but also useful in case of a Pacific War.

The problem with all this is that the current generation of politicians in the larger European countries is utterly worthless. They would rather misgovern so badly that their own country falls to extremists than to get their act together for European security in less than a generation.

Part III will be more about development, procurement and force design.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Free Europe's security challenge if America turns full fascist (Part I)

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The risk of the United States of America turning full Fascist has entered more mainstream media. I wrote about it years ago, but there's no reward for being early.

What would it mean threat-wise to Europe?

The threat ranking would change, and not just because of Americans: The Russians turn into Italians with nukes. They consume their Soviet arms arsenal inheritance in Ukraine. The addition of the Finnish army to NATO and the ruin of the VDV render Russia impotent versus free Europe, even if Turks and Hungarians would side with Russia.

So the threat ranking would change from 

1. Russian Federation
   
2. United States of America
3. People's Republic of China
4. India
5. Israel 

to

1. United States of America
2. People's Republic of China
3. Russian Federation
   
4. India
5. Israel 

The PRC being mostly of concern regarding a possible reinforcement of Russia if we (Europeans) are stupid enough to get involved too much in the Far East. (I believe that embargo & arms sales are the way to go in case of a Chinese assault on Taiwan main island, Philippines, ROK or Vietnam.)

So, what could the United States of America do to free Europe?

For starters, they could switch off our economy because our governments are stupid.

It could also subject free Europe to air attacks. This would mostly be cruise missile attacks (that damage would be repairable, though key repair industries require protection or redundancy). "Stealth" bombers could be a problem because we didn't face them so far and haven't built up the necessary long wavelength search radar network to detect them at useful distances. Those "stealth" bombers would mostly drop just some more cruise missiles, though.

Then there's the threat of naval aviation and worst of all, the USAF could set up bases in striking range, and striking range is thousands of km to them.

So let's look at the map:

Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Ireland, UK, Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands, Morocco and Israel are plausible bases for air attack. I omitted Egypt because that seems too much trouble for Americans and too much at risk nuclear-wise. Only UK and Israel might be voluntary bases, the rest would be invaded.

The parallels between U.S. vs. free Europe and U.S. vs. PRC are evident now. The U.S. needs in both cases

• not really fear attacks on its own territory
• attack primarily by air power
• especially by cruise missiles
• use nearby bases that need no great land force for their defence
• the ability to take said bases by amphibious/triphibious invasion
• cut off oceanic trade
• produce (ten) thousands of guided missiles during wartime
  

This means it's near-impossible to enhance European security vs. Americans by pushing for arms limitations on the American side. They wouldn't agree to those because they need those arms for the conflict with China that's on their minds.

A Fascist America in conflict with free Europe could actually lead to a Sino-European alliance instead of a Sino-Russian alliance. The Americans may have what it takes to defeat the Chinese, but they cannot afford what it takes to defeat both China and free Europe at the same time - not even if Taiwan, South Korea, Japan & Philippines aid them out of self-preservation motives.

On the other hand, a quasi (Hindu-)Fascist India could ally with the U.S. due to its issues with Pakistan and China and then we've got about the same mess as if China allies with Russia, for India will become a huge industrial powerhouse especially so with the war economy-relevant 'old' industries soon.

Part II will cover what European defence policy (basically, force design) needs to include to tackle the 'hostile Fascist America' contingency.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Too simple minds

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Humans have a troublesome tendency.

They do often times identify one evil, and then follow a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" policy due to a "the enemy of evil is good" logic. That's obviously untrue.

Sometimes the enemy of evil is evil as well. Sometimes someone whom you identified as the bad guy in one context is the good guy in another context. Vice versa

Particularly zealous people seem to be particularly vulnerable to this (I suppose it's a) logical fallacy.

An example is Noam Chomsky, who correctly identifies some evil in Reagan's foreign policies and then stuck with the mind set that the U.S. is an evil imperial power. Worse; he all-too often depicts adversaries of the U.S. as good when they're clearly not.

Another example is Julian Assange. He helped to expose war crimes of the Obama administration and was opposed harshly by the same. This turned him into a hater of the Democrats, without any consideration about whether the Republicans wouldn't have been just as mean, if not worse - both in Iraq and to him.

There's a similar nonsensical illogic at play regarding the conflict in the Levante.

Some people (who am I kidding? Almost all people!) appear to be incapable of managing enough information in the mind in parallel to think of political actors as separate of the people as a whole or to maintain the thought that being victim in one context isn't in conflict with being perpetrator in another context.

And don't get me started on how incompetent the notion of war crimes is being handled. Hardly anyone ever read the Geneva Conventions (officers should know the basics, and I can at least say that I read much of the full text of the conventions).

Simple bogeyman thinking appears to rule. Most people appear to pick one hunter-gatherer clan to side with and that other hunter-gatherer clan is eeeevil!

Exceptions are being treated as if they were inconsistent or hypocrites, while I respect them for at least being able to think a bit more advanced than a caveman - even if the conclusions aren't mine.

The worst are of course the racists, who simply force their whole racism bollocks on the topic.

- - - - - - - - -

So in case anyone is ever confused about my stance:

1. Israel has to leave the occupied territories and go back to its pre-1967 borders. The state of Israel is only legitimate within the pre-1967 borders.
2. The U.S. is at fault for #1 not happening due to its unethical UNSC vetoes. It does thus deserve a major share of the blame for the mess.
   
3. Any talk about pre-1967 borders being indefensible is bollocks. It's militarily untrue and it doesn't matter anyway. Singapore isn't exactly defensible either, but that doesn't mean it gets to steal land from Malaysia. The security interests of one country do never justify territorial expansion or occupation of foreign lands. No exceptions!
   
