Category: Military Strategy

Monday Wake Up Call – Ukraine Edition, February 7, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Winter in the Palouse, near the town of Oakesdale, WA – January 2022 photo by James Richmond Photography

We talk a lot about a nation’s credibility in foreign policy. The US strives to be credible regarding its positions with allies and foes alike. We have often failed. Russia has also proven many times over that it isn’t a credible partner.

Consider a report from Numbers Stations showing that Russia has invaded its neighbors and a couple of distant countries 58 times since 1917. One element of clear credibility for Russia is its willingness to invade others. How does knowing this history inform the current situation between Russia and Ukraine?

The world is well-aware of Russia’s ostentatious military buildup along Ukraine’s border. Putin added to the tensions by making demands requiring a new European security order. He wants Russia to be allowed its own sphere of influence that roughly corresponds to the old Soviet Union. That means NATO should certainly not expand, and possibly should contract.

Let’s look at history between the US and Ukraine:

  • In 1994, President Clinton asked Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons. In return, Ukraine got a financial settlement and the Budapest Memorandum which provided non-aggression assurances by both the US and Russia. Ukraine shipped 1700 or so nuclear warheads back to Russia and destroyed the missiles.
  • In 2014, President Obama looked at the big, muddy land called Ukraine and asked if its strategic importance was worth war. Meaning a real war, with an enemy that could fight back. He decided on economic sanctions.
  • In 2020, President Trump attempted to blackmail the Ukrainian president into interfering on his behalf in an American election.
  • In 2022, President Biden rules out military intervention should Russia invade Ukraine, talking mostly about more economic sanctions as the consequence.

Regardless of whether Russia invades Ukraine or not, the US is walking down a perilous path. It faces efforts to divide and neutralize its alliances in both Europe and Asia.

In Europe, Russia wants to bury the post-Cold War order. Putin wants Europe to recognize its sphere of influence in the former Soviet countries. Putin wants to separate Ukraine from NATO permanently. He would like to fracture the European alliance by making Germany a more neutral party as Russia attempts to create its western buffer zone.

Europeans think that Putin won’t invade but will follow a hybrid strategy — keeping a military presence on the border, continuing weaponization of Russia’s European energy supply and increased cyberattacks — which will serve to keep NATO from becoming fully anti-Russian the way an invasion of Ukraine would. From the NYT:

“Before the crisis, Germany was America’s closest ally in Europe, boasted a special relationship with Moscow and was the most important partner for Eastern and Central Europe. Today…Berlin’s relationship with Moscow is fast deteriorating….Germany’s difficulties are a hint of what could come if Mr. Putin continues his brinkmanship, without providing the certainty of an actual invasion.”

The US and Germany aren’t singing from the same choir book right now, so Putin may be on to something.

In Asia, China would like to drive a wedge between the US and some of its Eastern allies. It already has agreed with Russia on the demand for NATO to pull back in Europe.

India tilted toward Russia at the UN Security Council meetings last week. After China and Russia cast “no” votes in the Security Council on whether to hold an official session to discuss the Ukraine crisis, Responsible Statecraft says that India abstained. It was effectively a rejection of the US attempt to hold Russia accountable.

In the Philippines, the front-runner for president says he wouldn’t accept any offer of help from the US in negotiations with China over the South China Sea if elected president in May.

Any person can see what’s coming in cold war 2.0 and should be very wary and worried. We need to learn to navigate in what has become a multi-polar world, one with worthy competitors in Russia and China.

We should remember that during cold war 1.0 in 1962, the stationing of Russian missiles in Cuba let to a great power deal. Russia took its missiles out of Cuba and the US pulled its missiles from Turkey and Italy. Back then, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was willing to consider Kennedy’s fears about Moscow’s missile deployment in Cuba. That became the basis for ending the confrontation.

The enormity of how close the world came to thermonuclear war led to an easing of tensions.  The next 50 years were a period of relative calm in US/Russian relations.

Today’s warlike tensions between the US and Russia over Ukraine have most of the same elements present, with the roles reversed. Now, Putin is telling the West that Ukraine should not be allowed to join NATO. He also demands that the US should not place offensive weapons in Ukraine.

Like Cuba in 1962, is Ukraine now the chessboard for these superpowers? Is there a lesson here from that history?

Time to wake up America! You aren’t uniquely qualified to run the world, and there are competitors who will work really hard to prevent you from trying to continue doing so. To help you wake up, listen to Pink Floyd perform “Dogs Of War” from their album “Delicate Sound Of Thunder” at the Nassau Coliseum, NY in 1988. While the singing is a bit muffled, the band sounds fine, and there’s a great saxophone solo by Scott Paige:

Sample Lyric:

Invisible transfers and long distance calls
Hollow laughter in marble halls
Steps have been taken, a silent uproar
Has unleashed the dogs of war
You can’t stop what has begun
Signed, sealed, they deliver oblivion

The dogs of war won’t negotiate
The dogs of war don’t capitulate

Still relevant, 34 years later!

