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Firewatch (March 2024 edition, Part 2)

(This is Part 2 of my innagural edition of "Firewatch" becuase I was dumb and didn't realize what the character limit is. Read Part 1 here). Full piece beneath the cut.

Smoldering Embers

These are the conflicts that, while not yet to the point where the flames are rising and heating up, smoke is starting to billow (or has been billowing) and there's potential for a real blaze to suddenly flare up at a moment's notice. You may have heard about them in the news here and there, but they're likely only popping up for your attention once in a blue moon because they haven't gotten bad or dramatic enough yet to fully grab the world's attention amid everything else going on.

West Africa/Sahel

The Sahel regions of West Africa are no stranger to crisis and conflict. Multiple countries in the region have already been dealing with internal political discord and armed conflict for years, but now multiple factors and various players seem to be converging in this part of Africa, positioning it to take a number of different paths forward in the coming months and years – few of which look very good.

West Africa and the Sahel are feeling a series of different pressures converging all at once. Since 2020, the region has seen a historic number of coup d'etats – both failed attempts and successful ones – which often come with a large amount of public support amid frustration with institutions and leaders that appear to be failing them. One reason for this frustration (among others that should be unsurprising, like economic troubles) is increasing amounts of instability throughout the region. Affiliates of both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State both have footholds in the region, and are engaged in insurgencies against the governments of Mali (its most recent coup being in 2021, and also fighting a simultaneous insurgency by Tuareg separatists), Burkina Faso (most recent coup in 2022), and Niger (most recent coup in 2023), with Nigeria also dealing with a well over-decade old insurgency against Bokho Haram.

Niger's coup last year, in particular, seems to have been a watershed moment for the region and beyond. The country was strategically important both for its mineral resources (which unsurprisingly have not translated into economic and social development for the people of Niger themselves) and as a geographically well positioned outpost both for France (who's colonial legacy hangs heavily over the region) and the Untied States and other foreign powers, who all had troops stationed in the country to conduct counter-terrorism operations. The coup was seen as serious enough that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) issued an ultimatum to the Nigerien junta this past summer, threatening that if it did not cede power back to the elected President that ECOWAS would intervene to restore the legitimately elected government (as it has in the past).

Ultimately, the ECOWAS threats have not come to fruition and don't seem likely to – despite some apparent moves to do so in the aftermath of the coup. But out of those threats, Niger has joined into a new political and military alliance called the Alliance of Sahel States with both Burkina Faso and Mali (all of which had been suspended from ECOWAS due to their respective coups) to provide for collective self-defense against foreign intervention. Since 2023, French troops have been forced out of both Burkina Faso and Niger – with Niger now seemingly on the verge of doing the same to the remaining US troops in the country, while Vladimir Putin's Russia has seemingly been on a charm offensive to befriend the members of new alliance signing economic and military agreements and even reportedly dispatching troops – with mercenaries such as those from Wagner already having been active in the area (now operating under the new name of the "Africa Corps").

All these factors and more combined suggest that things in the Sahel are liable to get very interesting in the near future. As stated before, a number of different paths seem to unfold ahead for the region: if the ongoing radical insurgencies continue and are victorious, we could see a new territorial caliphate in West Africa and the Sahel mirroring that of IS in Iraq and Syria in the 2010s (and all the horrors that came with it). Barring that, as Russia deepens its ties to the AES, it could further turn the region into even more of a battleground in the multilateral Cold War we find ourselves in (as Russia is not the only authoritarian power seeking to deepen its influence in West Africa, as Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also attempting to get involved there). Those are only two potential options out of many, and the myriad of other options in a region that is heavily populated and on the radar of multiple great powers means that it bears continued monitoring going forward.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo/Rwanda

Now this is one that I imagine is probably flying under the radars of most people who aren't deeper into my field, but is probably one of the most immediately pressing in Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been fighting against a rebellion by the armed group known as "M23" in its East for a decade now – that much isn't new. But now the conflict is threatening to turn onto a state-on-state war in Africa's Great Lakes region, as M23's primary back of neighboring Rwanda seemingly steps up its direct involvement into the conflict.

Rwanda has been backing M23 for some time now, with both Rwanda's government (under long-time President Paul Kagame) and M23 itself being primarily led by members of the Tutsi ethnic group. Rwanda also has a history of armed interventions in the DRC as well, so that in itself is not new. But in recent months the long-running tensions and low-level conflict between the DRC and Rwanda has threatened to boil over into outright, full-scale war, amid a series of fresh escalations – one prominent example being Rwanda firing on a DRC fighter-jet that it claimed violated its airspace. The high level of tensions has been further evidenced by more direct US involvement recently than is typically seen in this part of the world, with the United States and other governments attempting to broker some kind of peaceful resolution between the DRC and Rwanda. These efforts do not seem to have made much headway, with this past month the United States resorting to publicly urging both the DRC and Rwanda to "walk back from the brink of war." US mediation efforts may well be undermined, however, by it's (and many other Western countries') cozy relationship with Rwanda – despite its autocratic leader.

The trajectory for the current crisis remains unclear. A sideline meeting during the African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa appeared to make some progress in at least getting both the DRC and Rwanda to sit at one table and discuss a return to a peaceful dialogue to resolve their differences. However, that same day, the DRC accused Rwanda of having launched a drone attack in the city of Goma – a key objective of M23's advances, seemingly pouring cold war on the idea of constructive and peaceful reconciliation for the time being. Most recently, the DRC appears to be acquiring drones of its own, with China reportedly set to supply the DRC with nine CH-4 armed drones (apropos of nothing, China has also supplied a fair amount of military hardware to Rwanda in recent years, as well as military training).

With little other news available on the crisis since February (with other global events taking precedence), it remains unclear where things with the DRC and Rwanda go from here. There have been reports that the DRC and Rwandan leaders may be preparing to meet face-to-face once more, through mediation by Angola. At the same time, little seems to have changed with the personalities at play. DRC President Felix Tshisekedi was recently re-elected (under conditions labeled a "farce" by the DRC opposition), and has previously taken a hard line on the crisis, threatening to "march on Kigali" if re-elected and the issues with Rwanda persist. The DRC's acquisition of drones from China seems to reinforce that it has no plans of backing down in its confrontation with M23 and Rwanda, even if Tshisekedi doesn't follow through on his more bellicose threats. Meanwhile in Rwanda, Kagame announced his intent to seek a fourth term as President – amid criticism for lifting term limits in order to stay in office longer (criticisms that he has made clear he cares very little for if at all), and so has an impetus to maintain his own hard-line on issues with the DRC.

A further ticking clock has been added to the DRC-Rwanda situation by the fact that the United Nations mission in the Congo – which has been assisting the DRC fight against rebels (including M23) for almost two decades – will now be leaving the DRC by the end of 2024 at the request of the DRC government, stating that the force had not been able to resolve the war with M23. This comes after the DRC government also ordered troops from the East African Community (EAC) that had been present in the country as well to leave in late 2023 – for the same reasons it ordered the UN force to leave. While the DRC may well be right that neither force has helped it to beat M23, the withdrawal of these troops may very well shift the entire balance of the conflict and not necessarily in a way that the DRC wants. The South African Development Community (SADC), led by South Africa itself, is seeking to fill the gap left by the UN and EAC, but it remains to be seen how quickly they can do so and if they can change facts on the ground any more than the UN or EAC could. Once again, we see a number of potential factors on a collision course, and while cooler heads may still prevail, we see the prospect of yet another major war in the heart of Africa's Great Lakes regions that could have significant impacts for the people of the region, the continent, and the world. It is definitely worth keeping an eye on this developing situation (to the extent you can even find news on it).

Ethiopia

Ethiopia, like Myanmar, is a country that has shown up in the past when I've done a round-up on pertinent conflicts in the world. However, unlike with Myanmar, I'm afraid I can't report that things are getting better in Ethiopia's case or that there's much cause for hope at this point. In fact, things seem to be getting actively worse.

The last time I substantively talked about Ethiopia, the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was engaged in a war in the Tigray region against the Tigray People's Liberation Force – even allying with his former long-time adversary of Eritrea to do so in a war that threatened to rip the country apart while engaging in brutal authoritarian actions that I'm sure are making the Nobel Committee really regret giving him that prize in retrospect. After a seesawing of the fortunes of war back and forth for both sides, the conflict was seemingly brought to a close by the signing of a peace agreement between the TPLF and the Ethiopian federal government. All's well that ends well, done and dusted, right?

Well, actually: no.

Just less than a year after the Tigray War ended, Abiy apparently tripped over his dick into a new internal conflict in mid 2023, this time with Amhara people and forces in the eponymous Amhara region (Ethiopia's second most populous) rather than Tigray. The spark for this conflict was apparently born out of the haphazard way in which Abiy ended the previous one. One of Abiy's key allies in the Tigray War were militias and security forces from the region of Amhara, including an influential armed group known as the "Fano." However, the peace deal that Abiy struck with Tigray did not sit well with many Amahara people, who felt betrayed by the deal due to Tigray claims on their territory (as well as the fact that the Ethiopian federal military and security forces had been unable to prevent the TPLF from occupying Amahara territory during the war). This rift was only made worse by crackdowns by Abiy's government against the Fano, coupled with a plan to absorb Ethiopia's regional security forces into Ethiopia's federal military and security forces, which was not received well among the Amhara. These tensions and more came to a head from April through August 2023, with the result being Abiy's government facing down a fresh and ongoing revolt that doesn't appear to be ending soon.

The result of this bridge burning by Abiy has been a growing war in Amhara occurring under the umbrella of an ever prolonged state of emergency in Amhara that gives Ethiopian authorities broad powers to carry out arrests, impose curfews, and ban public gatherings. This is a continuation of the Abiy's playbook of gross human rights violations from the previous war in Tigray, with accusations being leveled against his government of arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions, and indiscriminate killings – including indiscriminate drone strikes against targets such as schools and public transit stations (apropos of nothing, once more, Abiy has acquired his fleet of armed drones from Iran, Turkey, and China – as well as purchasing new fighter jets from Russia). If you're wondering why you haven't heard more about all this, its because Abiy has made heavy handed use of another favorite tactic of his from the previous war (and that it has even used against Amhara in the past), which is information and specifically internet blackouts, which make it very difficult to get information out of Amahara as the conflict drags on (as it did in Tigray during that war).

Abiy's uncanny knack for burning bridges and making enemies isn't limited to within his own country, but has made tensions rise throughout East Africa. At the start of 2024, Abiy signed an agreement with the breakaway region of Somaliland in Somalia, which reportedly gives Ethiopia a naval port on Somaliland's coastline in exchange for recognizing the region's independence from Somalia (something that no other UN member state does). All of this appears to be part of Abiy's quest to regain Ethiopian access to the sea (lost after Eritrea became independent), which has included efforts to re-establish the Ethiopian Navy. The reaction to this deal has been, unsurprisingly, poorly received in Somalia, with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud even threatening the possibility of war if Ethiopia follows through with it and accusing Ethiopia of outright trying to annex part of Somalia. Somalis are not the only ones unease about Ethiopia's quest for access to the Red Sea, with other East African states such as Djibouti, Eritrea, and Kenya all having previously voiced concern about Ethiopian actions.

There's also the matter of Ethiopia's previously mentioned issues with Egypt over the Nile River, in particular Ethiopia's construction of a massive hydroelectric dam known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (or "GERD") on the river that Egypt worries could have a devastating effect on its water supply downstream if Ethiopia acts without considering Egyptian concerns. Despite numerous efforts to come to an agreement over the dam and the river, every attempt thus far has ended in failure, with Egypt continuing to refer to GERD an "existential threat." Egypt has also made it clear that it stands squarely with Somalia regarding the sea access debacle, with Egypt's autocratic President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi asserting that "Egypt will not allow anyone to threaten Somalia or affect its security," creating a fresh avenue for tension between Egypt and Ethiopia in addition to the GERD issue. This is all in addition to concerns that both Egypt and Ethiopia could be drawn into the aforementioned civil war in Sudan, with numerous potential negative consequences for all involved.

The long and short of things when it comes to Ethiopia, is you have no shortage of opportunities for more intense conflict in the near future, both within and around the country. Abiy's continued heavy handed approach to both domestic and foreign politics creates an ever increasing possibility that one day he will bite off more than he can chew, and potentially spark a conflict of such scale and scope that it could engulf all of East Africa in a major war and potentially even destroy Ethiopia – the second most populous country in Africa – as a polity. Given the potential consequences, this is a part of the world meriting very close observation going forward.

"Do You Smell Something Burning?"

In this final section, I want to touch briefly (as I've already gone on for a few thousand words) on some hot spots in the world that are cause for concern and have been for a while, but have nothing major going on at this moment in time. While they may be quiet (at least relatively speaking, compared to everything else we've just talked about), they have the potential to spark up in the mid to long term and become a problem once again.

The Korean Peninsula

By this point, we're probably all used to North Korea (under its dictator, Kim Jong-Un) shooting off missiles and making bellicose statements. That's par for the course for them. But in recent months, Kim and his government's rhetoric have taken a new and more hostile turn. North Korea has stated it has abandoned the idea of peaceful unification with the South, instead naming it North Korea's "principal enemy" which it will "annihilate" if it is provoked. This comes as North Korea continues weapons tests and conducts multiple military drills – with Kim often in attendance.

While I wouldn't worry about a continuation of the (yet unresolved) Korean War just yet, this may well be cause for concern. While tensions are typical on the Peninsula, we haven't seen rhetoric like this from the North in quite some time. And while full-scale war may be unlikely at this moment (though not impossible), 010 showed us that under the right conditions, the Peninsula is never far from violent skirmishes and incidents between the two Koreas, such as the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan. While wider conflict was avoiding in those cases, now that South Korea has a more reactionary President wanting to present a hard line towards the North, it raises questions about it may react to provocation. Again, while I wouldn't be panicking just yet, it may be worth keeping your ear to the ground on this one to keep from being caught unawares if tensions suddenly spike further.

Armenia and Azerbaijan

Well, they finally did it. I've also written about this conflict several times now, and it looks like by all accounts, Azerbaijan has gotten exactly what it said it wanted. After the world stood by and did largely nothing in its 2020 war against the ethnic-Armenian enclave of Artsakh (AKA: Nagorno-Karabakh), Azerbaijan decided to finish the job once and for all with a fresh offensive on the heels of a nine-month blockade this past year. With next to no prospect of outside assistance, and weakened by the blockade, the Artsakh forces quickly folded, and almost the entirety of the ethnic Armenia population promptly fled in the ensuing days and weeks to avoid violence at the hand of Azeri forces, leaving Azerbaijan free to complete its cultural genocide of the region. But now that its over, surely Armenia and Azerbaijan can find a way to live in peace with this new reality? Right?

Ha ha, no.

In what should be surprising to absolutely no one, Azerbaijan has celebrated getting what it wanted in Artsakh by shifting the goal post once more. Now its new demand is a land corridor connecting it to its ethnic exclave of Naxcivan on the opposite side of Armenia – referred to as the "Zangezur Corridor" (after the Azeri name for the Armenian Syunik province that it would pass through). Armenia seems highly unlikely to agree to such a demand, which it views as an unacceptable infringement on its sovereignty, which likely means – as has been the case after every war fought between these two countries in the past – a new war is almost certainly on the horizon as Azerbaijan will not stop until an outside force compels it to stop and will use the Armenian rejection as an excuse for fresh conflict. 2024 has already seen fresh skirmishes on the border between the two countries, showing that the tensions remain very much present.

It's not clear when this new war will occur, but we can only hope that in the interim more nations step up to actually assist Armenia. We have seen hopeful signs of greater support from other countries, with France and India selling arms to the country to help it defend itself. However, I can't take any of that for granted, with how the world has left Armenia out to dry time and time again. If Azerbaijan does decide to go to war for a land corridor, it also risks potentially sparking a wider regional war, as Iran has called such an action to cut off its land border with Armenia a "red line" (though whether or not it would really take military action in response remains unclear). Anyway, keep your ears to the ground on this one, because like with the other wars Azerbaijan has launched it'll likely come out of the blue.

I'm Very Tired.

I've just thrown a lot of information at you, so I'm going to try and keep this conclusion short and sweet (for me). First, I'll lay out a few takeaways about the wider world situation, and then some general closing thoughts.

Looking at the general state of things with the conflicts I've laid out, I'm going to infer a few things about the general state of global security. For one, Africa is in a dire state in multiple regards and seems to be the biggest place to watch for trouble on the horizon at the moment, as it has several crises that seem ready to boil over into major wars in the near future – if they haven't already in some cases. These crises and conflicts have the potential to pit some of the most populous countries on the continent against one another, and also to rip some of those same countries apart internally. Short of that, Africa is also seemingly getting teed up to be the sight of a new round of intense great power competition for influence and resources the likes of which we haven't seen since the Cold War, with said competition not just involving big players like the United States, Russia, or China, but attracting newcomers to the influence game too – as the UAE's involvement in Sudan's civil war has shown. Finally, it's also worth noting that now that we're in a post-Russian invasion of Ukraine world where large scale state-on-state conflict is back on the menu after many "experts" thinking it was dead and gone, it makes some of the fault lines we're watching here even more important to keep a close eye on.

There's almost certainly more that I say here, but these are just some big overarching themes to take away from this round of observation. Now, for the closing thoughts:

I know you're tired. We all are. I am.

That being said, we can't give up in our fight for a better world for everyone living in it. That requires remaining well informed (to the extent that you're able) about what's going on in that world. This is especially true if your government is playing a role in it (for good or for bad), or it isn't and it should be. Information is, in its own right, power.

I know that your emotional energy is precious, and likely being eaten up but a number of different things at any given moment. I'm not ask you to drop everything and devote all your time and energy to these causes or others, nor am I trying to shame you for not paying as close attention to them as I or others have. Simply, to add them to the Rolodex of your brain as something that matters and that you should check in on once in a while so you're not caught unawares when new developments occur that may affect you and others.

There's only so much that all of us can do about any one issue, either at home or abroad. But we do what we can, and in order to do that, we need to have an idea of what's going on. So take that as you will after reading all this (or anything else that I write or post, for that matter).

On that note, I'll let you get back to whatever else you need to do. But thank you for taking the time to read this and potentially learn more about events you may not have known much about and their potential impacts. I'll hopefully see you again for my next essay, but in the meantime: stay safe out there and don't give up.

Photo credit: africanews/AFP.

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Firewatch (March 2024 edition, Part 1)

Yes, finally, the first War Takes essay for 2024. In it, I decided to take some time to consider some of the major flashpoints for crises and conflicts in the world, and I ended up writing so much I had to divide it up to post it on Tumblr (lmao). Part 1, under the cut. Enjoy.

It occurred to me recently, looking at my feeds on social media, that I've been (for the most part) laser focused on what's going on in Palestine and the broader Middle East. To a lesser, but still strong, extent, I've also primarily been focused on the state of the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine. While I think there are very good reasons for the focus on those two conflicts, its also made me realize how much more that has been going on in the world of conflicts and crises that has passed me by (or that I've intended to talk about and then completely forgotten about by the end of the day).

With all that in mind, for my first quarterly essay of 2024, I decided now was a good time to go around the horn, widen the aperture, and identify some other ongoing armed conflicts and burgeoning crises that are important to keep an eye on. It's been a while since I've done one of these in general, so I felt it was overdue (it also works out well for me because I had exactly zero ideas on what I wanted to write about for this one so consider this my equivalent of the teacher wheeling the big TV into the classroom when they're hung over).

I want to try and formalize this as a recurring piece that I do (at least) once a year to update folks on important goings on in the field of conflict and warfare, so with that in mind I have a fun new flashy name for it: "Firewatch." This isn't just me trying to be cute, but putting it in the context of "fires" also actually helps me a bit with trying to categorize things by severity and level of concern that (in my opinion) you should probably have at this moment in time.

Before we get into things, a few up front disclaimers. First: these are all entirely subjective assessments based on my own personal analysis and knowledge, with my being stronger in some areas and admittedly weaker in others; take it all with a grain of salt and know I'm not perfect; in that same vein, I picked conflicts that I thought in my opinion were the most important to keep an eye on at the moment, but that doesn't mean that others aren't worth your attention (again, this is all subjective and I'm not trying to overtly dismiss anything). Second: these are all based on what information I could find at the time of writing, and the situations could all change rapidly (my Haiti piece in this was literally changing as I was writing it), so keep that in mind too and know that this could all be made out of date rapidly by new events. Third and final: again, I'm not perfect; if I missed anything, I swear it wasn't a purposeful omission and I apologize and please let me know so I can reassess my analysis; I'm only one guy, and the internet is getting harder to search these days; I'm doing my best to just try and keep folks on the Left informed about what's going on.

Ok, with all that out of the way, let's dig in to what's going on with the fires out there.

Roaring Flames

These are the conflicts that are at the point that not only are things on fire, the flames are rising and being actively fanned in many cases. These are conflicts you've probably already heard about in between other pieces of news, but may not have as much depth on compared to other ongoing events (unless you're a weirdo like me who soaks up conflict news like a sponge).

Sudan

Sudan has been locked in a civil war (its third since independence, if you're counting) for what will be a year this coming April. Coming on the heels of years of political upheaval and a prior coup against a civilian transitional government launched by the Sudanese Armed Forces in 2021, the war was sparked by an attempt by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces to then seize power from the SAF back in April of 2023 amid a power struggle between the two forces. When the RSF coup went off half-cocked and failed to immediately take over the entire country from the SAF, you'd probably have been making the smart bet by putting your money on the SAF as opposed to the RSF. While both forces were roughly comparable in numbers of personnel (a lesson in why you shouldn't build a parallel military to compete with your military), the SAF had all the advantages in heavy firepower, possessing tanks, helicopters, jets, and so on.

However, the SAF has proven unable to snuff out the RSF over the past ten months or so of fighting, with the group proving remarkably resilient in its ability to take and hold territory throughout Sudan. This is despite the fact that the RSF is widely feared and hated, descendant from the infamous Janjaweed militias that were used by Bashir's regime during the War in Darfur to commit numerous crimes against humanity. In fact, after much of 2023 being a stalemate for both sides in Sudan, the RSF has made notable gains against the SAF in recent weeks and months, with the momentum of the war seemingly shifting dramatically in its favor. Part of this has had to do with increasing international involvement, with the leaders on both sides of the civil war seeking and gaining foreign support on the battlefield, such as supposed weapons support provided by the United Arab Emirates to the RSF, or even reported support by the Ukrainian special operations forces to the SAF (facing off against the late-Yevgeny Prigozhin's Russian PMC Wagner Group who have also been providing support to the RSF). However, in recent days the SAF appears to have had a rebound of its own, securing some high profile reversals against the RSF, showing that the outcome of this war is anything but certain just yet.

The international involvement in Sudan belies why this conflict should be on your radar. Obviously, a civil war in any country with almost 50 million people, like Sudan, will have widespread repercussions. Add in the fact that Sudan is located along the strategically important Red Sea (very topical at the moment, as you may have noticed), and also lays astride the Nile river, and you see even more reasons why international interest in Sudan is high. Add in the potential of the RSF winning the war and taking control of Sudan after having cut a swatch of indiscriminate destruction across the country, and more problems seem almost immediately around the corner (let me be clear, the SAF junta is by no means 'good', but the RSF is a unique kind of bad in its own right). An additional complicating factor comes from Sudan being between Egypt and Ethiopia, which have both sparred and threatened one another over usage of the Nile River (to say nothing of Ethiopia's own internal issues, which will come up later). But if you don't care about any of that, there's the sheer human cost in terms of civilians brutally killed, forced to flee their homes, and potentially starve. In so many words: this is a conflict to keep a close eye on if you haven't been already, both for reasons of geopolitics and of simple humanity.

Myanmar (Burma)

Thinking about Sudan makes me depressed, because all I can think about is all the innocent civilians caught in between bad (the SAF) and worse (the RSF), just trying to survive it all. But if there's one conflict going on right now that actually gives me some degree of hope for the people involved – and for humanity in general, really – its the ongoing civil war in Myanmar (AKA: Burma), which I've covered to varying extents in several past essays of mine.

Like with Sudan, the initial spark that eventually led to Myanmar's war was a coup d'etat. The Myanmar Armed Forces (commonly referred to as the "Tatmadaw" - or more preferred by those resisting the military: the "Sit-Tat") had already previously been in total control of the country of decades, and the coup came after years of apparent shifts towards democratization in the country. However, this was all dashed in the course of a day on February 1st, 2021, after the election held the previous November failed to deliver the result the military wanted.

An ethnically and religiously diverse country, Myanmar was already host to a number of political and paramilitary organizations that have waged low-level conflict against the central government (largely dominated by the Burmans or Bamar ethnic group, which makes up around two thirds of Myanmar's population) for decades, in search of better treatment and varying degrees of autonomy. But the brazenness of the 2021 coup and the incredibly brutal and violent crackdown by the military that ensued against those who openly opposed the usurpation of democracy, has served to not only energize and encourage resistance to shift to outright armed opposition, but also galvanize a broad front against the Sit-Tat and create a new sense of unity between the People's Defense Force stood up by the anti-coup National Unity Government to fight back against the Sit-Tat (many of their members overwhelmingly young people and students from the Bamar majority who protested the initial coup) and the preexisting ethnic armed groups.

The unity and energy that the combined opposition is bringing to the table seems to be paying dividends, as in recent weeks and months the junta appears to be on the ropes. Previously propped up with support from Russia and China, the Sit-Tat has been left wanting in that department as Russia has been increasingly distracted by its own war of aggression in Ukraine and China has been perturbed by the junta's inability to control Myanmar's shared border with China (which is one of several factors that has led China to lend support to some of the opposition groups and attempt to play a double game and preserve its relationships and influence in the country no matter how the war turns out). Due in no small part to the drying up of support to the junta and increased coordination and unity among the opposition, Sit-Tat has lost significant ground to the resistance in a series of offensives that have been ongoing since late last year. The situation has become so dire for the Sit-Tat that it has reportedly had to resort to enforce conscription for the first time in years (a move that has made many living in Sit-Tat controlled territory reportedly very eager to move out of it, for obvious reasons).

The international isolation of the Junta and its constant reversals on the battlefield seem to suggest that its living on borrowed time. However, many questions about this war remain to be answered; not simply when the Junta will fall, but what comes next? There is admittedly a possibility that the situation in Myanmar may not improve once the Sit-Tat is gone, or could even become worse – with some worrying the country could be ripped apart entirely. The prospect of infighting among the diverse members of the opposition shouldn't be ignored given Myanmar's history of internal ethnic conflict, but the idealist buried deep down under my cynicism holds out hope that this time things may really be different for the country. While the number of armed groups opposed to the Junta in Myanmar is vast and varied, most seem to be generally united under the ideas that authoritarian rule is unacceptable and that there should be some kind of confederal or federal democratic system in Myanmar with respect for the rights of all the groups of peoples that live there. While a lot could still go wrong and many issues that will need to be worked out in the aftermath if and when the resistance forces win, I say that's at least a good starting point for a new Myanmar and worth supporting and hoping for. This is why I continue to keep a close eye on what's going on in Myanmar even as other crises and conflicts fill me with more negative emotions, and I continue to hope the best for Myanmar and its people.

Haiti

Haiti is a country that has been plagued by a myriad of issues since it first gained its independence from France, many of them the result of outside interference. The state wasn't even recognized by many countries for decades for reasons of outright racism and slavery, with France later forcing Haiti to pay it reparations for the loss of French planters' slaves in the revolt that won them their freedom. Haiti then suffered imperialism in another guise through a twenty-year long occupation by the US Marines starting in 1915, with the US later helping to prop up the brutal dictatorships of the Duvalier family that lasted from the late 1950s through the 1980s. The 1915 US intervention was only the first in a series of 20th and 21st century outside military interventions by the United States and the international community as a whole that typically did nothing to substantively improve the conditions within the country (and arguably making them worse in some cases).

