Warmongers

Invading another country for no good reason is widely recognized as being a bad, bad thing. Those responsible for it are usually considered as really bad persons - just think about what we thought about Saddam Hussein once he had invaded Kuwait.

It's interesting to recall why it's like that. Wars imply waste of resources, death and suffering. It also leads quite often to unfair peace treaties and of course there's general assumption that the aggressor is superior to the victim. Nobody likes to become a victim of a stronger power, so we generally tend to dislike the aggressor for this reason as well.

Many of these war disadvantages also apply to wars that were started with good intentions and it's obvious that also the wars begun by Western powers in the past couple of years caused a lot of death and suffering - and often rather unfortunate and unfair conditions after the hostilities.

It's about time to no longer limit the contempt for warmongers to dictators who want to annex other countries. Our very own warmongers deserve the same treatment. The very minimum is to deny them every influence on our policy, direct and indirect. It's time to counter their warmongering which is usually preceded by scaremongering to scare us into stupid wars.
let's stop them ASAP, their scaremongering only works because there's no decent lobby that counter them.

Scaremongers usually invent a lie and repeat it a couple thousand times till many people believe them without ever having seen an evidence. Some even belief strongly that evidence exist, although there is none. The scaremongering also works because of networking and because of the inclination of mass media corporations to pick up such sensational stories that address very basic instincts like fear.

Once enough people are scared it becomes simple for warmongers to execute the most irrational and stupid policies that let us run into costly nonsense adventures that kill and maim our troops as well as innocent enemy troops and civilians. Wars benefit only some war-related corporation CEOs, employees and shareholders. Wars and stupid interventions/military adventures cost us a huge share of our economic output - resources that we should better use for rational preparations for the future like education, preventive health care, improved relations to other countries, alternative energy and raw material supply and efficiency improvements.

Scaremongers are enemies of democracy and therefore enemies of freedom. They manipulate the people to enable policies which are hurting these people instead of helping them. They are traitors and deserve to be treated as such.

Warmongers are enemies of their people. They deserve the most severe punishments that our civilization is willing to use for the most severe crimes.

Warmongers are worse than serial killers by several orders of magnitude.
You know who's a warmonger in your country. Think about these persons again.

And especially don't be scared by scaremongers about Iran, or even agree to a war of aggression incited by warmongers against Iran. It's their newest pet project.


Sven Ortmann

Societies' ingrained commemoration of war

Different societies have different histories, and different lessons learned from history.
Germany is a very special case of this, as its present state and society were created to prevent a repetition of past mistakes, especially war of aggression and fascism.

Europe has been ravaged by war for millennia, and especially the war-torn countries of continental Europe have learned many lessons about the terrible effects of war.
Germany, for example, has been depopulated by the thirty years war in the 17th century and had its cities destroyed by World War II.
Germany became a major power quite late due to late unification and difficult geo-strategic position in the center of Europe. The following attempts to gain advantages concerning territory and natural resources by war were complete failures and ended as defeats in two devastating world wars. The attempts to gain prosperity by own economic activity before and after the two world wars (1871-1914, 1949-today) were great successes. Germany had learned the lesson that you don't need much territory and you don't need to have rich natural resources to be successful and influential.
High efficiency agriculture can substitute for territory and trading is a much more efficient means to raw material supply security than wars are.

But this seems to be less the case for the late colonial powers UK and France and for those states who never really tried the wrong recipes themselves like Poland, for example.
The USA had only one devastating war at home, and only in a small part of itself. The expenses and losses of the World Wars were either small (World War I) or remembered as heroic history of a "Golden Generation" (World War II).
It has - and this is not easily understandable - a quite aggressive stance to raw material security, using a military power to exert influence and even to wage war for raw materials in the Middle East.

This and the fading memories of the past create a - let's call it "Zeitgeist" in Europe - it misguides people.
The old lessons learned are pushed aside by the promises of smaller military actions than conventional war to give economic advantages, comfort and prestige at low costs.

Well, the costs are not low. Even if you invade a country with less than 100 KIA (killed in action) soldiers, you still end up paying billions of US-$ or € for the adventure.
A comparison of the economic advantages and disadvantages of the U.S. adventures in the Middle East would be devastating.
It would have been cheaper to get away from the oil addiction, probably even without the costs of the extremely expensive Iraq occupation.