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 30, 2022

Well, this was predictable. NPR reported that China’s ambassador to the US warned that the US could face a possible “military conflict” with China over Taiwan:

“If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the US, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in a military conflict.”

It isn’t a coincidence that China raises the specter of war while the US is focused on a possible threat by Russia in Ukraine. This week, 39 Chinese military aircraft flew near Taiwan, including two of China’s most advanced warplanes, their J-16D jets. Military analysts think that the J-16D has capacity to interfere with Taiwan’s defense radar systems and could make a huge difference in combat.

This is more evidence of how strategically fraught America’s legacy global policies are in a multi-polar world. Russia is threatening NATO and our Western allies, while simultaneously, China threatens our strategic position in Asia. We haven’t fought a two-theater war in 77 years, and haven’t won a war since.

It’s ironic that neither Taiwan nor Ukraine are formal mutual defense treaty partners with the US, yet US defense hawks think we should defend either or both. On to cartoons.

Surviving is difficult when you live in the wild:

Some voices on the Right support Russia:

Breyer retires, but opinions differ on who owns the right to replace him:

There seems very little Republicans can do to stop Biden from filling this seat, since there’s no filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. That was taken away by Mitch McConnell, during the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

Mitch looks for a loophole:

The never-ending Republican hissy fit:

Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, “MAUS”, is a memoir about the Holocaust. It was banned last week by a school board in Tennessee. In the book, the cats are the Germans while the mice are the Jews:

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War With Russia? Over What?

The Daily Escape:

Bailey’s Island, ME – January 7, 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo

Russia has decided the time is right to challenge the balance of power in Europe. The talks between Moscow and the US, and between the EU, NATO and Russia were motivated by two reasons. First, Russia’s long time concerns about NATO encroaching on their Western border. Second, the view in the West that Russia, after massing troops on the Ukraine border, is going to invade Ukraine and absorb it.

Putin told Biden in early December that he was looking for European security guarantees. They were later presented by Moscow in the form of two draft treaties, one a Russian-US security treaty, the other a security agreement between Russia and NATO. That led to the recent talks that seemingly went nowhere.

The pawn in this diplomatic game is Ukraine. The basic options for Ukraine are the same as were discussed in 2014: Alignment with Russia, alignment with the EU/NATO or balancing between the two.

But to Moscow, Ukraine isn’t the problem. Putin thinks it’s Washington.

We should remember that Putin laid out his position to not accept any further eastward expansion of NATO in his speech to the Munich Security Conference in February, 2007. He hasn’t changed his thinking.

Both sides know that Ukraine is an impoverished, de-industrialized, divided, and corrupt mess. Ukraine ranks 117 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s corruption index. Why would either side want to take over responsibility for Ukraine?

Also, Russia understands that the NATO expansion hadn’t been on the table for years until Putin brought it up. Suddenly, he has the West debating an issue that wasn’t an issue for a long time. Ukraine hardly qualifies as a potential NATO member – it doesn’t have the resources to defend itself. There’s no way it could really contribute to defending other countries in Europe, even though they did send a few troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

So why would Russia attack Ukraine? Moscow is fully aware that while its troops would be welcomed in Eastern parts of Ukraine they wouldn’t be in others. Yet, we learned yesterday that Russia withdrew its diplomats and their families from Kyiv:

“According to one senior Ukrainian security official, 18 people — mostly the children and wives of Russian diplomats boarded buses from Kyiv back to Moscow. About 30 more Russians left within the ensuing days, from the Kyiv embassy and a Russian consulate in Lviv. The Ukrainian security official said Diplomats at two other Russian consulates have been told to prepare to leave Ukraine.”

Anatol Lieven, writing in Responsible Statecraft, wonders what the US, NATO and the Europeans are thinking. They’ve rejected Russia’s conditions for an agreement since they were not willing to rule out expansion to Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet republics: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…NATO has no real intention of admitting Ukraine, nor of fighting Russia in Ukraine. Both Washington and Brussels have openly ruled this out. Indeed, NATO could not do so even if it wanted to. US forces in Europe are wholly inadequate to the purpose, as are what is left of the British and French armies.”

It’s possible that Russia is attempting to split Germany from the rest of Europe. Germany is reliant on Russia’s natural gas to a greater extent than other European countries. Assuming that Lieven is correct about NATO military weakness, it’s also possible that Russia is trying to intimidate NATO. According to Adam Tooze, Russia accounts for about 40% of Europe’s gas imports. And a rupture of relations will result in the complete embargoing of Russian gas and oil to European customers.

