Pakistan's priorities

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I found an article that kind of confirms my recent post about the Afghan-Pakistan border.

It confirms another problem as well; the Pakistani army is half-hearted in its effort against the Taliban in part because it keeps most of its power at the border with India, its supposed and historic arch-enemy. Well, it's either like that or they simply have this as an excuse.

I know from first-hand experience that many Pakistanis (in the army and in national security-related jobs) take the prospect of a war with India really seriously. It's not a faked focus.


Nevertheless, I assume that they are also serving their own partial interests by keeping the fear of a war with India alive; peaceful, relaxed relations would sooner or later cause a crash of the Pakistani army budget.

The prospect of war at the border isn't entirely fiction, though. That's where diplomacy could intervene.

A mediator could motivate India to move its military - or at least its offensive parts of its military (like armoured vehicles and helicopters) away from the border.
Pakistan could in exchange do the same, and thus free enough forces to swamp the troublesome regions with its army troops.

- - - - -

It's an open secret that Pakistan is in part still considering the Taliban as their present or future proxy. Such a shifting of army units would therefore not defeat the Taliban in Pakistan, but it would re-assert Pakistani authority to some degree and force the Taliban into the underground or non-violent politics.

The problem of Pakistani motivation is tricky, but at least their army availability problem could be solved with good diplomacy.

Sven Ortmann
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Airspace deconfliction

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I recall an interesting recount about an early night air raid against Germany (by the UK and maybe Canada). The anti-air artillery (AAA) that protected German cities were exacting their toll, and the British understood that the duration of an air raid over the target was a major variable for the AAA's effect. A longer bomber presence allowed to guns to fire longer = more, and with equal hit chance, therefore achieving more hits.

The RAF Bomber Command decided to reduce that duration to about 20 minutes, but at the same time the air raids were approaching 1,000 bomber strength. The air crews were sceptical and feared many collisions because of this.
The RAF's answer was based on the new field of operational research: They told their crews that - according to maths - there would be on average just one collision, but more than a dozen bombers would be saved from AAA.
The new tactic was tested one night and it played out exactly as expected (one collision) . It was (with modifications) used many times afterwards.


It's remarkable that some (even lethal) accidents were accepted to achieve another, more important and/or more likely advantage.

- - - - -

Let's contrast this with modern army and air force deconfliction requirements:
These requirements shall ensure that no manned object in the air collides with another object.
Three methods are dominant (and known to me):

(1) restricting assets in altitude (like "aircraft need to fly higher than x,000 ft" or "mortars must not fire higher than y,000 ft")


(2) restricting assets in time (like aircraft being limited to a time window of artillery silence)

(3) asking for permission and coordinating flexibly (but slowly)

Today's battlefields don't have a thousand manned bomber-sized objects over an area like 10 x 10 km. Collisions are much less likely - nevertheless, deconfliction is much more rigorous.

The only viable justification for this could be low opportunity costs; the advantages that are lost due to the deconfliction requirements may be even less important and/or less likely than the tiny collision chances.

- - - - -

So what are those costs? Here are some examples:

* Mortars are restricted in their firing arcs and less effective especially against high and far targets.

* Artillery is very restricted in its fire support role.

* Helicopter operations are impeded (helicopter need to go low to do their job)

* Use of radio bandwidth.

* Busy signallers and controllers (even the use of E-3 AWACS for airspace control)

* Company and battalion leaders don't use available small UAVs as much as otherwise desirable because airspace deconfliction is too limiting.


Probably most important:
* Support fires are delayed down (impacting after five to ten instead of two to three minutes, for example). This puts troops in combat at risk, makes fire missions obsolete and fire missions against moving or only briefly observed targets impossible

- - - - -

Does the tiny (like one in a million) chance of a collision justify strict deconfliction requirements at such opportunity costs?

Maybe. Maybe in present conflicts due to the low lethality enemies.
Maybe not.

It's certainly advisable to treat airspace deconfliction as a temporary requirement, though. Its rationality needs to be re-assessed for every new conflict (at the beginning and during the conflict till its end). It must not become gospel, or else we could someday do the equivalent of what the British pilots were about to do; avoid accidents and die in the process due to another problem.