Others are much smarter than Europeans and Americans.
The Chinese buy plantations in the Third World to secure their renewable resources supply. They become friends of dictatorships world wide with a strict business-only approach to investments and contracts for mineral an hydrocarbon resources.
The Chinese secure their raw material supply by being smart and applying the lessons learned with European blood instead of alienating resources-rich countries and wasting their own nations' energies and financial power in military expeditions.

Our approach to address our future global needs is wrong.

We should strengthen our relationships with weak nations instead of playing Great Power games and wasting our attention and resources on military adventures.

S O

Tactical visibility

Discussions in the past years on military technology were often about new sensor technologies to find and identify enemies and about new communications technologies to relay this information to someone who can engage the target effectively.

Well, this is an utterly offensive approach that has its merits, but also its limits. The best-case scenarios never worked out in practice - not the least because the enemy adapts, as always.

This fits into the general trend in warfare since the mid-19th century's Minie rifle:
The enemy will likely kill you if he can see you.

Firepower in terms of accuracy, range and also rate of fire has been improved steadily since smooth bore weapons became outdated in the 19th century.
Dispersion and camouflage and since World War 1 (again) armour were successful means to negate much of the enemy's firepower.
The lack of troop numbers would force us to embrace the concept of dispersion in today's conflicts even if there was no the firepower argument, and armour has spread even to personal bullet-resistant armour for non-infantry soldiers.
But dispersion only reduces excessive casualties and has severe drawbacks such like locally reduced capabilities.
Armour has its drawbacks as well, like heavy weight and movement restrictions. Neither tanks nor soldiers can be fully armoured to withstand all typical attacks. Tanks have their weak spots, and body armour protects only the torso (partially) against rifle fire and the head against fragments. Wounds in the extremities reduce the fighting power of the infantry a lot and being hit at an unprotected spot is quite likely.

But let's have a look at the third element - camouflage. Its purpose is to enable troops and equipment to not recognized by the enemy. It's a primarily non-technological means to survive firepower and therefore not in the spotlight, just like dispersion.
The ability to fight without being seen is a distinct strength of indirect fires as indirect fire support troops attempt to stay out of line-of-sight, but also infantry can use the principle to its benefit (and does to some extent).
Not being seen is more than just camouflage. It's about deception, careful movement, manipulation of night sight, obstruction, ability to sense while being unseen - and it's a mindset.
A mindset that tells all infantrymen and even more so scouts that they need to remain unseen as much as possible.
Imagine how this vital mindset is ruined by vehicle patrol, diplomatic, symbolic, construction, checkpoint, garrison and escort duties during counter-insurgency and peace-keeping missions. A generation of NATO soldiers becomes accustomed to the idea that the enemy sees you all the time while they themselves can see but not identify him. This creates a completely different mindset than the one necessary for inter-state wars (those wars which are sometimes really about defending ourselves). The result is an over-emphasis on armour (keyword: MRAP) that leads to excessive costs and logistical problems as well as tactical and movement restrictions.

In a discussion some time ago I was amazed how someone considered supporting fires as the only viable solution to the tactical problem of an infantry or recon squad being pinned down by the fire of a single MG.
This scenario reminded me immediately of a device of World War I, a device that allowed a sniper to aim and shoot with his rifle without exposing himself. Stuff like this has been attempted with modern camera and monitor technology, but in fact it doesn't require much more than a simple mirror and mechanics system. It would enable a squad marksman to shoot effectively while being pinned down. Add some obstruction by smoke and you can defeat a 1,000 US-$ MG without the need to call a 50 million US-$ fighter-bomber or (admittedly much cheaper) tank/artillery/mortar fire for help.

Staying pinned down and wait for superior firepower to arrive is sometimes the best choice when you're fighting low quality enemies like Central Asian irregulars, as it promises a happy ending without casualties. But it's no useful mindset for a large-scale war against medium or high quality enemies (which would outflank you or use indirect fire weapons to counter the cover) and very different ratios between ground troops in combat, available fire support and available bandwidths (resulting in much less available supporting fires).