While the US, NATO, and the EU have all promised “unprecedented sanctions,” against Russia if they invade Ukraine, sanctions only matter if the other side cares. If Russia decides to rupture relations with the West, it will have calculated that it would survive more economic sanctions. The primary Western threat is to block Russia from using the SWIFT electronic payments system. But it’s possible that Russia could survive being blocked from SWIFT for longer than Europe can survive without Russian energy.

Despite that threat, Western allies are sending dangerously contradictory messages about their willingness to impose anything on Russia beyond a financial slap on the wrist. One variable that sums up Russia’s commanding position in a sanctions environment is Russia’s foreign exchange reserves:

With north of $600 billion in reserves, Russia is just behind China, Japan, and Switzerland. This gives Putin the capacity to withstand sanctions on the rest of the Russian economy.

Putin has a timeline. In 2024 he faces a choice as to whether to continue in power or to begin to prepare for his final exit. At that point, he will be 72. We have to assume that by then, he would like to have drawn a line on Western expansion.

Also, 2024 overlaps with the end of Biden’s first (only?) term as president. So, setting the terms of Russia-US relations on the expansion issue must be a priority for the Kremlin. Biden has clearly signaled that his priority is China and that he is willing to pay a political price for retrenching its strategic position (Afghanistan). Perhaps that opens the door for a Russian deal in Europe.

Lost in this discussion is the possibility that directly confronting Russia could drive them to sign a joint defense treaty with China. That would be a world-changing diplomatic move, assuming it included a mutual defense provision.

It would be a balance of power earthquake, a real-life demonstration Mackinder’s Heartland theory, which states that:

  • Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland
  • Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island
  • Who rules the World Island commands the world

Mackinder thought of the heartland as the core of Eurasia, and he considered all of Europe and Asia as the World Island.  Think of such an alliance controlling much of the world’s natural resources, having global leadership in manufacturing, and the best of STEM education. Imagine their combined military and naval might joined in a military pact.

There is still a chance that US flexibility in two areas may avert a diplomatic meltdown with Russia. The first would be a NATO commitment to deploy no new forces in NATO countries close to Russia’s borders, in return for Russian limits on new deployments and the stand-down of the troops now deployed on Ukraine’s borders.

The second would be genuine US support for the failed Minsk II agreement which focused on autonomy for a demilitarized Donbas region within Ukraine. Donbas autonomy within Ukraine would be a serious barrier both to Ukraine seeking NATO membership and would therefore indirectly meet Russia’s key concerns.

NATO, the US, and the EU need to come to a more modest view of themselves and their role in the world. We should abandon the empty and hypocritical false promise of further NATO expansion and seek a reasonably cooperative relationship with Russia.

Otherwise, we can go on living in our world of make-believe, a world that may easily be shattered by harsh realities.

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Facing The Music

The Daily Escape:

First snow, New Hampshire creek – December 2021 photo by Betsy Zimmerli

“It’s always been about the music. And when it’s not, it’s about facing the music” – Wrongo

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. It is also Wrongo’s favorite day because he prefers daylight to darkness. This is an optimistic day since every succeeding day for the next six months will bring more daylight to the land.

But Wrongo struggles to see any political daylight at the end of this extremely dark year. Here is a summation of the three events most important to Wrongo in this dark, dark year:

The January 6 aborted coup. Nothing that happened this year can overshadow the effort to subvert our democracy. While it may be doubtful right now that the outcome of the Jan. 6 committee will bring justice for the coup plotters, let’s compare it to the Watergate scandal. Those plotters were held accountable. And Watergate occurred at a time when we didn’t have mobile phone, email, and text message electronic tracing to reveal what had happened. In this Jan. 6 case, proving accountability should be easier. We don’t need to know everything, we just need to know enough to prosecute people. With all the digital information that’s available, that should be an easier job than it was during Watergate.

The recent revelations by the House Select Committee are an encouraging sign because they moved quickly on passing a contempt resolution for a former Congressman, Mark Meadows. The Committee got to tell their story three times in 24 hours. They embellished it with juicy new details (texts from Trump’s family members, Fox News personalities, reporters, members of Congress) every time they told it. If they can keep that up through the early part of next year, maybe we’ll start getting somewhere with this.

Ending the Forever War. Biden was crushed by the media and the public for walking away from Afghanistan and the subsequent chaos around the pull-out, but it was the right thing to do. Nearly 2500 US service members were killed, 20,698 were wounded, and more than $2.2 trillion in American taxpayer funds were spent on warfighting, reconstructing programs, building the Afghan National Security Forces, and promoting good governance.

In the end, we have nothing to show for our time there except for more national debt and soldiers who will need care for the rest of their lives. We deserve a full and complete accounting of our 20 years in Afghanistan. After all, it’s another military defeat that requires a fundamental examination to ensure that we never again jump into a country when we fail to understand their social and cultural dynamics.

