NATO's hawks

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NATO general secretary Rasmussen was an unbearable hawk who made lots of stupid and aggressive remarks, but we got rid of him finally. The new general secretary is far from a pacifist, but at least he understands non-coercive diplomacy.

So he's not the warmonger-in-chief, which is why the NATO as an institution has its SACEUR, a general instead of a politician, in that function today: Gen. Breedlove. More about this here. The man mistakes his role as a politician's and goes even beyond what's acceptable for those.

I wonder what went wrong with the strictly defensive alliance after the end of the Cold War that it's breeding such voices and attitudes. I don't think it's all about the individuals, random or the influence of individual member countries.

Instead, the bureaucratic fear of dissolution or even only the aversion against a loss of prestige, budget and power after the loss of the original mission (keep the communists at bay) may have shocked the institution into a 'fight for survival' mode. Their panicky quest for "relevance" since the 90's reminds me of the U.S. Army's "relevance" panic after the 1999 Kosovo Air War. Both bureaucracies under (imagined) existential threat had outside allies who meant to use them as tools for their own ambitions.

I'd like to write that it would have been best to reduce NATO to a skeleton bureaucracy; maybe a single military HQ (less than 1,000 personnel) with AWACS transferred to the EU, but that wouldn't have eliminated the position of SACEUR and a bureaucracy under attack like this would probably have become even more shrill.

It might have helped if the supposedly obsolete original purpose of NATO - to provide collective security for its members against attack - would have been taken more seriously at the latest since the Baltic members joined in early 2014.

related:

2009-05 The utility of NATO

2010-08 NATO finally remembers its raison d'être

2014-02 How NATO changed the perception of what an alliance is and does 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Very low casualty tolerance in recent conflicts

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Here's the short version:

The conflicts Western soldiers get sent into are not worth much expenditure in blood, and almost everybody understands this.*

The mismatch between sending the men into a warzone and not wanting to sacrifice many of them for the cause is founded on the politicians' desire to play great power games. The many people who feel better thinking of their country as a military powerhouse are the supportive useful idiots for such poor policies.

It's disingenuous to blame the low casualty tolerance of the citizenry; it's the politicians who create the mismatch, not the people.

Still, this blame game is being played almost every time when the topic is being mentioned. It's as if warmongers claimed the right to blame the people for the fact that warmonger policies are unpopular when in reality warmongers simply fail to propose adequate policies. I wonder why they get away with it so easily.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: I've yet to see anyone who admits that he or she thinks sacrificing 50,000 soldier lives to establish an (unstable) Iraqi system of governance of Western choice would have been worth it.

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[Blog] Under preparation

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I won't cover Netanjahu's primitive fearmongering; I think Kaplan did a good job at that already (and Jon Stewart with his tools as well).*

Under preparation are other topics (some not for the first time):

# big artillery-related topics with historical perspective and outlook, possibly multi-part

# propeller era military aircraft topics, sharing a bit my military history fascination

# another "Exotic weapons" topic or two

# maybe a basic training topic or two from the national perspective, not the recruit's

# I expect to keep covering the anti-surveillance state topic as (quite reliably) new info becomes available

# I expect to cover the 'better actual defence, no stupid military adventures overseas, actually reduced military expenses' preference some more. The typical call elsewhere is for an intuitive increase of military spending in response to a subjective increase of the Eastern European threat situation.

# Some general remarks on uniforms, uniformity, and privately purchased equipment

# Politics and policy in Germany are too depressing for coverage.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

edit: An Israeli expert thinks it was bullshit, too.

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Tactical ballet

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(A demonstration of police tactics in Germany)

I suppose some German police tactics developers and trainers looked at ancient Roman infantry tactics closely!

edit: A reader notified me that it might be from South Korea. I seriously cannot tell, since some German states' police agencies have adopted a dark uniform as well. Thanks J.K.!

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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[Fun] Camelflage

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You may have noticed; the comments were switched off a while ago. The reasons are several, in part it's saving me a lot of time, in part I got annoyed once too often by comments which were either hostile, off-topic or in denial of me having debunked their point in the blog text itself already. To censor the poor comments amongst the good ones was no acceptable option, so I recommend to everyone who wants the own opinion be published in a milblog to set up an own one.

I recommend MilPub and Think Defence (see blog roll on the left) for discussions; those milblogs are  debate-centric.

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Infrastructure

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A Youtube comment on this video with about 800 'thumbs up' was

"Maybe if you cut your military funding by 2%, you'll be able to

fix all the dams and bridges in America."

