Disconnects everywhere

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One of the lingering topic ideas for this blog is to write about the disconnect between how Western governments see the world and how Western citizens see the world. It's a gargantuan topic and I wanted to write about it only after at least having looked more at whether the current situation is unusual in history.

The current news have added to this topic by an order of magnitude; the British government is apparently so thoroughly disconnected that it even disagrees with its own parliament - its own parties' members of parliament. And this was not just a disagreement and different view - they did in fact run into a parliamentary vote disaster and did not even see it coming!

It's as if PM Cameron had slept for a decade and never heard of the "Iraqi WMDs" story.

 

 

David Cameron Blow to Cameron's authority as MPs rule out British assault on Syria

PM says 'I get that and will act accordingly' after government motion on action against Assad defeated by 13 votes

www.theguardian.com

That future blog post is still building up in my grey matter, but I can predict with good confidence that it will have a conclusion in favour of more constitutional requirements for direct democratic decision-making.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Assorted thoughts about Syria

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I was quite surprised when yesterday German TV news (a public station ) flat-out declared that a Western intervention in Syria was now a sure thing, as if there was no doubt left. Only hours earlier I had read about poll results showing a ridiculously low pro-intervention support among the U.S. population!

The TV news may have been up to something, as only hours later the internet exploded with blog posts, forum posts, op-eds etc. all discussing an intervention. There was probably a tipping point reached recently, I'm just not yet sure for what.

James Fallows' reaction sounds quite reasonable:

For 20 years now we have seen this pattern:
1. Something terrible happens somewhere -- and what is happening in Syria is not just terrible but atrocious in the literal meaning of that term.
2. Americans naturally feel we must "do something."
3. The easiest something to do involves bombers, drones, and cruise missiles, all of which are promised to be precise and to keep our forces and people at a safe remove from the battle zone.
4. In the absence of a draft, with no threat that taxes will go up to cover war costs, and with the reality that modern presidents are hamstrung in domestic policy but have enormous latitude in national security, the normal democratic checks on waging war don't work.
5. We "do something," with bombs and drones, and then deal with blowback and consequences "no one could have foreseen."

There's a reason why I wrote a blog post titled "We need to do something ..." six years ago already. This desire to do something when a situation is uncomfortable appears to be deeply rooted and not easily controlled. Sadly, warmongers exploit this and other human imperfections for their rackets.

 

The usual suspects came up with the usual opinions, and I'm no exception. The Syrian civil war is one of those "devil or deep sea" things, which is probably why it lasts so long and almost nobody intervened in force yet.

I'm not sure there is going to be an actual military intervention.* To set up training courses with special forces training selected rebel groups just behind the Turkish border might be a reasonable move instead (if one still thinks the U.S. military is any good at training Arabs).

Obama et al would need to be extremely insulated to not notice how the avalanche of reactions is overwhelmingly contra intervention.

By the way; it's interesting how more than just a few voices have been raised with a rather cynical tone, claiming that an intervention is necessary to teach respect. After all, Obama drew a stupid red line and evil Assad didn't obey / respect it. The supposedly planned intervention is supposedly not aimed at pushing for regime change, but only at punishing Assad's regime.

This view may be cynical, but also true - and revealing. These people imply that the red line thing was a threat, and threats are of course violations of international law.
 

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.

These must be dire times, as I quoted this passage many times already. Guess its source. And again; bad, bad ally!
 

The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

source

That quote was used too often already as well. Maybe I begin to use the propaganda trick of repeating till it sticks? The warmongers surely use it a lot!

Syria is in a civil war which is going to end with some parts of the country oppressing other parts. I think it would be unethical to intervene and decide who gets to oppress whom. Some pro-intervention folks react with not very intellectual responses to such opinions; especially blaming suffering, beheadings et cetera on the naysayers. Guess what? That's going to happen anyway.

Some people believe 'we' in the West should side with the Christians in Syria. Well, that would mean to side with Assad, who supported Hezbollah, which skirmishes with Israel, which is supposedly the West's greatest friend in the region. The usual Middle Eastern mess.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*:  Still remember how often we were told air strikes against Iranian nuclear industry were imminent during the last years? This may be about the same kind of sabre rattling porn.

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Musings about small powers and their alliances with great powers

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Most countries are not great powers, but small powers. 

Some of them seek national security by being allied with at least one great power. Curiously, most don’t and still retain their sovereignty. 

First: The downside

An alliance with a great power usually incurs some costs including the risk of being called to help in a conflict. Such a disadvantage requires at least equivalent benefits, or else the alliance would be a political mistake. 

Protection against invasion?