4. The Geneva Conventions bind the signatory power Israel. Violations thereof are war crimes.
5. Intentional killing, injuring, torturing or abducting civilians is a crime (at least in customary international law). It's obvious that all parties do or did at some point commit this crime.
   
6. Israel has a right to close its borders with Gaza, but a naval blockade of Gaza just because Gaza was ruled by a disliked political faction was never legitimate.
7. There's no violence followed by counterviolence in the Levante conflict any more. It's all counterviolence by now.
8. Assassinations of non-combatants or against a country without state of war are illegal and deserve sanctions.
9. Casual and habitual bombing of foreign countries at will is not acceptable, not legal, never legitimate and must not be normalised.
   
10. The European politicians have been worthless  in the Levante conflict since 1967 (after when France ceased to export weapons to Israel in reaction to it attacking neighbours with French weapons). That's the nicest way to put it that I've come up with.
    
11. Being a victim in one context does not authorise being a perpetrator in any context.
    
12. The talk of "Staatsräson" in Germany is bollocks. The German government has to serve German interests, not foreign ones. The word "Staatsräson" or "Staatsraison" does not appear in the constitution, nor does the word "Israel". All this "Staatsräson" talk is bollocks of the same high grade as the "Supergrundrecht" bollocks. Keep in mind #10.
    

 

The conflict in the Levante is a big mess. Only fools find any "good" party there. Our (Western) handling of the conflict is an embarrassment. It shows the widespread failure of intellect and the all-encompassing worthlessness of Western politicians in this conflict.

The best path to cooling the conflict in the Levante down does include an end to the U.S. veto policy in the UNSC, which is not in sight. Democrats stick to Israel regardless of what its government does (short of nuclear genocide) because they don't want to lose the votes of New York City. Republicans stick to Israel regardless of what its government does (limit unclear) because they have a strong pseudo-Christian nutjob faction in their lying moron-dominated party that insists on supporting Israel due to one or another moronic bible interpretation.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Gaza '23 and more in general: Our politicians are worthless

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This episode of counterviolence breeds counterviolence is part of an ongoing conflict that's older than my mom. It's kind of not really interesting, just noise of tragedy.

 

I see only one hot fix that would work for Israel, and that's sweeping Gaza with hundreds of thousands of troops to weaken Hamas before handing it over to Fatah (their political opponents who control the non-occupied parts of West Bank). Fatah regaining power in Gaza like that would lead to its long-term demise, though.

The pursuit of a two-state solution has failed to deliver on its promise and is an obsolete approach in my opinion. Obsolete or not, a failing poly should be replaced by a more promising one.

Suppose there are two children on the schoolyard taunting and brawling every school day, and have done so for years. I understnad it's fashionable to sit down to talk to them, mediate, talk, tlak, talk.

A more classical (and in my opinion more promising) approach is to not give a s*!t about their opinions and simply enforce the rule that everyone on the schoolyard has to be peaceful, or else will be sanctioned so much that he/she/it regrets to not have been peaceful.

It's time to stop talking to Arabs and Israelis, and to stop hosting talks between them. It's about time they learn to OBEY. They need to obey international law, or be made to regret it. There's almost no prospect that the cycle of counterviolence will end for good just because the involved parties suddenly get nice.

Sadly, the U.S. with its veto power in the UNSC is the main (possibly only) obstacle to this.

The UN(SC) should MANDATE that Egypt takes over Gaza and meets its responsibility to ensure there won't be any attacks on israel from Egyptian (including Gaza) soil. Extremely severe and ten-year sanctions against these countries should commence in 12 months if the UNSC hasn't confirmed their satisfactory compliance until then. Egypt would later be held responsible for every aggression from its soil, just as any country should be held responsible for such a thing.

Ideally, the same should be done regarding Jordan (West Bank) and Syria (Golan Heights), with Blue Helmet (MP, MI and CivMil, not combat troops) support.

Israeli military security concerns about having Egyptian military nearer to Tel Aviv and Syrian military on great vantage points on Golan Hieghts carry ZERO weight, just as Russian desires to have vassal states between itself and NATO carries zero weight.

There's hardly any Syrian conventional warfare military left, hardly any Jordanian military and the Egyptian military will freeze when the U.S. stops subsidising it. Meanwhile, everybody knows that Israel is a nuclear power with a quite robust 2nd strike capability and all of itself is within range of precision-guided missiles nowadays (which devalues depth). So security concerns about reestablishing the 1949 borders are not very substantial anyway.

Maybe if Germany hadn't such a useless, timid, worthless chancellor we could be part of the solution. A charismatic, fluent English-speaking and decisive German chancellor could pressure POTUS Biden through public diplomacy and behind closed doors diplomacy to not veto a 1949 borders restablishment UNSC resolution that mandates Egypt to take over Gaza and establish security. The time for this is perfect. There are many ways how POTUS could be pressures behind the scenes. Germany could threaten to kick out all American troops without giving them time to set up a replacement for Ramstein, it could threaten to leave NATO*, threaten to sabotage U.S. foreign policy in many ways.

That would require a non-fossilised, action-oriented chancellor, though. You can't have any good results with a worthless potatoe. I respect the office of the chancellor, I do not respect the person AT ALL. he should rot in jail for defalcation in the CumEx scandal.

The politicians we have can only think in old narratives and thier only actions are about spending money.

Their inaction thorugh three generations of crisis in the Levante KILL people, just as their inaction in the Mediterranean migration crisis KILLs people.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: Germany is not threatened itself, is also in the EU alliance and there's no such thing as accumulated obligation to stay in an alliance. We can leave the North Atlantic Treaty at will, within a year (see its article 13).

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"Sanctions don't work!" (That's bollocks!)