Losing the Covid war. We’ve failed as a country to work together to beat the virus variants, despite having a vaccine that offered protection. The politicization of Covid treatment is the second worse outcome in 2021, to the politicization of the January 6 attempted coup.

Anti-vaxxers believe that their strong natural immune system will beat the virus, and that “healthy lifestyles” will give you a healthy immune system. They think using a vaccine to enhance the natural protection offered by their beautiful immune system is a bad idea because [insert the excuse of the day]. Perhaps they don’t realize that you can’t have natural immunity to a virus that your body has never encountered. An unvaccinated but fit person can get Covid because their body has no idea how to fight it.

There’s also the argument that Covid only kills older people. While the facts don’t support that idea either, maybe the anti-Vaxx community views it as an experiment to see if “having living parents or grandparents” is an evolutionary advantage for the kids who didn’t lose their relatives.

These issues show America must face the music. Wrongo’s sure we’ll face more 2021 music, but this is his top-of-mind thinking.

We’re going to have Christmas or seasonal music in each post this week. Today let’s listen to U2 – “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)” filmed in November 1987 at the Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. These guys were children back then. Maybe this tune has a special relevance in a world where Covid has taken so many lives:

Be kind. Not just during this season, but all the time.

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Biden and Putin Talk Ukraine

The Daily Escape:

Dawn sky, North Shore of Lake Superior – November 2021 photo by Ken Harmon

Biden and Putin had their heads-of-state version of a Zoom call yesterday. It lasted more than two hours. From the WaPo:

“In an email readout of the call, the White House said that…Biden voiced the deep concerns of the United States and our European Allies about Russia’s escalation of forces surrounding Ukraine and made clear that the US and our Allies would respond with strong economic and other measures in the event of military escalation.”

It seems that the two leaders simply assigned their respective teams to follow up. The White House said Biden and Putin also discussed ransomware attacks and the Iran nuclear negotiations.

Wrongo doubts that Russia intends to invade Ukraine. There are too many downsides to a full-scale invasion for both sides. It would be costly militarily. Ukraine’s military would not be a match for Russia. But it’s in much better shape than it was in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, and entered Ukraine’s Donbas region. With help from the West over the past seven years, Ukraine’s regular units and reserves have come a long way.

It’s difficult to imagine why NATO would respond militarily to support Ukraine. Germany certainly doesn’t want a war with Russia. Rather, they want Russia’s Nordstream 2 gas pipeline to begin supplying energy to them. It’s even unclear whether a war in Ukraine would be supported strongly by the Russian people.

Understandably, Putin doesn’t want Ukraine to join NATO. And so far, it doesn’t look like NATO wants Ukraine in NATO, either. It’s doubtful that Biden would insist that NATO ask Ukraine to join it. OTOH, Ukraine has leaned toward the EU and NATO since its independence in 1991.

Putin has observed that if Ukraine joined NATO, then NATO would be closer to Moscow than the USSR was to the US when they placed missiles in Cuba. Putin’s thinking that a nuclear warhead launched from Ukraine would have about a 5 minute flight time to Moscow.

That should be a threat Americans understand. If NATO had cruise or ballistic missiles in Ukraine or the Balkans it would be a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis. And we should understand that Putin would react as JFK did in 1962.

It’s ancient history, but when Wrongo ran a nuclear missile unit in Germany, our role was a total defense strategy against a potential invasion from the Soviet Union. It seems logical to Wrongo that national defense in Ukraine and the Balkans is similar, a poison pill to deter Russian aggression.

A way out for Biden is to promise Putin that he won’t supply Ukraine with offensive weapons. The definition of what constitutes an offensive weapon has been clear for some time. It’s unlikely that Putin would be happy if Ukraine received state-of-the-art air defense weapons from NATO, but that crumb from Biden may have to be sufficient.

We in America should understand that NATO Chief Stoltenberg has been pushing to admit Ukraine into NATO. He’s also parroted what Biden has said about Russia paying a high price if it made a move against Ukraine. What about the US strategy for Ukraine? Reuters reported last week that Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried said that:

“As you can appreciate, all options are on the table and there’s a toolkit that includes a whole range of options…”

Donfried knows that there’s no “all options on the table” plan for the US. If Russia decided to invade, the US has neither forces nor resources in Europe to do much to stop it, unless NATO was to unleash a European-wide war.

Neither side wants that, because it wouldn’t necessarily be limited to Europe. There is something in the military called “Escalation Dominance”. That implies that when escalation begins, it can remain limited only if your side has a dominant nuclear capability. No one who looks at the US and Russia believes there’s any way to guarantee that an escalation will remain limited between these two powers.

There are no easy answers on how to avoid that. As long as we view this as primarily a military problem, we will see only military solutions. But if Ukraine falls to Russia, it would be a catastrophic reputational loss for the US, one that demonstrates our weakness in power and influence across our post-WWII empire.