Many if not most small powers in a written alliance with a great power are not at immediate risk of aggression today, and plenty of them are actually so very distant from reasonable candidates for aggression that the classic motivation can hardly be the main benefit: The alliance with a great power does not protect them against aggression, since there is no such threat anyway.

The naval view

Protection against an indirect aggression, such as severed maritime trade lines, may be another benefit. This is a curious proposition, though. Countries such as Brazil, South Africa or Australia may be very dependent on maritime trade, but there is really only one navy capable of posing an existential threat to it: The only navy which routinely deploys and sustains entire battlegroups thousands of miles away from home. The only affordable protection against such a threat is indeed to be its ally. An alliance with a world-leading navy may indeed secure maritime trade, but one should be aware that this is because it neutralizes the only major naval threat, not because one would fight side by side with it against the only major naval threat. This has important consequences for naval planning and budgeting, of course. It would amount to fighting off phantoms to still pretend one needs to build up and maintain naval strength once the only major naval threat was neutralised politically.

The nuclear umbrella

Another possible motivation for a small power to enter and maintain an alliance with a great (nuclear) power is to gain a seat under its nuclear (deterrence) umbrella. This clearly played a huge role during the Cold War, but we shouldn’t forget that it’s in great part the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which created this situation. Is the nuclear umbrella still a powerful reason for an alliance with a great (nuclear) power? There are today probably only five countries with a reasonable fear of attack with nuclear weapons in the next years: India, Pakistan, South Korea, North Korea and Israel. Three of these are nuclear powers themselves, and all five have had ongoing and irregularly lethal conflicts with at least one neighbour for two generations. Countries such as Indonesia, Nigeria, Chile or New Zealand hardly need a seat under a nuclear umbrella any time soon.

Demands on the small power

There is a recurring talking point about the relationship between junior and leading alliance partners: The assertion of free-riding. Free-riding signifies that one party enjoys benefits generated by another without paying for it. The application of this term in regard to collective defence is typically less restrictive and also applies to an incomplete compensation instead of only to no effort at all. Interestingly, nobody ever seems to accuse the most obvious free rider, Iceland, of it. Free-riding accusations thus don’t appear to be driven by morale standards, but by political demands for more benefits for the leading partner.

What constitutes an incomplete compensation for protection in an alliance? A country which is not threatened and thus could within the status quo provide for its own security with its current military power can hardly be a free rider in an alliance. This means that mere differences in relative (% GDP) spending levels cannot be a sufficient criterion for it. Maybe the criterion is whether the junior partner makes enough of an effort for its own security? This criterion is at times being applied to continental Europe within NATO, usually with the false assumption that it couldn’t defend itself without extra-continental assistance (against whom, the red horde of 1988?). Yet this criterion can hardly be a suitable one either, since the classic motivation for an alliance is exactly that united every ally needs to make less of an effort for his own security than if they were on their own. The entire free riding angle appears to be driven by faulty logic and feelings rather than by rational thought. 

The level of effort

So how should a small power determine its effort for national or collective security in an alliance if it decided to join and maintain it? It is a tricky question and the only final answer is probably to let democratic legitimation rule on the question: Whatever national security effort a democratically legitimated parliament authorises is at least legitimate, even if no-one knows an analytical rule for the optimum level of effort.

It’s in part so very difficult to determine the correct level of effort because the payment happens in more than one currency: It’s not just money, but also additional foreign policy restrictions and conflicts and notably, bodies and blood. It has been common since ancient times that junior allies contributed military forces to the wars of their leading ally. Classical Athens is such an example, but the Hun horde, the Roman Republic and the British Empire applied this concept as well. It has been applied in living memory during the Second World War, the Vietnam War, in two recent wars against and in Iraq and the ongoing civil war in Afghanistan, too. Small powers need to keep a wary eye on this, though: Historically such troops-contributing small powers were typically not sovereign, but rather vassals. There is a fuzzy line between being a de facto vassal and being a sovereign junior partner in an alliance. Official censorship and self-censorship come to mind as analogies for this.

Most discussions about small powers and their alliances with great powers have very different angles than this text. The reasons are probably some not mentioned yet underlying assumptions as well as dominant narratives. Rarely does anyone sum up the immense advantages enjoyed by an alliance-leading great power; the dominant narrative is typically about what the small power should do additionally. This coincides with the institutional self-interests of the small power’s national security establishment and this again may explain why the dominant narrative is so readily accepted by so many voices. 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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KFX-E

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Today's small power air forces probably have the feeling of doing the equivalent of preparing for the Second World War with biplanes - and don't like it. 