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Certain people on the intertubes are claiming that sanctions on Russia don't work, that sanctions circumventing renders them moot. It appears to be fashionable to cite trade statistics with Central Asian countries to provide supposed evidence for this assertion.

I'm not going to publicly guess why these people do so, or what their sources of income are. Instead, the economist in me found the topic a bit interesting from an analytical point of view:

 

Suppose you want to buy a used car. You spend time looking at offers on the internet, you drive to car sellers, discuss with friends, finally you travel to a specific seller and actually buy a used car from him for 10,000 currency units.

What was the cost of this purchase? I suppose the average economics layman will say it was 10,000 currency units. The average economist should be ashamed if he/she/it gave such a reply. Economists know about the concept of transaction costs. All those other activities around the used car purchase deal caused transaction costs; currency units and time were spent on that deal beyond the purchase price.

Now let's look at a hypothetical case of a 250,000 CU machine being purchased from a Western company by a Russian company through a middleman in some Stan-country. That purchase has a long rat's tail of additional transaction costs; middlemen, briberies, additional transport costs, a greater time delay, additional risks.

So we know for sure that circumventing sanctions like that imposes extra economic burdens on Russia(ns).

Furthermore, economists know a concept called price elasticity of demand. The usual case is that less goods will be purchased if the price increases. The opposite is so super rare that these freak cases have their own name (Giffen goods).

Imagine a 10 € spare part for a 250,000 € machine. Its price could triple and it would be purchased just as often. Imagine the machine's price increased from 250,000 € to 750,000 € and the quantity sold will plummet.

So what's the effect of additional transaction costs on products that Russia(ns) want to import from the West? The quantity will be reduced by this change, as many of the import goods have a price elasticity of demand that means less purchases at higher costs of purchase. Moreover, Russia(ns) not only get less, but they pay more for it per copy.

This was a "ceteris paribus" analysis. We considered how the outcome changes if one input variable is changed. The overall outcome may be influenced by a gazillion input variables and others may override this one input variable's influence, of course. Trade statistics of poor countries have a lot of statistical noise. There may be a mighty influence for less trade and the end result of all input variables may still be an increase of trade for a while.

A certain input variable has recently been very powerful, though; inflation. The "Sanctions don't work!" crowd doesn't attempt to convince people of their opinion by using trade statistics that were  corrected for inflation, currency exchange rate issues or even things such as population and economic growth. A serious economics scholar would be expected to do so if he/she/it proposed a paper on the subject for peer reviewed publication. No, that highly opinionated crowd uses relatively short run and raw trade statistics (nothing like 'since 1991', no 'real', no 'per capita', no '%GDP').

In short; they're not in the information dissemination business. They're in the propaganda business.

 

Long story short; sanctions don't work as absolutely as desired, but they hurt. Adjustments can be made to the sanctions regime, and it can become ever more restricting, an allegorical anaconda strangling an aggressor state. Russia's quality of life won't plummet much, though. The cases of Cuba and Iran show that a country with decent natural resources luck can maintain regime survival and a low-but-not-starving consumption level for decades in face of severe sanctions.

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: More could be written about this. I didn't touch on the subject of opportunity costs this time, for example. And the whole 'thinking' of the "Sanctions don't work!" crowd is somewhat reminiscent of the bollocks spreaders who claim that minimum wage increases get significantly if not fully neutralised by what inflation they (supposedly) cause.

wa.

Ukraine and NATO membership

I see three ways to look at the question whether Ukraine should be permitted to join the North Atlantic Treaty.

1. The egoistical view: What's in it for us?
2. The idealistic view: We should protect them!
3. The international order view: Wars of aggression should not happen!

The egoistical view makes some sense (disclaimer; I applied it in some early blogging). It was utterly standard before 1939. NATO truly changed the perception of alliances. Nowadays it feels a bit out of fashion, but an alliance was in the past either forced on a state or it was entered voluntarily out of self-interest. It may be argued that Ukraine joining NATO is in NATO members' self-interest, but the biggst advantage is unlikely to be had; to add Ukrainian military power allows the old members to spend less on their militaries for the same degree of security. Vested interests are hell-bent on spending ever more on the military-industrial complex. A variation of the egoistical view is Machiavellian power foreign policy gaming.

The idealistic view is enticing, especially if you don't have much emotional distance to the war and pay much attention to Russian atrocities. I'd like to point out that to help others without equivalent benefit to the own people is a violation of the German cabinet's oath of office, which requires to avoid harm to the German people. They violate this oath casually with all kinds of foreign policy, of course. The government of a state is in my opinion the people of that state doing those things together for their own good that cannot better be done alone or with other forms of association. A government is supposed to serve its nation, not to serve other nations.

The international order view is my current view. I think it's vastly superior and vastly better-suited to the topic. It has huge conclusions, though: Those who apply it must support Ukraine's intent to fight on till all of Ukraine is liberated, including Crimea. Wars of aggression shall not happen, thus it's necessary to make them 'unprofitable'. Personal risks to Putin himself are desirable in this framework. Other potential aggressors should fear for their personal well-being (power, riches and life) in case they dare to launch a war of aggression. Another huge conclusion is that the accusation of hypocrisy has to be solved by staying on the "international order view" at all times, inlcuding when the offender is a friendly or allied country. Almost all cruise missile attacks and bombings by the UK, U.S. and Poland post-1953 were illegal (even under U.S. law, which Americans prefer to ignore). The 1991 liberation of Kuwait and the 1982 Falklands War were notable exceptions.