Even given the scale of the prior trials and tribulations Haiti has experienced, be it coups and earthquakes and various interventions, the country now faces a crisis unprecedented for it in modern times, with the country in the midst of an open revolt by armed gangs that is bordering on civil war. The current crisis began with the dramatic assassination of then-President of Haiti Jovenel Moise in July 2021, when a group of foreign mercenaries (primarily Colombians but including two Haitian Americans) that were reportedly hired by a Haitian doctor with Presidential aspirations stormed into the President's home in the Haitian capital of Port-Au-Prince and gunned him down. The President's murder created a power vacuum in the country, which was filled by Prime Minister Ariel Henry. In the time since taking over, Henry has failed to hold fresh elections on multiple occasions as tensions mounted and conditions worsened inside of Haiti, with armed gangs steadily expanding their control of the capital and levels of violence rising.

It was the most recent delaying of new elections – despite an agreement to hold them and pass on power by February 7th of this year – that served as impetus for the violence to escalate to its current level. Gangs and other armed groups have stepped up their violence to outright attacks on government buildings and institutions and stretching already overtaxed and under-resourced police and security forces to the limit and reportedly taking control of over 80% of the capital. These gangs appeared to have coordinated their actions, launching their wave of attacks as Henry was out of the country on a visit to Kenya in search of foreign police and troops to intervene in the country on his behalf. As Henry struggled to re-enter his own country, the gangs called for his ouster. After days of stonewalling and radio silence, following a conference of the Caribbean Community in Jamaica, Henry did just that.

While Henry is now on the outs (and will likely be missed by few in Haiti or elsewhere), the crisis in Haiti appears to be far from over. While their principal demand has been met, the gangs appear in no mood to back down, refusing to accept any new government imposed from outside forces. Instead, the gangs themselves seem to be aspiring to power – in particular, their unofficial leader, Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier, a former police officer and leader of the gang known as G9 who has been crystal clear about his willingness to seize power violently if necessary. But Barbecue also faces competition, such as from fellow gang leader Johnson Andre (aka "Izo"), and former attempted coup leader Guy Philippe – recently returned to Haiti after serving a sentence in the US for taking bribes from drug traffickers, and making no illusions about his own desires to take power.

As the violence in Haiti continues with an associated and worsening humanitarian crisis, the United States and other foreign powers have debated and struggled to put together troops and police for some kind of intervention force and stabilization mission for months, with few governments seeming particularly eager to step into the breech after the past few interventions. Among those that are willing, such as Kenya, they've experienced various domestic roadblocks.. All while the and number of dead and displaced continue to rise amid worsening conditions (with some migrants to the neighboring Dominican Republic being forced back across the border into Haiti). However, in recent years Haitians have been understandably apprehensive if not outright hostile to the idea of yet another foreign military adventure in their country that will likely not solve any long term problems and potentially make them even worse yet again. Even as the gangs wage war in Haiti, its important to remember that there are regular people who are also protesting their frustration with their prior, ineffective, corrupt governments, in addition to foreign interference. The right path forward for Haiti remains unclear, all while foreign governments, the gangs, and other aspirants to power seem set on a collision course if nothing changes. Given conditions seem unlikely to change for the better at this moment in time, we should be prepared for things to get much worse in Haiti – and potentially the Caribbean as a whole – in the near future. (Note: I'm dumb and didn't realize how stringent Tumblr's character limits are now, so find part two here, with the rest of my thoughts and a conclusion) Photo credit: @operation1027 (on Twitter)

#War Takes #War Takes essay #war #international relations #foreign policy #defense #security #Myanmar #Sudan #Ethiopia #Haiti #leftism #leftist #socialism #democratic socialism #Burma #War Takes Firewatch

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wartakes · 4 months

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Fighting Back in an Age of Impunity

Its the last essay of the year and the events going on in Gaza - and similar events elsewhere - had me pondering some thoughts for those who may feel powerless and like they can't do anything. It's not perfect, but its something. Full essay under the cut. Happy Holidays.

I feel like I increasingly start each of these essays with checking on folks and seeing how they’re doing following “the event” – with whatever “the event” is varying depending on what time of the year the essay is occurring in. When I first started thinking about what I may be writing for my last essay of 2023, I thought the worst event I’d have to think about was Azerbaijan’s assault on Artsakh, which resulted in over 100,000 ethnic Armenians fleeing their homes as Ilham Aliyev finally realized his genocidal dream of cleansing the region and forcing it fully into Azerbaijan by force.

Of course, then October 7th happened.

This is not to say that what happened with Artsakh should be forgotten about by any stretch of the imagination. We definitely shouldn’t forget about Armenia and Azerbaijan – especially as Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey, continues to make aggressive statements suggesting it may attack the Republic of Armenia proper in order to secure a corridor to its exclave in Nakhchivan. This is still very important and deserves our attention.

At the same time, if you’ve been following world events at all since October 7th, you kinda know what the most pressing, soul-sucking issue of the moment is. In the weeks since the attacks launched by the Gaza-based Palestinian militant groups – spearheaded by the Islamist political-military movement HAMAS, which largely controls the enclave – Israel has used that unarguable tragedy as an excuse to launch a horrific campaign of violence of its own in revenge, the sheer scale and scope of which has left the Israeli bodycount of October 7th in the dust as more and more Palestinians are killed by the Israel Defense Forces with each passing day – most of them women and children.

I originally was going to shift focus and write something entirely about what’s going on in Gaza, but I was also not sure what more I could say that would be constructive and not simply venting to avoid exploding (something I do on Twitter on a regular basis). I also didn’t want to complete leave Armenia and Azerbaijan in the dust, because I felt there were a lot of parallels between the two situations and their histories (which makes sense since Azerbaijan and Israel have such a cozy relationship, with Israel being one of Azerbaijan’s main arms suppliers in its wars against Armenia and Armenians).

In the end, I decided I wanted to write about something that is more generally going on, and that we’ve seen in Israel’s campaign against Palestinians, Azerbaijan’s campaign against Armenia and Armenians, Russia’s war against Ukraine (which Putin says isn’t ending anytime soon in case you were curious), and other acts of aggression by hostile states and armed groups in what feels like every corner of the globe these days. Everywhere you look, it seems that fascistic states and groups are taking every possible opportunity to try and conquer and kill that which they covet or hate.

We are currently living through what I conceive of as a new “Age of Impunity” in international relations, of which the current assault on Gaza is only one example – though certainly the most egregious and barbaric of the moment. Such ages are not new, and have waxed and waned throughout history, but they all have one core theme in common: during their span, we see a drastic increase in aggression by those states and groups who are determined to hammer home the Thucydidean cliche that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

But there is a new rub to this tale as old as time. Now, in an age of an increasingly interconnected world via the internet and social media and smart phones and etc., aggressors are not just seeking to prove that might is right, but to gaslight us constantly as they do it, doggedly endeavoring to convince us that this state of affairs is not simply the glib, bleak reality that is allowed to persist in international relations, but is actually good and right and just and fair that those of us that dare question their narrative are insane and sick and even criminal for believing otherwise. To try and add further legitimacy or distance themselves from the acts of information warfare, such aggressors often enlist third parties as well who are aligned to them either ideologically or financially (i.e. they’re paid to).

This combination of consequence free mass violence combined with an aggressive campaign to make you feel insane for not thinking its actually good is enough to make anyone with a moral compass feel actually insane, or to feel incredibly depressed and distraught over it all. Its so easy to feel completely and totally powerless from events such as Gaza and more, boiling over inside with a sense of impotent rage, especially when it seems that all that a key set of individuals and governments would need to do to stop it all – or at least less the impact – is show a modicum of backbone and a slight bit of effort to go along with it, but they don’t.

However, it is important for us all to understand against this backdrop of slaughter, that we are not powerless – not completely. There are limits on our power as “normal” people, absolutely; but we are not totally powerless, and the longer we go on thinking that the longer this Age of Impunity will last – to say nothing of other negative states of affairs we’d rather not stick around. There are actions that we as people can take to try and effect better outcomes. These actions are often indirect, focusing on applying pressure in various forms on those who can actually do something or who can otherwise force someone else to do something, but are none the less impactful and not to be disregarded.

To the end of helping folks not feel powerless in the face of impunity and aggression and giving them a concept through which they can push back on aggression and fascism and authoritarianism worldwide, I’ve crafted an approach of my own. The approach I’ve conceived of is extremely simple, straightforward, broad, long-term and almost certainly incomplete – but a start. So, if the gifts you’re looking to get this holiday season are a shred of hope, a sense of purpose, a modicum of agency, and the ability to actually make an impact upon ongoing global events, let’s open up Santa’s big bag of toys and see what’s inside for all the good little guys, gals, and non-binary pals out there. Ho ho ho.

BLUF: “Don’t Shut Up”

I already warned you that my plan is pretty simple. What I haven’t warned you is that this plan, in a nutshell, may make some people roll their eyes and go “yeah, right, whatever” (or something more impolite), so consider yourself warned of that now.

So, the plan? Don’t shut up. Ok, obviously this is going to need more expounding upon.

To build upon “don’t shut up” in more detail, the plan is simply to not give up voicing your opposition to the unjustifiable acts of aggression going on throughout the world – whoever it is that is undertaking them, whenever they occur, and wherever they occur. This opposition can come in various forms, be it protests and various other forms of activism and civil disobedience, both physical and virtual, but it really can be boiled down to those three words: don’t shut up. Keep talking – shouting, rather – about what’s going on and don’t let people forget what’s going on.

Not to get defensive right off the bat, but I am anticipating some people reading this feeling a bit disappointed, dismissive (maybe to the point of eye-rolling), or frustrated with this simple approach. So I want to take a little time to push back gently before we get more into the nuts and bolts. I’m going to try and not go on for too long with this because I wrote this earlier and fully made half of the essay me being defensive so be thankful I went back to make this part shorter.

First, to those saying “that’s it?” I would say, ‘yes’; but with the caveat that while its a simple answer, its also a simple problem (which I will get into more detail about later). To those saying “that won’t work,” I would say “based on what?” I feel the problem with that strain of preemptive defeatism, dismissiveness, and doomerism are a uniquely American-centric perspective that is focused only on our own experiences – and also, a very recent and limited view of them. All you need to do is look to the rest of the world to see instances where mass movements that refused to be silenced and maintained pressure accomplished the ousting of various dictators and autocrats (I picked relatively recent examples here, but you can look even further back). I know we’re all tired and demoralized and depressed (hence why I’m writing this), but all you need do is widen the aperture a bit and look beyond our shores to see that things are not as hopeless as they seem. That doesn’t mean that there are quick and easy solutions (something else I’ll get into – we’re in this for the long haul), but again, that doesn’t mean that we are powerless and that our actions mean nothing.

Ok, I got my defensive preemptive pushback on doomerism out of the way and I did it in two paragraphs instead of a page and a half. You’re welcome. So let’s actually get into the nuts and bolts.

Using the potential criticism of “that’s it?” as a starting off point, I will concede again that t his is a very simple approach. But, I would also assert that the activity that this approach is crafted to counter is actually fairly simple in its own right when you think about it. It makes sense that a relatively simple problem demands a relatively simple answer (note that just because the idea is simple doesn’t mean the execution will be quick or easy, but we’ll get to that).

Regardless of the approach or the medium through which they are attempting it, in the information sphere, the ultimate goal of an aggressor to is to silence criticism and to boost its own narratives and supporters. If aggressors can’t coerce or cajole you to their side, they’ll settle for getting you to shut up by whatever means are at their disposal – which is just as good to them; it doesn’t matter if they don’t actually have a lot of popular support at home or abroad, but as long as they can silence dissent and criticism and keep their narrative as the main one, they can just keep on doing what they’re doing.

This can take multiple different forms: drowning you out with torrents of useless, twisted, or outright false information, intimidating you through hostility and harassment, depressing you by making you feel weak and powerless and convincing you that there is absolutely nothing that can stop them (potentially giving you a genuine mental breakdown through their gaslighting), and mental and emotional exhaustion from some or all of what was previously described, just to name a few different methods. These methods may be utilized by the aggressors themselves, or through various allies, partners, and proxies – be they other states and organizations various individuals who are consciously or unconsciously boosting the aggressor’s narratives and attacking the aggressor’s detractors. But the end goal of all of these methods remains the same in every case, but in different guises: to shut you up. If the aggressor’s goal is that simple, it make sense that our response doesn’t need to be that complicated either: deny them their objective by simply refusing to be silenced and, in fact, continuously increasing that pressure.

If information is a domain in warfare, it is probably appropriate to think of your role in it not as a soldier in the army of a peer competitors in a high-end conventional fight. Rather, you should think of yourself as a fighter in an insurgent army, and as this information warfare as an insurgency or rebellion or an uprising rather than the information equivalent of a conventional war (at least not at this stage; we have a few more stages of Mao’s guide to get through first in this analogy). If you conceive of it that way, it can make your task seem even more daunting, but then it also can reveal the inherent advantages that we have in our approach and the challenges it creates for an aggressor trying to manage information.

The Cognitive Insurgency of Attrition

I’ve talked about insurgency and counter-insurgency in the physical domains of warfare before at great length, with my main takeaway being that counter-insurgency is almost always a losing game for whoever is acting as the COIN force. Unless they are prepared to make significant political concessions, they are likely to never win; the best they can ever hope for is to not lose – which will require constant fighting and expenditure of resources of all kinds, indefinitely (something that few countries, even reasonably prosperous and powerful ones, can hope to keep up).

Recalling that takeaway, your advantage and the disadvantage of the aggressor becomes clearer. When I said earlier that really all you have to do is not shut up, I really meant it, because as long as you and others refuse to be gaslit and continue to speak out against particular aggression and injustices, the aggressor is failing at the primary objective they have regarding you. As long as you exist and continue to act and speak out, they will continue to have to expend time and resources to try and counter you. The struggle with the aggressor becomes a battle of wills, and by simply continuing to exist and refusing to be silenced, you are wearing them down in a war of attrition. The more they are worn down, the more likely they are to make mistakes and to show more of their true colors, and the full extent of the horror becomes harder and harder for more and more actors (be they people, organizations, states, and etc.) to ignore and turn a blind eye to, and the pressure mounts to take actual action.

This whole approach and the idea of not shutting up and not giving up is closely tied to another idea, which is that “bullying works” (another thing I originally had in a section unto itself, for another peek behind the curtain, but decided it wasn’t dissimilar enough to separate out). As you refuse to be silenced and continue to speak out and apply pressure, one form of that pressure, is in effect, “bullying.” Basically, making sure that those who are either taking part in various acts of aggression or who are facilitating it or supporting indirectly won’t get a moments peace in their lives as long as they continue to do so. They need to be shown that people will not forget what’s going on and will not go away and will be reminding those who are carrying out out aggression or supporting it at every possible opportunity and be making their lives very difficult for as long as it takes and for as much as it takes until change for the better occurs. Remember kids: bullying by punching down (figuratively), is bad; but bullying by punching up (again, figuratively), is not only good, but necessary for a healthy society!

The inherent downside to this overall approach, of course, is that it is a long-term one. This is not a single battle, but a broader campaign in the wider war against aggression and authoritarianism and fascism. This in its own right may be discouraging to some, but also a bitter pill that must be swallowed. To be perfectly clear: this is not me saying that we shouldn’t bother trying to apply pressure and affect change on issues in the short term. To use our primary example of Gaza once more, we should absolutely be trying in the short term to bring more pressure to bear to bring about a lasting ceasefire and greater humanitarian relief and more in Palestine. However, we’d be deluding ourselves if we believed any action we take right now would suddenly and decisively end the occupation and fundamentally change the political status quo in Palestine in the short term.

As discouraging as this reality can be, it should not dissuade us from taking action, but compel us to gear up for the long fight. Much as the right is willing and able to do with its policy goals at home and abroad, we need to undertake more generational and multi-generational efforts to achieve our aims in all areas – especially when it comes to foreign policy and international relations. Like an actual insurgent force fighting an occupying army or authoritarian regime, we must take a long-term view. This long-term view may encompass short term surges and bursts of activity to achieve specific, tangible, secondary and tertiary goals (like a ceasefire, humanitarian aid, or what have you), but its primary goals and planning must be fundamentally protracted in nature.

Even if you understand, agree with, and accept the protracted nature of this approach, that doesn’t mean it can’t still be demoralizing in the short term. However, there are reasons to be optimistic, because if you look around you can see the signs that this approach is already bearing fruit. In the case of Gaza, you can see signs that the dedication to not “shutting up” about the plight of the Palestinian people on the receiving end of Israel’s military campaign in how the Israeli government and its supporters are either becoming more deranged in their defensiveness for their actions, with some Israeli government officials being increasingly mask off about their genocidal intentions towards Palestinians and their homes, as well as increasingly dismissive towards ideas such as the two-state solution – which governments like that of the United States continue to cling to. We also see this in the reaction of some states supportive of Israel, such as the United Kingdom, where now former-Home Secretary Suella Braverman labeled all pro-Palestinian protesters in the country as “hate marchers” (and was fired from her post not long after that).

In other cases, where governments and groups supporting Israel haven’t gone fully deranged, its becoming increasingly difficult for them to look the other way in the face of Israel’s mask-off violence and aggression. Even as US President Joe Biden continues to stand by Israel doggedly and assert its right to “defend itself”, the administration has internally squirmed at Israeli actions (as well as the potential for escalation). While the administration continues to fruitlessly try and have it both ways (which is fundamentally impossible and only wastes time as more civilians die), the fact that they’re even attempting to do that rather than continue to support Israel wholeheartedly shows that the pressure is mounting. This is born out by polls in the United States that show that support for Palestinians is rising. If aggressors and those running support for them are lashing out or are becoming more desperate in their attempts to control the narrative or silence opposition or even have a leg to stand on in their support, those are signs that the pressure that countless regular people are bringing to bear with their humanity is having an impact. Don’t give up now.

I am once again asking you not to give in to despair

We can’t stop everything going on in the world on our own as individuals, that’s true. And posting alone also won’t stop anything – that’s also true (as much as a lot of us wish it would – or convinced ourselves it will). But we are absolutely not powerless, and we must avoid falling into that trap, or the aggressors win right off the bat.

You are fighting in one particular campaign in a much wider war against aggression and fascism and authoritarianism the world over. There are other fronts that exist now and there will be more in the future – both physical, and virtual. But combat of various sorts (literal and figurative) will be required on all of them in order to achieve successes. It is a collective effort; we are are all in this together, in numerous different ways. To crib a line from the trade union anthem Solidarity Forever: “yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, but the union makes us strong.”

The broader struggle against fascism and aggression will be a long war, and all likelihood, it will likely never end in an absolute victory, and only be one in a series of wars and struggles to come (again, both figurative and literal). As I’ve always said in my writing, part of the reason I’m sure people like me will still have a job even in a better world is because there will always be authoritarian aggressors of some kind who can convince others to fight and die for them in service of their rancid ideology and hatred (hence why I say a “better world” and not a “perfect” one). But even if we there will always be another enemy around the corner in some shape or form, we can set ourselves up to be stronger, smarter, more united, more compassionate, and better prepared for the additional struggles and wars ahead.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that everything I just talked about isn’t exclusively for responding to acts of aggression abroad, but is perfectly applicable at home as well. The approach that I’ve laid out can be applied to fascist aggressors of the domestic political variety, just as much as they can be applied to aggressor states and groups overseas engaging in armed aggression. In the United States in particular, we face an ever increasing war from within. Even if the political crisis in the United States doesn’t escalate to the level of a full scale civil war (something that I certainly don’t want, that I imagine most sane people don’t want, and something we should all work to avoid), we still find ourselves in an American Years of Lead situation at bare minimum that will very likely only get worse as we approach the 2024 election. Again, we can see some promising signs that these approaches are actually working, from the progressive gains that have been made in recent off-year elections on matters such as abortion, legalization of marijuana, and other progressive causes – many of which have been in response to right-wing forces doubling down on their extreme positions in desperation as normal people increasingly point out and deride their “sicko” behavior and refuse to let it go unanswered.

However, as heartening as these victories are, polling shows that the 2024 election is looking increasingly fraught, and nothing should be taken for granted in the eleven months that remain before election day 2024 – especially as former-President Donald Trump has been perfectly blunt about what his plans are if he makes it back into the White House (to say nothing of the coterie of other sickos and chuds that he will put into positions of power in his administration if he wins). While far from the only tool at your disposal, the approach I have laid out previously for pushing back on the narratives of fascism, authoritarianism and aggression abroad may very well make a real difference in the rhetorical and political battles against those same insidious forces at home. Keep that in mind on the road to November 5th, 2024 (or, if you live outside the United States, to road to whatever political battles you have to face in the near future).

We live in particularly bleak times in general, there’s no arguing that. This current Age of Impunity we find ourselves in has no shortage of dictators, tyrants, and fascists who are eager to take advantage of global instability and shifting geopolitics to take things they’ve long coveted, settle scores and seek revenge, and carry out a laundry list of other heinous acts. But even in those acts of aggression, we can find hope. For example, in Myanmar, a diverse coalition of varied ethnic groups – spearheaded by young people – are pushing the fascist junta back on its heels in that country’s civil war. While their battle is far from over, the progress they’ve made in recent weeks since launching a new offensive against the junta has been remarkable. Wherever we can, we need to grab onto examples of maintaining persistence, applying pressure, and not giving up hope – whether its on literal battlefields, or political and ideological ones. We need to take the progress and victories where we can, to remind us why we’re doing any of this at all: because we believe a better world is not only possible, but necessary and inevitable. It is on that note, I leave you on this last essay of 2023. I’ll be back with another by mid-March at the absolute latest for the first essay of 2024 (God only knows what I’ll be writing about by then, but we’ll see where Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride takes us all). For those of you who are celebrating, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday Season, and also a Happy New Year to you all. Please, wherever and whenever you’re able, even while you all try to keep up the struggle, try to find some time to rest and be kind to yourself because we all need that. See you in 2024. Stay safe.

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wartakes · 5 months

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FINALLY.

HAPPY "HENRY KISSINGER IS DEAD" DAY!

#War Takes #War Takes Announcement #Henry Kissinger #HENRY KISSINGER IS DEAD

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wartakes · 7 months

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Clear and Present Danger 2: Mr. Musk's Wild Ride

In this essay, we find that when it comes to U.S. National Security and asking the question of what the greatest threats to it are, the answer is the one comes up when asking most questions about problems when you're on the Left: "it's the Capitalism, dummy."

If you’re on the Left, you probably don’t need to be told that capitalism is the greatest threat to our collective survival and freedom. Even if the world isn’t going to “end” in the doomer sense of things, if immensely rich and powerful capitalists are allowed to continue acting with impunity to amass further wealth and power at the expense of all else (including our lives), the future we can “look forward” to is a truly grim and dystopian one, in which the planet and its climate have been significantly altered, countless people are dead as a result, and those who aren’t have their neck trapped under the metaphorical (or literal, in many cases) boot of authoritarianism.

That being said, that long-term threat is not the only thing we have to worry about. Aside from the long term threat posed by capitalists to the world and its people if they continue to get their way unimpeded, we’re now seeing more pressing and immediate threats to the lives and security of many around the globe from their actions more. I’m not just talking about exploitation through trade and industry or the more traditional ways in which capitalists threaten lives and livelihoods around the globe, but through the direct involvement of prominent capitalists into the business of war and statecraft in a way that hasn’t been seen before.

Even if I was not as far left as I am now, as a national security professional I would be hard pressed to look at billionaire capitalists like Elon Musk (who will be something of the main character for most of this essay), examine his involvement in US. national security, look at his actions to date, and not feel at least uncomfortable if not extremely concerned or even threatened. When I look at Elon Musk wearing my leftist cap, I see a threat to the world coming from a dipshit, self-absorbed, fascist megalomaniacal capitalist; when I look at Elon Musk while wearing my NatSec cap, I see a clear and present danger not only to the national security of the United States, but to the security of states and peoples across the world. In my world – the world of security or defense or war or whatever you want to call it – under the right circumstances, capitalists of an ilk like Elon Musk could make decisions and take actions that could kill and maim large swathes of people and devastate communities and lives.

Regardless of whether or not you call yourself a “leftist” and (if you are, in fact, a leftist) regardless of how you may feel about certain states and governments and the wars they are or may end up fighting, you should be worried about hyper-wealthy, hyper-ideological capitalists with questionable politics and ideology and allegiances getting close to the levers of military power in any substantial form. In the remainder of this essay, I intend to lay out why that’s the case.

Elon Musk The Strange Case of the World War III That Wasn't

Elon Musk has been having a bit of a time lately and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying it immensely and hoping it only gets worse for him.

Even when his bare minimum veneer of respectability began to scratch off years ago – even as his ideas became more and more dumb and outlandish and his opinions more and more questionable, he seemed shielded from any substantive negative consequences. He was surrounded by what I’ve heard referred to as “the Elon Musk reality distortion field.” It didn’t matter what he did; the money and adoration seemed to keep flowing from all corners with no end in sight, and he could convince anyone and everyone that he was a genius that could do no wrong.

That state of affairs now seems to be very gradually, tentatively, changing. Finally.

It seemed like it started going downhill the moment Elon Musk bought Twitter – something he was essentially forced to do legally after probably embarking upon it as a bit. As he’s proceeded to run Twitter (I refuse to call it “X”) into the ground while almost certainly mainlining ket and God knows what else, he only seems to have become more unhinged. Every action he takes seems to be based around appealing to the absolute worst kind of people from the darkest corners of Twitter: extreme libertarian venture capitalists, slimy right-wing grifters, foreign dictators and aspiring dictators, and out and proud fascists and anti-Semites.

It now appears that Musk’s desperate attempts to get the cross section of 8chan membership that actually pays for a Blue Check to like him may actually, potentially, have some real life consequences for him. And it all started several weeks ago, revolving around a snippet from the billionaire’s forthcoming biography revolving around the ongoing war against Ukraine by Russia.

In addition to aid of various types being provided by the United States and its allies and partners, Musk had been providing Ukraine with access to Starlink – the space-based internet service provided by SpaceX, which is perhaps his only company he’s currently involved in that is actually successful. Musk’s provision of Starlink to Ukraine (which began days after the war started in February of 2022) was not without controversy, with Musk essentially threatening to cut it off at one point due to lack of payment before later relenting (a deal was eventually struck for funding through DoD). But that turned out to only be the tip of the Ukraine Starlink iceberg.

In the segment quoted from Musk’s biography, Ukraine had been purportedly planning a sneak attack on the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet at its home base in Sevastopol in Crimea (which had been annexed illegally by Russia from Ukraine back in 2014). This attack was to make use of seagoing drones, the control of which at a distance would be enabled by Starlink. These small, hard to spot, remotely operated vessels would get the drop on the Russian warships – with Russian vessels already having been damaged by Ukrainian maritime drones on several occasions. A cunning plan.

There was only one problem: Starlink wouldn’t actually allow that to happen.

Initially, Musk’s Biographer – Walter Isaacson – asserted in the Washington Post (which was then later quoted by CNN) that Musk had Starlink “turned off” for the Ukrainians on purpose as the attack was undertaken, making their subs lose connection offshore of Crimea and be rendered useless. Since the initial bombshell, there’s been a series of denials, excuses, and ass-coverings from both sides of the story that has only muddled it further. Musk asserts that Starlink was never activated over Crimea to begin with and he had simply denied an emergency request from the Ukrainian government to extend Ukraine’s Starlink coverage. Issacson then walked back his claims in line with Musk’s, instead saying the Ukrainians only thought that Starlink was enabled out to Ukraine and then asked for it to enable their attack after finding out it wasn’t – only then to be denied by Musk. Most of the mainstream media coverage has since been edited to reflect Issacson’s claims (while still making reference to the original assertions in some cases), but I feel like things have only been made more confusing and contradictory than clear.

Regardless of which side of the story on the Ukraine Starlink debacle that you believe, there’s one aspect that is present in both the original and walked-back versions of the tale: Musk specifically denied Ukraine the ability to use Starlink in their planned surprise attack because he feared that the attack would be the equivalent of “Pearl Harbor”, potentially leading to World War III (with SpaceX being partially responsible, in his eyes). Musk was so concerned about this potential World War III sparking attack, that he not only made calls to the Ukrainians and to US. President Joe Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan, he also apparently was in contact with the Russian government – something that I’m sure had a great many Western intelligence agencies pricking up their ears when they found out.