S O

P.S.: This was - like many other points raised by me - in part about how small war experiences and optimization may be a terribly preparation for major warfare in the future.

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Desertec

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edit 2021:  I leave this blog post online and don't hide it, but if you want to know the current state of affairs on the subject I recommend to you this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o

 

Desertec - it's been in German news for weeks, apparently in other European news as well. It's been almost completely ignored by U.S., Australian and New Zealand's news as far as I can tell. It's a huge and credible project of European companies to establish a renewable energy supply in North Africa with continuous current power line links to Europe. Desertec is a big enough effort to provoke comparisons with Manhattan and Apollo projects and could prove to be the most important grand strategic factor for Europe in the 21st century. I wrote about such ideas (which were circulating for about three decades in Europe) in 2007, and it's obvious that the European powers will need to be involved although the project itself will by driven and financed by private companies. State-funded R&D has apparently already ensured the feasibility, but that was only a small step in comparison to what lies ahead. Such a huge project would link Europe with Northern Africa and require a close and reliable relationship. Just a short collection of thoughts: * We would care a lot about political stability and reliability of the Northern African countries * Northern African economic and social problems would become an issue for us because they could destabilize governments. Economic aid policy and trade policy could reflect that. * Lesser objectives like establishing democracy and human rights would most likely be subordinated to energy political stability and reliability. This could similar to the Cold War's competition in the Third World when support for dictators depended almost entirely on whether they declared to be "socialist" or "anti-socialist". * A formal alliance (that prevents other alliances for the Arab countries in the fine print) may develop. This could be an extension to NATO or it could replace NATO. * Any unification movement would likely be in opposition to Europe because a unified Northern African/Arab Region would be less easily influenced (see previous blog posts here and here). * We would most certainly not accept being cut off of our energy supply and go to war to secure it just as Japan did in 1941 when cut off from its oil supply. * European nations would re-orient their military to the south; a huge increase in amphibious capability and dedicated defences for the power lines would be likely. * We would want to make the Northern African countries more dependent on us to increase the safety of the project. * We could even take the modern equivalent of hostages (investments of influential Arab elites in Europe, attracting the Arab elites' youth into European universities and companies). * Northern Africa would possibly become an interest sphere for European foreign policy (and I think that such a common European policy would indeed be feasible in this context). We wouldn't allow third much country influence in this area. That could create conflicts with the PR China and the USA. * Several European powers would likely not agree that a high degree of dependence on Northern Africa is a good idea. Some or all European countries would limit the project to a small or no share of their energy supply (Norway, for example). * The company Desertec would be allowed its profits, but most likely become as politicized as Gazprom in Russia. I expect a very tight political control of the company and senior politicians in its boards.

Desertec - if realized only a quarter as big as planned - could become the most important factor in European grand strategy of the 21st century (unless the nuclear fusion power would really become practical in the 2nd half). Its effects would be as important as the Cold War for Europe - and might replace the oil riches for Arab countries. 

 

S O

Afghanistan and Pakistan

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For Britons and Americans watching the hard-fought progress of our Coalition troops in Helmand, the harsh reality is that Nato could do everything right in Afghanistan and still lose the broader regional campaign against terrorism if Pakistan fails to contain its internal militants. This makes the fight in Pakistan, and finding means to help Pakistanis help themselves, the most important battle in the world.

(Kilcullen)

Kilcullen argues that Pakistan is much bigger and more problematic than Afghanistan. He's certainly right; the Afghanistan problem has been inflated for years.
This needs to be reflected in priorities and therefore in strategy.

I've argued about this at the example of border control years ago (I think it wasn't in the blog).


An intuitive answer to the problems in Afghanistan is what many people in fact demand: To seal off the border, to interdict the smuggling of drugs and fighters. That would be fine for the campaign in Afghanistan; it would reduce the pressure there.
The problem: The pressure would still exist. It would stay in Pakistan and cause much greater trouble. A campaign against smuggling would also add the smugglers (traders) to our list of enemies for no good reason.

This could be considered one of the many seeming paradoxes in war. The intuitive, quick answer is 180° wrong (and not being refuted often enough).