The international order view is a bit weak regarding the risking of nuclear war. The Russian kleptocracy regime used the nuclear threat in a comical fashion and regularity, but the possibility of a violation of the nuclear taboo is real. So either we widen the international order view from "Wars of aggression should not happen!" to include "Nuclear strikes are taboo!" or we need to combine it with the egoistical view's disdain for a nuclear strike to get a properly encompassing view. And then things get really difficult to judge, with a huge grey zone of possibly correct conclusions.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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European security policy and China

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So Macron made some waves with his remarks that the anglophone internet doesn't seem to like.

 

I return to a long-held opinion that security policy (and thus as a part of it, alliances) is supposed to serve the own nation first and foremost.

Americans may have become emotionally invested in Taiwan, Europeans not so much. Americans may feel an irrational desire to ward off a challenge to thier gret power greatness by China, Europeans not so much.

The possibility of a PRC-ROC war concerns Europeans' interests mostly in two ways;

1. a disruption of globalised supply chains to the point that European countries could lose a quarter of a year's GDP in output if the war and subsequent drastic sanctions last for several years
2. a violation of the principle that wars of aggression are out
   

You may have noted that the second was already committed by Russia in 2014, the U.S. & UK in 2003 and many NATO countries in 1999. In fact, Israel and the U.S. do it habitually and casually. So we cannot claim that the 2nd bullet point is an extremely big deal to Europe with honesty and without hypocrisy.

We should also note that both points are already met if the conflict turns hot, regardless of who starts it and who 'wins' it. The European interest is thus to avoid such a conflict, not to "win" it. 

Here's what I think European countries should have as a publicly stated policy in case of PRC attack on any East Asian or Southeast Asian country (including a mere naval blockade):

• total trade & travel embargo against PRC (save for medical goods & food)
  
• enable global maritime blockade against PRC
• sell military goods to U.S. with permission to deliver those to Taiwan
• support suspension of PRC in UN

We could even cast this into a law to diminish doubts about this policy.

The counter-trade measures would badly hurt Europe itself, and I added this to the list because I place a much greater emphasis on abolishing wars of aggression than the average European does. At least half of us Europeans are fine with the casual and habitual aggressions by the U.S. and Israel, and the somewhat less often aggressions by Turkey, France and the UK.

In the end, to deter China with military might is too expensive if done the ordinary way. To drastically reduce trade with China in peacetime doesn't fit with the GATT/WTO framework (to let the PRC into the WTO was a colossal mistake) and would have huge economic costs even without a war.

• We should reduce trade dependency on BOTH Chinas in select critical areas. This is AFAIK possible within WTO using the national security argument.
• We should evaluate whether and how to supply ROC/Taiwan with what it needs to deter Chinese invasion (I don't think a blockade attempt could be deterred by them on thier own.)*
  

 

The most stupid thing to do would be to go all-in on an adversarial stance against China, conduct an air/sea arms race and still play mere auxiliary forces to DoD plans without reducing critical economic dependencies on both Chinas. Americans and anglophone internet appear to want Europeans to do almost exactly that, though. We need some prominent voices to stem that tide. 

 

related:

/2017/02/a-security-treaty-for-east-asia-north.html

2017/07/just-reminder-about-north-atlantic.html

/2018/11/natos-boundaries.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: I think of anti-air, anti-tank and coastal anti-ship weapons, their munitions and the associated targeting and communictions equipment. Artillery and counter-artillery as well as their supplies and peripherals might also make much sense. But first ROC/Taiwan needs to signal that it's serious about being able to fight off an invasion, and this very old blog text on that issue still largely holds true.

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Finland joins NATO

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Finland joins NATO. It's unfashionable to think so, but alliances used to be a concept in foreign policy to further the own nation's best interests. The notion that a country somehow has to serve an alliance rather than the other way around is a perverse distortion.

What's in it for Germany? Well, the accession of Finland adds almost no additional risk of a hot war (considering its longtime neutral and moderate foreign policy) and Finland adds a lot of land power (especially hundred of thousands of reservists in an army that always took actual defence seriously) to the alliance.

This added military power doesn't improve the odds that Russia would lose a war with NATO and given the demonstration of Russian military shortcomings in Ukraine*, it is beyond reasonable doubt that Finland does not improve the (already 100%) deterrence of Russian aggressions against NATO itself.

The logical conclusion is thus that Finland's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty adds military power on top of already sufficient (for deterence & defence) military power within NATO. 

This means that a continuation of the current military spending levels is necessarily and beyond reasonable doubt wasteful (even assuming there was no inefficiency in it at all). 

The accession of Finland thus means that we (the old NATO members) should revise military spending planning DOWN from the planned levels (at least down from the levels planned before Finland joining might possibly have been 'priced in').

The real benefit to Germany (and most other old NATO members) is thus that we can save military spending, as the alliance has gained military power by adding Finland rather than by adding military spending.

Military spending is not virtuous, it's not productive, it's not an efficient way of promoting science or technology. Military spending is government consumption like spending on armoured sedans for ministers. Its justification is not emotions, it's the achievement of a sufficient deterence (and as backup defence) to protect our freedom, prosperity and lives. It's comparable to buying a good lock for the door of a family home; there's no point in spending ever more money on it if it already does its job well. Likewise, you cannot further the prosperity of the family by spending more on the door lock; it's an entirely unsuitable tool for that purpose.

The insight that the accession of Finland should trigger military spending reductions is as alien to the general debate on military spending as is the insight that Russia proving to be a conventional military Potemkin' village  an empire without clothes, means that we need to spend less on detering it or defending against it than was previously reasonable to believe.

The dominant notion is that somehow we need to spend more on armed forces, and hardly anyone asks about what kind of reasoning supposedly supports that notion. The vested special interests of career officers, arms industry and legislators from arms industry-rich districts combine to support the illogical notion that causes more economic harm to a country than the vast majority of criminals combined.