Well, the tricky thing about being unseen in combat is to see the enemy at the same time. That's tricky because the latter often requires a line of sight. Mirrors and camouflage help to combine these conditions, as do the much more expensive remote sensor and robotics systems.
A real infantry combat revolution comparable to the Minie bullet is about to happen with the wide-spread use of infra-red sights by infantrymen. An extreme infantry fighting power inequality will arise once at least all infantry leaders, scouts, machinegunners and designated marksmen are equipped with such sights. The army which can equip its troops like this can use obstruction by smoke to break the line of sight for the enemy while retaining its own ability to see the enemy as IR sights can see through some smokes.
It's still possible to camouflage against IR observation, but very difficult and sometimes even outright impractical.
This (expensive) technological advance could help us getting back to a "I see you, but you cannot see me" mindset.

It's really necessary to preserve mindsets suitable for large-scale wars, and to restore skills and mindsets lost in the recent needless overseas adventures to stay up to the task of protecting our sovereignty.

Sven Ortmann

War within Europe

The exhausting effect of World War Two and the unifying effect of common enemies turned both Eastern and Western Europe into quite peaceful regions during the Cold War. Europe saw conflicts and even a civil war in this time, but no inter-state war.
People became used to living in peace with each other apparently, as we saw no inter-state wars in former Warsaw Pact or NATO countries since then as well. The Yugoslavian Wars of 1991-1999 were a very unpleasant variation of the norm, as well as tensions between Greece and Turkey.

So what might lead to intra-European wars in the future?

The old idea of conquest don't seem to be as strong as a few generations ago. Most people realize that land mass does not equal wealth or power, even own natural riches are dispensable. Germany, Italy and Japan began to flourish once they gave up expansionism.

Conflicts of religion are hardly imaginable. The Balkans had their semi-religious conflicts in the Yugoslavian War, and the borderline between Christian and Muslim regions is mostly on Europe's edges.
Minority insurgencies based on religion (like German Muslim Turks vs. German state and so on) are quite unlikely as the immigrants dominate no territories and it's excessively difficult to even launch an insurgency if your supporters are a minority everywhere. They cannot claim any territory for the same and historical reasons.

Wars over natural resources are unlikely as well. Europe has much less natural resources than it uses, which makes its own resources an asset of minor importance. Water is only short in South and Southwest Europe and even then it's much simpler to fix the water transport system than to wage war.

Wars over trade opportunities (like control over pipelines or harbours) offer little good reasons for war as well.

War over influence/power. That's the Russia card. A direct confrontation between nuclear powers about something secondary like prestige or influence seems not advisable. It might happen that the West-East conflict causes wars in or between smaller influenced nations in East Europe (Moldavia, possible Ukraine civil war) or Russia's southern periphery (Caucasus), though.
Another possibility is that the Western world divides into two alliances, with some European nations allying with non-European nations (like UK with USA and so on).

Finally there's war over ethnics.
It' likely good thing that Hungary is only a small power as Hungarian enclaves exist in many of its neighbouring countries. The ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia has apparently been thorough and might prevent future wars. Conflicts may arise around the Albanians which live in Kosovo and Macedonia and not only in Albania itself.
One of the safest way to cause a war is to put several nationalities into one state, rule the state with marginal or no democracy and wait till it collapses.
This happened in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Soviet Union, Austria-Hungary and a couple of other states which had well-developed nationalities (instead of just tribes like African mixed states) on their territory.
Can anybody explain to me why so many politicians want to enlarge and empower the European Union while accepting that it offers less democracy (especially ridiculously indirect-indirect-indirect democracy that assures that the voters have no significant power any more)?

The current development of the EU to a state with marginal democracy is laying the foundations for an intra-European war of secession by 2030-2060. The potential of this is in my opinion greater than that of many other imaginable intra-European conflicts.

S O

German overseas military operations - serious?

The German army and navy have significant overseas operations, patrolling in the coastlines of Lebanon and Somalia and peace keepers in Kosovo and Afghanistan, for example. The peacekeeping force in Afghanistan is even in a war-like situation.

It's an open secret that the past German governments have used troops commitments as a means to build up political capital because they want to get a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council.

Untimely withdrawal of forces would cost political capital and this is likely why the politicians keep renewing those missions ... again and again ... for years ... eight years now for KFOR (Kosovo).

The interest in actually solving or defusing the conflicts seems to be rather limited. Diplomatic activity for this seems to be very limited, probably kept secret. Multinational institutions like NATO, EU and U.N. are held responsible for this work.

