Pundits were all over the tube and Twitter after the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Hamburg Germany. They were yelling into the echo chamber, speaking about handshakes, the body language of the principals, and what the deeper meaning of each told us about the meeting.
What did it mean that Trump didnât body-slam Putin about Crimea or US election meddling? What did it mean when they spoke for two and a quarter hours when the meeting was scheduled for 30 minutes?
Wrongo is glad that these two world leaders took the time, and then some, to talk to each other. He hopes they do so regularly. The world isnât a better place when they are not talking, despite what pundits or politicians say.
On to cartoons. Trump is unaware of the irony in what he sometimes says:
The GOP is still searching for a health care bill that they can pass:
Hobby Lobby proves their true values arenât truly Christian:
The Donny/Vlad meeting included chemistry:
The Donny/Vlad meeting included really tough talk:
Going to the Sun Road, Glacier National Park, 2016 â photo by Wrongo
They told Wrongo that if he voted for Hillary, weâd be at war in Syria. He voted for Hillary, and sure enough, looks like we could get into a war with Syria! Particularly after this:
A U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet from Carrier Air Wing 8 on board the USS George Bush shot down a Syrian Air Force Su-22 ground attack aircraft near Raqqa, Syria after the aircraft struck ground troops in Ja-Din, south of Tabqah, near Raqqa.
According to most sources it is the first time a U.S. combat aircraft has shot down a manned enemy aircraft in aerial combat in nine years.
The pro-Assad regime Syrian Su-22 that was downed had attacked Syrian Democratic Forces aligned with the U.S. led coalition and inflicted casualties on the friendly forces as they were driving south of Tabqah before it was intercepted.
Russia was displeased. They announced that they could possibly shoot down any US air craft operating in western Syria:
In the combat mission zones of the Russian aviation in the air space of Syria, all kinds of airborne vehicles, including aircraft and UAVs of the international coalition detected to the west of the Euphrates River will be tracked by the Russian SAM systems as air targets.
Treating US and allied planes as âtargetsâ does not mean the Russians will shoot at them. What theyâre saying is that they will track the planes as they would track any target, they will send their own planes to observe the targets, and possibly escort the targets out of the area.
This gets tricky: what happens if the âtargetâ refuses to be escorted away? Do the Russians then shoot at the target? They havenât said. But until they do start shooting, weâre not in a hot war. Weâve just moved a step closer to one possibly occurring soon.
And this would be the most dangerous confrontation between the US and Russia since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wrongo remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis very well. He was in college. We sat around thinking that DC (where we lived) would be taken out by nuclear missiles launched by the Russkies.
This is one outcome of Trumpâs outsourcing full control of military action on the ground to the generals.
One miscalculation, and Trumpâs generals are making new foreign policy. Clemenceau was correct when he said that âwar is too important to be left to the generalsâ. Who we decide to fight is one of our most important national decisions. From the American Conservative:
There has never been a Congressional vote authorizing US military operations in Syria against anyone, and there has been scant debate over any of the goals that the US claims to be pursuing there. The US launches attacks inside Syria with no legal authority from the UN or Congress, and it strains credulity that any of these operations have anything to do with individual or collective self-defense.
The US says we are in Syria to fight ISIS and evict them from Raqqa. But we have also been arming the Syrian opposition for at least three years. And we have been a party to the Syrian civil war for at least a year before that. But the underlying assumption, that it is in our interest to be fighting in Syria, has not been seriously questioned by most members of Congress.
Americans are so accustomed to fighting wars on foreign soil that we barely notice that the policy has never really been debated or put to a vote. If this Syrian confrontation leads us into a larger conflict with Russia, will it finally be time to notice whatâs happening? Â
Shooting down a Syrian jet shows the dangers that come from conducting a foreign policy unmoored from both the national interest and representative government.
It was shot down because it was threatening rebels opposed to the Syrian government, and the US supports those rebels, apparently up to and including destroying Syrian regime forces that attack them. We say we are there to fight ISIS. That has sufficient support by the people and the Congress. If we are also fighting to oust Assad, we are doing something that requires a full debate.
Without that debate, when we shoot down a Syrian plane inside its own country, we have committed an act of war against another state.