The most disappointing part is not that we cannot defeat these special interest groups in pursuit of the nation's general interests. The truly disappointing part is that there's hardly anyone even only challenging to that fight.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Russia revealed that its armed forces combine all weaknesses and faults ever known from Russian armed forces of the post-Suvorov era at this time (other than the mutiny & revolution of 1917).

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Basics regarding the Russo-Ukrainian War

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The ability of some people to perform mental gymnastics in regard to this ongoing war is astonishing. Most if not everything of what is being said and written in favour of Russia in this war is untrue or irrelevant.

So I thought it's a reasonable idea to write down the basics in a very clear and somewhat concise manner:

 

(1) Practically all countries of the world including the Soviet Union and thus its successor, the Russian Federation, have signed the Charter of the United Nations. This charter is the most important international law document regarding whether a country conducts legal violence against another or not.

It says among other things in Article 2:

1. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
2. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

So it's wrong to attack another country without clear UN authorisation or without exercising a right to self-defence.

(2) There was a Ukrainian independence referendum in 1991. Every single region of today's Ukraine chose independence as Ukraine (being ruled from Kyiv) over staying part of the USSR (being ruled from Moscow). Yes, Donbas and Crimea sided with Ukraine as a nation state.

There was no later referendum or election turning this around, for any region. There were shams that faked something, but no actual referendum or election about secessions or annexations of Ukrainian territory since. There is thus no legal basis and generally no reliable basis for any claim that a secession or annexation of Ukrainian territory is an expression of the people's right to self-determination.

(3) The Russian Federation recognised the sovereignty of Ukraine directly and indirectly many times, including once even signing the Budapest Memorandum, in which the Russian Federation even guarantees Ukrainian sovereignty.

(4) Russia is an empire built by subjugating, colonising and to some degree assimilating foreign peoples for centuries. They merely did the colonising mostly next door (exception being the temporary colonization of Alaska) on two continents rather than overseas. It's an extant colonial empire that pretends that no part  of itself is a colony, just as the French pretended in the 1950's that coastal Algeria was no colony.

(5) No country has any rights to enjoy a threat-free neighbourhood, or to have any buffer zone to potential threats. International law can only work if it's the same for all countries, and thus no country's sensitivities can possibly infringe on another country's sovereignty. Any demands for neutral buffer zones, spheres of influence and the like are illegitimate and carry no weight as arguments.

(6) Other countries doing wrong does not right any wrong committed by Russia, nor does that give Russia any additional rights.

(7) NATO never promised to the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation to not accept Eastern European countries as new members. There are claims about a non-written promise, but those are disputed (among others by the late Gorbachev) and carry no weight in international law. The USSR or the Russian Federation could have insisted on a written, signed and ratified form of such a promise, but they didn't.

(8) The reason for the growth of NATO is not a NATO intent to prepare for aggression against Russia, but the new members seeking security from Russian aggression.

(9) The "Partnership for Peace" program was not an additional encirclement/encroachment of the Russian Federation by the West, as was implied in some propaganda graphic: The Russian Federation itself was part of "Partnership for Peace".

(10) Even if every single Ukrainian was a corrupt anti-democratic Nazi with a swastica tattooed to the forehead, that would still give no country any justification to fire a single shot at or inside Ukraine.

(11) Russian propaganda claims about Nazism and fascism in Ukraine are ridiculous anyway, for (a) the Russian Federation under Putin checks all boxes on a fascism test itself, (b) the Russian government tolerates various big fascist groups within Russia and (c) Russian government lingo identifies every Ukrainian as "fascist" who is in favour of an independent Ukraine, which confuses patriotism with fascism. The whole Russian "fascists" line of attack is propaganda bollocks, regardless of the true anecdotes about a few people in Ukraine, a country of  about 43 million people.

(12) Russian military personnel invaded Ukraine in 2014 when Crimea was occupied.

(13) Regular Russian military personnel invaded Ukraine in the Donbas area in 2014 and Russia also subsidises and equips the secessionists there since. Many of those secessionists were not born in the Donbas and didn't live there before the invasion.

(14) Russians claim that Ukrainians regularly shot at civilians in Donbas. While that's in some cases true, it happened only because of Russia's aggression. Moreover, Russia's behaviour of targeting civilians including schools and hospitals in Syria and Ukraine takes away all moral weight from such Russian accusations.

(15) Ukraine has the legal and legitimate right to kill any Russian combatant now. Russia still hasn't got the legal right or legitimacy to shoot at anyone or anything in Ukraine because it's the aggressor. There are no legitimate targets for Russians, even the Ukrainian military is no legitimate target to shoot at for the Russian armed forces and their mercenaries.

(16) The Ukrainians overthrew a Moscow-friendly president in a revolution. The elections since were democratic and give full legitimacy and legality to the Ukrainian political leadership. To have a revolution gives absolutely no other country any right to attack. It's that simple, and any Russian opinion on that matter carries zero weight because only Ukrainian opinions matter regarding who should rule in Ukraine.

(17) To push Ukraine to ceasefire negotiations equals to aid the Russian aggressors. The Ukrainian government is convinced that such a respite would benefit the Russian aggressors more than the Ukrainian defenders.

(18) To push Ukraine to peace negotiations equals to aid the Russian aggressors. Russia has no legal or legitimate claim to get anything from Ukraine that could be a bargaining chip in such a peace treaty. Russia is the aggressor. The Ukrainian government refuses to yield anything Ukrainian to Russia. Polls indicate that it enjoys an overwhelming popular support in free Ukraine.

(19) The only ones who have bargaining chips that could possibly be given to Russia in exchange for peace are other countries, especially the U.S. and EU countries. Possible bargaining chips could be frozen Russian assets and lifting of sanctions, while yielding parts of Ukrainian sovereignty to the aggressor is not acceptable to Ukraine and would reward aggression, thus provoke further aggressions. The Western governments' attempts to achieve peace for Ukraine through diplomacy were rebuffed by the Russian government, so for now there's apparently no acceptable path to peace through negotiations.