The sad part in this is that there's really little hope of getting us out of the mess except by simply disengaging or by leaving effective counter-Taliban forces in power.

Sven Ortmann
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Kwang Hwa VI

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I learned more than ten years ago about a Republic of China (Taiwan) naval project for a 'stealth' missile boat Kwang Hwa VI (~fast attack craft).
It kept me puzzled about its purpose all the time.


Taiwan has two obviously dominant naval requirements:
1) Deter/Defend against an invasion by the PRC
2) Protection of its overseas trade (deter/break a blockade)

Other requirements certainly exist as well, but are of lesser importance
3) cooperate with air power by providing surface-to-air missile coverage over sea
4) land attack
5) protection of naval link with Pratas Islands and Taiping Island (near PRC coast)

I don't see how missile boats would be useful in such a setup. Such boats are much less cost-efficient in an anti-invasion role than coastal missile batteries (on trucks) and also quite useless for convoying.

The only utility seems to be their land attack ability - if their Hsiung Feng II (or III) missiles are prepared for it. Yet, even then it's questionable whether they're worth their cost. It would be much cheaper to launch the missiles from an auxiliary ship (with strategic surprise) or to simply use longer-ranged, heavier missiles. Finally, they've got their islands as forward bases for such land attack missions.

The Taiwanese Hsiung Feng missile family is actually quite interesting, but that doesn't explain the missile boats.

Well, maybe the Taiwanese defence establishment knows a good explanation for the class.

Sven Ortmann
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Plebiscites and a Federal German myth

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Germany has several myths about its history that are, well, historically incorrect.

One such example was the overestimation of the Marshall Plan.

Today is a good day to rip into one more.
I wrote yesterday about petitions "It's the closest thing to a federal plebiscite we got."

We don't have federal/nation-wide plebiscites in part because of a German Federal Republican myth:

The myth that plebiscites are evil because they (allegedly) helped to crash the Weimar Republic and helped Hitler.

I could be lazy and just point at an old newspaper article that already ripped this myth apart.
I'm not THAT lazy, so I'll provide a summary for those readers who cannot read German.

There were only seven nation-wide plebiscite attempts between 1919 and 1933.
(The so-called plebiscites during Hitler's reign were irrelevant propaganda tools, not plebiscites).


Of these seven attempted plebiscites were three ineligible because they were about finance policy, and only the president was authorized to launch a plebiscite on that topic. There was no vote on these three.

Another attempt was accepted, but not executed any more.

Three other plebiscites were executed, but all failed because they didn't reach 50% participation as required for becoming effective. The political strategy of the time exploited this rule by boycotting the plebiscites of political opponents.

There was not a single national plebiscite in the Weimar Republic that had any consequence.
The myth is simply nonsense.

- - - - -

There are in my opinion two reasons for why we don't get federal plebiscites:

1) The politicians don't want to lose their legislative monopoly.

2) Too many people are not really democratic-minded because they don't really trust the voter to vote responsibly in plebiscites. They prefer to have professional politicians and bureaucrats as a filter.

Sven Ortmann
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Too funny to ignore

Obama Axes Pentagon Plan To Build Billion Dollar Tank In Shape Of Dragon

Our democracy evolves...

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The German population is aging in average and median - it's not a disaster, but an important change.


Some have predicted a clash of generations as the elders get a larger and larger share of the vote. Things like high pensions and deficit spending (effectively moving the burden of state expenses on the young) have been used as examples.
The results about this are mixed so far.

Instead, we've got a completely different trend; the elders don't understand the youth and their lifestyle and concerns.
This is no news, ABSOLUTELY NO NEWS. The ancient Greeks already wrote extant texts about this phenomenon.
It's also quite ridiculous because exactly the generation that got in trouble with conservative parents for their rock and Beatles music (born in the 40's and 50's) is now opposing the internet pop culture of the young German generation.

The 'young' Germans (I draw the line at about 35-40 years age for this purpose) seem to have found a tool to resist intolerant (and at times technology-incompetent) elder's politics.
The politicians who try to grab elder votes by representing their views seem to face more and more opposition.