A bit of music. Here is Paramore with âHard Timesâ:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Takeaway Lyric:
All that I want Is to wake up fine
Tell me that Iâm alright
That I ainât gonna die
All that I want
Is a hole in the ground
You can tell me when itâs alright
For me to come out
Last Thursday, Iran, Russia and Turkey signed a memorandum on the creation of âde-escalationâ zones in Syria. This represents the beginning of a new phase in the Syrian civil war. If the agreement and the cease-fires it envisions hold up, it could become a de facto partition of the country into zones of influence, some based on religious sect, and a recognition that at this point, neither the regime nor the rebels can win this conflict.
A glance at the placement of the proposed “de-escalation zones” shows that they are jihadi dominated areas under the protection and support of foreign sponsors; Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, the Gulf States and possibly, the US.
The text of the agreement says the de-escalation zones allow for an improvement of the humanitarian situation and to âcreate favorable conditions to advance a political settlement of the conflict.â In the zones mapped out under the agreement, the use of weapons, including âaerial assets, shall be ceased.â
The agreement was not signed by the Syrian regime, which is interesting. This means that Iran, Turkey and Russia are the guarantors of the facts on the ground post-agreement, and it shifts the conflict from one between the regime and the various opposition rebel groups, to one between the powerful foreign proxies that have sent weapons and in some cases, their armed forces into the country.
The US was not a direct participant in the negotiations for the agreement, but was present as an observer during the discussions. US Secretary of State Tillerson and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, stayed in touch during the discussions.
The agreement shows the degree to which Russia has outmaneuvered the US and is dictating terms in Syria. This sends a clear message to Trump that while the Americans are putting down roots in northeast Syria with the Kurdish YPG, the US role is not formally recognized by Turkey, Iran or Russia despite the fact that the area is de facto under US protection.
It remains to be seen if this agreement is the beginning of the map for a new Syria or just breathing space before the next round of war.
This is a gift for Donald Trump. He consistently called for safe zones while campaigning, so he can easily support this move. Also, Putin and Trump seem to be tacitly co-operating to keep Turkey out of parts of northern Syria. A question is whether the US will go along with the plan. The US plans to stay in Syria to finish off ISIS, while the other powers prefer to finish off the rebels fighting the Assad regime first.
Despite that, ISIS still controls much of the land mass of Syria, albeit not its population centers.
The answer may depend on how much the White House wants to take at least some of the credit for bringing peace to Syria, and Thursdayâs agreement may be the best shot Americaâs got.
Clearly, Putin is thinking in terms of a “grand strategy”, where the Syria situation is one of a number of critical elements of a possible US-Russia relationship. If the US-Russia relationship can be genuinely reset in a better direction, then it will impact many fronts: Perhaps Putin can get Trump to agree to Putinâs land grab in Crimea and the Donbass region of Ukraine. Perhaps they can work together to end the civil war in Syria, defeating ISIS along the way.
Notably, when Tillerson and Lavrov spoke last week, Syria and North Korea were two topics on their agenda. Maybe Russia could prove to be a more important factor in the North Korea situation than most realize.
So wake up Trump administration! Take that baby step forward by supporting the de-escalation agreement. If it fails, the other guys are to blame. If it succeeds in stabilizing the refugee situation while leading to a political solution in Syria, the credit will partially accrue to America. To help them wake up, here are the Rolling Stones with âStart Me Upâ from their 1981 album âTattoo Youâ:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Wildflowers in the Temblor Range, CA. April 2017 photo by Robyn Beck
We still have little hard evidence proving that Syria gassed its own people. Much like Iraq in 2003, we have made a military move that feels great emotionally, but that isnât built on a solid foundation of fact. That the Syrian government deliberately used chemical weapons to bomb its civilians became absolute truth in US media in less than 24 hours.
And once that tidal wave of American war frenzy starts rolling, questioning the casus belli is not permitted. Wanting conclusive evidence before commencing military action will get you vilified, denounced as a sympathizer with Americaâs enemies.