The "4th" and "5th" generation fighter distinction may be mere marketing or not - plenty has changed in combat aircraft technology during the last two decades, and 30+ year old designs such as the Gripen kind of feel like 2nd class: Fine trainers and useful against inferior opposition, but unlikely to prove useful against great power air forces in the future.

KAI concept of a T-50-based LO light fighter

South Korea may be up to something really smart; a fighter which incorporates the new style at least partially, but is still modest enough to be affordable in quantity (that's the hope). The Europeans have only modern combat aircraft designs rooted in the 1980's (Typhoon, Rafale, Gripens), Russia and China aren't satisfactory suppliers to many countries (such as South Korea) and the U.S. has only a not yet finished, but already very expensive ground attack aircraft with an untested approach towards air combat on offer (F-35).

The concentration in aerospace industries and the exponential cost growth for combat aircraft development have led to a world with very few combat aircraft designs. China works hard on adding to the list, but that's not reassuring to certain countries. Back in the 1960's a bloc-free country had the choice between plenty combat aircraft.

A list of 1960's supersonic fighters in production:

 

Mirage III

MiG-21

Lightning

Starfighter

Crusader

Draken

Freedom Fighter (F-5A/B)

Phantom II*

Today a small power can buy designs rooted in the 70's or 80's or equivalents only. It's a very unsatisfactory situation for some air forces.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: I ignored Thunderchief, several specialised interceptors and the during the 60's obsolete first supersonic generation (MiG-19, Super Sabre, Super Mystère, Tiger). You need to draw the line somewhere.

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More about armed bureaucracies

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Recently I wrote about Niskanen's budget maximising model of a bureaucracy.

Now let's add some more (knowledge of the model is advisable for this):

The model assumes efficient behaviour; the best actions are taken first. A bureaucrat is assumed to not undertake a '400k € value at 500k € cost' task before he has made sure a  '600k € value at 400k € cost' task will be accomplished, too.

This is actually not assured. The budget-maximising top bureaucrat may indeed fight for more power(s), budget et cetera with a tactic:

He leaves high pay-off activities unfunded, but funds inefficient activities (more is better to him, after all). Next, he goes to superiors, civilian masters or the public and demands more money, using the unfunded activities as arguments and claiming a certain need for additional funds, say, 2,000k €. His prey is only moderately involved and lacks detailed knowledge - and his bureaucratic superiors may even be complicit.

He gets additional funds, but makes sure some highly cost-efficient activities remain unfunded in the next budget, so he can rip us off again.

And thus air forces buy lots of shiny combat aircraft even as they don't have the budget to pay for enough fuel, missiles and spare parts. Armies rather decorated generals' offices before buying enough body armour. Navies buy impressive ships without sufficient missile or torpedo stocks for reloading.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: I'm not aware if this behaviour has been modelled in some economic science model.
There are more factors pushing towards the same aforementioned results, of course.

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About being a U.S. ally

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"The Strategist" blog appears to expand its tolerance for B.S., or maybe there's more to it?

The US is indeed Australia’s natural ally and we’re lucky to have it. But there’s a price to be paid to be a US ally, part of which is participation in wars led by the US. The other part is for allies to provide adequately for their own defence in their own region.

source

At first this appears to be nonsensical: What again is the benefit of being allied with them if it's a requirement to "provide adequately for [your] own defence in [your] own region"? There's not much they're doing for you according to this quote; protection of maritime trade lanes may be left.

I doubt that the USN can actually protect maritime trade on oceans, though. The greatest maritime trade security boost from being allied with the U.S. is probably from them not attacking your maritime trade themselves.

Which leads to my other point; the biggest benefit of being allied with the U.S. is to European countries, Aussies and Kiwis that this way they're not hostiles. You don't need to work against them (much) and you don't need to prepare for your defence against them if you're allied with them (or if you bankroll enough of their think tanks and have some control of their mainstream news media).

The provision of auxiliary troops for stupid wars looks like an outrageously high price for this; peaceful co-existence should be normalcy according to Western civilisation norms, after all.

Maybe the pupils befriend a big bully not because he protects them, but because this way he doesn't bully them?

Then again, I doubt that Mr. Molan has useful insights. His blog text was horrible and primitive. It's typical establishment talk, uninspired, features inaccuracies, primitive thinking and is apparently incoherent. The only good thing about it is the highlighting of operations and maintenance costs, and this will have a very bad aftertaste after tomorrow's Defence and Freedom blog post (which has been scheduled for days already).

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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War and peace, journalists and the intricacies of war

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(This text is not meant to claim 100% applicability, but I suppose readers will know areas where the observations apply.)