The online petition against internet censorship addressed one concern of the young Germans that most elders didn't even understand. This petition got a record-breaking participation without being significantly supported by mainstream offline media.

Now there's another one. That's also against a pet project of intolerant conservative politicians (conservative, but not just CDU/CSU): Their campaign against violence in video games.
Their argumentation gets refuted by scientific experiments all the time, but they persist because the elder generation has its firm prejudices.
The new petition is only one week old and already reached the critical 50,000 signatures mark that forces the parliament committee to listen to the petition initiator.

American politicians are scared of nipples - German politicians are scared of guns. Even on screens.


The political parties attempt to wage their campaigns for the federal elections in the internet as well. The most conservative parties are apparently failing the worst in this terrain.
A new party - Piratenpartei - that focuses on fighting exactly against these conservative policies gets surprisingly much support (and a similar party won actually a seat in the European parliament in the Swedish elections).

I doubt that the new party will have a lasting impact. The new ability of grass-roots ad hoc mobilization of voters and future voters is much more impressive.

The German political world was similarly challenged by the environmental-friendly movement of the late 70's that eventually led to the establishment of a substantial green party.
The reaction of the established parties was to counter by adapting most of their messages, just a little bit weaker. The green party was kept small (typically five to little more than ten per cent of the vote) and German policies became more environmentally friendly.

That's a well-proven approach, probably introduced by Bismarck (a somewhat ruthless, but most likely the greatest German politician of all time) to German politics when he invented obligatory social insurances in response to the rise of socialists in the 19th century. The worker's life quality was raised, and the left was stopped in its advance.

Something like this may happen again - especially if some key politicians are much smarter than I usually assume.
The Piratenpartei may eventually be absorbed by the liberals, but the e-petition campaigns, the Piratenpartei and all the other resistance may have a lasting impact and may defeat the conservative populism/ignorance.

The new ability of near-spontaneous mobilization for e-petitions will most certainly last as well. The youth has (almost) no representatives in the parliament, in the top leadership of parties, in the boards of the public television stations, in church leadership and it lacks a lobby.
Nevertheless, its voice can now be heard.

It's the closest thing to a federal plebiscite we got.

Sven Ortmann
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Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty violations

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source : en.rian.ru

The NNPT has been violated many times by its signatories.

You do likely think of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, right?

Well, that's the kind of (alleged) violations that made the (Western) news.
The whole picture is different, and full of hypocrisy (as often in Western security policy).

Article I (no assistance to non-nuclear powers for nuclear weapons programs) was likely violated by the PRC with its help for the nuclear program of Pakistan.
I do also recall an erratic proposal by President Sarkozy made to Chancellor Merkel that could have amounted to shared control of nukes - in violation fo the treaty.

Article VI

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

This is a most interesting article, and no doubt one that was violated by most nuclear powers - for decades.
The few nuclear arms reduction treaties of the 80's and later are a poor excuse.
President Obama hinted at possible disarmament and raised significant domestic protest - as if the U.S. hasn't committed itself (by its own free decision and in its own interest) to pursue that goal for more than four decades already.

Non-nuclear powers didn't only join this treaty for preventing a world-wide nuclear arms race; they also did so because this treaty had article VI, and gave them the moral right to demand nuclear arms reductions among the nuclear powers.

The PR China and India both pursued a minimal deterrence strategy with nuclear arsenals not much larger than the nuclear armament of a single 80's or later U.S. or Soviet SSBN (now about 96 and 48 warheads respectively).

It's my impression that the PR China is the only official nuclear power and NNPT signatory power that did not violate article VI (yet). It was and is already at a minimum deterrence level (rumored to be about 150-200 nukes) and can legitimately wait at that level till the other nuclear powers of the NNPT have reached that level and are ready for a disarmament treaty as well.

The French and British are significantly above a "minimal deterrence" level, and this is in part a result of their SSBN-based strategy. The have one or at most two SSBN at sea (and therefore likely to survive a first strike) at any time. This requires additional nuclear weapons in docked SSBNs. Their SSBNs have nevertheless more nuclear warheads than necessary (UK Vanguard class "up to 128" but more likely 64, French Le Triomphant class "up to" 96 warheads).