When Trump launched the tomahawks, most in the mainstream media suddenly fawned all over him. Margret Sullivan in the WaPo quoted several, starting with CNNâs Fareed Zakaria:
I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night…
Sullivan noted that the NYT’s piece failed to even mention that Trump is keeping refugees from the Syrian war, even children, out of the US. Victims of chemical weapons were âbeautiful babiesâ to Trump at his news conference, while the children trying to flee such violence require âextreme vettingâ and face an indefinite refugee ban. And this from the WSJâs Bret Stephens, previously a Trump critic:
 President Trump has done the right thing and I salute him for it…Now destroy the Assad regime for good.
Perhaps the worst was MSNBCâs Brian Williams, who used the word âbeautifulâ three times when discussing the tomahawk missile launches. He quoted a Leonard Cohen lyric (from First We Take Manhattan): I am guided by the beauty of our weapons â without apparent irony:
We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two US Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean…I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: âI am guided by the beauty of our weapons.â…They are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is for them what is a brief flight over to this airfield…
Williams might have focused on: What did they hit? What are the strategic consequences?
Many of these same media pukes were continuously expressing doubts about Trumpâs judgment since before his election. But, when he orders the use of force, his judgment needs to be questioned by them more than ever. One reason that the US so easily resorts to the use of force abroad is that the very people that should be the first to question the rationale for a presidential military decision are instead among the first to cheer it and celebrate it.
We see groupthink most of the time when the American news media watches an administration step up to the brink of war. This was true in the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, the start of our longest military disaster.
Journalists and pundits need to keep virtues like skepticism, facts on the ground, and context fixed firmly in their minds. They should not be like Brian Williams, focused on spectacular images in the night sky, without contemplating their deadly effect.
For example, how can the media NOT ask how Trump, a man with little outward empathy, can change in a minute, suddenly becoming a caring individual about beautiful Syrian babies? Or, how in a period of 24 hours, Trump managed to flip-flop 180 degrees on a position about Syria that he’s held for years?
Why is the media leading the cheers on Syria, but keeping silent about Yemen?
Why are there never pictures of âbeautifulâdead babies after our drone strikes go awry?
Time for the main stream media to wake up and do their jobs in an old school way. To help them wake up, here is Brian Williamsâs favorite lyricist, Leonard Cohen, with âFirst We Take Manhattanâ:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Takeaway Lyric:
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
There are two inescapable conclusions in the aftermath of Trumpâs missile strikes in Syria. First, the US can no longer focus only on destroying ISIS. Now, we are in the position of having to also burn calories dealing with the fallout from those strikes with Russia, Syria and Iran.
Second, we can no longer keep our previous distance vis-Ă -vis the Syrian civil war separate from our relations with Russia. Before Trumpâs Tomahawking, it was possible to argue that Russiaâs involvement in Syria was peripheral to our goals in Syria, and certainly not central to overall US/Russian relations. Now, the US has put at risk the limited cooperation we have had with Russian in Syria regarding ISIS.
And for what? Apparently, Trumpâs missile strikes didnât change much on the ground in Syria. In fact, the Syrian air force just used the same air strip that we blasted with 60 tomahawk missiles (at the cost of $1million a copy) to again bomb the same city that suffered the sarin attack.
Doubtless, Trump will call this a âvictoryâ but, if you use $60 million to disable an airbase, shouldnât it be disabled? Again, the question is: What was Trump trying to accomplish? He has taken a dangerous situation, and seemingly made it more dangerous. To Wrongo, it looks like Trump got nearly nothing from his attack. Does this remind anyone of Trumpâs attack on Yemen?
Since the Syrian fly-boys are back in the air, bombing the SAME city, Trump looks like a fool. Want to bet that he will feel the need to correct that impression? On to Cartoons!
Who/What was Trump aiming his tomahawks at?
We tipped off Putin that the tomahawks were coming:
Trump meets with Chinaâs Xi and learns something:
Negotiations with Xi werenât as easy as Trump thought:
Mitch McConnell, wrecker extraordinaire:
Invoking the nuclear option made things much easier for the GOP:
Ready, Fire, Aim! Arenât you glad we didnât elect Hillary, the neo con warmonger? From Booman:
Our Bush Era PTSD has been reactivated in a big way. While I offered a limited and cautious and conditional defense of President Trumpâs decision to authorize the strikes against Syria, I was at pains to note that itâs very important that the administration provide convincing evidence that the Assad regime is responsible for the sarin attack that served as the predicate for the missile launch.