Nobody knows what will happen, but we should expect Biden will do whatever he can to prevent direct confrontation. Russia has been deploying troops along its border with Ukraine, particularly around the Donbas region, where they have been carrying on a small war with Ukraine since late 2014.

In the middle of a pandemic in which millions have died, with no end in sight,  it would be a hell of a time to start a war.

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Saturday Soother – November 13, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, UT – November 2021 photo by Byron Jones

This week’s Veteran’s Day apparently isn’t finished with Wrongo just yet. It’s important to remember that when the US war in Afghanistan ended in August after nearly 20 years, there were both hard and soft costs that had been paid, and much that remains to be paid.

The Pentagon reports the hard costs of our Afghanistan adventure to be $825 billion. However, the “Costs of War” project at Brown University estimates those costs at $2.313 trillion. But it gets worse: They estimate the costs of all US post-9/11 war spending at $8 trillion, including future obligations for veterans’ care and the cost of borrowing on the associated federal debt for roughly 30 years. They also estimate the human costs of the “global war on terror” at 900,000 deaths.

Those are all truly staggering numbers.

And Congress is now considering next fiscal year’s military budget. Defense One is covering this so you don’t have to. They’re saying that the proposed 2022 defense budget will be another bipartisan effort by the old-timers in the House and Senate to add more money than was asked for into the pot. And it’s part of a long history of hiding flimsy arguments behind dramatic rhetoric: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“This year, both the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and House Armed Services Committee (HASC) have displayed a similar unwillingness to distinguish between needs and wants in their versions of the National Defense Authorization Act, which recommend adding $25 billion and $24 billion, respectively, to President Biden’s recommended $715 billion Pentagon budget.”

More:

“It is difficult to imagine how either the SASC or HASC could convincingly demonstrate the necessity of such military spending increases when none of the most urgent crises facing the United States today have military solutions. Furthermore, the credibility of both the Pentagon and Congress on this subject is, to put it mildly, underwhelming: one has an extensive history of budgetary boondoggles, and the other is openly cozy with the U.S. arms industry.”

Defense One says that the most frustrating aspect isn’t the exorbitant amounts, but the lack of any substantive strategic justification for the increased spending by either Chamber. In specific, Defense One argues that  there’s been no effort to demonstrate that the Senate’s billions are funding needs instead of simply political wants.

Remember this is from Defense One, a stalwart defender of America’s military.

We shouldn’t assume legislators think carefully about the public’s interest when crafting the defense budget. Over the years, the defense budget process is driven partly by what the administration and the Pentagon ask for, and by what the defense industry wants for its bottom line. (Full disclosure, Wrongo holds a significant number of shares in a large defense contracting firm.)

US military spending in 2020 was $778 billion. The next closest nation was China, at $252 billion. In third place was India at $72.9 billion. Another perspective is to compare what we spent to fight in Vietnam to the costs of our Apollo moon landing. Apollo 11 got to the moon in July of 1969. That feat cost the US about $25.8 billion.

During the same era, it’s estimated that the Vietnam War cost the US $141 billion over 14 years. That means that we spent about as much in two years in Vietnam as we spent on the entire space race!

When we think about accountability for the costs of the Pentagon, we should remember that the Pentagon has never passed an outside expense audit. Waste is endemic; and the Pentagon simply fabricates numbers, but receives nearly zero pushback from Congress.

There’s so much corruption in the halls of Congress that we will never know how little we could spend on defense. Maybe we should just make some deep cuts to the defense budget and force real strategic decision-making down their throats.

Enough! It’s Saturday, and we need to take a break from trying to figure out whether Steve Bannon or Kyle Rittenhouse will ever go to jail. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

With a soaking rain in Connecticut today, we’re limited to indoor sports. Most of our fall clean-up is still ahead, but today, let’s grab a seat by the window and listen to pianist Max Richter’s “Mercy” with Richter on piano and Mari Samuelsen on violin. Richter originally wrote the piece 10 years ago for violinist Hillary Hahn. For Richter, “Mercy” places the need for mercy and compassion firmly within our view:

 

 

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China’s New Missile Threat

The Daily Escape:

Moonlight on Nantucket Sound, Dennis Port, MA – October 2021 Samsung Note 20 ultra photo by Kelly O. & Bob W.

(We leave Truro, MA today, returning to our workaday lives in CT. It has been a wonderful time on Cape Cod, eating very well, and visiting with both local family, plus a few who traveled to spend time with us.)

From Vice:

“ the Financial Times, citing anonymous US intelligence sources, has reported that China tested a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead in August that left the Pentagon stunned.”

They’re saying that China may have launched a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) with a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV). Opinions differ, but they fired something that orbited the globe and dropped a hypersonic glide vehicle against a target.