The fear of Russia’s war against Ukraine sparking World War III is reflective of Musk’s adherence to his own form of “longtermism” – an ideology common among hyper-rich (and hyper-weird) capitalists of his type that centers on ensuring the long term survival and happiness of the human race (at least, its long term survival in a way its adherents find acceptable). Such a worldview no doubt dovetails well with Musk’s own personal “only I can fix it” Messiah complex. At any rate, his fears of the Ukrainian “Pearl Harbor” attack causing a major war between the United States and Russia turned out to be (surprise surprise) complete and utter bullshit after Ukraine launched a different kind of surprise attack on Sevastopol, making use of British-supplied Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles that all but destroyed both a Russian Navy landing ship as well as a Kilo-class diesel attack submarine (one capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles back at Ukraine, no less). As you’re guessing by now, since no nukes have popped off since that attack, no World War III broke out as a result of that attack.

Since we haven’t all died in an Oppenheimer style nuclear firestorm (yet), and even as the story about the denial of Starlink coverage has been walked back, Musk has now faced increasing criticism and scrutiny from not just from online commentators, but from the US. government itself. The Chair of the US. Senate Armed Services Committee – Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island – announced not long after the Ukraine Starlink bombshell dropped that his committee would be “aggressively probing” Musk’s and SpaceX’s “outsized role” when it comes to providing space services to the US. government and warning that no “private citizen, can have the last word when it comes to US. national security.” I mostly agree with Senator Reed here (though my reasons for thinking the same thing as him would only partially overlap with his reasons and I think we’d both be worlds apart in what we ultimately want and how far we’d be willing to go for it, but that’s neither here nor there and I can get into that more later).

Will this Senate probe go anywhere and lead to any meaningful consequences for Musk? Has his reality bending force field finally weakened enough to the point he may actually have to experience the “finding out” end of “fucking around?” I’m still somewhat skeptical but I’m not prepared to say “no” because stranger things have happened and we’ve already been seeing a wave of “finding out” lately. It’s not implausible Musk may finally face some real consequences of some kind for something he’s done, even if those consequences aren’t as harsh as any of us would like and aren’t for EVERYTHING he’s done as opposed to only some things that make the state feel uneasy. All I know is no matter how it turns out, it’ll be funny to watch – kind of like with Trump’s numerous indictments and trials.

Likewise, regardless of what happens with Elon Musk in this specific case, the right questions are not being asked about the potential threats that individuals with outsized power and influence – coupled with questionable political viewpoints – could have not just on US. national security but on international relations and international security as a whole. When those questions are examined in greater depth and breadth, the threats both at home and abroad become far more stark.

The Real Threat From Within

It is commonly said by various foreign policy officials and talking heads that the world is entering or risks entering a new Cold War, centered on the United States and China. I would argue we’re entering less of a Cold War in the sense of how the last one went, and more of a new era of multi-polar great power competition that is more similar to the decades prior to World War I (I’ll leave it to you whether that makes you feel better or worse about our current situation). No matter how you look at it, we’re entering a period of far more tense relations and mutual suspicion among great powers and their respective bloc, with coinciding arms races and military buildups.

Be it a Cold War or Edwardian Era-style competition, these periods always come with worries not only of the threat of foreign adversaries, but also of “threats from within”; individuals and entities with loyalties to foreign states and groups that seek to deliberately undermine and weaken the country that they’re living in to the advantage of that country’s adversary or adversaries. Such fears are almost always both overblown, but also usually tinged with some form of racism or other prejudice in search of a convenient scapegoat – be it the antisemitism of the Dreyfus Affair in pre-World War I France, the internment of Japanese Americans after the Attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, or the recent dramatic spike in hate-crimes in the United States against Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent. As tensions with China rise, the old and ugly question of “dual loyalties” is raised from xenophobic right-wingers, essentially suggesting that not only any American of Chinese descent but any American who is not sufficiently white and European enough in their lineage has an unspoken loyalty to the country of their ancestors over any to the United States.

Obviously, anyone who actually has more than two lonely brain cells knows that the idea of dual loyalties is patently bullshit. Albert Dreyfus turned out to be falsely accused of spying for Germany, only being exonerated and reinstated in the French Army after years of protests on his behalf; the Japanese Americans interned in concentration camps in the American Southwest were just normal people, who were deprived of their property and livelihoods baselessly despite the fact their family members were also fighting and dying on the front lines in Europe, then going without so much as an apology from the US. government for years. Yes, an AAPI American could turn out to be a spy or a saboteur acting on behalf of a foreign government, but literally anyone could could turn out to be a spy or saboteur or insider threat; ethnic, racial, or religious background could have next to nothing to do with it. After all, the recent perpetrator of one of the largest US. intelligence leaks in modern history wasn’t Chinese or Russian or Iranian or Korean, but was in fact a 21-year old white dipshit Airman First Class in the Massachusetts Air National Guard of Portuguese descent.

Now, you may be asking yourself, “KD why are you going on about this in an essay that’s supposed to be about billionaires and capitalists and Elon Musk?” Well, part of if is just that it pisses me off in general and I wanted a chance to rant about it and this was as good an opportunity as any. However, I do have a point I’m trying to make here that brings us back to the main theme of this essay: there is a threat from within, and its capitalists like Elon Musk. The real “threat from within” isn’t based on race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin, but is instead based around money, self-importance, narcissism, and the bizarre and harmful ideas that come from being online far too much and not having anyone around you ever tell you “no” or that you’re wrong. The whole Ukraine Starlink debacle is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the threat that Elon Musk-style capitalists could pose to US. national security – and however you feel about it, to your own security depending on where you live. Capitalists like Elon Musk not only are more likely to have the intent to embark upon the kinds of actions (and more) that those going on about racist “dual loyalties” assert, but they’re increasingly in a far better position to be able to act on that intent in a major way and cause serious harm. In my business, intent plus capability to act on it equals threat; you do the math.

For the longest time, weird billionaire capitalists like Elon Musk were confined to their more traditional domains of tech, finance, business, and so on. Their involvement in international affairs was mainly through a lens of investment, trade, and – of course – economic exploitation, but less through one of war and security (although Musk has dipped his toe in before). But over the years, Elon Musk and those of his ilk have increasingly latched on to the national security apparatus in the United States.

When it comes to the Defense Industrial Base – or DIB (this is what people in my profession call the “Military Industrial Complex” in polite company), its still mostly dominated by the kinds of companies you’d expect: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, BAE, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman – you know, all the superstars of companies that love selling weapons to some of the worst people you know (with the US. government’s blessing). Aside from building weapons and munitions, these companies often also provide direct services to the US. government through contractors. Search for job listings in the Washington DC. area and you’re sure to find a whole host of various shades of “intelligence analyst” positions for one of these companies working in support of some part of the Department of Defense or the Intelligence Community.

While capitalists like Musk have not come anywhere near to shaking the hold the legacy defense companies have on the industry, they’ve managed to weasel their way in through various cracks and make themselves indispensable in unique ways. Musk’s SpaceX is the prime example of this, as if the United States wants to conduct a National Security Space Launch to put a sensitive military payload into orbit, its only two options are either SpaceX, or the United Launch Alliance – a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing (the US. is set to expand from two to three from 2025). While SpaceX itself may be the most normal and successful of Musk’s companies (it actually turned a profit this year, compared to say, Tesla), his influence and personality are still very much felt and subject to its whims – with SpaceX’s employees previously deriding their own boss as a “distraction” from their work.

It’s through SpaceX’s activities that we see capitalists like Musk don’t even have to take over the DIB to harm national and international security. Musk and those of his ilk only need to get enough responsibility and power in the right areas to have outsize impacts if they decide to go rogue. Ukraine was just a preview of what could happen on a larger scale. The United States military and other armed forces around the world have become increasingly dependent upon Musk as space has continue to grow in importance as a domain of warfare. In the case of Ukraine, Musk was quoted as saying “how am I in this war?” in addition to his concerns about a potential World War III, when it came to one Ukrainian attack on a Russian naval base; what about in other scenarios directly involving the United States? Musk has stated that he thinks Taiwan is “an integral part of China”; if the United States gets involved in a war with China to prevent it seizing Taiwan, would he then see fit to shut off all support to the US. military to prevent a nuclear war (admittedly, much more of a possibility here than in the Ukraine case, though not guaranteed to happen)?

In a more low stakes case than war with China, Musk has already put his relationships with various authoritarian and right-wing populist leaders like President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on display for all to see, with questions have been asked by the US. government about investment from Saudi royals in Musk’s Twitter. If the United States went to war against a regional authoritarian power that Musk was financially dependent on or felt common ideological cause with, would he cut off support then because he disagreed with the US. attacking one of his fellow travelers and/or business partners? Musk’s actions on Ukraine opens up not simply a can of worms, but an CostCo sized value barrel of them.

Aside from potentially being able to take direct action in the form of denying services and capabilities to the military, Musk and those like him pose risks simply in having access to sensitive information – getting back to our espionage and “threat within” discussion earlier. As the head of a company with substantial DoD contracts, Musk holds a security clearance – one that has come under scrutiny twice now due to his drug use, but at time of writing he still has (full disclosure: I don’t think drug use in and of itself should deny you a clearance, but if we’re going to have all these rules about security clearances it’d be nice if they applied to all of us and not just all of us who aren’t a billionaire or the former President or someone else who’s “important”). I’m much more worried about an ideologically motivated billionaire capitalist with questionable loyalties and politics leaking large amounts of sensitive information, than I am some nobody. We’ve already seen how much classified material Trump was literally keeping in his shitter; what’s to say Musk and others like him wouldn’t do the same if they felt it in keeping with their worldview (especially if they also feel they have that aura of invincibility from their “reality distortion field” around them)?

I’ve mainly been using Elon Musk as my hobby horse throughout this essay because he’s the one that everyone is most likely to know about; but he’s far from the only one. Even if the big, traditional defense giants will continue to dominate the DIB, other Musk types are worming their way in and carving out fiefdoms that they could potentially do damage through. Another prominent example of this is Palmer Luckey (name alert). Prior to trying to break into the NatSec game, Luckey was best known for having founded Oculus VR and having designed the Oculus Rift, which he later sold to Facebook (now Meta) and became a key component of the Metaverse (which of course, as we all know – especially if you listen to Trashfuture – has been immensely successful and has moved everything we do into a virtual world with no legs).

Having moved on from Oculus, Luckey has now started and runs a startup/venture capitalist minded defense company known as “Anduril” that specializes in all the various flavors of the moment. Primarily, Anduril’s focus has been on autonomous systems (i.e., drones) of various kinds – as well as the means to counter them, but since its founding in 2017 its broadened its reach into areas such as solid-motor rockets (such as those used in hypersonic missiles), and command and control systems. As Anduril expands it operations and acquires other companies to facilitate these expansions, Luckey has made no secret of his goal of breaking into the top tier of defense companies, giving the giants mentioned earlier in this essay a real run for their money.

All of this hullabaloo about Anduril would be much of a muchness if Luckey wasn’t also a strident libertarian who donated to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign (Anduril later worked with the Trump administration on technology for its infamous “border wall”), who is also connected to infamous right-wing venture capitalist Peter Thiel (an early investor in Anduril). Luckey may very well be the ‘quiet’ Elon Musk that you don’t know about unless you’re a tech or NatSec person; the kind that only gets traction in Defense and tech trade publications and doesn’t end up as much in the mainstream news in comparison to Musk, but may very well just be just as ideological as Musk (if not more) and potentially just as dangerous under the right circumstances.

Potentially, Luckey and Anduril could be even more dangerous depending on how deep Anduril gets its tendrils into the DoD and in what ways). As mentioned before, Anduril is working on command and control (C2) systems for the DoD. Much like logistics is the lifeblood of any military, C2 is also extremely important. It doesn’t matter what fancy weapons you have or even what fancy intelligence collection methods you have (be it satellites, drones, or humans), but if you can’t information and intelligence back to the decision makers and then relay it to the units in the field, all the big guns and fancy drones you have are useless. If a company or companies like Anduril led by highly political leaders like Luckey in a highly polarized political environment like we have today become crucial to how the DoD plans to fight a war, you find yourself in another Elon Musk style situation where Palmer Luckey or someone like him could simply decide to shut off support to DoD if they do something he doesn’t like – or just being able to leak classified information should he choose to.

Before we move on, let me make something clear: I’m not saying the current situation with the big defense contractors dominating the DIB is good by any means. I don’t think private enterprise has any real role in national defense and if it were up to me all of those companies would be nationalized and replaced with Soviet-style design bureaus or something else entirely. What I’m talking about here, is the devil you know versus the devil you don’t. In terms of changing the world, until we can just nationalize the defense giants away or make them irrelevant in issues of national security, I’d prefer it be them doing what they’re doing than an Elon Musk or a Palmer Luckey doing it. For all of the faults of the big defense companies, they’re less likely to do something as crazy as Musk or someone like him is going to do. They’re going to be less personality driven and far more pragmatic in a way that is more manageable and also more predictable. While these companies may facilitate some awful shit, I feel like it pales in comparison to what Musk or those like him could wreak if they’ve given a bigger slice of the pie and more involvement in our national security. Musk has already proven he’s willing to torch large amounts of his wealth in the drug-fueled pursuit of his ideological and philosophical visions; don’t underestimate the capacity of him and people like him to fuck things up for everyone even more than they’re already doing.

The “Why You Should Care” Section (Yet Again)

I can understand why a number of leftists may read everything up until now (if they even still are reading) and at best wonder “why should I care”, or at worst thing “let them fight, this is good actually.” I can understand that impulse to a point – while I still disagree with it, but let me assure you and plead with you that you don’t actually want this state of affairs to continue and if its taken to its logical conclusion you’ll be sorry.

Billionaire capitalists like Elon Musk are already dangerous under “normal” conditions when they aren’t involved with waging war and they’re “only” dealing with electric vehicles that catch fire easily and run over people, space rockets that explode, bad transportation solutions, and etc. If you don’t think they could cause even more harm if they get involved in national security – both at home and abroad – you’re deluding yourself.

For someone who is stridently anti-war and fears for the state of the world, I can imagine there may even be some kind of an appeal to the idea of Elon Musk intervening in a war between the United States and some other power to stop it escalating to a nuclear exchange. But you have to understand, the interference of people like Musk in national security will never EVER be for the same reasons as you’d like, not even one bit; and the reasons he’s doing it will ultimately always contribute towards something making your life even more miserable. It’s either going to be done out of an interest to protect investments and markets, or out of an ideological or philosophical drive to protect their own twisted long-term worldview that still involves people like you and me being at best massively marginalized or at worst liquidated – or both!

The above all assumes if people like Musk makes more attempts like was done with Starlink in Ukraine on a larger scale in a more extensive conflict that it even accomplishes what was intended and doesn’t somehow backfire in a horrific way. Remember you’re dealing with cretinous man children who are often high out of their mind on ket or benzos or whatever, trying to post through their latest crisis, all while casually breaking laws left and right. You’ve seen the effects of Musk’s ownership of Twitter on the world at large; do you really think people like him getting more involved in matters of war is in any way good or helpful? That it wouldn’t potentially just make things even worse for everyone involved?

Admittedly, I may be making up someone to get mad at here (trying to anticipate “an anti-imperialist defense of Elon Musk” essay by some loser later on down the line). The real people I’m getting steamed at those who have promoted a Silicon Valley style “startup culture” mindset when its come to defense, hoping to invigorate a stagnant and stifled DIB leftover from the post Cold War era and the War on Terror and revitalize it for the new and multiplying security challenges the United States and the world now faces. Well, again, be careful what you wish for, I suppose.

I feel like many of those who had previously supported a startup/Silicon Valley style “disruption” of defense – in particular, those who don’t share Musk and Luckey’s ideological leanings – may now be starting to tentatively realize what many of us further on the Left have known for a while: billionaire capitalists are not a solution, they’re a threat. And they’re not just to our national security, but to all of the well being of everyone, everywhere. That second part of that point may still be a bit too much for some of these folks to swallow, but getting them to understand that first point about billionaires being a national security threat is a point that could serve as a useful wedge issue that has the added virtue of being true. If we can get security minded liberals or even so-called centrists to understand the security threats posed by this generation of extremely online right-wing minded billionaires we’ve been cursed with, maybe from there we can get them to see all the other problems they (and the system they’re a part of) can cause. More people need to understand that’s no room for ultra rich fascist-friendly freaks like Elon Musk in national security, and whatever perceived benefits they’ve deluded themselves into thinking those types bring to the table is heavily outweighed by the risks not only to US. national security but to international security and the lives and livelihoods of people across the world.

For too long, too many convinced themselves that the “disruptive” and “innovate” styles of start up entrepreneurs and tech bros would be a shot in the arm to a defense establishment trying desperately to retool itself for large scale conflict after twenty years of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency with mixed to failed results. Now, they’re seeing what those of us on the Left have seen for ages: a threat – and a threat they’ve let into their home. While I wish they’d come to this realization sooner, it’s not too late to do something about it. Ultimately, the role of capital needs to be removed our defense and security entirely, but I’ll certainly take getting dangerous dipshits like Elon Musk out of it for a start before we move onto the more traditional ones.

On that note, I just looked at my word count for this one and went “holy shit” and have decided this is as good a place as any to wrap up (I could have gone on longer just about the more “traditional” capitalists in Defense, especially given news that Wall Street Executives are going to be doing a war game with Members of Congress – an announcement that made my eyes roll back up in my head), but I think I’m saving those rounds for another engagement. Until next time, stay safe out there, and peace.

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wartakes · 9 months

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I DID IT.

ALL MY OLD ESSAYS ARE POSTED.

I'M FINALLY CAUGHT UP.

GOD THAT WAS TEDIOUS.

From here on in, my long-form content will be living here. Expect a new essay before the summer is out (sometime before September 23rd).

I have no idea what its going to be yet but there will be one lol.

Alright I'm gonna go have a beer, stay pretty.

#War Takes #War Takes announcement

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wartakes · 9 months

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"What Should It Look Like?" Part IV: Special Operations Forces (OLD ESSAY)

This essay was originally posted on May 24th, 2023, is my most recent "old" essay which means we are fully up to speed over here on my content!

This essay is the latest entry in the "What Should It Look Like?" series - which I may still have a few to do on but we'll see. In this one, I unleash a rant against special operations forces that I've mostly held in for years and finally let out full force. This is another one that got a very specific type of guy on Twitter annoyed.

(Full essay below the cut).

Oh boy here I go ranting again.

Fair warning, this is a dense one. For real. But that’s because this is one I’ve wanted to cover for a long time and have a lot of thoughts about. A lot.

Yes my guys, gals, and non-binary pals, we’re finally talking about the United States’ Special Operations Forces (SOF), those tacticool, high-speed, low-drag, routinely accused of war crimes special snowflakes that have destroyed the minds of so many middle and high school ages boys that ever owned an Xbox and played a single Call of Duty game after 2007.

I’m not going to waste a lot of time here in the intro because, as I’ve already said, I have a lot of thoughts on SOF both in terms of what they’ve become today and what role they play in the scenario we’ve thought of for this series of essays. Suffice to say up front, I think SOF are useful and necessary in a military context, but they have a myriad of problems of varying kinds. I’m going to outline some of those problems, and things I’d try to do differently in building a force for the mildly better future we envision and then employing them in said future.

First, we’re going to talk about the issue of “bloat” and uncontrolled growth in the SOF community. After that, we’ll talk about SOF being directed to missions that are out of the scope of what they should be doing (and also may just be straight up unwinnable). Finally, I’ll talk about the big elephant in the room, which is the toxic culture that is evident inside of SOF units and the SOF community as a whole. As usual, I’ll try to tie it all together in the conclusion and leave you with some closing thoughts for both today and for a (hopefully) better future.

Without further adieu then, let’s dive right into this!

A bad case of the bloats I struggled with which of the issues with the SOF community I wanted to address first, because the more I thought about them, the more I realized it was a never ending loop of each of them feeding into one another to keep this disaster factory going. Ultimately, I decided I just had to pick one to start with, and I decided the issue of bloat would be the best point – not just because of how it feeds and is fed by the other issues (and I will call back to this throughout the essay), but because of the effect it then has on the rest of the Joint Force outside of SOF.

Before we get any further, I really want to drive home the scale of the bloat that the SOF community has experience over the past two decades or so in change. According to the IISS Military Balance for 2001, at the start of that year – prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11th and a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States Armed Forces consisted of 2,568,300 total personnel (1,367,700 active and another 1,200,600 reserve and National Guard).

Of those 2,568,300 troops, the collective SOF forces of the United States – under the auspices of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM or just SOCOM – yes, like the video game), made up 42,920 of those troops across all branches of the military (28,620 active and another 14,300 in the reserves and National Guard – yes, there are National Guard special forces; and they’re based in Utah; be very afraid). I’ll apologize now for throwing a bunch of numbers at you – trust me, I’m not a numbers guy either – but there’s a point to this.

Jumping forward to the present, this year’s Military Balance has the total US Armed Forces pegged at active duty US Armed Forces at 2,177,050 personnel (1,359,600 active – just about 8,000 personnel fewer than it was in 2001, and 817,450 reserve and National Guard – over 395,000 fewer than it was in 2001). This amount is just over 391,000 troops smaller than it was in 2001 with the Cold War and the Persian Gulf War in the rear-view mirror and the Global War on Terror not yet initiated.

However, while the military as a whole has shrunk, the SOF community has grown – and by no small amount. In 2023, SOCOM clocks in with 65,800 total troops (which is larger than a good portion of the other armed forces in the globe). The Military Balance unfortunately stopped breaking down between active and National Guard/reserve forces in SOCOM at some point, so I don’t know what the exact proportions are (you can assume the majority of them are active), but even with that breakdown we can see how much each branch of the military’s special group of very special boys who are special has grown over the past twenty years. Compared to 25,900 total active and National Guard/reserve troops in 2001, Army SOF now have 35,000 – about 9,000 more; Navy SOF have almost doubled, going from 5,400 active and reserve in 2001 to 10,500 today; Air Force SOF have grown by over 5,000 troops, going from 11,620 in 2001 to 16,800 today; and finally, the Marines – who didn’t even technically have a SOF component in 2001, now have 3,500 Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC) troops at their disposal.

So, by the numbers, while the military has shrunk overall since its GWOT era peak, and now that the active force is closer to the size it was when the GWOT started – and the reserve and National Guard even smaller – SOF forces have grown larger and remain larger.

This growth hasn’t been limited to personnel either. The SOF slice of the budget pie has also increased dramatically over the course of the GWOT. In 2001, prior to the beginning of the GWOT and prior to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the budget for SOCOM was $2.3 billion USD. By about twenty years later, in 2020, that budget had ballooned to $13.7 billion USD – an almost six fold increase in funding. But again, its not just about the number itself, but the percentage. In 2001, the US defense budget was just shy of $332 billion USD, making SOCOM’s budget about .07% of the entire defense budget. By 2020, the defense budget had risen to $778.4 billion – having risen to new heights, fallen, and then rising again in the late 2010s going into the 2020s to even greater heights. SOCOM’s budget had increased to be close to 1.8% of the entire defense budget – and increase of well over a full percentage point.

Now, I don’t want you to get it twisted and think me saying the military as a whole not being bloated and enormous with both people and money is a good thing. I think it was right for the military to shrink back down as we backed away from things we shouldn’t have even been doing to begin with. The problem now is that while the military has shrunk, SOF hasn’t shrunk with them after the growth they experienced during the GWOT. Proportionally, they’re taking up way more billets (and funding) than they were at the start of the GWOT, prior to 9/11.

But you might ask, “ok War Takes, but why does this matter?” That’s not a stupid question to ask for those with only passing familiarity with the military. It matters because SOF is not only not as relevant to the threats that the United States and others primarily face, but at the same time are taking up resources that could be directed to forces and capabilities that are better suited to deter and if necessary combat those threats. This is especially true as long as they remain optimized for and stuck in the mindset of low intensity conflict, COIN, and CT being their lodestars (as I will get to in more depth in the next section).

SOF are what the military wanted more of when the main thing it was worried about – to the detriment of almost all other issues – was running around in the “Sandbox” for long periods of time, humping through the hills and doing Zero Dark Thirty shit while wearing far too many pouches and overpriced sunglasses – and again, I cannot stress this enough – they were being central to a mission that I don’t think we should have been doing in the first place and was a massive waste of time, money, lives, with consequences we will be grappling with forever. Today – and in our theoretical scenario – the primary threat is from large, peer and near-peer adversaries with significant conventional military forces.

Again, while SOF still have a role to play in conflicts against these kinds of adversaries, the bigger and more consequential role is going to be played by other forces. Every troop, dollar, moment of attention, and ounce of effort that is applied to SOF over what it should be, is one one that could (and should) be applied to more effective areas. This includes not only combat arms such as air-and-missile defenses, long-range artillery – including both tube and missile, maneuver forces like infantry and armor, and etc., but also the capacity needed for the critical work of the rear echelon in logistics, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, transportation, and more. It doesn’t help that a by-product of SOF’s rampant expansion over the past two decades is a great deal of redundancy and overlap between missions as their unique capabilities fade away and they all basically turn into pale imitations of one another running around in the Middle East spitting dip and comparing beards. SOF still have a role to play today and in the future – just as they did in the past – but that role is different and I would argue doesn’t necessitate the numbers they still maintain. At the same time, they remain largely stove-piped off from one another and in competition with one another (which can be made even worse by toxic culture, which I will get to in the third section).

We don’t need theoretical cases to understand the effects that a bloated SOF force can have on the rest of the Joint Force, a we’ve had them from watching it pivot from counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency to preparing for the potential of great power conflict. Numerous capabilities were divested of during the GWOT in the interest of being able to continue feeding meat into the grinder in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. After 2005, the Army had only two active-duty short-range air defense (SHORAD) battalions on hand, with the rest being in the National Guard; the Army not only didn’t keep pace with the development in air and missile threats growing throughout the world, but then had to work rapidly to reconstitute its SHORAD capabilities following the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Likewise, the Army also divested itself of reconnaissance helicopters during this period after several failed attempts at replacing the aging OH-58 Kiowa Warrior, believing the job could be done by a mix of drones and AH-64D Apache Longbows (spoiler alert: they were wrong, and now they’re having to spend time, money, and effort, on belatedly finding an OH-58 replacement).

Now, admittedly, it is unfair to put these examples squarely at the feet of SOF and only SOF. SOF just happens to be the most obvious one to blame in this case – out of many who share blame – for the questionable allocation of resources that resulted from poor decisions that were made in the interest of unwinnable wars that we shouldn’t have embarked upon to begin with. SOF, by virtue of its bloat – or lack thereof – is the ideal example of how overcompensating in one area can hurts others, and how those poor choices can come back to haunt you and cost you more blood, sweat, and tears later. That is something we’ll need to keep in mind for our own scenario and hypothetical force.

At the end of the day, SOF, by premise, are meant to be elite. There’s not meant to be many of them, because they’re selected to be the best of the best – not only physically, but mentally, intellectually, and so on. So, I posit to you, in that case: if that’s supposed to be so, why are there so fucking many of them? I mean sure, they’re still a small fraction of the entire joint force, but I can hardly look at 65,000 people and think that each and every one of them are a special snowflake. I see someone on Twitter with 65,000 followers, I don’t think that each and every one of those followers is a fucking savant. That was neither here nor there, I admit, but just something I wanted to get off my chest before we wrapped up talking about bloat (strap yourself in because there’s more rants there that one came from).

“Hey, what’s my mission again?”

Another question you may be asking yourself at this point is, “War Takes, why did SOF get so big to begin with?” Well, the short answer is: “9/11.” The long answer is still “9/11” but with more detail. However, 9/11 and the GWOT didn’t just make SOF grow to its current bloated size, but it also twisted the mission of SOF away from its original purpose (and the purpose it would be best suited for in our scenario) – which was both fed by and fed into the bloat I just described (like I said, all this stuff has been working in one big feedback loop or series of loops).