(20) There is by now no reasonable doubt that the Russian government intended to annex all of Ukraine. The renewed attack on Ukraine in February 2022 was meant as a war of conquest. The de facto dictatorial Russian government wanted to subjugate the Ukrainian people.

(21) The Russian Federation is infringing on the sovereignty of other countries as well, most notably Moldova and Georgia. It does in both cases secure secessionist puppet regimes with regular Russian armed forces in place (in Moldova, in Georgia).

(22) No NATO member is a 'bad' ally because of supplying arms to Ukraine or because of not doing so. There's simply nothing about this in the North Atlantic Treaty nor in the accession protocols.

(23) It is a war. In fact, the Russian Federation and Ukraine have been at war since 2014 already.

(24) It's deservedly called Russo-Ukrainian War because the aggressor is customarily mentioned first when naming wars. 

(25) Corruption in a country does not in any way give any other country a right to attack. That's also in the interest of the Russian Federation, which is an oligarchic kleptocracy with a de facto dictatorship.

(26) An illegal or illegitimate government does not authorise any other country to invade in general. That's not even close to an excuse for an invasion, not even for part of an excuse.

(27) Crimea is not Russian territory. The Russian opinion on this doesn't matter. 

(28) The Donbas oblasts of Donezk and Luhansk are not Russian territory. The Russian opinion on this does not matter.

(29) It's an unacceptable concept to demand that a country under attack by a nuclear power should surrender to the aggressor to avoid nuclear war. This way the nuclear powers of the world could subjugate all other countries.

(30) The delivery of arms and munitions is not an active participation in a conflict. It does not equal 'being at war'. We have centuries of history from five continents to back this up.

(31) To oppose the delivery of arms to Ukraine is a legitimate stance (freedom of opinion, freedom of speech), but it's not really a "pro-peace" or "anti-war" stance. It's first and foremost a "pro-subjugation of Ukraine" stance. A "pro-peace"/"anti-war" stance would have to take into account that a successful war of conquest might provoke more such wars. Those who sabotage the Russian effort to subjugate Ukraine have better grounds to call themselves "pro-peace"/"anti-war" for it. 

(32) Wars get very often decided on the battlefield. Sometimes peace won by campaign victory leads to a follow-up war, but very often it does not. Meanwhile, wars that were stopped by quasi-permanent ceasefires do very often lead to cold conflicts lingering for generations, which slowly poisons relations, culture and governments (examples Korea, Bosnia, Near East, partially also Cyprus and China).

TBC

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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Tactical nukes

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Russia doesn't use tactical nukes in Ukraine even though it gets humiliated and its regime and mythology are at existential risk.

How could anyone maintain the assumption that Russia would use tactical* nukes over land against NATO if there's ever a hot war between them?

How could anyone maintain the belief that tactical nukes for use over (on) land are potentially useful, for deterrence and/or for defence?

The nuclear powers promised to work towards nuclear disarmament in exchange for non-nuclear powers promising not to pursue having own nuclear weapons. They violated their obligation to pursue their own nuclear disarmament with one-sided reinterpretations of plain treaty language, supposedly turning the NPT into a one-sided treaty in which only the non-nuclear powers have obligations.

I say it's time to restart the anti-nuke movement and to push to get rid of tactical nuclear weapons. Anyone reasonable in the nuclear powers should be able to see that the loss of "tactical" nuclear weapons is easily acceptable.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: I use for the purpose of this blog text the definition of "tactical nuclear weapon" that defines it as devices that include nuclear fission and produce an overall energy yield of less than 50 kt TNTeq.

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The Kremlin's puppets

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Putin's regime is still playing the American far right like a fiddle.

They have buttons on their table, and they know exactly what happens when they press the button "American right wing shall hate other Americans and their president some more".

So POTUS wanted the two Americans who are being held with dubious criminal convictions in Russia, and his diplomats negotiated. The Russian regime did the obvious thing; it maximised how much damage it can do, for the U.S. has nobody in custody whom they really want freed.

 

They gave POTUS a young, black, female and Cannabis-using and lesbian citizen back and categorically rejected the notion of releasing the other guy, a former Marine.

Naturally, the far right sprang into action and began hating, as if POTUS had betrayed the good guy to get some woke (the word they use on everything they hate these days, but cannot defined properly) person back instead.

There was hate on the freed captive, hate on the president, ... utterly predictable.

But why was there such hate? Wouldn't a patriotic party be glad that a fellow citizen was freed? Wouldn't it be glad that the president had a success?

What does it take to hate and be outraged instead? Maybe it takes hating about half of the own country, and putting party partisanship before country?

The remarkable thing about this exchange is that it happened despite the reactions being so completely predictable. POTUS obviously decided that freeing a fellow citizen would be worth the backlash to freeing a fellow citizen. He's put country before party politics. This was clearly no issue suitable to mobilise followers for the next elections (which are now very distant), so this degree of selflessness is plausible.

By the way, that "marine"? Discharged for bad conduct. A thief. The reflexive militarism that was exposed by the reactions was interesting. "marine" = "good guy" was implied, because militarism. He's neither. The marines don't think he's one of them, they didn't want him to be one of them. A thief.

He's still a citizen who should be repatriated, but that was not on the table. And the reason for that is probably the far right wing. Their predictable response to him not getting freed is what made it so unattractive to the Kremlin to let him go.

BTW, the lying moron had two years time to get Whelan for Bout only if that was ever a possible deal. He didn't. Well, coherent thoughts are not a requirement to become a hyperpartisan hater who hates half of the own people.