Wrongo lost the fob for his car once, they’re expensive to replace. What are we talking about, and why should we care? In August or possibly in July, China tested a missile that might be a FOBS. While Wrongo ran a missile unit in the military, that was 50+ years ago, and the technology has vastly improved – so he’s not an expert.

Let’s define what we’re talking about: “Hypersonic” means that it flies faster than the speed of sound. Hypersonic means speeds from Mach 5 to Mach 25, which is orbital velocity. All ICBMs are hypersonic when they re-enter the atmosphere.

An ICBM can be tracked from launch, and since it can’t be redirected during flight, we will have 10+ minutes warning of the targeted location. But a FOBS can stay in orbit for an indeterminate time. You won’t know where it’s going until it begins its descent, which means that by the time it’s possible to determine the target area, there might only be 2-3 minutes of warning.

This has implications for our missile defense umbrella. A traditional ICBM flies a parabolic trajectory so a missile tracking radar can make projections of where and when it will hit a range of targets, providing “early warning” to our threatened locations.

But as the Drive says:

“The maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicle, descending from high-altitude at extreme speed, could travel thousands of miles to its target, which can be…offset from a normal ballistic track. Complicating things…these systems can attack from the south pole, not just the north where most of America’s ballistic missile early warning, tracking, and defensive apparatus is focused.”

Our missile defense system is designed for launches from the north. Seems like a bad time for us to figure out they can also come from the south.

Regardless, America’s military has little ability to intercept China’s weapons. Our mid-course intercept capabilities are focused on traditional ballistic missile flight profiles. In practice, America’s missile defenses have never been able to stop China’s missiles, so this additional Chinese capability doesn’t change our vulnerability to their nuclear weapons.

From Jeffery Lewis of Arms Control Wonk: (brackets by Wrongo)

“They [the US] have a very poor [anti-ballistic missile] test record…It’s around 50% percent and only in very scripted scenarios. They don’t test in adverse weather. They’ll cancel missile defense tests on account of rain.”

Doesn’t work in the rain? Shouldn’t we have a more legit missile defense system? What if I told you it  cost more than $30 billion?

US spy satellites have revealed that China is constructing hundreds of new missile silos in northwestern China. Their military buildup is, at least in part, a reaction to the perceived threat of America’s pivot to China from the Middle East.

If this report ends up being accurate, one thing is likely: There will be a new profit center for America’s defense contractors! The Pentagon is pushing to deploy a whole new space-based early warning and tracking system for hypersonic and ballistic missiles.

Expect new calls for hugely expensive missile defense capabilities in Congress, as well as demands to do whatever possible to bring China to the bargaining table in hopes of obtaining some type of strategic arms limitation treaty.

Speaking of now wanting a new treaty, China and Russia have both expressed concern, multiple times, about the US abandonment of the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty. The ABM Treaty was a 1972 deal with the Soviet Union that limited the number of such systems both countries could develop and deploy.

Colin Powell and George W. Bush dismantled that treaty in the wake of 9/11. Perhaps if GW Bush hadn’t unilaterally abandoned it in 2001, we might not be talking about this today.

Our presidents can say whatever they want, but our adversaries have to look at the worst case for their own defense, just as we must. They believe that abandoning the treaty opened the way for a US first nuclear strike.

But don’t be too worried about this.

Rest assured we will have an effective defense/response system just as soon as we can get the parts from China.

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DOD Could Save $1 Trillion Without Changing US Security

The Daily Escape:

Sea Street Beach East Dennis MA – October 2021 photo by Ulla Wise

Rather than adding to the current vibe of general despair, a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) offers a number of interesting perspectives on how the US defense budget could sustain a $1 trillion cut over the course of 10 years.

The CBO report says that national defense programs could absorb a well-structured $1 trillion cut while still protecting the homeland and America’s allies from foreign adversaries.

From Responsible Statecraft:

“The new report outlines three different options for cutting the Pentagon budget by $1 trillion over the next decade — a 14 percent reduction. Doing so would still leave the department with $6.3 trillion in taxpayer dollars over the next ten years, in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars.”

The report’s mandate was to look at how to adjust the size and focus of US military under smaller federal budgets. It created three broad options to illustrate the range of strategies that the United States could pursue under a budget that would be cut gradually by a total of $1 trillion, or 14%, between 2022 and 2031. They developed the options using their Interactive Force Structure Tool.

Here are the CBO’s three options for military force reduction:

  • Maintain the existing national security strategy but with fewer personnel.
  • Change the existing national security strategy to focus more on countering adversaries with international allies and coalitions.
  • Change the existing national security strategy to focus more on protecting America’s access to sea, land, and air and space.

In all three options, the CBO slashed full-time active forces, while leaving the less expensive reserves at their current levels. While acknowledging that “none of the plans are without risk,” they concluded that the Pentagon could reduce spending without sacrificing our security.