Once again we’ll need to start from basics because before I can talk about SOF getting away from what it was designed to do, we need to talk about what that even was.

US SOF can point to a number of various ad hoc units through military history as being part of their lineage, such as various units and organizations from World War II like the Office of Strategic Services, the joint US-Canadian First Special Service Force, US Navy Underwater Demolition Teams, and more. But as the units we know today like the Green Berets and the Navy SEALs were officially founded in the 1950s and 1960s against the backdrop of the Cold War, their primary purpose from the beginning was to engage in unconventional warfare (UW).

Much has been written on UW – some of it good, some of it bad; some of it about right, some of it very wrong. By the Department of Defense’s own definition, UW is “activities conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt or overthrow a government or occupying power by operating through or with an underground, auxiliary, and guerrilla force in a denied area.” More simply put: UW is support to guerrillas, insurgents, or resistance fighters (however you prefer to style them). Those fighters are meant to be the core focus of UW, according to US. Army Special Operations Command’s own UW Pocket Guide from 2016. With that in mind, the platonic ideal of UW is a covert campaign to enable local peoples under hostile occupation or a tyrannical regime to have the means to fight back against that occupier or tyrant and free themselves. This very concept is reflected in the Green Beret’s Latin motto: De oppresso liber (“to free from oppression” or “to liberate the oppressed.”)

For those of you who are students of history and are familiar with some of the regimes supported by – or governments toppled by – the United States over the course of the Cold War, I’m sure you’re making a face right now after having read that last paragraph. Completely understandable. I’m asking you to bear with me some, because I think this concept of UW is one of those ones that isn’t necessarily flawed in its own right but has been twisted and misused or just paid lip service to or just ignored. Like so many things I study in this field – like the very concept of the military itself – while coming from a Left perspective and considering concepts like UW and others, I often think of the apocryphal quote attributed to Gandhi when he was asked what he thought of ‘Western Civilization’ – the answer being: “I think it would be a good idea.”

Indeed, early US SOF themselves immediately strayed from their supposed doctrinal mission with the advent of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The use of SOF in Vietnam would largely be characterized by engaging in counter-insurgency (COIN) activity, rather than actual UW. There was an attempt made early on, at least, to stick to doctrine. One of the earliest missions of the Navy SEALs in Vietnam were attempting to undertake true UW in North Vietnam, working to train locals to rise up against the government in Hanoi (this, of course, failed – and we proceeded to learn nothing from it, nor think hard on maybe whether those whole ‘Vietnam’ thing was worth the effort if it was that hard to recruit people to fight against the North Vietnamese government). Use of SOF in Vietnam quickly descended into direct-action missions attempting to take out specific targets such as arms caches, senior leadership of the Vietcong, enemy bases or outposts, and etc. I’m sure these all things that I’m sure won’t sound familiar at all to any veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan – and consequently, it may surprise any of them to realize that we did not, in fact, win the Vietnam War.

SOF very early on fell into the COIN trap. As I’ve elaborated on at length before, I see COIN as losing game over 90% of the time. Fighting an insurgency is a recipe for either defeat, or eternal war with no end – never victory. When their initial attempts at UW in Vietnam failed, the US military seemed to fall back on the old standby of just trying to kill its way out of a problem. SOF were not really acting as they were supposed to, but instead were largely just doing covert, highly specialized versions of the missions that a conventional force would do: close with and destroy the enemy. Now, that’s one thing against a conventional force. I should make it clear that some of these direct action missions – as well as other missions like intelligence gathering and recon, that were also undertaken by SOF in Vietnam – are perfectly valid missions for SOF in the UW context. But, in the grand scheme of things with COIN – where you’re already essentially fighting a losing war, it’s just pissing in the wind. That may win you battles in COIN, but when you’re fighting “the birthrate of a nation” (as journalist David Halberstam put it in regards to Vietnam), it will never win you the war.

With the American withdrawal from Vietnam in the 1970s and the eventual unification of the country under the North, the US military – and the SOF community – decided collectively to put that whole ugly mess behind them and go back to what they had been doing beforehand: preparing for the possibility of fighting World War III in Central Europe (or barring that, a smaller, regional conventional conflict, somewhere else in the world). This meant a return to form for US SOF in the 1970s and 80s. A prime example of this is the US Army’s 10th Special Forces Group. In the event of war in Europe, the group’s primary mission would have been to organize partisan and resistance activity either in territory occupied by advancing Warsaw Pact forces, or within the territories of Warsaw Pact nations themselves, and conduct “stay-behind” direct action against occupying forces as they pushed into NATO territory. If this had all come to pass (and assuming the war didn’t go nuclear, which was not guaranteed per say, but still way more likely than you want it to be), it would have been a UW mission in the truest sense. This was also when counter-terrorism (CT) started to become a mission-set, with the rise of political terrorism of various stripes in the 1970s. But at this point, terrorism was still a niche issue that necessitated a niche response, and not something that the entirety of SOF was notional geared towards, being left to specialized CT units like the Army’s secretive 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (AKA: Delta Force) and the now infamous Navy SEAL Team Six (now known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group or DEVGRU).

That’s not to say there weren’t some backsliding to old, bad habits. SOF relapsed back into its old Vietnam way of doing things – and gave us a glimpse of the future – under the Reagan administration when the Green Berets were deployed to El Salvador while it was in the midst of its civil war. While there, SOF once again where in the business of anti-communist COIN, and in doing so helped to facilitate right-wing government death squads that visited horrific carnage and slaughter on El Salvador’s citizens – including the infamous El Mozote massacre, in which the US-backed Salvadorian Army killed almost 1,000 civilians in and around the village of El Mozote, and which the US government then shamelessly lied through its teeth about. More than 75,000 Salvadorians were killed over twelve years of civil war, most of them by the military. Thirty years later, the country isn’t much better, off, sliding back into authoritarian rule under its feckless and petty tech-bro President and probable future dictator Nayib Bukele. As for the Green Berets and other US advisors that were there, these atrocities were so bad, that not the official publication of everyone’s favorite right-wing coffee company – Black Rifle Coffee – can bring itself to gloss over the fact that it all actually happened under US watch and can’t disguise feeling vaguely uncomfortable about it (though their cop out answer is that the advisors “hands were tied” – you know, you guys didn’t have to be there right?).

Ironically, the same war that would see SOF get back into its true wheelhouse would also be the one that spark the beginning of SOF’s second and more drastic straying away from its core purpose. That of course, was the War in Afghanistan and the GWOT in general, which actually started with a true UW mission. As popularized by the film “Twelve Strong”, the beginning of the US military involvement in Afghanistan was the deployment of Green Berets – alongside CIA operatives – into Afghanistan in 2001 to support the Northern Alliance and other Afghan resistance fighters in their fight against the Taliban government. In this sense, it may be the one real success story of the entire Afghan War. It’s easy to forget that – unlike in Iraq – US conventional forces did not do the brunt of the initial fighting on the ground when the war first started. When Kabul fell (the 2001 version not the 2021 remix), it fell to Northern Alliance fighters (fighting with Green Berets). In many ways, this initial success could be seen as the post-Cold War high point for the Green Berets in undertaking the traditional SOF mission of UW, a high that hasn’t been reached again since.

If you know me and have read my work by now, you know I have decidedly mixed feelings on the legacy of the War in Afghanistan. I ultimately think we shouldn’t have been there (and in fact, didn’t have to be there, as the Taliban were prepared to hand over Bin Laden, our main reason for going in). But if we had to go in, it would have better to have left on a high note after this point (and after it became obvious Bin Laden was no longer there) and then let Afghanistan figure out its own affairs internally. To put it more simply: we should have left as soon as the UW mission was accomplished and the circumstances changed. The Taliban was – and still is – an objectively evil and terrible government and supporting forces to overthrow was a moral move in my book. But what would proceed to happen in Afghanistan – and soon, in Iraq – over the next twenty years would very quickly taint anything moral and just that we had initially accomplished. It would also very quickly and drastically stray from the standard UW mission for SOF and lead us to the issues we now have.

As mission creep quickly set in with Afghanistan and an anti-terrorism focused UW mission quickly grew and morphed into occupation and state building, the mission of SOF quickly got away from UW as, well, there wasn’t a UW conflict to fight. We had become the occupiers that the populace very quickly got sick of within a few years and wanted to get rid of. Like wise, as the GWOT continued to ramp up from 2001 on, hunting down terrorists and attempting to dismantle terrorist groups and cells also became the primary concern of the military and of SOF, with CT and COIN melding into one unholy combination where they were basically the same thing to the military.

Once again confronted with COIN and unable to accept my thesis that it is – most of the time – unwinnable, SOF fell back on the same reaction as they did in Vietnam: trying to kill the problem away. SOF were once again essentially doing the same tasks infantry would do, only more special, more sneaky, with better toys, and etc. No matter how you dress it up though, they were doing the same job as any other grunt stuck in a pointless COIN war: killing insurgents with the hope eventually there will be no more; destroying their weapons caches with the hope they’ll stop getting new ones; destroying their outposts while hoping they wont’ just set up a new one a few miles away; etc. When that didn’t win the war immediately, the reaction was often just to throw even more SOF at the problem – leading to the bloat mentioned before. In all fairness, not all of this was SOF’s fault – when you’re a command or policymaker and have these really cool looking hammer that everyone thinks is great and special, you’ll want to smash every nail you can think of with it. This constant operational tempo, in addition to putting SOF up on a pedestal as the most special boys in the COIN fight, and with other factors, would also contribute to developing a rancid internal culture with horrific results both for those SOF interacted with and for its own members (which I will be addressing in the next section).

I could spend a long time going on about the use of SOF in Afghanistan – as I always say: “that could be an article in and of itself.” But there’s other things I want to cover, so what I want to talk about now is the cautionary tale of getting sucked into circumstances like that and pushing SOF into missions they shouldn’t be doing (or that no one should really be doing). This is especially relevant as the US military is now working to reorient its SOF back towards the missions they were founded to do in the first place, as great power competition increases and the possibility of war with a peer or near peer adversary becomes something that is actually plausible. Because of those twenty years of baggage, it’s not an easy job. After twenty years of GWOT, SOF operators are literally struggling to understand or feel comfortable performing the very mission that was their original justification and purpose and pining for the door-kicking they’ve been doing the past twenty years, feeling like that if they aren’t kicking down a door or clearing a room every few hours they aren’t doing their jobs right. God only knows how long it will take them to get over this – if they’re even capable of doing so in their current form (I would argue they can’t and would go further but I’ll save that for the conclusion). But don’t feel too sympathetic to a lot of them, however, because we’re going to use those institutional issues as a segway into the third main pillar of the issues of modern US SOF – which is their toxic culture and the depths to which it goes.

The Men Who Just Really Love Doing Crimes. I should clarify from the start of this section, that I am well aware that US SOF have always had issues with culture and professionalism. One need only look at some of the stories from the Vietnam War to realize that SOF has long had issues. But even then, I would argue those were not as widespread, deep seated, and batshit insane as what we have seen and are still seeing in the SOF community in terms of legal, ethical, and moral violations after twenty years of COIN and CT as part of the GWOT in the Middle East and around the globe.

All of this goes hand-in-hand with the bloat SOF experience after the start of the GWOT. As discussed earlier, in the effort to show progress in the GWOT, SOF became the go-to weapon of choice for the US government in tracking down and capturing or killing high-value terrorist targets. They increasingly became the most lionized, hyped up, and obsessed over part of the US military in an era where the average troop was already put up on a pedestal, seen as the solution to any possible problem a policymaker may encounter in national security. At the same time, as the US was pulled deeper into the quagmire of Afghanistan and Iraq and key terrorist leaders like Bin Laden remained elusive, pressure mounted to show results in all of the various “forever wars” America had found itself entangled in.

All these factors combined – and more – no doubt went to the heads of numerous SOF operators and leeched throughout the community. This was seen especially in Afghanistan, where by the 2010s US SOF had developed a reputation for a “shoot first, ask later” attitude towards their mission – at the expense of Afghan civilian lives. But this attitude went beyond simply having an itchy trigger finger, to allegations of outright unlawful killings (i.e. murder) and torture. Having been put on a pedestal and told how important they were, results being expected of them, and being told that they were doing God’s work, SOF seemed to take an attitude that the ends justified the means and that they were right in going to extreme ends outside of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) to accomplish their mission. According to one SOF expose by Rolling Stone, a Green Beret writing to the author from federal prison (where he was incarcerated for smuggling 50 kilos of coke into Florida onboard a military aircraft), as long as the mission they were assigned was accomplished and everything was kept hush hush, SOF seemed to have free reign to go to whatever lengths necessary in the course of their duties.

This mindset was no doubt fueled by a sense of impunity, seeing that US SOF have only seldom faced any consequences for allegations of abuses and war crimes. In the rare occasions that investigations have been mounted or charges have been filed by the military, its even rarer that anyone actually is convicted or faces consequences for their actions. An extensive investigation of the ethics and culture of US SOF that was undertaken in 2020 found “no systemic ethics problems.” When Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher was put on trial for murdering a captured ISIS fighter, he was acquitted; and after being convicted of a lesser crime of posing with a dead body in violation of the laws of armed conflict, he was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump. In the few cases where punishments are doled out and actually stick, they’re usually relatively minor and done extraordinarily quietly, with the military and the government not wanting to draw any extra attention to the matter. In other cases, the government and the military have straight-up attempted to cover up any acts of wrongdoing. The standard that has been set for SOF over the past twenty years of Forever War is that you’ll likely never be punished for egregious acts, and if you are punished it’ll probably be a slap on the wrist at the most.

The impunity doesn’t just end with acts against civilians and enemy combatants in foreign countries, however. SOF have also developed a culture of violence and heavy handedness against other service members. The past two decades of GWOT are littered with stories of other US service members being sexually assaulted, hazed, and murdered, with the accused or suspected perpetrators being SOF operators – the previously linked article from Rolling Stone just barely scratches the surface of some of these instances on just one post, Fort Bragg (home of Joint Special Operations Command). This violence isn’t limited to being against those outside the SOF community, but occurs within it as well. A famous recent case is the murder of a Green Beret while deployed to Africa, having been killed by Navy SEALs and MARSOC operators during a hazing gone wrong (oh by the way the Navy SEAL sentenced for involuntary manslaughter in that case got his conviction thrown out). In some cases, SOF operators just decide to randomly visit acts of violence on people they don’t even know. The culture of impunity and superiority has developed to the point that its not just that SOF think they’re better than the rest of the military, but that the rest of the military is either an obstacle or a threat that must be dealt with – especially when their privileges and impunity are threatened by them. Despite their notional image as the best of the best, defending America’s values and interests, they seem to have little qualms about harming other Americans when push comes to shove. Even when they’re not murdering and torturing, SOF’s culture of impunity has led them to a point where they can’t stop committing crimes in general. Whether its smuggling drugs or embezzling official funds, SOF operators have been socialized to think they are entitled to it all.

In many ways, the culture of SOF operators has become akin to that of modern law enforcement in America – in that they act more like a cult or an organized crime group or gang (or all of the above) rather than as a professional military unit with good order and discipline. Strict group-think is enforced, with new ideas that break the mold or challenge the status quo are quickly shot down and those who suggested them are ostracized or punished. An “us versus them” mentality is imposed where those not in the cult or the gang are at best disdained or at worst outright hated or targeted. When the cult is under threat, all its members are expected to close ranks to defend it and any members who may be under attack – and God help you if you speak out. And even if you aren’t party to whatever transgressions that have been visited on someone else by the gang, and you largely go about your business trying to do no harm, you’re still part of the problem simply by not speaking out and doing anything about or taking part in a code of silence to cover for other’s wrongdoings. (By the way, this is not to say that these problems don’t exist anywhere else in the US military, but that they are particularity potent in the SOF community. You could really envision the SOF community as being a concentrate – if you will – of all the problems the military as a whole experiences, heightened to their logical extreme).

How do you even begin to tackle this problem? Well, I think as things stand now you can’t. Part of this is there being too much damage to SOF as it exists now to “save” it (and I will talk about this momentarily in the conclusion, like I said earlier), but also needs other issues to be fixed. You need stronger and more consistent oversight of the military in general and SOF in particular from elected officials who are actually going to dig deep, ask probing questions, and demand results – and will need to have a strong moral compass on the issues at hand. You’ll need a top brass in the military that will also have zero tolerance for such behavior and other shitty behavior in general, won’t be afraid of the military getting a black eye or bad press for calling attention to bad behavior, and will rigorously act to deal with bad behavior and crimes of various kinds and dole out actual punishments. Finally, you’ll need a military justice system that actually delivers – well, justice, for the accused and isn’t biased or rigged to produce certain results or simply to protect the interests and appearance of the military. I just mentioned three things that could all be essays in their own right (and likely will be at some point if I can ever get around to them – I’m very tired ok), so clearly this is an issue that goes beyond just SOF and requires sea changes in how our country works, not just how our military or SOF works (something I have pointed out as being necessary in the past). If SOF in our hypothetical better future and scenario are to function without descending back into a toxic culture of murder and cruelty, than these issues will all need to be fixed alongside one another going forward.

De Oppresso Liber (but for real this time)

Ok, so, this is the part where I remember that I’m supposed to be writing about how I would do things differently in this hypothetical future and scenario we’ve crafted for this series. But before I get into that, I want to speak about the here and now – knowing that what I say here and now will make little difference but I want to get it off my chest anyway.

As things stand now, I think that SOF as currently constituted in the US military are essentially un-reformable (and this is not a new opinion of mine). I think the rot has gone on for too long and goes too deep for it to be salvaged. This – again – is similar to my views on law enforcement; I am a police abolitionist in that I think some form of law enforcement or public safety needs to exist in society, but that I think the current system is beyond fixing and needs to be knocked down and started fresh from a completely blank slate with new ideas and new people in order to work. In that sense, I am a SOF-abolitionist in that while I think SOF should exist in the military – both as it exists now and as I’d like it to exist – the slate has to be wiped clean and it has to be started over fresh and new with new people and concepts and rules and oversight.

But ok, if we did wipe that slate clean and started over, how would we want them to be? As I said earlier, a lot of changes need to happen alongside one another – both in the military and in our society. But if we’re assuming the political changes we’d like to see have already happened in the United States and we’re focused more on the military problem now, the answers to the main problems I’ve outlined are self-evident (to an extent) in the problems themselves.

First, we need to have discussions need to be had about how many SOF is enough, and how much funding is really needed, without just letting the community bloat to an extreme size and throwing money at it with no accountability. There also need to be questions asked about how many different types of units we need – does every single branch of the military need to have its own unique SOF unit? My inclination is to say “no” and there would need to be studies done on what types of units we really do need to avoid not only a redo of bloat, but to avoid redundancy and overlap. If a new SOF unit needs to be justified, it needs to have a truly unique argument as to why it uniquely needs to exist. If there’s any of the things I’m listing I think could actually happen under the current system, its at least this one – as there seems to be conversations going in the halls of power regarding potential significant cuts to SOF as I finish writing this essay. So, there’s that I guess (though I imagine this will quickly turn into a political culture war issue in Congress and elsewhere with a revolving door of retired generals making their way to hearings to defend their special snowflake boys to Greg Steube and a similar coterie of very big dumb Republican guys, so don’t hold your breath).

Second, the missions SOF are assigned need to be ones that are actually militarily relevant and useful to the grand strategy we’re adhering to (and also are actually militarily achievable – unlike COIN and CT). Over all of this, thirdly, the SOF community also needs to be subject to oversight with actual teeth to it and those who violate rules, procedures, and established laws (both US military law and the LOAC), need to held accountable for their actions in a meaningful way. This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but just the major issues that come to mind reflecting on everything I’ve dumped on you for the past then pages or so in change.

While all of these issues are important, as a defense analysts I am most interested in the missions angle – not simply because I want to make sure its addressed how SOF fit in to the scenario we’ve established before, but because it also ties in to the other issues in that circular feedback loop I described from the onset. In our scenario of coming to the aid of an ally that is under attack by a strong conventional adversary and is being invaded, what would SOF be doing?

In our scenario, SOF would likely be the first troops of ours on the ground to assist our ally, before any substantial conventional ground forces are able to arrive in strength. To that end, their initial goal would be the same as any and naval firepower that is being directed to the region as the invasion is underway: to slow down and hopefully stall the enemy advance until those aforementioned conventional ground forces can arrive and concentrate and counter-attack. This would be in close conjunction with allied forces on the ground – likely including their own SOF, if they have any. Much like US SOF planned to do in Central Europe if the balloon went up during the Cold War, they’d blow bridges, collapse tunnels, and undertake harassing actions to slow the enemy down as their forces moved forward onto allied soil.

While our forces prepared for a counter-offensive to liberate occupied allied territory, that’s when SOF would really go to work, undertaking the mission that was always meant to be their primary responsibility: unconventional warfare. SOF would infiltrate behind enemy lines and work to establish an insurgency against the occupying forces – or support ones that have already cropped up. SOF would train and advise these forces, directing them on where and how to strike in order to make the biggest impact on the occupation, fighting alongside them in the process. It would be a return to form for SOF, fighting in support of insurgents fighting for their rights and freedoms, rather than engaging in a COIN campaign (and forcing the enemy to engage in such an ultimately hopeless endeavor themselves). The goal here is to continue weakening the enemy, drawing away forces and effort to fight the insurgents and lowering enemy morale and effectiveness, while making the coming conventional counter-offensive more effective and faster from having worn down and worn out the enemy internally. Once conventional forces press forward and link up with the insurgents, they may be able to link up with those conventional forces to press on and assist them – following Mao’s own theories on insurgency and guerrilla warfare, with the guerrillas gradually growing into the final phase of conventional warfare.

Additionally, aside from shooting people or even training other people to shoot people, SOF would play a critical role as eyes and ears quietly observing enemy movements and activities. In an age of satellites, drones, and other technical means of intelligence gathering, you often still can’t beat a soldier on the ground to give you an eyes-on account of what’s going on and to catch nuance that a long-range camera just can’t get you. To get back to the shooting while still staying in the intel gathering mold, SOF could also embark on moire aggressive intelligence gathering or snatching operations to get key info that not even satellites or drones can get eyes on, further demonstrating their importance in a highly technical age of warfare.

All in all, SOF would play an important role in the scenario we’re thinking of. That’s something that anyone on the Left that still thinks that armed conflict is sometimes sadly necessary will have to get comfortable with. This is a big assumption on my part, based mostly on vibes and what I see in discussions online, but I get the impression that among a Left that already has a dim view of the military, the dimmest and darkest possible view is that of SOF and its operators. Again, given the transgressions I outlined earlier in this essay, I don’t’ think that’s a view without reason by any means. But that’s why I wanted to talk about all the systemic issues with SOF to show its just one thing that’s led them to what they currently are, and to demonstrate just how far they’ve strayed from the purpose they were meant to have originally. If reoriented on that original purpose, and utilized in service of ideology and motives that were not inherently imperialistic, SOF do have an important role to play. This is especially true if in this better world we imagine that we still wish to support those seeking their own liberation (I should surely hope so or I wouldn’t even bother writing this shit), without getting drawn into the moral and military deathtrap of regime change and occupation and COIN. Deploying SOF to train, advise, and equip insurgents fighting for better lives in their homeland is the way to avoid stumbling into our own versions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Basically, we always want to make sure that the only role we play in any insurgent, is being on the side of the insurgents than as the COIN practitioners (assuming the insurgents aren’t pieces of shit and genuinely want a better future for their people and aren’t just batshit insane).

On that note, I think I’ve said just about all I can think to say on this subject for now and my brain is starting to run on empty. Out of all the essays in the series, I think that this one was the one I was both most excited for and the most dreading to write for a long time because of how intellectually and emotionally dense a subject it is. In all honesty, for how much I’m glad I’ve broached this subject, I’m happy to put this one in my rear-view mirror and move on to greener pastures now that I’ve said my piece. As with everything I write, I hope it at least promotes some introspection and some useful discussions and debate.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know if this is the end of the “What Should It Look Like” series or not. I think I was maybe planning on doing another one at some point specifically on the Reserves and National Guard and the role that they should play and how they should be different, so I’ll probably get to that at some point. I may switch things up for the next essay though and do something different, depending on what strikes my fancy at the time or what’s in the news by the end of the Summer. Now that I’m doing fewer of these a year, I don’t want to make every single one a “What Should It Look Like” until its all done, so I want to try and keep it fresh for you all. For now though, thanks for your patience as I move to a new schedule and space these further out. I’m juggling a lot in my life and not having to do these every month has made it a lot easier, so I appreciate all of your understanding.

Until next time, as always, stay safe out there and keep on keeping on. I’m going to go enjoy Memorial Day weekend and stuff my face with burgers and beer. Peace.

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wartakes · 9 months

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"What Should It Look Like?" Part V: The Air Force

This essay was originally published on January 27, 2023 and is a continuation of the "What Should It Look Like?" series.

In this entry, we go into the DANGER ZONE and I explain how drones aren't going to solve everything (I go into some other stuff too but that's a big part of it).

(Full essay below the cut).

Greetings, folks. We return once more to my “What Should It Look Like” series and oh boy, it’s time to go Up into the Wild Blue Yonder with the United States Air Force.

Air power is one of the most important aspects of modern warfare. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that, in a large-scale war between two state armies, air power is essential for victory. As we’ve seen in Ukraine, even if you can just deny your enemy’s control of the air and prevent either side from gaining dominance – as Ukraine has, you can buy yourself some serious breathing room and seriously frustrate their efforts. In that particular case, ground-based air defense assets also play a major role – but as Ukraine consistently asking for more combat aircraft (among other things) has shown, the planes themselves remain important.

With the absolutely critical nature of airpower established early on in this essay, I’m going to give you all a warning: this is going to be another long one. Because of how important air power is in modern war and because of all the facets to it, it was hard for me to cut things out for this one because so much felt important. So, if you’re feeling a little drowsy, now is probably not the time to dive into this essay – unless you want to brew some coffee first. But if you’re ready, willing, and/or caffeinated, let’s dive right in.

Quality vs. Quantity (and vice versa)

In the scenario we’ve been using throughout this series (I won’t rehash it completely again, so you can go read the original essay to refresh your memory), aircraft play a crucial – if not, arguably, the most crucial role. In particular, tactical aircraft (“TACAIR”; i.e. “fighter” aircraft and other smaller combat aircraft) are essential due to the fact they can cross long distances quickly to get to the theater of war and immediately begin operations to slow and hopefully halt the enemy advance, by providing Combat Air Patrols (CAP) to contest enemy air superiority and Close Air Support (CAS) to friendly ground forces to hold back enemy forces, conducing Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) missions to help secure air superiority by destroying enemy anti-air, and other missions. In the study that served as one of the sources of inspiration for this planning scenario we’re using, air power is flagged as absolutely critical (and the centerpiece of the study). Within the first week of conflict breaking out in this scenario, air power is arriving to take on all the missions I just described and more, and to set the stage for all other operations occurring and to follow. Without air power in general and TACAIR in particular, nothing else we’ve discussed or will further discuss can really happen.

In order for a country like the United States to be able to do what I just describe in support of our scenario, they need to generate something we call “mass.” Simply put, you need to be able to muster up enough of something to do the job – or in military terms, “create the effect” – that you want them to do, successfully. This is all being done while keeping in mind that you’re doing that while being opposed by a peer or near-peer adversary military. This probably won’t come as a surprise, but in that kind of scenario, you’re going to need to generate a lot of mass in terms of TACAIR given the amount they’ll have to do – and also factoring in the unfortunate reality of combat losses and other forms of attrition that inevitably occur in warfare.

Now, you’d think that probably wouldn’t be an issue for the United States, as it possesses one of the largest air forces on the planet (technically, it has four of them – in terms of total aircraft numbers – if you count the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps as well). But that’s increasingly becoming a problem for them for a variety of reasons – with two major ones standing out: a shortage of pilots, and an issue we call “gold plating.”