This is not the only hint that makes some people wonder how serious those commitments really are.
Troops are held away from combat as much as possible. Either geographically (as in Afghanistan) or by the choice of troop types (recon planes, patrol ships, advisers).

Finally, there's something that exposes a peace-like mindset and accordingly the lack of seriousness: Hostages in Afghanistan.
Our media reports captured soldiers of any nationality in Afghanistan as "hostages", not as "prisoners" or "prisoners of war". Well, that's the media.
But our politicians do obviously pay for the freedom of civilian hostages in Afghanistan, thereby encouraging thugs to take more hostages (many nations seem to do that).
This does not fit to any serious commitment of creating a lawful, peaceful Afghanistan.

German rulers sold their troops to England as mercenaries for the American war of independence in the 18th century. Today our politician sell our modern troops for imaginary political capital in their quest for a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council.
Finally, there's also the motivation of our past three secretaries of defense that's called "prestige".

The German top politicians aren't serious about peacekeeping or defusing conflicts - they just want to contribute as much as the German public will tolerate.
 

S O

National security and economy

I have already written about the sustainability of military power a while ago.

The sustainability is a very important criterion for long-term national security planning.
Economic power balances will shift over time, and just like the industrialization in the late 19th century turned Germany into a Great Power and the industrialization in the 1920's and 1930's turned Russia/Soviet Union into a much more potent power than grasped by contemporary analysts in the west.
We'll also see shifts in the next decades. China and India are obviously on the rise (but they'll have at least one economic crisis as well), while Europe and North America are on the decline (not measured in money, but measured in industrial capacity).

We have seen episodes in military history during which economic power in terms of money alone was sufficient for dominant military power. That was mostly related to mercenary armies and all such examples took place before the middle of the 19th century.
Since that time we've seen how the ability to produce the equipment and consumables for warfare in a war economy was the primary variable for military power.

Now look at the situation of our present western economies: We have lots of money and secured raw material supply, but huge chunks of our industrial capacities moved into non-allied countries of the world.

This won't be a problem for national defense affairs as long as we stay out of total wars and limit confrontations to small wars, preferably beating on economically and militarily ridiculously inferior nations like Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Yugoslavia and so on. As long as we do this, we'll only struggle with so-called asymmetric warfare challenges that do not threaten our sovereignty, and barely our interests.
But once we return to what we were best in during the 20th century - conventional warfare among industrialized nations - we'll recognize painfully that we gave away much of our war-relevant economic strength.

This is probably the point at which most readers think about how inferior possible challengers are in training, doctrine, expertise and the like. The present is always deceiving if you try to look 20 or more years ahead.

Think about the proud Royal Navy of August, 1889, showing its powerful fleet in front of Queen Victoria and German Emperor Wilhelm II at Spithead. The German navy was a mere coastal defense organization with marginal cruiser forces at that time, lesser in power than every one of the many RN fleets world-wide.
15 years later a technological revolution (Dreadnought all big gun battleship) - embraced by the Royal Navy as well as by many other navies - made the entire Royal Navy battlefleet (and all others) obsolete.
20 years later the Royal navy struggled in an attempt to keep its superiority over the German navy.
25 years later both navies were in war with each other.
27 year later the RN prevailed during the Battle of Jutland (at greater loss of personnel and material) despite its technological flaws (several secondary explosions in battle cruisers) . It did so because the economic superiority of the Entente alliance had enabled the RN to continue building the newest, most powerful battleships (super dreadnoughts; "R" and "Queen Elizabeth" classes with 15" guns) while the German navy had fewer of these in production, at lesser priority. But there were the submarines, and the RN was almost defeated by this mostly unanticipated factor...

The UK's advantage in that conflict was that it still controlled the maritime access to world raw material markets. NATO countries are in the same lucky position today.

But no one in the UK would have suspected that within less than a generation the proud Royal Navy would be in such a dire situation against a navy that was at that time still a minor force. But the foundations were already laid by 1889, as Germany's economy was growing rapidly (being an industrialization late-comer) especially in the steel industry sector.

By the way - did you also read about armour-quality steel shortages due to the little conflict in Iraq? The few thousand armoured cars needed for that conflict apparently stretched the U.S. armour steel production capacity to its limits.