According to the report, in all three of CBO’s options, units would be staffed, trained, and equipped at the same levels as they are today, but there would be fewer units, or different combinations of units. The CBO chose to retain fully staffed units because, while personnel are expensive, partially staffed units would not be able to execute their missions. That would make the US more of a paper tiger than we are currently.

The CBO report also put the potential cut in historical perspective. While significant, a $1 trillion cut (14%) over a decade would be far smaller than the cuts America’s military spending in 1988 to 1997 (30%), and the 25% cut we had in 2010-2015. A 14% cut from fiscal years 2022 to 2031 would also still leave annual defense spending at more than it was at any point from 1948 through 2002.

Lindsay Koshgarian, program director at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) said:

“The US military budget is now higher than it was at the peak of the Vietnam War, the Korean War, or the Cold War….We are spending far too much on the Pentagon, and too little on everything else…”

A $1 trillion saving isn’t chump change. Those funds could be used to prevent future pandemics, address climate change, or reduce economic injustice. None of those are small matters. And they are all matters of political priorities.

No self-respecting Republican war hawk would have anything to do with cutting the military’s budget. And with the exception of a handful of left leaning Democrats, every other Democrat will shrink from the idea of reducing the military budget. It’s too risky politically.

We actually need Congress to solve three problems: Our revenue problem, our social spending/cost inflation problem, and our defense spending problem.

The CBO idea tackles the defense spending, but we need to consider taxes and revenue along with spending. We need to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals while cutting that defense spending.

Turning to social spending, if you ask Americans what spending they want to cut, they will never say that we ought to ravage people’s retirement security. And 90+% of entitlement spending goes to the elderly, the disabled, or people who worked at least 1,000 hours in the past year. The big savings should come from reducing the growth in the cost of medical services.

Taking $1 trillion from Pentagon spending would be a great start, but we have other work to do.

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How to Think About Australia’s Nuclear Subs

The Daily Escape:

Pumpkins, Bear River City, UT –  September 2021 photo by John Dodson

Should average Americans care that the French are pissed off at Biden? Should we care that within days after shutting down our Afghanistan adventure, we’re adding a new nuclear capability, girding for a possible war in Asia?

On the surface (pun intended) it’s all about nuclear submarines. Australia just reneged on a $66 billion deal negotiated in 2016 to buy French diesel-powered subs. Instead, on September 15, they signed a new deal with the US and the UK to purchase American nuclear-powered submarines.

Ironically, in order to win the Australia deal, France had to design a conventional power plant for its Barracuda-class submarine that was originally powered, as all French subs are, by a nuclear reactor.

France’s power conversion for the Australian order ran into difficulties and time delays. Vox reported that the French deal had already been unraveling, saying that it had fallen behind schedule while costs nearly doubled:

”In June, Australian Defense Secretary Greg Moriarty signaled…that the original deal was proving untenable…and that Australia was pursuing other options should the pact fall apart.”

There were other issues. Shortly after Australia and France reached their agreement, the French shipbuilder revealed it had been hacked, and documents related to a separate Indian submarine project were exposed. Meaning plans for another Barracuda-class sub were floating around the internet, not a big confidence builder.

On the strategic side, France’s conventional, diesel-powered attack vessels may have made sense before China began its quest for dominance in the South China Sea. But new geo-political realities along a major Australian trade route made the French submarines obsolete before they could be delivered.

FYI, a sub designated an “attack” submarine has only conventional weapons on board. The US-made attack subs are nuclear powered, so they have a far greater range, don’t require refueling, and can stay underwater for months at a time without being detected.

Australia has already sunk some $3 billion into the French contract, and France will likely demand additional compensation for the cancellation. The new contract with the US/UK not only costs more, but it only includes 8, instead of the 12 submarines France was delivering.

Generally, navies require three boats in order to have one at sea full-time, since the other two are often either in training, or in refit. This means that the actual patrolling capacity for Australia’s nuclear navy will only be 2-3 concurrent submarines at sea.

Losing the sub deal places French President Macron in a tough spot. GZero reminds us that France is just six months away from a general election that’s shaping up to be a close race between Macron and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen:

“Macron, who has increasingly veered to the right on certain issues…knows that he can’t afford to look toothless, and that taking a hard line on the US could reap political benefits come election day (only 44% of French adults now view the US favorably).”

That helps explain some of the anger. Aside from the financial hit from losing the deal, and the slight by the US, France is also miffed because it shows the world something no country wants to admit – that France is not a superpower. And despite its pretensions, it really isn’t a global power.

Most would agree that a nuclear sub strategy is the right choice for Australia. It is a member of the British Commonwealth. Australia and New Zealand are out in the Pacific, much closer to China than to Europe. They seem to think that planning to work with the US and Britain is a better fit.