The USAF has been struggling with a persistent shortage of pilots, so much so that it’s had to force higher ranking officers to fly in more junior positions or even bring pilots back from retirement. A key driver for this has been an issue with retaining pilots, as many simply get tired of the poor quality of life and culture that the USAF imposes on them, turning to much more attractive offers from private sector airlines. The USAF has already attempted some changes here in terms of increasing that quality of life and doing more to support service members and their families in general.

My only real input or suggestion here would be to go further and not bite around the edges and half-ass it as the services are want to do. Like I said regarding the Navy and its toxic Surface Warfare culture, and with military culture in general, “if you build it, they will come.” Maybe if the Air Force follows that maxim, they’ll find themselves hemorrhaging less pilots. Also, I’m going to beat my usual drum here that “maybe if we weren’t a sprawling empire trying to be everywhere at once that the strain on the services would not be near as high – nor would the resulting demands on personnel.” Finally, I do (begrudgingly) have to admit there’s some areas where the Air Force could benefit from utilizing more drones in place of crewed aircraft (more on that later), but that still require skilled service members, so the retention and quality of life issue continues to take center stage. Just make it suck less for them. Easy.

Now that we got the boring “human” dimension out of the way, we can talk more about what we are really nerds for: hardware. Specifically, the over-designing of it, something we call in the biz “gold plating.” It’s a tale as old as time in my field, but since the end of the Cold War it’s gotten particularly bad. When designing new platforms and systems, the United States has had a tendency to give in to “scope creep” and try and make these new weapons do anything and everything under the sun – and do it the best they possibly can. The result is you get weapon systems that are insanely expensive to produce and maintain (if they even make it to production without being cancelled) and often come with a host of various technical issues to boot. You also are likely to end up with far fewer of what you need – as well as with expensive weapons that commanders may be risk averse in putting in dangerous situations because they don’t want to lose them. In addition to costing more, it also tends to take longer these days to develop and field a new weapon than it traditionally has, for a variety of reasons. All of these factors fly directly in the face (ha ha, flying pun) in the imperative of generating sufficient mass for TACAIR.

As an example of this gold plating issue, I’m going to bring up everyone’s favorite high-tech aviation punching bag: the F-35. I’ve already talked at length in a prior piece about the entire debacle of the F-35 Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter, so I’ll try not to just rehash that whole piece here and give you some highlights. One of my major takeaways in that piece is that, while a 5th generation multirole combat aircraft is by no means a dumb idea – and in fact, a necessary one in a future fight against a peer adversary, the USAF made a crucial mistake by going “all in” on the F-35 making up the vast majority of its TACAIR fleet of the future.

Why was this a mistake? Two main reasons: first, because the F-35 in particular is essentially a gold-plated camel (a camel, the old joke goes, being a “horse designed by committee”). While it is not completely useless (the original concept of a 5th generation multi-role fighter was and remains valid) and some of its issues have been fixed, the F-35 is still plagued with issues that are often surrounded by DoD obfuscation. It also remains incredibly expensive and finicky to maintain and sustain even when operating correctly and even as some costs have been brought down over time. The F-35 has been made to do try and do too many things all at once, turning it into a flying complex of software bugs that loves to try and kill its pilots.

Second, while stealth combat aircraft are absolutely crucial in a peer-on-peer conflict, they are by no means infallible. Stealth has never been invincible, even when the United States had a monopoly on the technology back when it was first introduced. This was evidenced by the shoot-down of a stealth F-117 Nighthawk over Serbia during NATO’s Operation Allied Force in 1999 – with another F-117 being hit as well (though that one managed to make it back to base without crashing). These attacks were undertaken with 1960s-era Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles and radars – which, when utilized correctly, could detect stealth aircraft. Technology has come a long way since the 1990s (or the 1960s for that matter). While some like to downplay the risk to U.S. stealth aircraft, it’s never as simple as they depict it. It’s not unreasonable to expect a technologically sophisticated peer adversary (like China) could develop tools enabling it to better find, fix, target, and attack stealth aircraft – if not now, in the near to mid future. Stealth absolutely has a use case but depending upon that as the sole advantage of a platform – or a fleet – at the expense of qualities like speed, range, maneuverability, payload, and more, is very risky.

Even without the risk, there are areas where you encounter situations where an expensive, high-end aircraft seems like overkill when it comes to the mission its undertaking. For example: why would you want to assign a high tech, penetrating stealth fighter to a mission like air defense of friendly territory? Why does it matter (outside of showing off) if the fighters you’re scrambling are stealthy or not when you know an enemy is on the way and they know you’ll scramble to meet them? In that case, what may matter more are sensors – either on board the aircraft or linked to it – and its ability to carry a lot of ordinance and fuel. The same could apply to stand-off strike or air defense missions where the aircraft doesn’t necessarily need to penetrate enemy air defenses to fire ordinance like long-range missiles. This is to say nothing of a fight against an adversary that isn’t as technologically advanced. A high-end stealth fighter isn’t required for every mission and there are efficiencies to be gained from an appropriate mix of high-end, more exquisite platforms, and less advanced platforms that you can get more of and do the job “alright” and may actually have advantages over high-end platforms in key areas like range or payload. We call that sort of thing a “high-low” mix in the biz and its nothing new.

The USAF also seems poised to potentially make this mistake again with its bomber fleet as it prepares to introduce the new B-21 Raider bomber that has been developed as a replacement for its B-1B Lancer and eventually for the B-2 Spirit bomber. In the B-21’s defense, while it is a high-end stealth bomber like the infamously expensive B-2 Spirit, it is (on paper) supposed to be far cheaper than that aircraft was (though it will also be smaller and thus have a smaller payload capacity). But the key question is, why does the majority of the USAF’s bomber fleet need to be made up of penetrating stealth bombers, when the enemy we plan on fighting against has a large air-defense network that is only growing larger and more sophisticated? Maybe having some of the bomber fleet be aircraft like B-21s makes sense, but is the juice really worth the squeeze in terms of having the majority of the fleet be made up of them?

This is one of those areas where the USAF may be doing the right thing at the same time its doing (maybe) the wrong thing, as at the same time its introducing the B-21 it is also preparing to keep the B-52 Stratofortress in service into the 2050s. With new engines giving it renewed life, the B-52 could be assigned to the role of primarily being a bus to carry long-range missiles it can fire at stand-off distance (though oddly enough it still can drop ‘dumb’ bombs and still practices how to do that which is kinda cool). While some instance sin war may call for a bomber that will attempt to penetrate enemy air defenses, do you really need every bomber to do that when what you may need more of is a big, dumb, missile bus that has a long range and long-range ordinance that can launch its ordinance and go home? Hell, we even thought about doing this with 747s back in the day (among other, crazier ideas) and I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t bring that idea back. Sometimes you need something expensive and stealthy, but sometimes you just need something big to carry stuff.

This is an area where we may be able to learn something from China’s approach to a high-low mix in combat aircraft, as they’ve been doing a lot of things that I think we should be doing. Even as they’ve designed and are now producing 5th generation fighters like the J-20 – and soon the smaller J-31/FC-31, an analogue to the F-35 that is also intended for export as well as domestic military use – they’ve continued to produce 4.5 generation fighters like the J-16 (a Chinese analogue to the Russian Su-35 “Flanker”) and the smaller and cheaper J-10 – another tactical aircraft that is also directed at the export market as well as the People’s Liberation Army. Even as they work to develop their own stealth bomber, they’re still actually producing new versions of the 1950s vintage H-6 “Badger” bomber that are capable of firing cruise missiles – and even air-launched ballistic missiles – in a role similar to that of the “missile bus” B-52 or 747 described prior. While appreciating the value of high end, low-observable aircraft, China seemed to hedge their bets in adopting that technology and now it may very well put them in a better position to generate mass in terms of airpower in a potential high-end conflict.

Ultimately, I don’t know what the right “high-low” mix is if you’re looking for an exact number – whether it be for bombers or fighters or whatever. That’s something that would need more careful study and examination than I can provide here. What I can say with some degree of confidence is that while high-end stealth aircraft definitely have a role, they probably should not make up the majority of a combat aircraft fleet. This is yet another area where the services – and the air force in particular – have either bit around the edges or danced back and forth on making the right choice. While the Air Force was planning on buying more of the 4.5 generation F-15EX, those buys are now being curtailed. And while the Chief of Staff of the Air Force identified a potential need for a “budget conscious” 4.5 generation fighter a couple years ago to replace aging F-16s, he then had the gall to claim in the same breadth to suggest that we need to do a “clean sheet” (i.e. brand new) design from scratch, taking up time, money, and my sanity in the process. This was despite the fact that, in addition to the F-15EX, we have other 4.5 generation fighters in production now in the form of the F/A-18E and the F-16V. Thankfully, it seems that the Air Force has now walked back this “clean sheet” idea and is instead looking at the more sensible plan of upgrading around 600 of its F-16s to this new model, but I swear to God sometimes the military makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills with how they act.

I’m going to try desperately to wrap this section up now so I can move on to the next one by giving you a very high-level idea of what we should do regarding combat aircraft in general – both for TACAIR and for bombers (keeping in mind I don’t have exact numbers for you). First, buy fewer exquisite, gold-plated systems like the F-35 (while acknowledging you’re still going to need a fair amount of them). Second, buy more modernized versions of proven systems or upgrade packages to bring existing systems up to that standard. Third, and finally, for the love of God try not to make the same mistakes we’ve made with things like the F-35 and more when it comes to the new 6th Generation of TACAIR that is currently under development – in the form of Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) for the USAF and F/A-XX for the Navy. We literally cannot afford it – both in terms of money and resources, but also in terms of the potential consequences if we screw up yet again and create another gold-plated camel. Yes, systems like that are going to be expensive no matter what, but we can still do more to make it so they can be a bit more cost effective and at least be good value for money in doing their jobs well (and maybe not trying to actively kill their pilots in the course of doing their duties).

Droning on and on

Before I start off this section, I want to make something clear: I am not inherently anti-UAV (UAVs of course being Unmanned or Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles – commonly referred to as “drones”). As I will explain in this section, I think there are plenty of uses for drones in modern military operations and I would be pretty dumb and shortsighted to argue against their use whole-cloth. My issues with drones are with the idea of them taking on every role, replacing most – if not all – crewed aircraft. I am very firmly against this for both legal, ethical, and moral reasons, as well as concerns about the actual military risk involved from a variety of vectors. But I’ll got into that more shortly. I just wanted to put that disclaimer right up front.

Drones have already been a hot topic in every sense of the term since they came more into the public eye during the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), but they’ve become even more of a topic du jure in recent years due to their prominence in conflicts occurring in places like that between Yemen and the Saudi-led coalition on the Arabian Peninsula, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, within Ethiopia, and – of course, by both sides in Ukraine. Drones of various types have played key roles in those conflicts, and have been highly publicized in that regard, which has led a number of self-proclaimed “experts” to extrapolate from those conflicts to make sweeping generalizations and wild predictions about the future utility of drones in combat and the “obsolescence” of crewed aircraft and various other legacy military platforms.

The first thing you need to realize about drones in order to come to a more sensible understanding of their strengths and limitations, is that they are just aircraft that don’t have a person on board. That’s it. The first advantage they gain by not having a crew on board is that its more space you can add for other things like more fuel, sensors and optics, weapons, and more. The second obvious advantage of a drone is you can send it into dangerous situations without putting a human air crew in danger – which is good both in the sense that its nice when people don’t have to die, but also in that you’re not having to spend time, money, and energy to replace that air crew. You also have to realized that a lot of the footage we’ve seen of drones in combat on social media places like Ukraine – or really, combat footage we see in general – are brief snapshots in time of a particular aspects or moment in a war. You’re rarely seeing the whole picture, but it can be all too easy to make sweeping judgements based off of a series of these snapshots without additional context. This is something that all analysts can fall prey to.

Ok, so we’ve established that drones are a hot topic these days. We’ve established that a lot of big brains on the internet have very strong opinions about how great they are. While I could spend a whole essay writing about how they are dumb and wrong (and I probably will at some point – I’m surprised I haven’t already), now I’m going to jump to telling you why – in my opinion – it’s a bad idea for you to have an air force that is almost entirely drones, even if they should be used in some capacity for some roles.

First, it’s a bad idea because of the ethical, legal, and moral implications. I should clarify here that, when I’m talking about this, I’m talking specifically about full or partial automation of a drone and its decision-making process on using force, not just some guy piloting it from a shipping container in Arizona. Obviously, human beings are not infallible, and the United States has had more than its share of black stains on its soul for unpunished war crimes that occurred due to incompetence, malice, or what have you, when it comes to undertaking aerial warfare. That being said, a human – especially if they are properly trained and are coming out of an environment that doesn’t encourage them being a psychopath – is very likely to make decisions or judgement calls that an AI automated drone would not, like potentially showing mercy.

Second, having an entirely drone based air force is a bad idea due to the fact that drones – just like any aircraft or any military platform in general – have inherent weaknesses and shortcomings that a peer enemy will actively be trying to exploit. If you want a drone to fly more than a couple hundred kilometers away from the ground station that is controlling it by line-of-sight data-link, than you need satellites. With that in mind, the U.S. military has already made it abundantly clear that in a war against a peer adversary it is expecting all of its command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) capabilities to be disrupted by the adversary – especially space-based assets like satellites. This could make operating drones at long or short distances varying degrees of challenging to impossible.

This is to say nothing of the ways you can disrupt an individual drone aside from going after the broader C3I network enabling it. We’ve already seen insurgents hack U.S. reconnaissance drone feeds in the past, with Iran claiming to have done the same thing – and also claiming to have brought down a drone through hacking. Drones, just like any other computerized system reliant on outside data, are going to vulnerable to disruption, be it by hacking, or by electronic warfare (i.e. EW or “jamming”) disrupting its sensors, its datalink back to its command, or its link to the global positioning system so it doesn’t even know where it is, where it’s going or what time it is (yeah, GPS helps coordinate time; did you know that? Well now you do). Drones are not only just as vulnerable to these disruptions as any crewed platform, in some ways you could argue they are actually more vulnerable to them. A pilot in an aircraft should – if said pilot is properly trained and equipped – be able to respond to these disruptions in a way a drone is unable to. Putting all your eggs in one basket by not having any crewed aircraft that could do the same job seems like a huge liability to me.

A final subset of my second point here that I wanted to call out, is also the fact that true artificial intelligence (i.e., “AI”), still hasn’t been achieved and its arguable if it is even real or technically feasible or capable of making certain decisions. A lot of what passes for “AI” these days isn’t actually truly “AI” in the science-fiction case. What it usually amounts to is something “dumber” than an AI, or – as one of my favorite podcasts, Trashfuture, loves to point out: often is “just a guy” (in that it’s just a human doing the things you think AI is doing or faking that an AI is doing it). Additionally, what passes for AI today (and is arguably not actually AI) is also surprisingly easy to trick or fool or lull into patterns that may not be helpful, even without hitting it with hacking or jamming. Just look at how we’ve made “AI” sexist and racist just by interacting with them. Suffice to say, full automation may not even be possible, or at least may not be possible for decades or generations, which is just another reason not to go all-in on drones as the backbone of an air force as they may not even be capable of doing the things that “Drone Bros” think they are (or at least won’t be able to do them worth a damn)

There are absolutely areas in which drones could take over a large amount of the work – if not all – from humans, that are primarily in combat support areas that don’t necessarily involve being a “trigger puller.” We’ve already seen this to a large extent with UAVs becoming the primary intelligence gathering aircraft for the US military – though we still retain a number of Cold War-era platforms like the famous U-2 “Dragon Lady” spy plane.

But intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aren’t the only areas where drones can either lighten the load or take it over. Take airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft that help direct fighter aircraft at incoming threats. Those are typically converted airliners that require a large number of skilled personnel to man, and in a wartime scenario would be in high demand with a lot of strain placed on them. Those traditional AEW&C platforms could be supplemented by drones equipped to do the same role. You could also purpose task AEW&C drones to be on the lookout for certain threats over others, like missiles and stealth aircraft. As early as 2015, China had already built a prototype UAV that could fulfill an AEW&C role. The same idea has been mooted in the US – though it’s been met with some degree of skepticism by traditionalists (I should be one to talk though I suppose). The bigger point here though, is even if AEW&C UAVs can’t do the job quite as well as a legacy platform and don’t replace them entirely, they could be assigned to lower risk areas to monitor for aerial threats to allow the more capable crewed platforms to operate in higher-priority areas. And remember how I was talking about drones being vulnerable to EW? Well, turns out they could actually be used to dish it out as well as take it – another thing that China has been working on.

This is the logic I extend to drones in combat too – in the limited capacity that I would accept them as such. When it comes to combat, the main contribution that drones could make is not replacing crewed aircraft, but by supplementing and supporting them. This is the idea of the “loyal wingman” Uncrewed Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV), which is where you take several UCAVs and link them under the control of a pilot or aircrew in a crewed aircraft as they proceed on a mission. This is sort of the happy medium between letting drones do whatever they want, and not using them in combat roles at all. The drones have some amount of autonomy, but ultimately follow the orders of the crewed aircraft and don’t use lethal force without the crewed aircraft’s permission. Their role here is to supplement and augment the crewed aircraft to add that additional mass we talked about earlier that is necessary for a successful air campaign (especially if pilot shortages continue to persist). Losing a UCAV that is (ideally) cheaper to build than a plane and doesn’t result in the death or grievous injury of a pilot is also a more acceptable loss – especially when you’re going into a contested area.

This isn’t just about satisfying LME concerns or dealing with pilot shortages and losses, however. It’s also about hedging your bets and preventing yourself from being vulnerable. I already mentioned how drones and the C3I networks supporting them can be vulnerable to electronic warfare and hacking among other things, and that the U.S. military is preparing to fight a peer conflict with severe disruptions to C3I. By having a pilot flying with UCAVs and still being in the loop, that can mitigate some of these disruptions. If you can’t connect to a communications satellite to give a drone orders, it won’t matter as much because it’s not trying to contact a distant ground station, it’s trying to reach the fighter jet flying right next to it. Same applies if GPS is disrupted. A properly trained and equipped pilot can still use a compass and a map to get to their target, and the drones just need to tag along and follow them. It’s not foolproof, of course. Drones could still be disrupted in other ways that we’ve already covered earlier, but it reduces the degree to which drones could be disrupted. In a worst-case scenario, if the “loyal wingmen” fail completely, you still have one or two crewed aircraft that can respond to a developing situation more dynamically and make a judgement call on whether to continue on mission or not. It’s about making sure you have redundancy and haven’t gone “all in” on something that is more vulnerable.

“…and The Rest!”

There’s only so much I can write about in these essays before they start to become a thesis or a book (though maybe I should write one someday). A good portion of this essay so far has been taken up by me discussing the high-low mix and drones. This was a conscious but difficult choice on my part to focus on these areas because I think these are two that are going to be highly consequential, but I didn’t want to allow you to talk away thinking those were the only main issues to consider when thinking about what an effective air force should look like in the future for the type of scenario we’ve been using as our benchmark.

For our scenario, strategic airlift (i.e., long-range cargo planes) will play a key role. While most of the troops, equipment, and materiel will get to a warzone by ship, airlift will play a key role in quickly transporting the first wave of combat troops into a theater, as well as other high-priority logistics. Airlift is an area in which the United States still is the undisputed champion, but while facing persistent issues. Like with many areas of the military, the airlift fleet has been operating at a high tempo as aircraft available have decreased. I feel the easy answer here is to reduce the strain put on the airlift fleet day today by the demand of constant global operations. This ties back to our overall philosophy of not being an imperial power and trying to enable allies and partners across the globe to provide for their own defenses as much as possible on a day-to-day basis so we don’t have to try and be everywhere at once and can reduce the demand on key assets like airlift – leaving more available for when a major war pops up.

I also find it kind of interesting now that strategic airlifters like the C-5 and C-17 are out of production that the United States is producing no heavy airlifters and there hasn’t yet been a serious discussion by the USAF of what comes after the C-5 and C-17. That’s definitely something to be thinking about, given how important airlift is and will remain – and perhaps an opportunity to incorporate nascent technologies allowing for fuel efficiency – which not only may ease financial and resource strain but could ease the strain on the environment.

Another key capability for this scenario are tanker aircraft. Capable of refueling other aircraft in mid-flight, tankers are essential to being able to fight across the globe. Without tankers, you’d have to rely on leapfrogging between various airfields to refuel and reach your destination – something that is neither efficient, nor would you be guaranteed access to. Again, this is an area where my main suggestion is to reduce the strain by trying to reduce our global footprint so we have more forces available for a major contingency, but this also an area where the main problem is not just imperialism but capitalism and the military industrial complex. Also, much like with airlifters, the USAF has had some issues here.

Trying to procure new tanker aircraft has been something of a white whale for the USAF for years. Its newest tanker – the Boeing KC-46 A Pegasus – has been plagued with technical issues with key refueling systems (as well as just generally shoddy production practices). Meanwhile, a decade’s long quest to try and procure an off-the-shelf “bridge” tanker before it designs a clean sheet tanker of the future has also faced an uphill climb and now may not even happen, with the possibly opting to buy more troubled KC-46As. This speaks to wider issues with both procurement and the state of the industrial base (both of which deserve essays in their own right – I’m deciding if they’ll occur in this series or not). One way or another though, given how critical tanker aircraft are to our scenario, its something that will need to be unscrewed and quickly if it is to be at all viable. We need tankers, and specifically we need tankers that actually work most of the time. Additionally, in regards to future tankers, much like with stealth bombers and “missile trucks” we’ll need to think about how many tankers need to be stealthy and fancy and how many just need to be big flying fuel tanks. Likewise, this is another area where drones can play a role to add additional mass – and already are, in fact.

Likewise, I think strategic forces (i.e., nuclear weapons) will need to be an essay in their own right due to the interdependent nature of the nuclear triad of land-based missiles, aircraft, and submarines. I actually suddenly realized as I was thinking about the USAF’s fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles and aircraft-deployed nuclear bombs that I completely forgot to talk about this in my essay on the Navy and I mostly overlooked their ballistic missile submarines. I’m still figuring out the best way to broach my thoughts on nuclear weapons in general too, so that’s another reason I’m going to punt talking about them until a later date and stick to the conventional forces for now. Rest assured, however, that they will be addressed. Same with special operations forces, which I’m also going to be dealing with in a separate essay dealing with them as a whole across the joint force. So, stay tuned on that front.

I’m sure there are other things I’m missing, but as I repeatedly say, I’m trying to avoid writing a book here so I’m trying to limit myself to the most important concepts and capabilities – which are purely subjective opinions on my part. For example: I was reminded the other night that I haven’t really covered the culture issues within the USAF – in particular, its history with Evangelicalism and religion in general. I already touched on culture a bit in a more general sense in my recruitment essay that I linked earlier in this essay (what was that a thousand y ears ago?), but forgive me for not diving into it here in detail with how much this thing keeps growing. Very briefly: I think it’s a problem and that it needs to be dealt with – along with many other cultural issues in the Air Force and elsewhere (yet another thing to deal with in another essay).

At any rate, if I haven’t talked about whatever your area of expertise or hyper-fixation is in, I apologize. Rest assured, I probably think it’s important and something that we should have in the future, but there’s just only so much ground I can cover in one of these before both peoples’ eyes – including my own – start to glaze over. Sorry.

Finishing this up before I pass the hell out

I’ve been rambling on for what has to be an all-time War Takes record, so I’m going to keep this conclusion short and sweet.

I’ve already said it multiple times in the body of this essay: air power is essential to success in a modern war. While air power alone does not guarantee victory (something we’ve seen in wars past where one side tried to win almost solely through air power and found out the hard way that’s not possible), it cannot be achieved without it either. Control of the air is vital, and you need a large and robust mix of capabilities and competencies to do that – not just one “silver bullet” that happens to be the flavor of the week on Twitter.

If we’re at all serious in this fantasy better world I’m imagining of being able to reach across the globe to help like-minded allies and partners who come under attack in the spirit of democratic socialist internationalism, if we don’t build the proper air force for it there’s no point in bothering. Air power will be the first wave that will blunt the enemy attack and then set the conditions for a counterattack that will push them out of friendly territory and neutralize them as a threat for the immediate future. Air power is absolutely critical to the success of any campaign and I’m going to leave it at that before I repeat myself further.

That’s all for now. I know this one was a slog to write, but I hope it’s useful in some way to those of you who made it all the way to the end. After two years or so of writing this “What Should It Look Like” series, we’re (maybe) getting close to the end, so let’s hang in there and see if we can make. I’m gonna go turn my brain off for a bit after writing this, but as always, all of you stay safe out there until next time.

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wartakes · 9 months

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Why We Fight (Old Essay).

This essay was originally posted on December 20th, 2022.

This essay was written after a particularly draining year in all aspects - foreign and domestic. In this one I dig deep to offer up some encouragement to go on, in thinking about why I (and others) keep up the fight against a world that seems dead set on grinding us into the dust in new and cruel ways.

(Full essay below the cut).

Well, folks. It’s been a hell of a year, hasn’t it?

I feel like since 2016, every year has been “the longest year ever” (or maybe 2016 itself has just been the longest year ever and is still going on). But I really do feel like 2022 has taken the cake so far. We have an ongoing major land war in Eastern Europe involving a nuclear-armed totalitarian imperialistic aggressor, fascist anti-LGBTQ terrorism running rampant in the United States, and everything else bad that you could imagining kicking off all over the world. It’s been an exhausting year that’s felt more like a decade than 365 days. With the state of things, it’s understandable that some folks may be feeling very burned out, grim and dour about our future and the future of the world in general.

As many of you well know, I oppose doomerism in all its forms – for a variety of reasons, but if for nothing else out of spite and a desire to spit in the universe’s eye. I do still truly believe we can make the world a better place – though that will require a great amount of blood, sweat, and tears on our parts. But I recognize things will likely get worse before they get better. I too, still go through periods of being discouraged or temporarily or tactically “doomer” even if I still have hope in the long run. It’s understandable and inevitable as a human being.

It was in one of those slumps recently when I started thinking about what I wanted my last essay of 2022 to be. Thinking about how I felt in that moment and how others felt at home and abroad, I decided maybe what folks might need is a reason to keep going. We spend so much time being bombarded with media meant to break our will and get us to give up whatever struggle we’re involved in to make things suck less, that we could do with a few explicit words of encouragement. Everyone needs a reason to keep up the struggle in whatever form that takes, against the forces that would seek to bring destruction and despair to all corners of the earth. In so many words, sometimes we need to be reminded of the answer to the question “why we fight” or “why should we fight?” That’s what I’m hoping to give you in this last essay of the year before I go sleep for two weeks straight and hope things are better when I wake up.

The Thing That the Essay Title Promised You

So, I’m going to do you all a favor right now (you’re welcome). I’m going to give you the bottom-line up front(ish) so if you just want the basic takeaway of this essay and don’t feel like reading the rest, you got it:

We fight because we’re worth it.

That’s it.

Whether its ourselves, or our friends and loved ones and others who matter to us, we all have inherent meaning and value as people. As we go about our daily lives, we all have the capacity to create and do amazing and beautiful things in the course of our existence; things that make ourselves and all those other people we care about feel a wide array of positive emotions. Whether it’s writing a book or drawing a picture or even just hanging out with someone and telling them a joke or a funny anecdote and making them laugh or taking the time to listen to them if they’re having a bad day, we all have the capacity to do things that make living worth it – both for ourselves and for others. In a way, it’s the world’s most positive feedback loop.

Maybe I’m being soft and lame and cringe, but I think that’s wonderful and worth protecting so that it can continue and flourish all over the world. We fight because we all have the capacity in us to do good things for ourselves and others and that’s absolutely worth protecting. We fight because we can make the world a better place in which for us to do those things that make life worth living and to show our inherent value and worth and meaning as people.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to fight for our inherent right to exist and live our best lives. However, as it’s become painfully obvious to us, a perfect world is not possible and just a better world is a struggle to get to. There are those who would deny us this right for a variety of reasons.