One stereotype of journalists is that they're hating war and seek out the horrors of war for reporting in order to discourage warfare or pushing for an end thereof. Another stereotype say they do it  because of petty sensationalism. It's probably both quite often.

The role of journalism as a whole in the 'war of peace' question appears to be mixed, though: Prior to a war they are very keen to relay rumours, assertions and doom scenarios - and I claim this is both because of sensationalism and because some of them really feel too much kinship with the power elite (or just kiss their feet in order to gain and retain "access".

There is thus at times a divide between effectively warmongering 'journalists' in safe, climatised TV studios and newspaper HQs at home and the at tims rather contra-war war reporters who then report on what war is really like (possibly after a jingoistic invasion phase with lots of mil porn).

The latter may under certain circumstances actually prolong and worsen the war by reporting about its horrors and failures, though. Sure, this is counter-intuitive and seemingly paradox.

(I love this. Trivial things are boring, but exceptions, counter-intuitive stuff and paradoxes - that's exciting!)

Well, how could they have such an effect?

Imagine this:

Some Western asshole sends troops to invade another country*, but the war doesn't go so well (it almost never does). The asshole's subordinates begin to understand that it's going to be a not worthwhile mess and begin to advise to pull out.

The enemy understands the same and happens to be smart (not a common occasion under such stress): They correctly determine that Westerners are about as fanatic about saving face as are Japanese, for example. Westerners are just not as frank and honest about it. So one of the quickest ways to peace is not a thorough defeat of the asshole, but to offer him (or her) a face-saving way out, a compromise which offers plenty spin material for the asshole, but doesn't hurt the defender more than a continued warfare (which is a quite easily-met criterion).

Now imagine the war reporter's role: What's more beneficial to this peace-seeking diplomacy? Exposing how aggressor forces get defeated and behave barbaric or avoiding to embarrass the asshole?

I built another counter-intuitive facet of warfare into my example, of course: Sometimes "winning" tactically may actually be strategically detrimental even if you don't alienate anyone in-country.

I really do love these exceptions, counter-intuitive and seemingly paradox stuff. (Recommendation: Read Luttwak's book "Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace"). The obvious, superficial stuff is usually boring, even if attractive to the eyes. Rarely does understanding of superficialities (such as "longer spears are longer") win the day.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: It's difficult nowadays to imagine a non-Western country being the aggressor.

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Extra long range torpedoes

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The technology-dominated area of naval combat has spawned a couple operational research-centric publications, amongst them Wayne P. Hughes' "Fleet tactics" books. There aren't really the rivalling fleets to make much use of such theory any more, though.

One thing to ponder about is in my opinion the extra long range torpedo. It was published last year that an extended range (export) version of the newest German modular heavyweight torpedo has set a range record of 140 km*.

This was certainly done with a low cruise speed** and even greater ranges would be possible with lower cruise speeds. The role of natural currents was apparently not published.

photo: Atlas Elektronik

Still, such a long range is interesting. It's interesting because self-deploying naval mines could apparently be developed to match this performance, and this basically means you could infest almost all notable sea gates (straits) with mines without the need for a naval or aerial delivery platform.

Second, there's the question of ambush tactics with actual homing torpedoes in such sea gates. You could tell your ammunition to self-deploy, and then let it attack the approaching targets as a wolfpack.

The obvious challenge would be the means of communication, since such munitions (torpedoes) will rather not keep a cable (copper wire or glass fibre) intact over such a long distance and they are also unlikely to have  LF radio receiver as do submarines. The munition would need a different, suitable message receiver and decryption.

The end result could resemble the (not very successful) ambush lines of submarines as used during WWI (North Sea) and WW2 (Pacific).

Third, torpedoes can be deployed easily. A container ship with torpedo launchers in outwardly innocuous long ISO containers could deploy hundreds of torpedoes or self-deploying mines during a night and it wouldn't even look conspicuously on a radar screen. There is very little defence against such a platform in the opening stages of a naval war, or when foreigners insist on business as usual in a naval war zone (as in the Persian Gulf during the 1980's). This may indicate that coping with the munition rather than with the launch platform may be the better approach (as is happening in tank defence, air defence, C-RAM and has happened in regard to naval missile defence for quite some time).

Munitions getting more and more capable up to a point where theory needs to adapt and invent some new approaches is rare, but it happens. It happened with the invention of the torpedo, it happened when artillery shell fuses became smart (proximity fuses), when cruise missiles appeared, when cruise missiles became accurate, when air/ground missiles became accurate et cetera. The more sophisticated the munition becomes, the more tactical variations become practical and the more focus has to be on defeating the munition. The defeat of the platform becomes almost secondary, if not irrelevant after launch (as with coastal defence missile launchers).