It's more like 10% if you look at military spending overall, almost 20% if you look at the DoD budget only:

"The nation’s surface transportation systems are facing a funding gap of

about $94 billion per year under current projected spending levels."

source

Something is going wrong when hundreds of billions of U.S. Dollars can be added on top of what's needed for actual defence in order to have offensive bullying and invasion capabilities, but meanwhile the nation's infrastructure crumbles with an annual 0.5% GDP-large funding gap.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Military theory - the evil twin

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Robinson is on his island. He's good at collecting coconuts and a poor fisherman, but he would like to eat fish much more than coconuts. Friday appears on the scene. Friday is a better fisherman, but prefers coconuts over fish.

Welcome to microeconomics 101, the simplest model of trade and how trade between two agents is a win-win for both and actual improves aggregate output. There are diagrams for this, of course. Macroeconomics has its analogy in free trade theory.

Economics is about how cooperation can lead to a better aggregate and individual outcome.

Military theory is the evil twin: It's not about how to achieve what cooperation, but about how to force others into compliance. Its only efficiency goal is to force the own will on others at least expense, whereas the aggregate outcome and at least one party's individual outcome (usually everyone's) are worse as a consequence of the process of (trying to)  forcing one's will on others.

Economics good, military theory evil. 

Too bad; countries often need the latter for avoiding its worst consequences, even if they don't like it.

Yesterday I did refer to economists' appraisal of biology as a supporting science, and suggested that military theory and political science could do the same. This wasn't by accident. Military theory and economics may be opposites, but this makes them similar as well. Economic theory is about cooperation, military theory is about confrontation. Both are about an interaction of agents, whereas a great many sciences such as geology, physics and math aren't about the interaction of thinking and competing humans at all.

Political science is in between both, in that it is both about cooperation and confrontation between competing agents (in military theory you usually don't compete with allies unless some honour code is in effect or said allies are expected to become rivals or enemies soon thereafter).

The similarities are promising enough; one field may gain insights by paying attention to other fields' findings. There sure is a better match than the faux analogies of geometry (Renaissance military thinkers) or misunderstood physics (von Clausewitz).

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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"Your genes help determine how much money you save"

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Researchers Henrik Cronqvist and Stephan Siegel constructed a measure of savings by essentially tracking the changes in the net worth of the twins between 2003 and the end of 2007. They found that identical twins—who share the exact same genes—are significantly more similar in their savings behavior than fraternal twins. In fact, they conclude that genetic differences explained roughly 33% of the variations in individual savings rates.

"Your genes help determine how much money you save"

Matt Phillips

Imagine a future in which such influences on behaviour, such biologically-mandated preferences, could be known about senior officers and top politicians before they they're empowered by command or office. It would be eerie in some way, but potentially world-changing for the better, too.

Citizens could almost know which politician would start a needless war because of some archaic territorial fight gene. An army could almost know in advance which officer would keep a cool head and find the right mix between caution and boldness.

Economics have begun to accept biology (neuroscience, for example) as a supporting science in the 90's as far as I know. Maybe political sciences and military theory should do the same, and embrace it fully to squeeze the maximum gain of insights out of it.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Isoluminence camouflage

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The rise of tiny LED lights may have made this approach practical on a large scale. A different technological approach is IIRC to use surface materials which emit light when there's an electrical current in them.

Drones of any size and aircraft could hide visually with this because it's the shadow that makes even white undersides dark and easily recognizable.

We will likely not see any use in great quantities in the next couple years because platform life cycles and upgrade intervals are long and no major conventional war forces armies to optimise themselves with great effort.

related: Wikipedia article "Yehudi lights", secretprojects forum topic "Yehudi lights"

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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An old scenario about Russia

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The similarities between 1933 Germany and today's Russia are striking.
Mortified, defeated, survived economic crisis, shrunk military, authoritarian government, desire for national greatness, territories to reclaim, history of military strength even without major allies, arms limitations treaties in force...let them ally with PR China and they could grab Eastern European territories just like Germany was able to grab Saarland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Memel[land] before appeasement was given up. Imagine a reunification of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

Guess who wrote this almost eight years ago.

Russia was actually more self-confident (going alone), faced a weakened (economic crisis) Western world and (so far) grabbed less (the equivalent of Sudetenland, Memelland). Other than that, the scenario was much more spot on than the "COIN is the future of war!" slogan.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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