The Russian regime needs to play slightly different tunes to control the German far right (or the German far left), but it knows how to do that as well. These days show who's truly the vaterlandslose Gesellen.

It's important and valuable to expose who gets played how easily and clearly. Keep in mind who's a puppet of the Kremlin, dancing by the Kremlin's tune, when you get to vote again!

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

BTW, if you think Bud is going to be a big arms dealer again, maybe importing weapons fro Putin: Bollocks. His business model was to bribe high-ranking officers to sell him what's in Russia's arms warehouses and he had a fleet of old cargo aircraft to deliver those weapons. If anything, Putin is angry at him because this guy is a big part of the reason why the Russian army lacks equipment for mobilization and a small part of the reason why it's so corrupt and lying so much.

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This is going to cause me trouble

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Foreign policy in Western Europe and later the whole EU was coined by cooperation and building of support for joint policies after 1951. This stood in stark contrast to the events of the Second World War and much of the 1930's as well as the First World War. The ultimately unsuccessful efforts to come to peaceful cooperation from the late 1920's had been picked up and brought to success.

We entered an age in which -at least within Western Europe and within our societies- confrontation had a bad reputation while cooperation, consensus-seeking and talking to adversaries had a good reputation to the point of being considered the only acceptable behaviour.

This macro level behaviour reminds me of the stereotypical advice that women give regarding conflicts; talk, talk, talk. Never in my life have I heard a woman advise to confront a source of trouble. This seems borne from evolution to me; the women of the world would have spent most of the past 900,000 years or so with broken jaws and worse if they had immediately confronted aggressive men rather than tried to keep the conflict at the level of talking (and shouting). It sure seems to have been a successful evolutionary strategy, but I suspect this success was misleading.

It's usually not the talking that reduces or solves the problem with some aggressor; it's that one man or multiple men step in to defend the woman. So the evolutionarily successful strategy wasn't really to limit yourself to talking; it was for women to buy time till men address (often solve) their problem with an aggressive man. This appears to have been lost somehow, and the belief in the power of the spoken (or written) word took over within Western societies.* 

Today's women appear to suffer from the twin delusions that their hardcoded approach is universally superior and that they typically solve conflicts with aggressive parties themselves. I have never seen the latter happen in my life. All that I ever saw was that aggressive people shied away from further escalation when men stood up and faced them, deterring further aggressive moves.

Sadly, this twin delusion has infected the political 'class'. Germany has many politicians who are highly proficient in hiding failures and shortcomings until given intense scrutiny, and highly proficient in building networks of political support within their own party. Nowhere to see is a talent or suitable character for standing up and facing an aggressor to force him to cease with his aggressions.

Instead, they fall back to the only thing they know, the only thing the women ideology recommends; talk, talk, talk. Well, this and spending public money, especially when others chose to do more than talking.

Sorry for the blunt and unsophisticated messaging, but this repertoire is terribly incomplete. Cooperation, consensus, network-building all have their place, time and subject where they are the best path of action, but the challenge posed by aggressors isn't among them. Maybe they could eventually succeed, but this would be way too slow, and lead to too much suffering and damage. What's needed is a good-old-fashioned, stone age-hardcoded behaviour of a group of men standing up and facing the aggressor selflessly.

I do not believe that the public (media, politicians, pundits) are ready to accept this publicly. Their careers depend on not acknowledging it, for none of them are competent enough for their jobs and this could become completely obvious. Our society (societies) allowed a delusional ideology to take over, and it led us to a path of giving extraordinary power to systematically flawed personalities.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: This clearly excludes their dealing with foreigners on distant continents.

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Unacceptable behaviour

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So there's a country which 

• has nuclear weapons,
• practically by government policy discriminates against its minorities,
• is known for committing war crimes,
• has way too often attacked its neighbours,
• eludes sanctions by the United Nations Security Council,
• kept territories of neighbours illegally occupied for a long time,
• is known for extensive hacking and illegal eavesdropping on private communications,
• wants more "strategic depth" at the expense of neighbours,
  
• is known for economic espionage and generally disproportionate intelligence service aggressiveness,
• is known for corruption of top politicians,
• has a censored news media,
  
• for a long time already pursued a grand strategy that involves conquest,
• is destabilising neighbours, 
• is known for assassinations abroad,
• calls everyone "nazis" who says something against its actions and
• once again decided to become an aggressor against a weaker neighbour that does not enjoy alliance protection.

We should find ways to do something decisive about it, maybe a total communications & travel & transportation embargo and blockade, with exceptions only for food and medical goods imports.

 

THIS is unacceptable behaviour.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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A messed-up international disorder

 

So, looking at the mess in Ukraine, what's my take?

The upside: Putin is apparently not the type for strategic surprise attacks. This calms my fears for NATO, as Russia could only hope to succeed with an aggression in the Baltic if it attacks by surprise. I am very pleasantly surprised about this.

Why did Western policy fail in Ukraine? In short; it was half-assed. No great power signed and ratified a bilateral alliance treaty with Ukraine to cover it until a much longer (and more overt from the beginning) NATO accession process could be concluded. Either draw Ukraine into the West or don't, half-assed measures are prone to disappoint.

So what did Russia do? The Russian Federation with Putin as de facto dictator (voting him out of office is not really an option for Russians) violated international law (Charter of the United Nations and more) by becoming aggressive against Ukraine in 2014 and occupying parts of its territory. It's thus an aggressor and occupier comparable to Iraq 90/91, Israel since 1967, Turkey since 1974 (a NATO member and I don't see any sanctions), Morocco since 1975, the U.S., UK and Poland in 2003 for a difficult to determine duration.