Don't take it as written in stone that NATO nations will have superior war economies for major wars in the future.

S O

India's cultural power

I have for my pleasure a client of Metacafe, a service comparable to YouTube. The search function on their website is the worst ever and the service has some other drawbacks, but the client downloads videos and other content in the background when my computer runs and some of it is indeed worth a look or just outright funny.
One of the categories that are downloaded is the image category, and there's been a huge trend in the past months at least; Bollywood celebrities.
The Indians (those in South Asia...) have a very different taste concerning women beauty (round face, larger eyes, thicker lips), while their male celebrities remind me a bit of young George Clooney, a bit darkened.
Anyway; having noticed this I looked a bit around in the Internet and real world and it seems as if India's population is becoming more extrovert about its culture.

Cultural power is easily misunderstood or ignored, but cultural influence is in fact a great power.
Let's use Germany as an example. Once the every family had a house or flat for itself again years after 1945, (Western) Germany proceeded to gain some wealth. But it lacked a model to use the wealth and adopted the US American model. Well, not completely, but in large part. The influence was obvious - it's quite impossible to feel more connected or allied to a nation that's very foreign to you than to one that's culturally very close (and not offensive against your nation).

China might expand in terms of industrial production like no other country, but India seems to expand its cultural influence like no other country. China isn't doing any progress in this field because Hong Kong Chinese already seem to have spread most of Chinese culture that's attractive to foreign nations in the past decades.

What might be the result of growing Indian cultural power? It'll certainly progress in economic and military power as well, so there's a potent mixture.

Indians are still present in some African nations (former English colonies), but I'm not aware if they have trader networks there like the Lebanese and Chinese. So it might be that India's influence in Africa won't match the one of China.

It's living in conflict with its Western neighbour Pakistan (which is kind of allied with China anyway) while its Eastern neighbour Myanmar doesn't seem to be very important in the long term. South East Asia otherwise is rather in the Chinese influence zone.

Indian emigrants might influence Australia a lot in the future, but that applies to China as well.

Indian cultural/political/economic ties with Europe and North America might be most interesting. India has a lot of inhabitants that look almost like Caucasians, which might simplify a convergence.
Indian emigrants in the USA, UK and Canada could help to exercise cultural influence.

By the way; the U.S. model of culture has definitely reached its peak long ago - it's not safe to assume that the U.S. American cultural influence in the world will remain as strong as today forever.

Maybe the most relevant consequence of India's rise is that an industry-depleted USA might lose its influence in Europe in the next decades while India and Europe converge? This could be very relevant, as a triple alliance Russia-PR China-India seems not to be feasible due to Indian-Chinese conflicts and rivalry.

India might drift into the "Western" camp and have much closer ties to Europe than we can imagine today.

S O

East Asian security challenges and Europe

In theory and practice most of Europe and all of Northern America are allied. It's been common in history that an alliance shares threats and foes, but this time the partners are so far away from each other and have so different stances in the world that it's more complicated.

American people with interest in foreign or defense policy often consider the PR China as the next big opponent. The USA have security treaties with East Asian countries in addition to their NATO obligations. The result is that an invasion of Taiwan or South Korea would for Americans almost be like a declaration of war on the USA.
For most Europeans, it would rather be a severe disruption of international trade and an event that would be handled through the United Nation's institutions.

This difference is quite important and should be understood by Americans. I know about no security pact between any of the European nations and any of the East Asian nations. It's the other end of the world for Europeans, where some industrial consumer goods come from and to where some of our businessmen go for investments.

The only European country with really strong security interests in East Asia is the semi-Asian Russia.

Sven Ortmann

Iraq War developments

Probably the only benefit that I had when I changed from an analogous satellite to digital terrestrial TV receiver some weeks ago is that I can now see CNN International. I'd prefer BBC World, but well. CNN International has the hilarious Daily Show with John Stewart, and I'm a fan of this satirical humour since I saw it in youtube.
Recently I continued to see the Late Edition or how that political show is called, and a Republican Senator highlighted a story about Shi'ites in Iraq turning against the Mahdi army (Al Sadr's militia). This and what happened previously in the Al Anbar province where Iraqi tribes (including an influential smuggler tribe) turned against AQ was presented as signs for a positive development in Iraq.