Luckily, there are historical and technical analogies which help navigate the uncharted waters of military theory.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: ~75 nautical miles. It's strange to see "km" in such a context
**: Maybe at a no-cavitation speed at which the torpedo would be quite silent, too.

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Do they understand democracy? Or: Does it matter?

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I was asked whether I believe that Egyptian politicians understand democracy.

The context to such concerns is -at least to a German- the lingering assertion / diagnosis that the Weimar Republic was a 'Republic without Republicans'; without enough people who were pro-democracy in their heart and willing to support and protect necessary institutions of a Republic.

I don't think it's really about whether people understand democracy.

There are three different views of a state and country:

(1) The currently dominant (public) Western view; the state as an organisation which serves its citizens with public goods.

(2) The state-as-a-prize view as seen in Greece, most of Africa, Arabian countries and much of Latin America. Such countries have internal power struggles in all-or-nothing contests, and the winner gets to rule and exploit the country, favouring/bribing his political supporters.

(3) The state-as-a-tool-for-ambitions view, where the state's power is a tool to pursue ambitions such as domination, conquest, torment disliked minorities or simply putting the women back in the kitchen.
This view was shared by Fascists, Bolshevists, Neocons, Imperial Japanese, Ayatollahs, medieval rulers et cetera.

The point isn't whether these people understand democracy (unless they want to set up and maintain one in the first place). The first and most important question is what's their view of a state. 

You can educate an Arabian prince to a Master in law at Cambridge - but upon his arrival back home he'll be part of an organised crime regime which loots natural resources and distributes the spoils among its supporters in a feudal style.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: (1) and (2) have some commonalities. Income redistribution from poor to rich (Republicans in the USA)) or from rich to poor (socialists) is one example, power-hungry politicians without real policy agenda other than their thirst for power (Merkel) are another. 
The important difference is that in (2) the "against each other" aspect dominates over the "same rule for all" or "national solidarity" aspects. Examples for this are African countries with tribes instead of ideologies vying for power. I added Greece to the list of examples because the obvious disregard for common good or efficiency and because of the obvious preference for rigging in favour of supporters there.

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Egypt's ongoing revolution and outlook

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Back during the Mursi administration the Western media focused on his seemingly fast-paced effort to reduce the republic to a republic in name only and set up a dictatorship-theocracy.

At least there was still some hope for a happy ending, as many of his political moves could also have been interpreted as moves against the remainder of the Mubarak regime. I don't think there's a happy ending scenario for Egypt in the next years any more.

The Egyptian military isn't really a military. It's a kind of General Electric with many heavily armed security guards. The Egyptian military (army) doesn't only have is own factories for boots, uniforms, guns, ammo and vehicles, but also for civilian goods and services. It's a gargantuan kraken with tentacles everywhere. And its generals aren't generals, but top kleptocrats.

They didn't do the coup for freedoms and stuff, but because they were bribed to do so (billions of Gulf states money) and because they perceived the Muslim brotherhood and Mursi as a threat to their fortune. The "generals" would have done a coup against Mubarak if they were on 'team freedom and democracy'.

 

Pictures make blog posts more attractive, enticing and pleasant.
It's magic.

Now there's the likely scenario of the military staying in de facto power with a fig leaf of secularist civilian politicians who can get support from both the West and the Gulf states. There is not going to be an economic boom with much of the economy rigged in favour of military and political elite. There is not going to be a democracy since the MB will not be allowed to win any national election. There may be a civil war, but the 'military' has its many armed guards, can reactivate the old Mubarak regime connections and it has a sizeable portion of the population (secularists) as supporters (unless it alienates them), and rarely any government lost a civil war in such a configuration.

The other less likely scenario is a violent overthrow of the government by the MB. This appears to require a bitter, lengthy violent civil war. That's no setting for a move towards democracy. Why should the MB preserve democracy if democracy didn't preserve their legitimated rule? They would disrupt the society a lot and again there's no real economic boom to be expected. 

It appears that for the next couple years Egypt is messed up either way. The Egyptians have now the choice between the devil and the deep sea.

It is quite wise for Western leaders to not pick a side loudly. You cannot pick a 'good' team, there is nothing to be gained but you could be unlucky and alienate the future government team.

By the way; isn't it remarkable how Westerners have de facto no noticeable influence there? The influence of the Gulf states is more apparent. Call me isolationist, but I think the effectiveness of foreign policy for other purposes than having treaties of cooperation with foreign countries is vastly overrated in public. Plenty people have grandiose power fantasies, but actual events tend to disappoint such fantasies.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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