Russia and Syria have denied that they are behind the Syrian Chemical Weapons (CW) attack. We know there was an attack, and that some kind of chemical was used. The media are saying it was sarin gas.
They also, nearly unanimously, say it is the fault of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. Earlier in the week, both US Foreign Secretary Rex Tillerson and US UN envoy Nikki Haley said removing Assad was no longer a priority in US Middle-East policy.
Now, Assad has to go.
Most news outlets and pundits support Donald Trumpâs spanking of the Assad government, but what is Trumpâs strategy? Enforcing norms against the use of chemical weapons (CW) is a good thing. But itâs hard to see how Thursdayâs all-out reversal of our level of engagement in the Syrian civil war is justified by the use of CW, particularly since it has been used several times before in Syria, and since it brings with it many other risks/issues, like a potential military confrontation with Russia and Iran.
After Thursdayâs Tomahawk missile attack, we are now simultaneously confronting the two strongest factions in the Syrian civil war, Assadâs army and ISIS. While Trump and the MSM are going bananas about the horrors of CW, no one was going bananas last week, or in all the prior weeks, about the daily death count of Syrian children who were collateral damage in the countryâs civil war.
The attack took place in the midst of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping This was where one of the hottest topics was what to do about North Korea’s continuing long-range missile tests and its work on completing a deliverable nuclear warhead.
Clearly there were implicit messages for both North Korea and China in the Syrian attack. This has something to do with Syria, and a lot to do with the Chinese. Military types would tell us that Trump firing 59 cruise missiles to take out an airfield is overkill.
But, it will not be lost on Xi that 50+cruise missiles could also devastate any of those new atoll airfields cropping up in the South China Sea. Donald Trump just proved to Xi that he is a man with 4,000+ nuclear weapons at this disposal and a military that follows orders. It looks to Wrongo like Xi and Putin now have a giant incentive to become better allies, and invite Iran to the party.
Once again, Wrongo thinks that the best option for the US would be to concentrate on humanitarian efforts and helping refugees. And to work with Russia and Syriaâs other allies to end the threat from ISIS in the greater Middle East.
Unfortunately, that also admits there is a limitation on the USâs ability to control events solely based on its military strength. Despite its flaws, if thereâs no reason to believe any strategy will improve results, then the best course is inaction. That was Obamaâs approach.
Itâs just not true that we âMust Do Somethingâ. People think that if we Do Something, then nothing bad that subsequently happens is really our fault, because AT LEAST WE DID SOMETHING. Whereas if we do nothing, then every bad thing that subsequently happens is our fault.
Thanks, Obama.
We really donât have to do anything. The problem is that by following the do-nothing strategy, America doesnât get to be the biggest, baddest ass on the Middle East Street.
Yes, if we do nothing, lots of people will die, but that doesnât exactly distinguish it from what will happen anyway. Our inaction wonât transfer blame for those deaths onto us, any more than an action to take out Assad will shift it from us.
Who knew running the worldâs superpower was so complicated? Certainly, not someone who said âI alone can fix itâ.
(The Philology library at Berlinâs Free University. Designed in the shape of the human brain)
Trumpâs National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is out. His lies or charitably, his misremembering whether his communications with the Russian ambassador included discussing the sanctions that had recently imposed by the outgoing Obama administration, were too much even for the fact-challenged Trump administration. That became patently obvious after the WaPo dropped the bombshell that Trump was warned about Flynn’s ties by the Justice Department before the inauguration.
Who notified them? Then-acting attorney general Sally Q. Yates. You remember that Yates was later fired by Trump for advising the President that his Muslim ban was unconstitutional.
She informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
When she notified the White House that the FBI had Flynn on tape talking with the Russian Ambassador, she also told then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan.
So the Trumpets had more than enough of Ms. Yates by the time she advised them that the Muslim ban wouldnât fly.
Flynn resigned Monday night. Most Republicans say there is nothing more to see here, and that we should move along. Democrats want an independent investigation.