For some it’s just a matter of simple greed in regard to money, power, and more; people who in order to achieve their goals requirement need to exert their control over us and deprive us of the means and freedom to be ourselves and be happy.

For others, they have convinced themselves or been convinced by ideology of various kinds that their happiness and self-worth can only come through a world in which they have total control to exert their world view on others and can subjugate and destroy all those who they see as a threat to their goals or conflict with their worldview – particularly minority groups of various kinds.

Others still – for one reason or another, be it nature or nurture – are just full of hate and want to do harm.

In some cases, it may be “all of the above” (and more) motivating certain people to launch campaigns of political, military, and economic domination all over the world. Whatever the motivation, there are those who would deny us the right to live as ourselves and they must be resisted in order to protect our worthiness to exist and do what we do.

Ok, So Now What?

Alright. I’ve told you why we fight, but you’re still here because you want more. Rather: you’re asking, what are you actually supposed to do now?

Naturally, as an analyst, my instinct here is to throw down a smoke bomb and disappear in the ether because I am allergic to giving definitive answers. I am going to fight this impulse and at least try to give you some broad ideas of what we should be doing (“we” just being people the world over in general), with the major caveat that there is no one size fits all solution to the myriad problems we face internationally in the fight against the forces of reaction. We have a great many tools in our toolbox, some of which are ideal for some situations, and others not so much. It all depends on the nature of the threat and the environment it’s occurring in, among other factors. There are no quick and easy fixes that apply in every single case.

To elaborate a bit more on “use the right tool in the right situation” analogy, it helps to think of what we’re involved in as a global total war on the forces of reaction. In some cases, we fight back using non-kinetic political and economic means; in other places and situations, violent or military force may be necessary. But it has to be understood that all of humanity is in the midst of a struggle against the forces of authoritarianism, totalitarianism, fascism – whatever you want to call it – in all aspects, be they physical or otherwise. That means we will need to fight back in different ways at different times depending on what is more appropriate, expedient, or necessary. With all that in mind, the battles we fight and the means we use to fight them will vary widely.

To start on the softer end of things, while I know many of you are likely disillusioned with electoral politics and feel as though your vote doesn’t matter, in many cases your vote does in fact have an impact and is necessary – if nothing else, as a tactical act to minimize harm against those who are the most vulnerable.

I harbor no illusions about the flaws in our system – nor do I believe that voting alone will save the world and change society. But to disregard the tool of voting completely is foolhardy politically speaking. At the end of the day, I am in fact a democratic socialist with an emphasis on the democratic and while I will continue to advocate for a more just and equitable democratic system than the one we currently have, it still has its uses and applications and we have to deal with it. So, as much as it may make you roll your eyes, voting is still one action you can and will often need to take.

However, as I said, voting alone does change things for the better. Once again, while I am very much a democratic socialist with a heavy emphasis on the democratic, I am not an electoralist. To put it plainly, while I believe in participating in electoral politics as part of politics I do not believe that voting alone will save us and bring about the change for the better that is so badly needed in our society.

Political and economic action beyond voting is not only possible but necessary in this battle. Labor organizing, strikes, and other industrial action have been and will be crucial in achieving change for the better. Beyond action among labor, other forms of civic activism and organizing to bring about change and apply pressure on authorities regarding key issues will also be essential – as it has been in the past for issues like civil rights and voting.

In some cases, around the world, certain situations occur that when all else fails and there is no other option, armed resistance and organized military action is necessary and the only way to defend yourself. Obviously, this is has been most visible in Ukraine following Russia’s unjustified, imperialistic invasion earlier this year, which has required mass resistance in Ukraine on a national scale among all its people.

As I often say, even if your country as a whole doesn’t want war, sometimes an outside aggressor will see fit to bring it to you regardless for whatever reason, and your only option for survival is to defend yourself with force of arms – be it in your country’s officially mandated military and paramilitary forces or by other methods of armed resistance. For those of us not present in places under attack in this manner, expressing support and solidarity through fundraising, donating of essential supplies and equipment, or encouraging elected officials or those in power to provide aid are all measures that can be taken to assist those that are fighting for their lives and rights.

Aside from an outside invader, we have seen all too often when the armed aggressor seeking to deprive you of your civil and human rights is not an invading army attacking your government but your government itself. You can pick from a wide variety of examples ongoing in the world today, but one of the freshest and also consistently escalating in the civil war in Burma (Myanmar) which has seen large sections of the population – with many young people desiring a better future – rebelling against the fascist military junta that seized power in a coup.

I feel like the threshold for violence here can sometimes (not always, but sometimes) be higher and murkier in comparison to the more cut and dry cases of being outright invaded by a foreign power. However, we’ve seen plenty of cases where a government has turned against peaceful and non-violent movements for change with overwhelming violence and murder that leave its people no choice but to take up arms against them in defense of their rights, such as the initial protests of the Arab Spring that led to the civil wars in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere. It’s not something to be taken lightly, but in many places unfortunately ends up being the only option.

The shoe, of course, can be on the other foot as well. Sometimes the forces of reaction deadset on oppressing and killing you aren’t coming from within your government (though they may have allies within it) but are in fact actively trying to subvert it or destroy it and replace it with their own twisted vision, causing a rebellion and civil war in the process. There are historical examples of right-wing rebellions or insurrections elsewhere in the world, such as theocratic groups like the Islamic State or Taliban in Southwest Asia, or the Lord’s Resistance Army in Africa. But here in the United States we still have a recent experience of this in an unsuccessful attempt at seizing power in the January 6th Insurrection following the 2020 Presidential Election – which at time of writing, the Congressional panel on the subject has just recommended charges to the Justice Department against former President Donald Trump for his role in the attempted coup (we’ll see if anything actually comes of it).

On the topic of the United States – where I live, and I imagine most of those reading this essay live – I don’t think we’re on the brink of a civil war like we’ve seen in Burma or Syria or elsewhere (as much as some in certain corners of the internet who fetishize the idea of that kind of collapse may wish that were true). I still think the risk of something like this happening here is somewhat low, though A.) it’s not near as low as I’d like it to be or it should be; B.) that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant to make sure things don’t escalate to that point.

But it is increasingly hard to deny that even if we are not in a “civil war” as we might imagine that we are in the midst of some other kind of campaign of politically motivated armed violence. I used to think that, rather than a full on “civil war”, we were fast approaching something more in the league of The Troubles of Northern Ireland or the Years of Lead in Italy. Its only lately that I’ve realized that we’re already well into that kind of situation and probably have already been there for some time before I finally came to terms with it.

Not only are we well into such a state of affairs, but it is also increasingly obvious that – barring some massive sea change in national sentiment and political will – that we can only sporadically count on the authorities to do anything to challenge the waves of fascistic terrorism we find ourselves victim to, if at all.

The state of affairs we find ourselves in now was most recently demonstrated by the act of right-wing terrorism against a drag show at a LGBTQ bar in Colorado that occurred earlier this month. In the case of that shooting, more loves were kept from being loss by the patrons of that bar aggressively fighting back against their attacker. This demonstrates what I think is the only option in this case of holding the line while we fight for change on other fronts. While I believe we shouldn’t seek out trouble in the current environment, we should be by all means prepared to deter it from occurring and fight back against it as communities where it occurs to enable ourselves to be able to live our lives.

Those supporting the forces of reaction that would seek to destroy LGBTQ and other marginalized peoples and their allies for whatever insane reason, need to be shown that people will defend themselves and that there can and will be consequences for their actions if they insist on following through with their violent fantasies and that they take their life in their own hands when attempting violence against the innocent. Quite simply put, the only sensible solution here is a domestic version of what I have been advocating in foreign policy: “don’t start none, won’t be none” or “fuck around and find out.” It’s a somewhat grim proposition, but when we can’t depend upon the state and other authorities to do the right thing, folks should be prepared to defend themselves when in vulnerable situations.

In Case You Forgot Already: We’re Worth It.

We live in “interesting” times to put it mildly. There is much to be discouraged about, to be angry about, to be fearful of. But we can’t let those emotions be channeled into despair. We can’t let all of the manmade horrors beyond our comprehension swirling around us like ghastly apparitions at home and abroad distract us from the main point: we’re worth it.

We as people have inherent value – and by “value” I don’t mean value in the way a venture capitalist or economist would think about it. we have emotional and philosophical value. We are worth protecting so that we can enable ourselves and others to flourish and reach our full potential. So, the next time you’re doomscrolling your way through a major historical event on social media, try to keep that in mind. Keep that in mind when you’re at the ballot box, on the picket line, in the midst of a protest or act of civil disobedience, or learning to defend yourself by whatever means against those who would threaten your life. We are worth it. The struggle for a better world is far from over. Our future is far from set in stone and time is not, in fact, a flat circle. Those who would seek to oppress or destroy us are far from victorious and their victory is far from certain. We are worth fighting for. Keep fighting the good fight in all its forms all over the world.

To all of those celebrating anything this time of year, I wish you a peaceful and restful holiday season. To everyone out there, I wish you all a Happy New Year that hopefully – if nothing else – brings us somewhat closer in some way to the better future we all deserve. Thank you for taking the time to read what I had to say past, present, and future. Stay safe.

#essay #War Takes #War Takes essay #socialism #leftism #democratic socialism #far-right #fascism #terrorism #domestic terrorism #insurrection #internal conflict #civil war #war #anti-fascism #authoritarianism #anti authoritarian #anti doomerism

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wartakes · 9 months

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“If You Build It, They Will Come”: Military Recruitment in a Better Future

This essay was originally posted on November 29th, 2022.

The brain seed for this one came from mulling the hypothetical future I like to throw around. With the caveat of that I would NOT recommend ANYONE join the military right now, at some point in the future where maybe hopefully we have a better government we will still need a military. With that being the case, how do you attract and retain talent? Shocker: a big part of this is just treating people like human beings with dignity.

(Full essay below the cut).

If there’s one thing I’m constantly hearing people in my field go on about – whether they directly work for the national security establishment or on its peripheries – it’s some variation on “manpower.” More specifically within the overall issue of manpower, they’re talking about the issue of recruitment and retention in the U.S. Armed Forces today.

It’s no secret that the military is going through what could increasingly be called a “crisis” when it comes to recruitment and retention of personnel. At the end of FY 2022, the U.S. Army had missed its active duty recruiting goal by about 25% – or 15,000 soldiers. The U.S. Air Force only just barely met its own stated recruitment goal for the year – with its recruitment leadership openly admitting that they’re going into the next year in a much weaker position recruitment wise. Meanwhile, the U.S. Marines had to reduce its recruitment goal for the past year. Overall, the military has been struggling in various ways to keep numbers up.

Now, it should be said right away that I subscribe to the What a Hell of a Way to Die position on joining the military right now: which is that you should not do it (understanding, of course, that for some folks in bad situations it may be their only option). So, at first glance when I see these low recruitment numbers, I generally go: “good.” However, it should be noted that I subscribe to the “don’t join the military” viewpoint with an asterisk at the end that leads you to an addendum: that I believe that is the case now but that will not always be the case someday.

One of the reasons I started writing these essays is because I believe even if we fundamentally change the political and social system in this country for the better, we will still require a military for a whole host of reasons. This means that, at some point in the future when things don’t suck at much, I’m going to shift my position from “you should not join the military” to “maybe some of you should consider joining the military.” I have no idea when that will be (almost certainly not in the immediate future), but if things go the way I hope they will in the long-term big picture, this will become a reality at some point.

With all that mind, that begs the question: assuming someday that President Leftist is elected and the Democratic Socialists of America gain a super-majority in Congress and begin a top to bottom change of how we do things in this country and in the world at large, how do you attract people to join the military? How do you do that when you’re not relying upon the poverty draft, or upon Rally ‘Round the Flag effects of patriotism? How do you not only convince people to join the military for an entirely different set of reasons than they are now, but also keep them there? What issues will need to be addressed – not simply in the military itself, but in this country as a whole?

I’m glad you totally asked all those questions just now because I’ve been thinking about them myself and now that I have you trapped in my mind palace let’s talk about them.

It’s the Culture, Stupid

A number of explanations have been mooted for why the military is struggling to recruit: the pandemic not only had direct medical effects, but also affected in-person and in-school recruiting (which in itself is a really dystopian concept to comprehend); civilian companies are making better offers in terms of benefits and other perks than the military can make; only a small number of American youths meet the various requirements set by the military to join (be they physical, educational, or “moral”); meanwhile, the patriotism that two decades of the Global War on Terrorism afforded the military has long since faded. Interestingly, military brass and civilian leaders also blame what a Bloomberg Government article calls “uninformed messaging” on the risks military service to both body and mind (I’d really like to know what exactly they mean by “uninformed” after seeing the consequences of twenty years of constant counter-insurgency on a generation of veterans but go off I guess, Bloomberg). The end result of the aforementioned issues and more is that for the first time ever, more than half of all youths (52%) don’t even consider joining the military as an option for their future.

Now, all of the previously mentioned factors certainly have affected recruitment and retention in the military. But there’s also the ones that nobody in DoD leadership really, absolutely, do not want to talk about at all (though they do want to talk about “uninformed messaging” about risks apparently – again, whatever the fuck that means). That issue is one of culture.

It shouldn’t be shocking to anyone with two working brain-cells that the military has had issues with toxic culture for- well, forever. Some of those issues have been steadily terrible for as long as we’ve had a military, while others have only worsened recently alongside the overall political environment in this country. An example of the latter was seen recently when the Army reprimanded a retiring general for criticizing infamous Fox News host and fascist Tucker Carlson roughly a year ago. The right-wing broadcaster had been making misogynistic comments about women serving in the military at the time when the officer – Major General Patrick Donahoe – had fired back at Carlson on Twitter for his comments about women in the military. The Army’s reprimand of the general caused a backlash that was not aided by Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth’s comments at the annual Association of the U.S. Army convention that the Army should stay “out of culture wars.” Her comments created such an outrage that the Secretary had to backtrack by the end of the week and state that Army leaders should stand up for all soldiers who are being unfairly attacked (still adding in the both-sides caveat that said leaders should “use good judgement” and “keep it professional”).

The Carlson-Donahoe saga demonstrates how unwilling the military is overall to stand by one of its troops even if they’re doing what is objectively the right thing to the majority of people – and even if they are a two-star general – because the brass terrified of rocking the boat. When the going gets tough, the military is more the leadership are more than willing to throw one of their own under the bus – even if that person in general is comparatively high ranking. Combine that with the fact that the military is doing this over comments on an issue that is essentially settled for most sane people (the issue of women serving in uniform), only makes it worse. It is entirely understandable people would not want to enlist in the Army when it can’t even make a straightforward statement opposing misogyny without first having caused a week of outrage (and make said statement with a whole series of caveats after the fact). What else won’t the Army back them up on the future? What else might they throw you under the bus for? The Green Weenie is finding new and exciting frontiers in fucking over the troops, apparently. This shouldn’t be that surprising though, I suppose, when the Army can’t even provide livable housing that isn’t infested with black mold for its enlisted ranks. How can an Army that can’t even do that be expected to stick up for its troops against someone like Tucker Carlson?

The issues of toxic culture aren’t limited to the wider American culture war, however. The military also has its own service-specific issues of workplace culture that have been festering for years. It’s not just about right-wingers being right-wingers. A perfect example of this can be seen in the U.S. Navy, where – despite reaching its recruiting targets for this past year – has seen desertions climb dramatically over the past two years. Sailors describe being in “unbreakable” service contracts requiring up to six years of active duty, while potentially being housed in unlivable conditions. An infamous recent example was on board the USS George Washington – a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier – where not only were sailors forced to live on a ship where construction noise made sleep virtually impossible and there was often no hot water or electricity but were also berated for issues out of their own control.

The issues about the George Washington all fold into a Navy-wide problem in the post-Cold War era of increasing the stress placed on both sailors and ships in order to meet increasingly demanding requests for naval deployments and presence around the world. It was a culture like this that led to not one, but two collisions of Navy guided-missile destroyers with other ships in 2017 (both resulting in the entirely preventable deaths of sailors onboard). More and more pressure has been placed on a smaller navy with fewer sailors to maintain an extensive imperial presence overseas, all while pushing for a mentality of “zero defects” or errors. This culture issue is especially bad in the Navy’s surface warfare community (i.e. the ships that are specifically designed to shoot at things and fight wars at sea), which is notorious for “eating its young” and responds to even the smallest of mistakes with chastisement and punishment – with little to no effort to turn any of said mistakes into teachable moments or lessons.

Workplace issues aside, I haven’t even gotten specifically in the issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault (ask the Army about how things have been going at Fort Hood). I wanted to make special note of that so you didn’t think I was casually ignoring it because it too is a huge problem and a huge reason for why people may not be eager to enlist but quite frankly given how up and down my mood has been already with various bullshit this year I just do not have the strength to go into granular detail on that issue right now. If I did, I might just end up curled up in the corner in the fetal position so let’s just say for now that it is in fact a huge bad issue and leave it at that to delve into another day when I have the mental fortitude for it.

From workplace culture issues like we see in the Navy, and the overall issues of failing to push back on toxic culture in American society we see in the Army, when you add in that many young people may take issue with the ends to which the military has been used for – especially for those who grew up in the shadow of the Afghan and Iraq Wars – , it should be no wonder why man young Americans have no interest in joining the military. All of these issues, of course, are ones that the military is desperate to not have to talk about because it involves admitting faults and problems and rocking the boat in a way that awakens loud and shrill constituencies of right-wing TV hosts and retired flag officers with nothing better to do than keep things the way they knew them. Change would also mean having to devote more money to actually looking after troops rather than having it flow directly into the pockets of the board of directors at Raytheon or General Dynamics or Absolutely Not Evil Defense Contractors Inc.

A Reason to Fight

Ok, so we’ve established that the military has issues with all kinds of toxic culture in its ranks – in addition to however many other issues that are preventing it from recruiting the numbers it needs. So, with our future hypothetical of a country and society that suck less, how do you go about fixing things so that more people – including ones that otherwise might say “not only no, but fuck no” to joining – might be convinced to enlist in a military in service to said country?

I’ve said on Twitter before that the military is not an entity unto itself that exists only in a bubble; it is a reflection of society and its health (or sickness). You cannot truly reform the military without also reforming society (to different extents, depending on the issue). To that end, only attempting to solve cultural issues within the military will not solve the issue of recruitment and retention on their own (it may have some positive impacts but would only be a band aid on a wider issue). Yes, there may be some issues you might be able to solve in-house only, but that won’t solve all the culture issues that face the military and as long as wider culture issues persist in America. If you only focus on the issues specific to the military, you’ll be fighting a losing battle against bad culture in general. Cultural issues need to be addressed in tandem throughout both the military and throughout the country as a whole.

The broadest answer possible to these problems is to – for lack of a better term – make both the military and country suck less so that people actually feel more like serving. This is why I label my approach to recruiting and staffing a reformed U.S. military for a fundamentally changed United States as the “if you built it, they will come” approach. The core of this approach is that if you build a society (rather, an allied community of such societies around the globe) that people actually care about and think actually does good – not only for them, but for others both at home and abroad – that more will actually want to volunteer to join the military to protect said society and its liked-minded peoples around the world. They will feel a sense of international solidarity with all peoples and maybe feel a desire to join a force that actually, genuinely fights in order to make people’s lives better or to protect them from harm by aggressors. I feel like this isn’t that complicated a concept, but that if I tried to explain it to most of the people that I encounter in my field I’d probably get some kind of open mouth fish expression from them in response.

Having that change in culture – both in terms of how the military treats its people and what it’s asking its people to go and fight for – is crucial when you realize that the recruiting environment would be even more competitive in the hypothetical democratic socialist future that we are considering. Social welfare programs like Medicare for all, strengthened social security, and etc. would mean people wouldn’t have to join the military just to get healthcare or retirement funds. Free college education would mean you wouldn’t have to join the military to have any hope at a higher education through the G.I. Bill (something that some Republicans have gone completely mask-off over). Improved worker rights through unions and other avenues of organizing would mean that working conditions in other fields would also improve and attract employees that otherwise might shy away or quit. If the military thinks it’s hard to recruit now, just wait until we elect President Leftist – they’re gonna have a bad time.

Rather, the military is going to have a bad time recruiting if they continue to stick to how things are done now. In a far more competitive environment for recruiting the best and brightest, the military is going to have to strive to not only treat troops well (like other employers will ideally be doing by that point), but also offer them something that other career paths don’t in terms of the intangibles of things like “self-fulfillment.” The “treat troops well” part should be simple (put them in housing that isn’t riddled with black mold, protect them against abuse and harm like sexual assault and murder, generally treat them like human beings with inherent rights, etc.), and goes hand in hand with changes we need to make on a macro level in this country when it comes to how we treat our workers. Thankfully, labor activism is an area we’re seeing somewhat of a renaissance in, and we should all aggressively support and show solidarity with. Hell, some of the troops have been resurrecting an old idea and trying to unionize, which I’m all in favor of (and would be a natural part of what I’m suggesting).

But when it comes to offering something that other fields wouldn’t, that’s a little more involved compared to simply treating the troops better – but something that is still tied to national level societal changes we need to make. Under the current circumstances, if people aren’t waved off by the various other issues I’ve already described when it comes to enlisting, they’re joining the military for material gain of some kind or for patriotism. We’ve already discussed how the patriotic drive for enlistment has diminished in the years following 9/11. This is actually reflected in recent military recruitment ads I’ve seen, where it feels like in some cases the issue of patriotism is completely side-stepped or mostly a foot note. The focus appears to be far more on careerism and vague notions of professional development or even on thrill-seeking and excitement in many cases than on any sense of national pride or service to the nation (let alone its people). In a weird way, while the military doesn’t seem eager to draw the ire of far-right chuds like Tucker Carlson, at the same time it’s trying to cleanse its recruitment image of some of the old school flag-fucking that we once accustomed to throughout the War on Terror years. The result comes off as sanitized and unappealing to just about everyone.

Ideally, in the society we’re envisioning, patriotic and nationalistic impulses will have further diminished to be replaced by something less jingoistic and imperialistic. We should be building a society where people are thinking less about our country alone and how great it is, and more about making the world a better place for as many people as possible, ensuring that they have their basic needs met, have their human rights respected, and are protected from harm by those who would deprive them of those essentials and more. Creating a world where people don’t live in fear of want and can be free to live and exist as their best selves. We need to instill a sense that if you join the military and being sent overseas, you’re not going to a warzone in order to prove your country’s “greatness” or to line the pockets of a corporation or oligarch or out of xenophobia or racism. You’re going there, because there are people there who are under attack and need help and have asked for help against an aggressor. You’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, and that requires people who are strong in both body and mind and willing to take risks in order to help those who are in need of help. That should be the draw for potential recruits in a society like the one we want to achieve. It should be about helping people both at home and abroad be able to live better lives. Anything else should just be the garnish to that central idea of what service should be about in this hypothetical future. The patriotism and nationalism that was once a draw to enlist, should be replaced by a sense of internationalism and solidarity among the free peoples of the world.

The Part Where I Admit I’m Mainlining Hopium

Out of every essay I’ve written so far, this is probably one of my most blatantly idealistic pieces. I usually tend to adopt fairly realistic viewpoints on change compared to others on the Left, but this is one of those few areas where I really stick my head in the hopium clouds, inhale deeply, and go for broke. I am well aware that what I’m saying is a tall order – not an impossible one by any means, but a difficult one. The type of change I’m asking for isn’t the kind that can be accomplished in five, ten, or even 15 years. It is, by nature, a generational project. It requires foundations to be laid and built upon for decades in order to come fully to fruition. However, if you’re a socialist and not in for the long haul than I really don’t know what to tell you after – you know – all the history of being socialist that’s ever happened ever.

I guess the inherent beauty is that if we do everything we want to as leftists and change this country from top to bottom, due to the nature of the military being a reflection of the society its serves, we’d already be well on our way to changing it. It would then just be a matter of rooting out any lingering remnants of reaction within. Therin lies a point that’s been buried amid everything else I’ve discussed: that in the society we want, the military will have to let go of its purported apolitical nature (one that can often be one-sided, as the Tucker Carlson episode has demonstrated to us). A military that is opposed to authoritarianism, fascism, reaction, and more – that is dedicated to all the principles we’ve laid out, will be inherently political. It needs to be political if it is to be successful. A military can not be divorced from the society it serves, and the society we aim to create is one of politically minded and involved people striving for a better world. Being apolitical or “neutral” will no longer be an option.

I understand that some people on the Left are going to be credulous of or openly hostile to everything I’ve written here, and I can understand that. I know some of you I’ll never be able to convince and I make my peace with that, but for those are open to being convinced, let me tell you I understand it may be difficult for many of you to feel idealistic about something like the military. No matter how you slice it, or you change it, joining the military fundamentally involves taking on risks to life and limb. You’re signing up for the possibility that you will be sent to war, where you could be grievously injured or die a horrible death. Even if you are never sent to war, you still take risks from training exercises, peacetime deployments, and any other time you’re around weaponry and heavy machinery and more. Moreover, you sign up with the intent that you may be called upon someday to take a life – multiple lives even. You take on the risk that even when everything goes right, there’s possibility innocents will die entirely by accident. Taking a life, even in self-defense, is no small thing to ask of a person and should not be taken lightly (especially with the amounts of destruction that modern warfare can muster).

Unfortunately, all of what I just described will still be necessary even in a future where we’ve affected real change at home. My whole basis for arguing for these changes and others is that we will still need a military, because there will always be a threat to those trying to live as free people from the forces of reaction and authoritarianism and fascism and more. We may not seek out conflict, but sometimes conflict is forced upon you – or upon others who are unable to defend themselves on their own and require assistance. That means we will still need a military and we will need people willing to step up and put their minds and body on the line to defend others as part of said military. It is no small order and what I’ve offered in this essay is only the beginning of trying to figure out how to square that circle of how promote a culture of service in a society that isn’t inherently capitalistic, imperialistic, and exploitative.

All I can offer to those who are skeptical and dismissive of everything I have said, is that if thousands of people have traveled across the world to defend Ukraine – a country that is not their own – from an aggressive imperialistic invader, if thousands traveled across the world to try and prevent Spain from falling to fascism in the 1930s, surely we can convince Americans of the future to step up to do the same thing on a grander scale. I believe we can change this country and the world for the better, and if we do that, we’re already well on our way to solving the problems I have described in this essay.

I will end my hopium induced frenzy here for today. In the meantime, I would remind you that while someday I may encourage some of you to join the military, for the time being I would like to remind you that you absolutely not join the military if you have a choice. That time may one day come, but for now I’d suggest you give that a miss. On that note, that’s all I have for now. As always, stay safe out there.

#essay #War Takes #War Takes Essay #leftism #leftist #socialism #democratic socialism #international relations #IR #national security #national defense #international security #foreign policy #foreign affairs #war #military recruitment #united states military #united states armed forces #military culture

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wartakes · 9 months

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Conflicts to Keep An Eye On (October 2022 Edition) (OLD ESSAY)

This essay was originally posted on October 28, 2022.

There's not a lot to say about this one. It was just another one flagging some potential and emerging conflict zones of note. A couple have panned out more since then, one not so much, and others are still brewing.

(Full essay below the cut).

Well folks, there’s been a lot going on in the world (obviously). There’s also been a lot going on in my life (don’t worry, nothing bad for the most part; just super busy), so that made deciding on what I wanted to write about (and what I was capable of writing about satisfactorily) very hard this month. So, I decided to bring back a previous idea I had so I can make it a semi-recurring feature: pointing out conflicts that you might not know about or be as focused on but that you should be aware of.

Since the start of the War in Ukraine, there’s a lot of crises and conflicts that seem to have slipped under the radar (or sunk even further below if they were already low down there). While the War in Ukraine is absolutely important and worth your attention, I worry it – and other high-profile events domestically and internationally – have led to a lot of other crises and conflicts that could have far reaching implications to be drowned out in a sea of noise.