Well, I understand the principle of divide et impera, but splitting an inhomogenous nation into even more opposing factions does not look to me like a winning strategy. It increases the intensity of the conflict, even if away from the occupying/foreign forces in Iraq.

I pointed out much earlier that in my opinion the Iraq conflict is a defeat for the U.S. anyways, but even if the costs of the conflict were ignored, those developments barely qualify as breaks. What do people like this Senator expect those Iraqi factions to do?
- continue eternal conflict. No success, just fuel in a civil war fire.
- both become peaceful after showing their different strengths. Right, and I'm the pope.
- one overwhelms another, is strengthened by the success and turns on other forces, probably foreign ones. Not nice.
- one overwhelms the other and does not use the newly-gained power for anything. Sounds like some people would believe this.

In the case of the Mahdi army the citizen themselves got annoyed by criminal militiamen and probably not a tribe or other militia. But if the Mahdi army loses territory and followers, other powers which are so far probably not influential at all will replace it.

The only success for the foreign forces in Iraq could be the creation of a true Iraqi state as William S. Lind, a respected national security analyst in the USA, points out in his blog. A state that successfully claims the monopoly of force.
Such a state is not in sight as the state's servants appear to be usually more loyal to their faction than to the central state. Further dividing the Iraqi society into even more opposing groups might weaken unfriendly groups, but it does not promote the creation of a properly functioning Iraqi state, powerful enough and with loyal personnel to end the civil war.

The recent actions against Blackwater are probably a well-orchestrated move to give the Iraqi government more popular support, legitimacy and authority in Iraq as well as a move to discipline out-of-control para-military contractors.
This might be part of a strategy aimed at strengthening the central state. This strategy might involve weakening only opposing militias instead of overpowering all militias. The increasing diplomacy between U.S. officers and tribal representatives in Iraq hints at this.

In this case we could forget about the creation of an Iraqi state to Western standards and instead expect that it will become something that resembles rather Lebanon before the Lebanese state was doomed by the Israeli invasion of 1982.
I don't see any long-term advantages in an unstable, Lebanon-like Iraq. It's too sad that this is quite the most promising scenario for Iraq today. Maybe the warmongers will wish sometime in the future that Saddam returns and rules Iraq with an iron fist in isolation as he did before 2003.

Sven Ortmann

"Leader of the free world"

"Anführer der freien Welt" ("leader of the free world"), I remember this.
The U.S. presidents were called like that in Germany. I remember this well, I heard it a lot in the 1980's and 1990's. Reagan, Bush senior, Clinton.
No matter if Clinton had blowjobs or sex - he was called the leader of the free world.
Sometimes this was changed to "Leader of the Western world", but everybody meant the same.

I cannot remember having heard this later than 2001. I believe the cut was when people became irritated by Bush junior's preparations for a needless Iraq war. He wasn't leading the Western world, he was only trying to do so and failed.

I remember having read that Bush senior and Baker had gained a lot of political capital and prestige for the USA when they successfully assembled a coalition against Iraq in 1990. Everybody was impressed. I think it's a good description of the effects.
I also remember that the comparably laughable "coalition of the willing" of 2003 was commented as the opposite. The USA had spent their political capital for this weak coalition, almost all of it. The USA lost prestige by this war of aggression, not gained any.

But it's not only a foreign affairs story. I recently read a quote in which president Bush told someone that he had sent his general to tell the congress and his people about the Iraq war. His people would believe this general, not himself.
A leader who admits that the people don't follow him anymore.

This loss of leadership strength and political capital makes a unilateral foreign policy next to impossible for the USA, which is good news for everyone who doesn't like the approach anyways. The situation might change in 2009, but so far the world does not need to fear any further needless wars initiated in Washington since that government is simply bankrupt in foreign policy. Almost no-one believes or follows that government anymore, and the primitive civil war in Iraq has drained the US forces' strength so much that their generals are more concerned about how long it takes to recover than thinking about how much is left for additional parallel adventures.

It will depend on the next U.S. president how the international security architecture will work in 2009-2015.
Many options exist. Creation of competing alliances, multilateral approach in the United Nations, a slow recovery of the US' position, likely unsuccessful unilateral/bilateral actions...

Sven Ortmann