Whether this issue is over or not probably depends on whether you believe that Flynn was a rogue actor, operating without any cooperation or involvement by others in the Trump administration. Was something larger at work? Was it just Flynn lying to Pence, and then Flynn lying to Trump?
Thatâs possible, but considering the character of some of the people in this administration, from Trump to Bannon, to Miller and Conway, it seems unlikely that Flynn was acting alone.
And on Tuesday, Trump tweeted, after accepting Flynnâs resignation, that:
The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?
We all know that isnât the real story. Thank you Sally Yates!
Here is The Who with âBehind Blue Eyesâ from their album, âWho’s Nextâ. It was recorded in March, 1971. It describes the Orange Overlord to a âTâ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfuWXRZe9yA
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Sample Lyrics:
No one knows what itâs like
To be a rich man
Itâs a bitch, man
Behind blue eyes
No one knows what itâs like
To be hated
To be baldpated
Telling only lies
No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
No one knows what it’s like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies
But my dreams They aren’t as empty As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely My love is vengeance That’s never free
No one knows what it’s like To feel these feelings Like I do
There may be reasons not to vote for Hillary Clinton, but there are no reasons at all to vote for Donald Trump â except for pure nihilism. For the Trumpets, there is little coherence about why he is their choice. Two threads emerge: First, that Trump will shake things up, that DC is its own bubble that must be burst. The current two party system is fraudulent and corrupt. Second, that rage against Hillary is sufficient reason to vote for the Donald. Neither idea, nor are both ideas, sufficient reason to elect the Pant Load.
So, Hillary has to be the choice for this election. She has a track record, and the only things you have to go by with respect to Trump are his mostly appalling business practices, and his appalling character, neither of which should inspire voter confidence.
However, Clintonâs track record and policies are not without concern. In particular, her foreign policy positions are frightening. It is clear that Clinton proposes to pursue a more militaristic version of the policies that have brought us where we are in the world. She would:
Enforce a âno-flyâ zone inside Syria, with or without Syrian and Russian agreement
Issue an even larger blank check to Israel
Treat Russia as a military problem rather than a factor in the European balance to be managed
Try to tie China down in East Asia
We have little idea about what would she would do differently in Afghanistan or Iraq. What would she do differently about North Korea, Iran, or Turkey? We donât know, but this should be frightening:
In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obamaâs departure from the White House â and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton â is being met with quiet relief. The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy…
And there is more: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
The studies, which reflect Clintonâs stated views, break most forcefully with Obama on Syria. Virtually all these efforts…call for stepped-up military action to deter President Bashar al-Assadâs regime and Russian forces in Syria.
The proposed military measures include…safe zones to protect moderate rebels from Syrian and Russian forces. Most of the studies propose limited American airstrikes with cruise missiles to punish Assad if he continues to attack civilians with barrel bombs…
Obama has staunchly resisted any military action against the Assad regime.
Apparently, the Iraq war was such a success that these policy experts want to repeat it in Syria. But, we are not as popular as we used to be, what with our drones droning all over the Middle East.
It is important to remember that when the Arab Spring erupted in 2010, the total Arab ME population was 348 million (World Bank data); today, it is 400 million. In the past six years, 52 million new Arab citizens were born in the ME, few of whom know a world without war, many who have limited education, schooling and economic prospects.
Should our next president be making new enemies in the ME?
We have a yuuge problem if our so-called foreign policy “elites” think the most “dovish” policy available is Obama’s current foreign policy. If this is the best that our serious policy thinkers can come up with, maybe we should just burn down the Kennedy School and Georgetown.
Wrongo thinks that 2016 is reminiscent of 1964, when LBJ ran against Goldwater. We had an anti-communist foreign policy elite looking for a fight with the USSR, and Goldwater was their man. America chose LBJ, because it was impossible to conceive of Goldwater having his finger on the nuclear button. LBJ was solid on domestic policy, but he listened to the elites, and launched us into Vietnam for no good reason, and with little public enthusiasm.
Today our anti-Russian foreign policy elites have Hillaryâs ear, and there is a potential that she will mirror LBJ, getting us into another calamitous foreign policy adventure.