I could write at length about a laundry list of various armed conflicts and ongoing crises that are worthy of attention, but this would rapidly turn into a book at that rate. So – as with my previous iteration of this kind of essay – I’m going to point out a small handful of conflicts and crises that I think are particularly worth monitoring due to the potential scale and scope of their impacts. This list is completely subjective and based purely on my own personal judgements and assessments. I’m not trying to say these conflicts are the ONLY ones you should be keeping an eye on and that no others are worthy of attention or action, but I’m just trying to focus your effort and attention on ones that I happen to think are noteworthy in particular.

Also, I’m going to try and do something that I didn’t think of with the last version of this essay: where possible, I’m going to try and give you sources you can go to for information on the status of these conflicts and crises, whether they be on social media or elsewhere. Just be aware that due to the fog of war and deliberate efforts at controlling the narrative by all sides involved in these events, information still may be hard to come by and you should always consume information carefully and critically and check your sources before you assume anything.

With all those disclaimers out of the way, let’s get right to it:

1. Ethiopia

Ethiopia is the first of two returning conflicts on this list, which I am restating because I think they definitely need more attention due to the fact that they are entering new stages and that their impacts could be severe not just for their own populaces but for the wider regions they’re in. Ethiopia’s internal conflict has already had a number of twist and turns and now is experiencing fresh ones.

If you want a recap on the early phases of the war and its causes, you can read my original hot spots piece, but to provide a very quick summary: the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia began late in 2020 when political differences between the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – the ruling party in the Tigray region and former ruling party in the prior governing coalition of Ethiopia – came to a head and turned violent. Since it began, the war has seen fortunes shift dramatically between the forces of the Ethiopian federal government and its supporters and the TPLF and its allies, before settling into a stalemate for months with no substantial activity on either side. Coverage has been further complicated over the federal government’s media blackout, with many international journalists being thrown out of the country and those remaining being prohibited from visiting the areas of the country affected by the conflict.

In recent weeks, the conflict has flared up again after a large scale build up by pro-government forces (which was detected by third party satellite monitoring). However, there is a new wrinkle in this phase of the conflict, as the government of neighboring Eritrea appears to have thrown itself wholeheartedly into the war on Ethiopia’s side, with large numbers of Eritrean forces launching offensives into TPLF held territory in conjunction with the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and its own allied paramilitary forces. After months of relative inactivity, pro-federal forces now appear to be capturing numerous towns and key positions from the TPLF.

The involvement of Eritrea shows how quickly geopolitics can sometimes shift from being intractable to flexible. For years, Ethiopia and Eritrea were solid adversaries – with Eritrea once having fought a decades long battle for independence from Ethiopia. It was only in 2018 that Ethiopian PM Abiy negotiated a peace deal with Eritrea after years of off-again on-again war (for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize a year later). Now relations have improved enough that Eritrea is willing to send thousands of troops into battle to help preserve the government that for years it saw as its primary threat. Much like with Russia as it persists in its invasion of Ukraine, Eritrea – which is widely considered one of the most totalitarian governments in Africa – has mobilized a large number of reservists and is continuing to intensify its call-up efforts to extent that – like in Russia – many Eritreans are attempting to flee mobilization as the government attempts to crack down on draft dodgers – which include both men and women.

While the TPLF certainly aren’t giving up yet and aren’t going quietly into that good night, these new developments on the front lines bode ill for them. Reportedly suffering a “four pronged” offensive by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, they now have to spread their forces among even more fronts. While this war has seen fortunes shift dramatically before even in the face of overwhelming odds, the situation for the TPLF looks darker than it did before. The situation also looks darker for the people of the affected regions, who have been the victims of armed atrocities by both sides as well as humanitarian deprivation. While the African Union has started peace talks in South Africa aimed at bringing an end to the conflict, the federal government continues to advance on the ground and seize towns from the Tigray forces and their allies.

This is one of the few conflicts where I don’t really have a side I’m definitively “on” as both have significant sins from both this war and past conflicts, but where I hope a lasting peace can be achieved due to the severe impact that it is having on regular people in Ethiopia who are just trying to survive – and the impact it could have throughout the rest of the region if it persists. With that in mind, there is a severe lack of good credible sources – both in mainstream media and social media – that are keeping regular track of the goings on in the Ethiopian conflict (partly due to a lack of interest or being drowned out by other news, and partly due to the federal government media blackout). One of the few good sources I’ve found just for keeping track of movement on the ground is the Twitter account EthiopiaMap, which tends to be pretty reliable and honest about its sources and when it can’t be sure about things. It offers updates on military movements, shares relevant articles, and more. Otherwise, big media outlets only tend to maybe publish a story when there’s suddenly some big activity on the ground and then lose interest.

2. Iran

This is one of the items on my list that – while not yet a conflict, is certainly a crisis that has the capacity to turn into a conflict and is worth keeping an eye on as it continues – time of writing – to persist with no end in sight despite government efforts to clamp down on it. I am of course talking about the ongoing protests and riots in Iran.

The current protests against the government in Iran began with the death of a Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who apparently died after being hospitalized for brutal injuries suffered at the hands of Iran’s so-called “Morality Police” for purported violations of Iran’s hijab rules. After her funeral in her native Kurdistan region, protests began to rapidly spread and continue to grow and persist. While women’s rights and the religious rules imposed by the regime appear to be focal points of the protests, the protest movement now appears to have evolved into a more broadly anti-government movement against the authoritarian nature of the Iranian regime. The protestors appear to come from a wide variety of backgrounds and are generally advocating for more rights and freedoms. The protestors have even gone as far as to call for the downfall of the government and the death of its leaders – including the ailing Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Violent anti-government protests in Iran are not new, of course. 2019 saw a significant protest movement against the government that started with a spike in fuel prices – one that was brutally put down by Iran’s security forces. Iran was also famously wracked by months-long, widespread protests in 2009 revolving around accusations that the regime had rigged the presidential election in favor of hard line incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, this movement seems to now have developed a more explicitly and overtly anti-government character and has already lasted longer than the 2019 uprisings did. While it has not yet reached the level of the 2009 election protests, it continues to intensify and grow even in the face of government efforts to quash it – including security forces beating and firing at protestors with live ammunition and shutdowns of the internet to prevent communication and to try and stop accounts of the protests getting out. The regime has also been working to discredit the legitimacy of the protest movement, accusing them of being organized by “foreign powers.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – the military force assigned to protect the Islamic Revolution and its leaders – has already launched attacks into Iraqi Kurdistan, accusing Kurds there of supporting the uprising.

Its hard to say how far the current protest movement will go. It could easily go the way of the previous protests and uprisings against the government. So far, it has been resistant to regime efforts to snuff it out, though the regime still has many additional resources at its disposal it could bring to bear against the protestors (even with how heavy handed its response has already been so far). I certainly would like to see the current government in Iran gone and for the people of Iran to choose a more fair and equitable system for themselves as they should have had seventy years ago (before the United States and the United Kingdom decide to fuck it all up). While I’m somewhat jaded and cynical on this topic, I do still hold out hope for change as I always try to do. Crazier things have happened. Iranians can achieve a better life for themselves. Even if it doesn’t pan out this time, I have every confidence that eventually the people of Iran will prevail. Every authoritarian regime has a shelf life, the Iran’s may be rapidly approaching expiration.

While government crackdowns have been a complicating factor, information on the Iran protests seems to be getting out easier than it has from Ethiopia. Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front has shared a number of videos from the Iran protests, as has the OSINT account Aleph. Tammuz_Intel is another useful account to watch, as it focuses on events in Iraq – which due to the influence of Iran among political factions there and the presence of a large Kurdish population there, events in Iran have a significant potential to spill over into Iraq as well.

3. Armenia and Azerbaijan

This section is probably going to be shorter only because I’ve already written at length about the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan – including in my most recent essay and one of my first. None the less, I want to make sure no one forgets about this one, especially as it is guaranteed to flare up again (and likely to do so sooner rather than later).

This September saw the heaviest combat between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the war that was fought in the Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh region two years prior. Setting aside the debate over conflict in that “disputed” region (which is functionally independent and overwhelmingly Armenian despite being recognized as part of Azerbaijan), this time Azerbaijan committed outright aggression against the internationally recognized territory of Armenia proper, attacking within Armenia and seizing territory recognized as part of Armenia (a fact that can actually be verified from space by way of NASA’s FIRMS satellites).

The international response to this aggression has – of course – been largely lackluster. Armenia’s erstwhile ally and security guarantor, Russia, has done basically nothing in response (largely due to the fact that the vast majority of its military resources are now dedicated to its failing war in Ukraine). When Armenia appealed to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – the military alliance led by Russia that Armenia is a member of – for direct assistance, the organization refused and instead opted to send a “fact finding” mission. The United States has been more vocal in decrying Azerbaijan’s actions this time around, allowing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to visit Armenia and condemn Azerbaijan’s attack. However, it’s hard not to be cynical and see US outreach to Armenia out of anything more than great power politics to screw over Russia – especially as the EU continues to cozy up to Azerbaijan in order to find a replacement source of oil and natural gas as Russia is steadily closed out of the European market.

Much like with prior Azeri aggression, the weak response of the world has assured that it will happen again and will be worse. Every time Azerbaijan is allowed to get away with attacking Armenia, its emboldened and goes even further the next time. While the series of flare ups that have occurred since the 2020 war have not risen to the level of full-scale war again just yet, it is unfortunately only a matter of time as long as nothing is done to stop Azerbaijan or bring it to heel. The ultimate goal of Azerbaijan – and its patron, Turkey – is the elimination of Armenia and the Armenian people. Azerbaijan doesn’t shy away from its racialized hatred of Armenia and will continue to nibble around the edges of Armenia until it finally feels it can launch a full-scale war of destruction to finish the job that’s been underway for years. The world must pay attention and be willing to speak up and do what it can to help Armenia to try and prevent this from happening (and if it does come to pass, to do everything it can to stop it in its tracks).

With all that in mind, fortunately I have a lot of sources here for you to turn to for this. A major one is one of my favorite people on the internet, Joe Kassabian (podcaster, author, historian, and more), who now lives in Armenia. Another excellent source is Neil Hauer, a conflict journalist that not only covers Armenia heavily but also reports on events in other parts of the former-Soviet Union that often are neglected news wise. Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front also routinely reports on events in Armenia and has also made a documentary on the 2020 Karabakh war.

4. Burma (Myanmar)

Burma is the second returning conflict on this list from the last time I wrote it and is returning for the same reason as Ethiopia – in that it is entering a new and intensifying phase. Unlike with Ethiopia, however, momentum seems to be going against the government in this case and there does not appear to be any end in sight for the near future, with more bloodshed ahead.

When we last left this conflict back in the summer of 2021, it was still very much in its early phases following the February coup. With the exception of the previously existing armed groups that had already been active in the country (mostly formed by minority ethnic groups that had been fighting for greater autonomy or independence from the central government for years prior to the coup), armed opposition purely on the basis of democratic resistance to the coup was still in its early stages. The conflict wasn’t yet considered to be a full-scale civil war.

Now, in late 2022, the time for protests have long since passed and armed rebellion has become the primary means of resisting the junta maintained by the Tatmadaw – Myanmar’s armed forces. This has ranged from hit-and-run attacks on outposts and checkpoints by urban guerillas to full on coordinated assaults by rebel forces against Tatmadaw held towns. The rebel movement is not without its problems, lacking in supplies and struggling with unity among its various different participating groups. Its individual battles with the junta are also still relatively compared to a larger conflict – like Ukraine. Despite all this, clashes between the junta and the various forces opposing it is gradually growing in size and intensity throughout the country and armed resistance gains further momentum.

While rebel activity is slowly but steadily expanding and intensifying, the junta also seems to be showing no signs of giving in despite reported setbacks in the field and as its physical control over the country slips away. While there have been unverified reports of several thousand defections among the ranks of the Tatmadaw and police, the military and security forces as a whole continue to fight on in defense of the junta – committing brutal atrocities in the process.

The junta also still has some important allies, despite both regional and worldwide condemnation of its activities. Neighboring China is the junta’s most prominent ally one of its main arms suppliers. While it does publicly push the junta to engage in dialogue with opposition groups to “achieve political reconciliation,” this is done more out of a desire for stability in a nation on its periphery rather than any desire by China to see an end to bloodshed and oppression. China has already made it clear that it will back the junta to the hilt “no matter how the situation changes” in the future. Russia – to the surprise of absolutely no one – also continues to back the junta, which has sought closer ties to the fellow rogue state even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (with Russia being another key arms supplier for the junta). While shunned by many and lacking recognition, the junta maintains just enough support from the right powerful players to continue fighting back against the opposition forces for the foreseeable future.

Much like with Ethiopia, coverage of goings on in Burma is complicated by the junta’s tight control over media access to the country. However, there are still some good resources out there for getting information on the status of the struggle. Nathan Ruser from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute routinely covers new events in the conflict, as well as other conflict and geopolitical news throughout Asia. Conflict researcher War_Noir also includes research and analysis on the conflict in Burma – along with numerous other conflicts worldwide. Once again, Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front has also taken time to cover the conflict (I honestly don’t think there’s a conflict – internal or interstate – that man isn’t tapped into at this point).

(Dis)Honorable Mentions As I mentioned before, this list is by no means all-inclusive of all the conflicts going on in the world – and certainly not all-inclusive of all the conflicts you should care about. Clearly, war is still raging in places like Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen – among others. The only reason I didn’t write about these is that they’re all either front page news still or are still getting enough coverage that I didn’t think they needed a spotlight. Also, with most of them, the situation hasn’t shifted enough on the ground recently to necessitate a re-assessment (like with Ethiopia and Burma). With those conflicts, consider the situation normal: all fucked up.

There are other crises that have not yet spilled over into war that are worth noting. One example is Lebanon – which I wrote about previously and is still teetering on the brink (the only reason I didn’t include them there is I didn’t have enough of a change in the situation there to push me to do an update). Iraq is also in the midst of a persistent political crisis that has already temporarily dipped into open conflict this year and has the potential to do so again – in addition to the already mentioned potential of further spillover from the unrest in Iran. Despite the Taliban’s victory in the Afghan War, their control is not absolute and resistance to their rule remains active (and may strengthen as disillusionment with their government rises). Consider these to be (dis)honorable mentions for conflicts you should keep an eye on if you’re not already doing so.

At the end of the day, I realize we all only have so much emotional energy to devote to keeping appraised of all the horrible events going on worldwide and at home. Hell, international relations and the study of war are my passions, and even I have been having to take more breaks from looking at Twitter or thinking about the state of the world for the sake of my own mental health. I’m not shoving these conflicts in your face to demand that you constantly stay appraised of every single shot fired or you’re some kind of horrible person. I just want to make sure people are at least aware of them and know to look out for major developments regarding them, as their outcomes could potentially have a significant impact on their lives. We’ve already seen how Ukraine – in conjunction with other factors – is affecting the world in terms of energy prices and other spillover effects. Plus, it never hurts to throw a little solidarity the way of those in these conflicts that are fighting for their rights and freedoms against authoritarians.

I am extremely low on energy this week so I’m afraid I have no snappy or thoughtful conclusions for you this time around. I’m just gonna wrap it up before my writing’s quality suffers any more. I promise next month I’ll be more on the ball. Until then, take it easy and stay safe out there.

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wartakes · 9 months

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Geopolitics: The Reason Why Your Tummy Hurts (OLD ESSAY)

This essay was originally posted on September 27th, 2022.

This is one of those essays where I see a string of posts or a line of behavior emerging on the internet and I feel compelled to push back on it. In this case, its how people don't understand the situation some countries and groups find themselves trapped in when they have to turn to less than desirable partners for help (especially if the US and the West aren't willing to step up).

(Full essay below the cut).

I feel like every time I rejoin you all with one of these essays I have to go “boy, a lot of history sure happened in the last month” and this time it’s no exception. I’m going to spare you the line-item state of the world summary, however, and I’m gonna try and get straight to the point in this piece because I really think the main point of this month’s essay is an important one that I want to really want to cram into people’s brains and make it stick there.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had a number of repercussions there will be more as it continues on. One that I’ve noticed online in particular – though exclusively – is the treatment of war and struggle as being almost like some kind of team sport. This in itself is not new by any means, but I believe that the monumental nature and scale of the Russian invasion and the manner in which it caught so many off guard has amplified this tendency. The result is that you get a number of people boiling down armed conflict and the geopolitics surrounding it into essentially “yay my team and anyone that supports it and boo the other team and anyone that supports it.”

Now before you take that the wrong way, this is by no means an attempt on my part to “both sides” the Ukraine conflict. I have maintained since 2014 that Russia is an aggressor trying to impose its imperialistic will on Ukraine and that belief has only been reinforced by the events of the past seven months as Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has slogged on. The point I’m trying to make is, by taking a “sportsball” (God help me) approach to wars like the one in Ukraine and everything else that becomes connected to it, those with that mindset begin to dumb down, disregard, or downright ignore nuance to the point that it starts to become actually harmful as it spreads to events that are removed by several orders of magnitude. It’s also worth noting that this attitude is something that’s not exclusive to any particular political ideology and that I’ve noticed it coming from all comers interacting with the War in Ukraine and other conflicts.

Said harmful effects became obvious in the past few weeks as new events unfolded outside of the scope of the War in Ukraine, but with the shadow of that conflict hanging over it and the “go team” simplified mindset having a direct impact on how it has been (incorrectly) perceived by many who have become more focused on international relations following the start of the Russian invasion. My goals for this essay are to A.) try and explain how all of this (i.e. geopolitics) is – unfortunately – more complicated than it looks and that can’t be helped; but I also want to B.) try and explain how you can wrap your head around what sometimes feels like conflicting and contradictory stances on geopolitics in a world increasingly filled with more and more crises and conflicts. At the end of the day, if you follow a consistent moral compass when it comes to armed aggression and your sense of internationalism and solidarity, you’ll find that navigating this crazy world isn’t as hard as a lot of people would lead you to believe (often to their own self-interested or sinister ends). So, without further ado, let’s get right into things.

The Tangled Web of Geopolitics

Life is inherently complicated. We, as human beings, have a natural desire to try and simplify it in order to make it both easier to understand and to manage – even if sometimes there are aspects of life that are difficult (if not impossible) to simplify. Geopolitics takes that to an extreme. Geopolitics are complicated, messy, sometimes contradictory, and always frustrating. So, it’s no mistake that the casual observer (and sometimes even the more experienced practitioner) will try and boil geopolitics down to simple, black and white terms, in order to try and make sense of it. While this desire to make geopolitics into a simple binary is understandable, it almost always ends up going too far and leads to flawed and often hurtful approaches to the rest of the world.

An excellent example of this are the latest clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan – occurring very much in the shadow of the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine. If you’ve read my essays before or followed me on Twitter (or follow Joe Kassabian on Twitter), you’re probably no stranger to the long-time struggle between Armenia and Azerbaijan – particularly over the contested majority-Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh. However, recently Azerbaijan broadened the conflict with a large-scale series of strikes against Armenia proper, attacking across their internationally recognized border with only the flimsiest of pretenses. While at the time of writing this essay things have calmed down some, the situation remains tense – with some countries advising their citizens to now evacuate certain parts of Armenia due to fears of further Azeri invasion.

Now, whatever you think about the Artsakh issue (my stance is that it is Armenian but that’s a completely different essay), we should all be able to agree that countries should not attack one another’s internationally recognized territory proper – especially not without actual provocation or under false pretenses (which Azerbaijan’s pretenses almost certainly are). Yet, I’ve seen quite a lot of sentiment on social media that somehow Armenia has done something to “deserve” this attack or that its somehow their “just desserts” and that they deserve no sympathy or assistance.

The very flawed and twisted justification for this attitude is that Armenia is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance led (and dominated) by Russia, formed following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992. Since Armenia is therefore a military treaty ally of Russia, a number of supporters of Ukraine (which I also support against unjustified Russian military aggression and imperialism) seem to believe that Armenia deserves whatever it gets as its attacked by Azerbaijan. There’s also a rather rosy attitude towards Azerbaijan by Ukrainians and Ukraine boosters, as Azerbaijan has politically supported Ukraine since the Russian invasion, sent humanitarian aid, and also has expressed a willingness to step up its oil and gas exports to Europe in order to counteract potential energy warfare by Russia this winter as the War in Ukraine drags on.

There are many problems with this logic (or lack thereof). For one, it fails to interrogate the actual relationship between Armenia and Russia beyond its more surface levels, refusing to ask why Armenia is even in an alliance with Russia to begin with. Armenia is small (both population and territory wise), landlocked country that is flanked by two states (Azerbaijan and Turkey) with much larger populations and resources – one of which has already attempted to wipe out its people before, with the other essentially now daring the world to stop them from doing it again. Armenia lacks the energy resources of Azerbaijan, which has facilitated strong relationships with countries eager to buy those resources – in addition to its strong partnership with Turkey over shared Turkic culture. From the moment it gained independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Armenia needed a security guarantor if it was to avoid another genocide. Russia was the closest and most able and willing to act compared to other states, essentially falling into the role of Armenia’s security guarantor by default and then proceeding to hold a trapped Armenia hostage in the ensuing economic, political, and security relationship.

Essentially, Russia has remained Armenia’s primary security partner all these years basically out of both inertia and a failure by the United States and other countries in the West to do anything to change the situation – even after Armenia’s peaceful democratic revolution in 2018. Russia has also increasingly failed in its role as a security guarantor for Armenia. Russia and the CSTO’s failure to act decisively in the face of the most recent Azeri aggression (this time against Armenia’s internationally recognized territory) has sparked widespread anger and frustration with Russia by Armenians. Some Armenians have even called for Armenia to leave the CSTO and the situation has led to outreach by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives – Nancy Pelosi – as the CSTO appears to fragment while Russia’s war in Ukraine falters. While Armenia has been Russia’s ally on paper, it is not and has never been a universally happy and loving relationship and is one that Armenia took out of necessity and lack of options to survive.

Those making overly simplified comments about the Armenia-Azerbaijan situation also seem to ignore that, however cozy Azerbaijan has been with the West or supportive (notionally) of Ukraine, it has retained close political and economic ties with Russia – which in the typical Russian fashion has been trying to play both sides of a frozen conflict (one that is increasingly warming up). Azerbaijan isn’t acting on any profound political or moral grounds, it is simply trying to play all sides in support of its national interests – among which are removing the Armenian state and Armenian people off the face of the Earth (if you don’t believe me, take a look at what 99.9% of Azeri accounts on Twitter have to say about Armenia). Azerbaijan is taking advantage of the war in Ukraine in order to distract from what it wants to accomplish in Armenia, and unfortunately its propaganda war has been far too effective for my tastes thus far (though this time around more people seem to be taking a stand against its more naked aggression and I hope this trend continues – especially if it attacks Armenia further).

Aside from personal interest, I wanted to bring up Armenia and Azerbaijan in particular because this conflict serves as such a solid and recent illustrative example of what I’m trying to communicate. That none of these events happens in a vacuum or without a complex web of sometimes contradictory connections. This isn’t new, either. It’s always been the case, even in situations that have been historically characterized as being almost entirely binary in nature.

Let’s take the Cold War, as another example. We think about the Cold War almost exclusively as a geopolitical struggle between East and West, Communism and Anti-Communism, with two monolithic blocs led by almighty superpowers acting in perfect lockstep with one another. It makes for good propaganda, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Both East and West had many fissures and countries within both blocs often acted against one another out of self-interest or opposing principles and ideology – both via proxy and sometimes directly. In the East, the most famous example of this is probably the Sino-Soviet split, which led to the Soviet Union and China engaging in direct border clashes in 1969 and becoming enemies for the next two decades. Another prominent example is the Suez Crisis, where both Britain and France – in league with Israel – attempted one last great imperialist adventure to retake the recently nationalized Suez Canal from Egypt and potentially even remove the charismatic anti-imperialist President Gamal Abdel Nasser from power (against the express wishes and without the direct knowledge of their allied superpower, the United States).

The Cold War, despite our binary view of the competition, was riddled with cases like those just mentioned where supposed allies and partners crossed one another (if you really want to make your head hurt, take a look at the Wikipedia article for the Nigerian Civil War and then take a look at who was supporting both sides). Despite our innate desire to boil down geopolitics to a simple black and white, good versus evil struggle, that is almost never the case. The reality, as we’ve seen in the examples I’ve brought up, is far more convoluted than we’d like it to be.

How to Hold Two Opinions at the Same Time – A Primer

By now I’ve driven into your heads that geopolitics are not straightforward or black and white. Yeah, good, ok. So now what are you actually supposed to do with this information as you go about your lives? I’m glad you asked.

The point I’m trying to make by smashing you over the head with the proverbial mallet here, is that I want people to understand that sometimes states and their peoples are going to have to make decisions in order to survive that may not necessarily sit well with you ideologically, politically, or otherwise. To be clear, I’m not talking about excusing horrific acts of mass wanton violence like genocide or ethnic cleansing or other war crimes and crimes against humanity. Those are unacceptable no matter who is committing them or what reason they ostensibly have. I’m talking about actions like forging economic ties with, buying arms or seeking military support from, and generally associating with countries, groups, organizations, and so on that you may not be a fan of (for perfectly justified reasons in many cases).

Obviously, there’s no one-sized fits all approach to evaluating these actions and figuring out how you should feel about them or respond to them. There is no one universal “line” that once crossed a country or a people should suddenly no longer be worthy of support in its struggles against outside aggression (nor do I really think there should be a universal line except for specific cases like those acts I mentioned in the previous paragraph). But we have to understand when we see countries doing things that make you want to – for lack of a better term, God help me for saying this – “cancel” them, we also have to put said actions in their proper context (something I’m big on in international relations and security studies in general). We have to understand that, while in some cases countries may be performing certain acts purely out of self-interest and preserving or furthering their national power, in many cases countries and groups are doing them for one main reason: survival. Often, they just have no other options to turn to.

This is a frustrating thing to deal with because it means we have to take positions that, while they are not essentially contradictory, they feel so or appear so. I support Ukraine’s fight against the unjustified invasion and aggression by Russia, while also supporting Armenia’s similar fight against aggression by Azerbaijan and Turkey. What this means is I end up supporting countries that – if you connect the dots – appear to be aligned against one another. Ukraine being aligned with the West and Azerbaijan against Russia, while Armenia is (on paper) allied with Russia against Turkey and Azerbaijan (which I will again remind you both have very close relationships with Russia still despite all this), makes you think that therefore you should also be opposed to Armenia as well as Russia and that you should support Azerbaijan for supporting Ukraine. It all comes back to our innate human desire to make all this simple and cut and dry, black and white.

These types of positions may seem contradictory, but really when you get to the heart of the matter they are not. Said heart of that matter is we should always be opposed to unprovoked and unjustified armed aggression by one state or party against another, full stop. At the end of the day, Russia invaded Ukraine in a war of imperialistic aggression that was entirely a choice on their part (one they are paying for dearly now), that they were led to following their own mistakes they made via their heavy-handed response to the Euromaidan Revolution of 2013-2014. Likewise, while in past struggles with Azerbaijan, Armenia has certainly undertaken acts that were horrific and uncalled for and should be acknowledged as such, that in no way justifies the ongoing aggression that Azerbaijan continues has shown against Armenia and Armenians now for decades. As I shared earlier, Azerbaijan continues to engage in ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide in Artsakh – a historically Armenian majority region – and now seems set on taking those acts to Armenia proper with its most recent attacks on internationally recognized Armenian territory. In both Ukraine’s case and Armenia’s case, even though their relationships tie them to their enemies, it is still ethically, morally, and ideologically correct to support both of them in their struggles as they are both still fighting fundamentally the same struggle despite the geopolitical bullshit that encumbers them as they fight to survive.