As you might have spotted, only one country on that list was beaten up (repeatedly) for the offence. All others officially got away, typically due to protection courtesy by the UNSC veto feature.

This is the problem: The West routinely expects non-Western countries (especially governments it doesn't like) to adhere to international law and paints them as evil when they don't (and often does so even only because there are expectations such as Iran never having violated the NPT, but still being assailed constantly). Yet International Law doesn't seem to feel all that binding and imperative to Western great power policy, or even only to its proxies.

Do as I say, not as I do.

A great attempt was made to build a world based on international law and order in 1944 with the founding of the United Nations. The 1991 war to hand back Kuwait to its kleptocrat-tyrant was widely perceived as a most promising effort to enforce such a rule of international law in the post-Cold War era. 

Yet the Americans did not scale back their (since the trigger-happiness of Reagan in the 1980's) habitual aggressions; they bombed Afghanistan, Bosnian Serbs (with Brits and Frenchmen), Sudan and Iraq (repeatedly, but with little munitions) in the short 1992-1998 time frame. None of this was legal under international law, and there wasn't even the slightest hint of fig leaf legality in the bombing of the Bosnian Serbs around Sarajevo.

Meanwhile, the NATO bureaucrats and allied politicians worked hard to keep NATO "relevant" after its original purpose became obsolete; a defensive alliance was re-worked into an intervention/war adventure club.

Then came the 1999 Kosovo Air War, preceded by a multinational campaign of lies. There was no genocide, period. The Kosovars' intent to become independent was legitimate, but the Serbs-run governments' police, paramilitary and military actions against the violent independence movement were legal under international law and an ordinary response. The conflict happened in the context of the earlier genocidal massacre committed by Serbs at Srebrenica in Bosnia and thus the Western public was fairly easily convinced and swayed by the lie of an alleged ethnic cleansing/genocide in Kosovo (I was fooled back then as well, and never again since).

Almost all Western powers of note participated in this aggression against Yugoslavia, which was blatantly against international law. The recognition of Kosovo's independence years later and ongoing Western troops presence to keep it that way provided blueprints that were later used by Russia.

West Germany/Reunited Germany had its original sin with this Kosovo affair and our federal constitutional court threw officers under the bus who had correctly and valiantly refused orders to participate in this aggression.

Afghanistan was invaded in 2001. It was no a clean self-defence by a long shot, as the Taleban were never killing anyone outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but most if not all countries kinda understood and tolerated the American rage.

Once more, NATO was brought into the conflict for absolutely no need, and very contrary to the North Atlantic Treaty, but by this point nobody seemed to care about the treaty any more. The idea of what NATO is or should be had been warped beyond recognition. The craze about the Taleban who had merely granted hospitality to UBL who helped them in their civil war lasted for two decades and very recently the U.S. government stole billions of dollars owned by the Afghan government. It appears as if they are bound to multi-generational anger about Afghanistan comparable to how they still hate Iran's government for the 1979 embassy crisis.

The Kosovo Air War blueprint of massive campaign of lies, deception and vilification was replayed by the Neocons to lie the U.S. (and the UK under the fool Blair, plus Poland) into a completely unjustified war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 (this time I didn't fall for it at all). Again, they got away with it in the UNSC, but this time the Iraqis made it very expensive for them. The American wars in the Mid East including Afghanistan total exceeds USD 6.5 trillion expenses including long-term costs.

The lying moron did "cruise missile diplomacy" (an aggression) against Syria, and most Americans seem to think he was a peacenik who abstained from aggressions. That's how badly their perception of what constitutes aggression was warped.

Now let's skip the South Ossetia War of 2008 (the Russian Federation was and is an aggressor in both South Ossetia and Abchasia, similar to what the West did in Kosovo), and look at the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

By international law, Ukraine is a sovereign country, including Donezk, Lugansk, Crimea. Its government is legal and legitimate, but that's not even of importance. Even dictatorships are sovereign countries and shall not be attacked under international law.

By international law, Russia is waging a (most of the time limited, as for example no air power was used until 2022) war of aggression against Ukraine.

The outrage is huge in the West.

How could Russia do this? Russia is evil! 

 

Sure, it's evil, but so are we Westerners.  

The problem is that the West did not only fail to bolster International law, it systematically disregarded it and preferred "might makes right" for itself.

The U.S. and UK are just as evil as Russia.*

Other European countries stood by, supported or tolerated or sometimes called for the aggressions of the U.S. and UK. Most of "the West" is guilty by association, as much as Germany was involved in starting the First World War by giving the aggressive Austria-Hungary a "blank cheque" that it'll support it in the summer 1914 crisis. Austria-Hungary's behaviour in summer of 1914 was accurately replayed by the Neocons in 2002/2003. All those politicians who like to give speeches about learning from history are cherry pickers.

Now we live in a world where Westerners understand that they aren't the only ones who can exploit such international lawlessness and play "might makes right".

This is a failure of Western foreign policy, and a well-deserved disgrace on the Western world. Putin would have had much more to fear if he ruled Russia in a world that had become accustomed to international law being followed by great powers for three decades. Now instead, he can rest assured that Western hypocrisy has dulled the blade of international law and his aggression will be tolerated by most of the world just as were Western aggressions.

Maybe we can push back the warmongers and launch another push for international law (for real), but it will be too late for Ukraine. Russia will at the very least (in my opinion) keep parts of Ukraine occupied and an open wound that very much prevents its accession into NATO, similar to what it does to Georgia.

It's much more likely that the warmongers who in large part got us into this messy, lawless world will feel an updraft and there will be more interventions and more military spending.

I hate warmongers and defense with an "s" hawks.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

*: France is a trickier case, and I dismiss Poland's participation in the war of aggression against Iraq as a one-off.