But the US shouldn’t have excluded the French or lied to them. France has 2 million inhabitants in the Indo-Pacific, and had by 2018 already defined its strategy for the region. Biden must work to mend these fences, and that seems to be underway.

Amid all the pearl clutching regarding France’s anger, isn’t the real question what’s best for Australia’s defense? This is Australia’s way of showing China that if they choose to block Australian trade routes, the Australian navy will have several untraceable attack subs that could deter the Chinese Navy.

China’s massive military buildup is the primary reason for this new arms race in the Indo-Pacific. Australia, along with Biden, are responding. We shouldn’t take seriously the accusation of “sparking” an arms race that is already underway.

For the US however, this amounts to a relatively cost free and significant de-facto expansion of America’s Asian nuclear attack submarine fleet, our most effective deterrent to Chinese territorial expansion.

With this, Biden has executed a masterstroke in Asia.

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Afghanistan Defeat May Energize Military

The Daily Escape:

Fall foliage begins with Swamp Maples, Westborough MA – September 2021 photo by Juergen Roth Photography

For Americans, our pull-out from Afghanistan was a roller coaster of emotion. Many felt anger at our failure to win against the Taliban. Some felt we should have stayed for an indefinite time until some indefinite goal was reached. Many were just sad we stayed as long as we did.

Jeff Groom, a former Marine officer, asked in Responsible Statecraft whether the failure in Afghanistan will touch off a “revolution from below” by more junior military members. He says that lower levels of the military blame their top leadership for problems with veteran’s health. And they also blame their leadership and the politicians for sending them to fight without clear goals or purpose.

The front-line military understands that the top brass was, at least in part, in the business of obfuscation and deception of America’s politicians and the public. Senior military leaders have often presented overly optimistic views, while insisting on ever-more resources for warfighting.

The front-line knew that US airstrikes and raids often killed women and children. From Groom:

“To expend human life for a cause you believed in but didn’t win is one thing, to break human beings and their families forever because of lies and deceit is another. Is it any wonder then, that our veterans are disgusted and angry? They were treated, as Kurt Vonnegut said in 2004, like “toys a rich kid got for Christmas.”

Pew found that 64% of Iraq veterans said that war was not worth fighting. For Afghanistan, the number was 58%. Some of these angry and disappointed veterans are now running for office on both sides of the political aisle. More from Groom:

“Lucas Kunce, a former Marine officer and now Democratic Senate candidate for Missouri, has taken a stand against the lies. And Joe Kent, a former Green Beret and Gold Star husband running for a Republican congressional seat in Washington state, has suggested establishing an “Afghan War Commission” with his sights set on “the blob.” “

The term “Blob” describes members of the mainstream foreign-policy establishment: Government officials, academics, Council on Foreign Relations panelists, and television talking heads — who share a collective belief that it’s the obligation of the US to pursue an aggressive, interventionist policy in the post-9/11 world.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen in this context as Blob-approved.

The anger at the military’s top brass and at Congress is leading more veterans to now run for political office. In 2020, 182 US military veterans ran for a seat in the House or Senate, and there are now 91 US veterans serving in Congress (17% of the Congressional total). Of these, 36 served in Afghanistan and Iraq; 27 are Republicans and 9 are Democrats.

At least 11 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are running for the US Senate in 2022, along with at least 33 seeking 2022 House seats. The majority are Republicans. These numbers will likely increase as both Parties are actively recruiting veterans who are willing to stand for election in the mid-terms.

Like our Congress, most American voters haven’t served. But voters have had a front row seat for decades of failed policies. It wouldn’t be unrealistic to assume the next decade will see a retrenchment of the US empire due to voters’ disillusionment with the Blob’s foreign policy consensus in Washington.

As for the future of the all-volunteer military, problems with the quality and quantity of service members loom on the horizon. The length of our recent wars has forced the armed services to cut corners to achieve service targets.

In 2003 94% of enlisted Army personnel had a high school diploma. In 2007 it had dropped to 71%. In World War II, the cut-off for the IQ test in the Marine Corps was a score of 120. In 1980, 85% of officers achieved that score but only 59% did in 2014.

In addition, concerns about the motivations for volunteering exist as well. America’s military relies upon citizens who willingly decide to sacrifice. Traditionally this was because the volunteers felt a strong connection to the nation and to its government. The failures of the war on terrorism coupled with our current cultural divide, indicate that this connection could be weakening.

Consider that the majority of the military is drawn from the South and Midwest. It may only be a matter of time before those volunteers stop raising their hands. If our all-volunteer system becomes a de-facto mercenary army, motivated only by a paycheck or college tuition, it will be devoid of real loyalty to country, a necessary condition for effectiveness.

We could be about to face both declining standards, and declining volunteerism.

Who will want to fight for us the next time? How hard will they fight?

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