Article X

1. Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.

The NNPT has been presented to the public as a kind of holy international law when Iraq, Iran and North Korea were under criticism (strangely, rarely so Israel - Israel is still no 'official' nuclear power because that would illegalize U.S. military aid due to a U.S. law).
It isn't. It's possible to leave the treaty on relatively short notice, and being bullied by a conventionally superior nuclear power counts as a valid reason.


There's a general problem with the slow and half-hearted nuclear arms reduction steps. Other nations with no or much less nuclear arms can reasonably and legitimately ask why they should stick to the NNPT and have no nuclear weapons when the conventionally quite unassailable nuclear power assert their need to have thousands or hundreds of nculear weapons. It's this hyprocrisy that damages the credibility of Western non-proliferation policies.


Whatever nation insists that another nation shall follow its obligations from this treaty should follow its own NPPT obligations, or be exposed as a nation of hypocrites.

S O

edit: OK, the arsenals of UK and France may be 'small' enough to be OK (preliminarily) under article VI.

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Another paradox of war

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I think I mentioned Luttwak's "Strategy: The logic of War and Peace" before. It's a great book, and really helps in regard to the (seeming) paradoxes in warfare.


Warfare is tricky and complex, a superficial idea is very often 180° wrong because some tiny factor was ignored or misunderstood. That's especially difficult for politicians because they have usually not enough background on their own to detect such problems.

- - - - -

Here's one paradox about which I thought recently:

Let's consider all military action as a mere method of demonstrating the enemy the disadvantage of further resistance. It's not meant as total disarmament (that's impossible in many conflicts due to geographical barriers or guerrilla warfare anyway). Instead, the military is tasked to create the conditions in which the war can be concluded satisfactorily in negotiations.


The spontaneous assumption would be that more military success (destruction, dead, wounded, prisoners, terrain under control) advances the cause.

Think about it. Does it really advance the cause?

Imagine this scenario: An enemy island nation has an air force, an army, an industry and a navy. You destroy the air force, then the navy and the industry. Only the army and its unassailable control of the enemy country is left.
Did this preliminary result help to convince the enemy that they should accept your conditions?

I don't think so. They have (almost) nothing left to lose. They will certainly mourn over what they lost, but considering the past losses as relevant for decisions about the future would mean to fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy. The enemies may fold if they're irrational, but they would not be particularly motivated (by the destruction) to fold.


It may be a better idea to play the "threat" card as much as possible and as long as possible in support of the policy. Mere destruction of military force is not necessarily advantageous. That's not intuitive, but this is a (seeming) paradox of war, after all.
You cannot threaten to destroy an industry any more if you already did so. The only major ace left in the scenario are the opportunity costs of a delayed recovery from the war.

This false paradox was probably at work in many wars.
* It may have delayed the Japanese surrender in 1944/45 (although that was no war with moderate U.S. war goals).
* It would have been a problem for Hitler if he had continued to focus on the UK in 1941 (that case would have come very close to my hypothetical scenario).
* The paradox may also have been a prolonging factor in the 1999 Kosovo Air War when NATO air strike planners ran out of good targets.
* Finally, it's probably always at work against underground forces (guerrillas), who after all, have very little to lose besides their lives (unless the have to fear the 'Hama' tactic).
It has generally a great potential of prolonging wars.

There's a difference between warfare that pursuits the unconditional surrender of an enemy and warfare that aims for a moderate, negotiated peace. The unconditional surrender version is relatively rare, but was most prominent in WW2 - exactly the war that coined many (most?) people's understanding of a conventional war.

An unconditional surrender can best be achieved by actual or guaranteed disarmament.

A moderate, negotiated peace treaty can best be achieved by threatening to inflict additional damage to the opponent.

Sadly, WW2 skewed our understanding of conventional war with its absoluteness and totality. The mad Cold War, especially in its "mutually assured destruction" phase, added to this distortion.

We (actually, first and foremost our foreign and national security politicians) need to re-learn the dynamics that lead to successful limited wars.

I don't advocate limited wars of choice, of course.

S O
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