Wrongo will vote for her despite these concerns, as there is no alternative.
Bush’s policy should not be the starting point, with Obamaâs foreign policy being the end point in terms of Hillary Clintonâs possible foreign policy options. If Bush’s policy was a complete failure, why on earth would she rely on a variant of it as the basis for our foreign policy?
Sadly, we are having this discussion less than two weeks before the election.
We have to hope that Hillary Clinton can be a good listener to options other than what the Neo-Cons are proposing.
Havenât heard of JOE- 35? Not surprising, since it is very difficult to find any mention of it in any major media news outlet. Google JOE- 35, and you get a series of links for a cast stone fire pit that is 35â in diameter.
Wrong. It refers to the “Joint Operating Environment 2035” [pdf] (JOE â 35), issued in July by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It lays out the environment that the military and the nation will be facing 20 years from now. It is written as a guide to how the Defense Department should be spending resources today in order to protect against tomorrowâs threats. They identify six broad geopolitical challenges the US Military will have to deal with in 20 years:
Violent Ideological Competition: irreconcilable ideas communicated and promoted by identity networks through violence. That is, states and non-state actors alike will pursue their goals by spreading ideologies hostile to US interests and encouraging violent acts to promote those ideologies.
Threatened US Territory and Sovereignty: encroachment, erosion, or disregard of US sovereignty and the freedom of its citizens.
Antagonistic Geopolitical Balancing: increasingly ambitious adversaries maximizing their own influence while actively limiting US influence. That is, rival powers will pursue their own interests in conflict with those of the United States. Think China in the Philippines.
Disrupted Global Commons: denial or compulsion in spaces and places available to all but owned by none. Think that the US will no longer be able to count on unimpeded access to the oceans, the air, space, or the electromagnetic spectrum in the pursuit of its interests.
A Contest for Cyberspace: a struggle to define and credibly protect sovereignty in cyberspace. That is, US cyberwarfare measures will increasingly face effective defenses and US cyberspace assets will increasingly face effective hostile incursions.
Shattered and Reordered Regions: states increasingly unable to cope with internal political fractures, environmental stress, or deliberate external interference. That means states will continue to be threatened by increasingly harsh pressures on national survival, and the failed states and stateless zones will continue to spawn insurgencies and non-state actors hostile to the US.
The report also warns that the rise of non-state actors such as ISIS, described in the report as “privatized violence“, will continue, as will the rapidity by which those groups form and adapt. The spread of 3D-printing technologies and readily available commercial technology such as drones, means those groups can be increasingly effective against a fully equipped and highly technological US military.
The study says:
Transnational criminal organizations, terrorist groups, and other irregular threats are likely to exploit the rapid spread of advanced technologies to design, resource, and execute complex attacks and combine many complex attacks into larger, more sustained campaigns…
John Michael Greer has a review of JOE-35 that is worth reading in its entirety. His criticism of the report is that:
Apparently nobody at the Pentagon noticed one distinctly odd thing about this outline of the future context of American military operations: itâs not an outline of the future at all. Itâs an outline of the present. Every one of these trends is a major factor shaping political and military action around the world right now.
Like so many things in our current politics, the JOE projections are mostly about justifying current procurement/pork barreling by a linear extrapolation of todayâs threats. That, and the institutional blindness that sets in when there have been no real challenges to the established groupthink, and the professional consequences of failure in the military are near-zero.
The JOE list may not be imaginative or fully predictive, but that doesn’t make it wrong. None of the problems they forecast are going away. For instance, the use of ideology to win and shore up support from potential fighters and allies is as old as ancient times, so why would ideological conflict NOT be an issue in 2035?
Threats to US sovereignty and territory go along with the Joint Chiefsâ recognition that the US is an empire most likely on a downward curve, unless there is great change in our policies, domestic and foreign.
In this sense, the report is quietly critical of our politicians.
The admission in the JOE report that we will be actively required to defend our home ground by 2035 is a mark of just how much our geopolitical environment has changed since 9/11.
It is indeed worth your time to read both the JOE report, and that of John Michael Greer very carefully.
Both will make you smarter than reading about the latest Trump outrage.