As leftists – and just as people – we should take a fundamental stand against armed aggression in all cases, while also supporting those who are victims of aggression in their right to self-defense. This was one of the earliest points I made in writing my essays and one I endeavor to return to often, discussing how being anti-war does not mean that you can’t or shouldn’t defend yourself against armed aggression with force in kind. Being anti-war just means that you don’t start none – that doesn’t mean there won’t be none, if someone else decides to attack you (put another way: “fuck around and find out.”) Once again, this is not a contradictory stance to take. In fact, it is the only acceptable stance to take if you are to stay true to leftist internationalist principles of solidarity and resistance against fascism and imperialism worldwide. We cannot pick and choose the struggles we support based purely on the most superficial of aesthetics or we are betraying the principles we claim to uphold and take to heart. This doesn’t mean that we have to rush to a state’s aid directly in the case of every single war – especially in a case where you have one shitty regime attacking another shitty regime. However, we should still on principle be opposed to armed aggression in the interest of stopping the suffering of innocents caught in the crossfire, and we should then be prepared to assist like minded peoples and governments that share the values we hold as democratic socialists when they request our help and assistance.

I’ve seen plenty of cases of this on the Left, which is one of the main reasons I started writing these essays to begin with. It is most commonly observed in the tankie tendency to support authoritarian leftist regimes regardless of their many failings and crimes, as well as in the more general campist tendency to support any regime – regardless of ideology – that stands in opposition to the United States and the West simply because of said fact and nothing else. The fact is, for us on the Left, it is no less complicated, and we are not immune to geopolitics. As Democratic Confederalists in Rojava attempt to preserve their revolution, they’ve been compelled to balance between the United States and the West on one side and Russia and the Ba’athist Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad on the other in order to defend themselves against aggression by Turkey and its proxy forces in Syria. They do so because they are doing what they need to in order for both their people and their revolution to survive, while remembering the hard learned lesson of what happens when you depend on one guarantor of your security only to be betrayed time and time again by multiple parties and left to defend yourself with little resources on hand. This is the world we live in, and it involves striking a balance between our ideological beliefs and the cold hard facts of reality. Its never easy, and ideally always a temporary act, but still one that always seems to drag on longer than anyone wants it to and can gnaw at the soul and the conscience along the way if you truly hold your beliefs dear.

Stop and Think

In a better world (not necessarily a perfect one, but a better one), this would all actually be simpler. Perhaps then we actually would have an international united front of ideologically like-minded countries and peoples assisting one another in defending against the arrayed forces of authoritarianism, fascism, imperialism, and a like; enabling its members to not have to make deals with the devil in order to survive and ensure they have a future. In a better world, the struggle of actual good versus evil – though still maybe not as clear cut as we’d all like it to be – would at least be more defined and less fuzzy and easier to get a handle on for the average person who doesn’t have an advanced degree in international relations.

But, as I’ve spent the past multiple paragraphs explaining, that is not the case. I hope someday we can get closer to that kind of world, but as with everything else I aspire to in these essays, it’s going to take many years and a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears to achieve. In the meantime, in the interest of those who engaged in ongoing battles for survival, there are certain things we are going to have to tolerate and make allowances for.

Does this mean that we should not care at all about taking strong moral positions? That since black and white issues are so rare that everything should be treated as “gray” and that ethics and morality, and ideological positions don’t matter? That we should all become ultra-realists that Kissinger would applaud? Of course not. The main overarching point I’m trying to make (and have made on other related issues in these essays before) is that all of this is far more complicated than you think. That’s not an excuse to not care, it should be an excuse to care more and an impetus for you to want to figure out how you feel and have to think about events more deeply and your own reactions to and interactions with them more deeply. It means you have to engage your brain when you see a new Tweet on world events and not immediately decide the entirety of your position right then and there in 280 characters based on whatever thoughts are floating in your head at the time. I know this is a tall order at a time when a new historical event is occurring every five minutes, but it really is essential if we are to have fewer in the future.

Ok, I’m fading fast here due to having stuffed myself with this sausage stew I made earlier, so I’m afraid I have no eloquent conclusion here other than “think” and “don’t be a fucking jackass.” Oh, and try to take a moment to breathe now and then in between major historical events or you will go insane – guaranteed. That’s all I got for now. Until next time, stay safe and look after yourselves and your loved ones, and I’ll be back with another lecture next month.

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wartakes · 9 months

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“What Should It Look Like?” Part IV: The Marines (OLD ESSAY)

This essay was originally posted on August 30th, 2022, and is a continuation of the "What Should It Look Like?" series.

In this entry of the "What Should It Look Like?" series, I turned my attention to America's favorite wet soldiers: the Marines. Basically, I felt they should still be around, but there should be far less of them and their mission should be more narrow. Needless to say, this got a lot of Marine Todd type guys very annoyed on Twitter - which was funny.

(Full essay below the cut).

Oh boy it’s time to talk about the Wet Soldiers.

That’s right folks, as we return to the “What Should it Look Like?” series, it’s time to take aim at everyone’s favorite maritime themed crayon munchers: the United States Marine Corps.

To make sense of the Marines as an institution, you firs have to understand that the modern-day Marine Corp is an inherently political institution in every sense of the term – be it domestically, internationally, and inter-service wise. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they served as foot soldiers for American imperialism in Asia and Latin America, famously described by revered and controversial Marine Major General Smedley Butler as “racketeers for capitalism” as they trampled on the sovereignty of numerous nations and people for American business interests. Pearl Harbor would give the Marines a chance to put that imperialist gangster phase behind them, and after gaining their modern-day image storming beaches and hopping islands in World War II, they mustered a political lobbying machine in Congress (rivaled maybe only by the National Guard) in order to preserve themselves when faced with assimilation into the Army.

This fear of being made irrelevant or being disbanded has been at the core of the Corps’ psyche ever since, with the Marines going so far to ensure their role in national defense going forward, that they successfully utilized that lobbying machine I mentioned previously to convince Congress to codify the Marine Corps’ force structure in law (specifically Title 10 U.S. Code, Section 8063). Politics and defense are very clearly entwined (regardless of what some naïve or lying folks will tell you), but the Marines have made politics in this realm a way of life throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The modern-day Marine Corps and its force structure, missions, and way of doing business is born mostly out of politics more than true, practical needs (though those do exist and we will talk about them soon enough).

But now, after years of such political maneuvering, the Marines are suffering from an internal political war of their own making, pitting the old guard and their boosters against a new generation of Marine thinkers.

This Marine Corps Civil War has been sparked by the current Commandant of the Marines Corps – General David H. Berger – and his plan to restructure and retool the Marines Corps for the war that he thinks its most likely to fight in the future, entitled Force Design 2030 (which is being continuously updated as the Marines Corps throws the proverbial spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks). The design encompasses some of the most drastic changes to the Marines in decades, shedding what Berger considers unnecessary or obsolete units and systems for ones more likely to assist the Marines in the type of fight that he sees potentially looming on the horizon – chiefly, a large-scale war with China in the Western Pacific that is largely dominated by the air and maritime domains and utilizes a host of burgeoning military capabilities). This had includes cuts to infantry, tube artillery, aviation, with things like the Marines few tank battalions being completely disbanded. Meanwhile, new units like drone squadrons and missile battalions are being added.

Bergers moves immediately sparked outrage from Marine traditionalists. The main shock troops of this old guard in the Marine Corps Civil War have been dozens of retired Generals and other Marine Corps boosters who have unleashed their heavy artillery in the form of a ongoing barrage of numerous op-eds screeching that the Marines need to stick to the old ways. In their eyes, Berger is going against the cult of the Marine Corps, not only challenging the narrative they’ve built up for themselves but ceding hard won missions used to justify the resources they consume and the capabilities and forces they have amassed over the years. Of course, they don’t couch it like that. Instead, these Marine relics – who are now so salty they may as well have been Lot’s Wife looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah – are squealing that proposed FD 2030 jeopardizes US national security and interests by overly narrowing the Marine Corp’s role. They also seem to like to use Ukraine as a reason for the Marines to reverse course on FD 2030 – while sidestepping the fact that, you know, the United States Army is still a thing.

Berger’s own boosters have returned fire, and in this ongoing Civil War I largely side with them – with some caveats. My main disagreement with FD 2030, frankly, is while I think it’s on the right track, I don’t think it goes quite far enough. I think the Marines need to be even smaller and more focused on a specific mission set than Berger has laid out (hell, maybe he wants to go as far as I do but just knows in the current political environment that it’d be suicide for him). I think they need to shed a more of the excess they’ve grown out of politicking all these years if they are going to be most effective for the type of scenario we’re thinking of. That being said, I’m going to rely on FD 2030 as the basis for my vision for the Marines in this series and point out the aspects I would go further on and do differently to better suit my purposes.

Now that this very lengthy intro is over with, let’s begin!

Splish, Splash, Taking a Bath

When the Marines were originally founded, around the time of the American Revolution, their purpose was simple and limited: to act as naval infantry – i.e., fighting much as soldiers would on land, only doing it in ship-to-ship combat at sea, or conducting landing operations from the sea. These would continue to be the Marines chief functions – with some small deviations – up to and through World War II, where it arguably reached its apex with the Marines large scale amphibious landings throughout the Pacific Theater against the Empire of Japan. A last hurrah for this kind of battle came for the Marines not long after in Korea, with the much-touted landings against North Korea at Inchon.

Now, the modern-day field of military and defense affairs is positively riddled with debates, arguments, and knock-down drag-out rhetorical fights over what is and is not relevant in a contemporary conflict in terms of capabilities, tactics, operational art, and more. One such debate is whether the amphibious assault – which has become part in parcel part of the Marine Corp’s modern identity, especially in the Pacific – is in fact, obsolete and no longer useful.

Where do I fall on this question? As usual, I have a wishy-washy cop-out “measured, analytical” response that doesn’t grab the same attention as clickbait on defense news websites. Much like with the airborne assault (as I talked about in the Army essay for this series), my view is that the amphibious assault is, not fact, obsolete. It will, however, need to become a much smaller, rarer, more niche affair if it is to retain utility and not be a disaster for all those involved. The days of massive set-piece amphibious assaults like we saw on D-Day at Normandy or throughout the Pacific Theater in World War II are firmly in the rear-view mirror when it comes to tactics and operational art (and arguably, they’ve already been there for decades now). A notable exception here may be if China ever feels compelled to resort to a combined amphibious and airborne assault across the Taiwan Strait in order to conquer Taiwan by force, but that comes with a lot of caveats and asterisks and is a topic for another day that I could on for ages about.

For the most part, amphibious operations of the future – while still present – will be much smaller out of both the necessity of not getting your shit rocked undertaking them, but also because of the changing nature of the missions for the force undertaking them. Future amphibious assaults in a contested environment fighting against a peer or near-peer adversary may be smaller scale affairs that are focused on securing key pieces of maritime terrain in order to position weapons and (arguably, more importantly) sensors to assist in sea control, air and missile defense, and other key activities in the maritime domain. In some cases, these amphibious assaults may not even be opposed, but working to seize unoccupied terrain to position forces before the enemy can act. In many ways, it’d be a return to form for the Marines, focusing on smaller scale landings rather than big Inchon style forcible entry operations.

As we talk about amphibious assault being a much smaller affair, the big elephant in the room here are the Navy’s large flat-deck amphibious assault ships – much as aircraft carriers were in my Navy piece (especially seeing that these larger amphibs are basically smaller aircraft carriers). Under such a vision of distributed, smaller scale amphibious operations, these amphibs are overkill in the best case and in the worst case are actually a liability. Much like with aircraft carriers, driving one of these into the kind of contested environment amphibious operations from now on will almost always take place in is a massive risk, leaving it open to long-range anti-ship missiles of various kinds. This is why the Marines Corps has been exploring the idea of Light Amphibious Warships (LAWs), which would carry smaller units of Marines (think platoons and companies rather than battalions) to conduct lower key distributed operations in a heavily contested environment (If you think this sounds reasonable and not a bad idea, it probably should also not surprise you that the LAWs funding has been hampered as part of one battle in the ongoing Marine Corps Civil War).

These LAWs are purportedly not intended to replace larger amphibs, but I say: why not? Like I mentioned with carriers, if you cut most or all of the largest amphibs, you dropping the need for thousands of personnel. One Wasp-class amphibious assault ship has around 1,000 officers and crew aboard, and the Navy currently has nine ships of this size for the Marines’ use. And when you cut one of them, you’re not just freeing up billets, but then there’s follow-on effects regarding the infrastructure you need in the shore establishment to help maintain them. This is to say nothing of all the aircraft aboard that you no longer need all the support infrastructure for throughout the rest of the Corps.

To prove I’m flexible in my thinking, I’ll say I’m at least open to the idea of maybe keeping two or three of these larger ships around for various purposes. Maybe the Marines hang onto some of this larger amphibs in order to act as motherships or control ships for fleets of smaller LAWs. They could focus on acting as mobile bases for the rotary wing aircraft that will support marines ashore (more on that later) rather than delivering the Marines themselves. Hell, if the Navy followed through on my idea for cutting carriers, maybe they could repurpose and put some of them to use as pure light-aircraft carriers rather than as amphibious assault ships (something that they’ve already been playing around with in various configurations). Point is, even if you hang onto a few for various purposes, you don’t need as many of these larger amphibs, and they shouldn’t be doing the original job they were intended to do if you do keep them. Like I talked about with warships in general: while bigger ones still have a place, more and smaller ones will be necessary to fight and win with how naval warfare is changing going into the 21st century.

“If God Had Wanted Marines to Fly, Mr. Wint – ”

Since we’ve talked about cutting a lot of these larger amphibs and seeing that they’re often acting as de-facto aircraft carriers, we can also talk about the Marines Corps and its air forces in general. Not only are the Marines themselves larger than many armed forces on the planet, but they also have a larger air force than many other countries on the planet – including fixed and rotary wing combat aircraft, tankers, transports and more.

Now, I’m not opposed to the Marines having any aircraft whatsoever. In some cases, I think it’s necessary for them to have them. For example: I think it’s necessary for Marine infantry forces to have rotary wing attack and transport helicopters just as its necessary for an Army brigade combat team to have them (though we may need to think of some new ways to get them to the combat zone if large deck amphibs are a bigger target and we may want to cut a lot of them). These would be useful not only for ferrying troops and supplies from ship to shore, but also in between different terrain features – in addition to providing fire support. I probably wouldn’t cut Marine rotary wing much more beyond what Berger already wants to do in FD 2030.

However, while I still think the Marines should have aircraft, I also still think that there’s no good reason for the Marines to have a lot of their aircraft. Outside of politics, it doesn’t make sense to me is why the Marines have its large, fixed wing aircraft fleet. One clear example of this is their fighter squadrons that nest within Navy air wings aboard carriers, which do nothing that Navy carrier squadrons can’t already do (and under my previous plan, there won’t be a need for as many of them anyway). For its remaining combat aircraft that are not necessarily attached at the hip to carriers, which serve mainly to support Marines on the ground, there’s no mission they can perform that can’t already be performed by Air Force and Navy combat aircraft.

The one truly unique capability a chunk of Marine fixed-wing aviation has is its Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) aircraft, like the older AV-8B Harrier and the newer (infamous) F-35B Lightning II replacing it. Aircraft like these may have once had a stronger argument for their utility (and may still have some more limited use), but with the way things are going that may not be the case much longer. For the contested conflict the Marines are preparing for, where they’re hopping between islands and other landmasses, it seems at first a STOVL aircraft would be well suited to it. Then you realize that the F-35B can’t really do STOVL operations without a paved runway or amphib deck. Then you realize just how few small islands have paved runways (or runways at all). Then you realize that many of the small islands the Marines may be looking at for expeditionary basing could be too small to host a large enough runway for F-35B operations. Then you realize a long runway could make that island a target. The case for utility rapidly starts to diminish the harder that you look (don’t tell the Marines that though).

There are some aircraft that I think the Marines should get more of that they don’t currently have and this may surprise some of you: uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs – i.e. “drones”).

I have built a reputation on being a drone skeptic – and I stand by this reputation and will continue to uphold it. But for what the Marines are trying to do – which again, I (mostly) agree with and think dovetails nicely with my overall plan. The Marines having more drones makes sense if in their role as naval infantry they are often going to be acting as eyes and ears and occasional shooters supporting the maritime domain. For those missions, having a higher proportion of drones compared to the other services makes sense. It makes sense to have drones that could be deployed and recovered without a runway in disparate locations, acting as the eyes and ears for the Marines – who are in turn acting as the eyes and ears for the Joint Force. Where necessary and applicable, they could play a combat role as well – especially when you think about loitering munitions (i.e. one-way lethal “suicide” drones) and their potential in defeating enemy landing forces or forces lingering offshore. Drones could also have an offensive role to play that doesn’t even involve firing a shot, when you consider the idea of drones acting as mobile electronic-warfare platforms that could jam enemy communications and make it harder for them to operate in a given area. The bottom line is that drones have a lot to offer as force multipliers to this specific vision for the Marines.

The Marines absolutely have a need for aircraft, but they need the right aircraft to perform the types of missions that they specifically should be doing going forward – not just whatever aircraft they want because they can get them. This may not mean buying the most sexy, exquisite, gold-plated platforms that are available, but buying a lot less exciting systems and ones that are a lot more useful and punch above their weight when put in the Marines’ hands in the right context. I would cut most if not all of the Marines fixed wing – either transferring them to the Navy or to the Air Force, or just scrapping what isn’t needed (which, as explained earlier, will have rippling effects in then cutting the support and logistics network needed to sustain these aircraft). I’d have them keep a good portion of their helicopters and then buy a wide variety of drones that would be most effective in the types of contested, distributed, austere operations that they’re likely to face. This isn’t a judgement on the cut aircraft in general (and I’ll get more into this with the Air Force), but more about specifically works best for the Marines.

“That Dictator Right There, Officer.”

The last thing I want to talk about before we wrap up is the one role that the Marines and their boosters constantly tout for themselves that is not inherently unique or exclusively maritime themed. That, of course, is their role as America’s “Force in Readiness” – often referred to unironically as “America’s 911” – one of those phrases that makes my eyes roll back into my head until you can’t see the pupils. This is yet another political machination of the Marines and one that is more a creature of the modern, post-World War II Marine Corps. In a cynical way, it could be seen as a kind of return to form to the “racketeer for capitalism” interventions that Smedley Butler described many years prior, only undertaken under the context of the Cold War and later the GLobal War on Terror and various other justifications. Obviously, not every time the Marines have been used in this fashion has been strictly “bad” – such as humanitarian intervention. But this “911” role is certainly often viewed through rose colored.

However, the imperialism angle isn’t the one I really want to hone in one here, as we’re talking about a hypothetical better future where we’re trying to use military force in a less imperialistic way to show solidarity with victims of aggression. I wanted to take some time to talk about the “America’s 911” image of the Marines because this role is a major justification by the Marines for why they should keep all the force structure and capabilities that I’ve mentioned that I think are superfluous and wanted to cut (and more) – such as having its own air force, having a fleet of large deck amphibs, having as many Marines as it currently does (especially when you look at the relative size of Marine forces for other countries’ militaries), and etc.

Now, much like with the Marines and aircraft, it’s not necessarily that I think the Marines should have no role to play in being a rapid reaction force under the types of scenarios and overall grand strategy we’re thinking of. I think they should still be an integral part – both in the type of way that FD 2030 is imagining, but also just in general as a light infantry force where needed (I don’t think the Marines should lose their ability to fight just as regular infantry, only that they don’t need to be a dedicated second land army for the United States).

With that disclaimer out of the way, my main point I want to bring up here is that this role as “America’s 911” that the Marines have built up for themselves is by no means unique. It is not something special to them that only they are properly trained and equipped to carry out. It is not their birthright. It’s just a role that they’ve somewhat been able to most effectively latch onto in order to justify many of the toys and structure they have.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean that’s still fresh. When nearly 6,000 U.S. troops arrived at Hamid Karzai International Airport just over a year ago to conduct the Kabul Airlift as the country fell to the Taliban, two battalions of Marines and their support troops were admittedly among them. Of course, they were accompanied by an entire brigade from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, along with units from the 10th Mountain Division and even a battalion from the Army National Guard – that outnumbered the Marines significantly. And while some of the Marine units that showed up did so from a nearby amphibious group, a number of them were airlifted in directly from a US land base in Bahrain.

The point I’m trying to make here is the Marines absolutely have a role to play as being part of a broader rapid reaction capability in the Joint Force when crises and conflicts arise. But that this ability to act as a “911” force is not something inherently Marine. It is not something only they can do or should do, and definitely not something that they need the extensive force structure and capabilities they have now in order to do. They are just one part of a broader Joint Force all contributing elements to that response mission.

As for cutting Marine forces somehow affecting this rapid reaction capability, I would just point to the broader points of the grand strategy underpinning this series – a key one being that we would be working to better support allies and partners and allow them to more effectively defend themselves wherever possible and make it, so they only have to ask for our direct support as a last resort. If we are carrying out the grand strategy I’m envisioning holistically, then hopefully they’ll be fewer crises and conflicts overall, meaning we’ll need fewer forces on hand to constantly respond to “911” calls worldwide if and when our help is requested. This really drives home that the choices we make in regards to defense need to be in service of a larger vision and not just disjointed and isolated decisions made based on short-sighted policy prerogatives.

Something Something “Hoo Rah”

I’ve gone on for a long time in this essay, so I’m gonna try and be short and sweet with this conclusion.

I know that people are going to be particularly sore at me for this one – even some folks who are on the Left with me. Something about the Marines stirs up a fire in the bellies of certain people no matter what. It arouses a certain dander when people talk about whittling it down or changing it. I think it’s an enduring sign of how effective their political wrangling and propaganda have been over the decades.

The fact of the matter is, when you cut through those politics and focus in on the traditional purpose of a Marine Corps (modified for the 21st century’s challenges), you can cut out a lot of redundant or outright useless force structure to craft a Marine Corps that is much smaller but more effective in an outsized way in contributing to an overall Joint Force by taking on more specialized roles.

At the end of the day, there’s no need for the Marines Corps to be a second land Army – or, arguably, a second Joint Force within the Joint Force. Most of the roles and capabilities they’ve acquired for themselves have been through political maneuvering and are largely redundant. What results is a Marines Corps that says it can do it all, but really only creates the illusion it can do it all while becoming a mediocre Jack of All Trades, Master of None.

Naval infantry definitely have a place in modern warfare (if that weren’t the case, China wouldn’t be growing theirs exponentially). But you could cut the Marines total end strength by a third and we’d still have the largest Marine Corps in the world by far. Don’t worry Jarheads, you’ll still have a place in war in the future, but you’ll just have to do it differently (and hopefully will be doing it for reasons that are more altruistic and not reverting to your imperialistic past).

That’s it for this one. If you think I’ve been too harsh on the Marines, just wait until I get to special operators – you ain’t seen nothing yet my friends, believe me. In the meantime, our next installment in this series will be on the Air Force. For now, hope you all stay safe out there. Peace.

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wartakes · 9 months

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When Domestic Politics Become a National Security Concern (OLD ESSAY)

This essay was originally posted on June 29th, 2022 - not long after the verdict overturning Roe v. Wade was handed down by the Supreme Court.

Basically, this was me commenting on how I increasingly see crossover between the world I operate in (national security, defense, etc.) and the domestic political environment in the United States - which is needless to say, NOT A GOOD THING.

(Full essay below the cut).

I hope for a lot of things these days. I hope for better things for myself, for my friends and family and loved ones, for people all over the world at large.

But more than anything, I really just wish we could stop having history for just a day or two.

Like, fucking really. Can it just take a smoke break? I’d really like to write one of these about something else for a change instead of whatever event is sucking my soul out that month and it feels like there’s been even more of that already this year than the last couple years combined.

The big event most recently of course was the U.S. Supreme Court overturning its own prior decision on Roe vs. Wade, stripping nationwide abortion rights and immediately putting the lives of countless women at risk. As if this wasn’t bad enough in its own right, it seems that there are troubling signs on the horizon for what the majority-Republican appointee court has its sights on next when it comes to stripping away rights that many of us thought were settled at this point. Needless to say, it’s been an utterly demoralizing week for myself and just about everyone I know.

Now, you may be asking yourself: “KomodoDad, why are you writing about this here? Aren’t you a war guy? Why are you going on about domestic politics?” First of all: if you really are unironically asking that, go fuck yourself, I’ll write about what I want to. Second: all of this is fast becoming a national security issue and that’s really bad and we should all be concerned (that is, those of us who haven’t already been concerned for a long time now).

I started thinking about this on the friday that the Roe decision was passed down and it festered in my head even more over the weekend that followed. I could see it not only in the reaction of victorious right-wing forces celebrating their accomplishment and lashing out further at their opponents, or in the various police crackdowns on people rightfully showing their displeasure at this rollback of bodily autonomy. I also saw it just in the reactions of people I know, a great many of them struggling to keep from saying something that would get them banned off of social media or worse. Even more than I saw during the George Floyd protests of 2020, I’ve seen this bubbling rage coming to the surface in so many people who A.) haven’t been prone to outrage before; and B.) aren’t all necessarily leftists or as far left as some of us are online.

I look at the pattern we’re locked in, with a powerful and vocal right-wing minority continuously ramming through its agenda even when the majority of Americans oppose it, and that majority of people getting more and more frustrated when nothing seems to be done to try and roll it back, and I suddenly get very concerned. I get concerned because I am a national security weirdo, and when I look at what’s going on now and I look at what’s been going on the past five, ten, twenty years, I start to see patterns that if I noticed them in a foreign country I’d be going “uh oh, that doesn’t bode well for them.” Basically, it feels like more and more of our domestic political issues are turning into national security concerns due to their intractability and that’s not good.

I want to stress before I go any deeper that I’m going to try and not make this a doomer piece. I speak every other minute about how I abhor doomerism in all its forms and that’s the last feeling I want to encourage with my writing. But I do want this essay to be something that at least makes you feel concerned if you weren’t already and motivate you to action. I’ve actually avoided writing about this topic for a while to be perfectly honest with you. I’ve seen more than a few articles and several recent books about the possibility of Civil War II and by and large I’ve felt they’ve been scare pieces trying to make a quick fear buck. While I’ve admittedly still had a low-level concern about that sort of thing, it’s been just that: low. I hadn’t yet felt a need to address it. But after this past week, I think I’ve finally felt like it’s necessary to talk about the risk of civil conflict for everyone’s sake because I feel shit like what’s happened with Roe is only going to keep coming hotter and heavier and we need to understand what we’re dealing with if we’re going to do anything about it.

Worrying Signs

As usual, I feel the need to define some terms and explain some of my concepts a bit more. If I casually say “everything is national security now” with no context, that can be taken a lot of ways. After all, national security and national defense do touch upon or are connected to multiple corners of our economy and day to day lives, even if we don’t always see it. When I say “everything is national security now” what I mean is that more and more political issues are rising to the level of contention or intractability where they carry with them a threat of widespread violence – be that violence against civilians, the state, or whatever or whoever else. They start to rise to the level that they’re disrupting or preventing the carrying out “good governance” (or whatever might pass for it) and all the things we might consider part and parcel of being a “normal”, peaceful, functional country. Things as simple as being to go to the grocery store or go to school or wherever without the threat of getting merc’d being off the scale. They rise to that level because their intractability prevents any kind of solution through existing non-violent channels for whatever reason – such as those channels being flawed and broken, or just being plain non-existent in some cases.

This is nothing new (unfortunately). We’ve seen this before to varying degrees. The most notable and destructive instance of this in American history is of course the original U.S. Civil War, where the issue of slavery became so intractable that it could not be resolved by peaceful means and became a violent conflict when the South took up arms in defense of it (if anyone ever tries to tell you it was about “states’ rights” just ask “states’ rights to what, motherfucker?). Other examples also exist at varying scales and intensity of violence. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 against the Federal government and its powers of taxation is one example, which involved a large-scale Federal and state military response but very few killed or injured. There are of course, other examples that don’t quite rise to the level of civil war or outright rebellion from multiple periods of American history, such as violence against activists in the Civil Rights movement. Another pertinent example in light of the Roe vs. Wade decision is the history of attacks – sometimes deadly – on abortion providers in the U.S. (which have consequently skyrocketed over the past year in case you were wondering).

So, yes: certain political issues becoming increasingly unsolvable by peaceful political means and becoming security issues as well as political issues is not new. However, whenever it happens, it should still be cause for concern even if its “mild”, because it signals greater problems afoot. In that vein, if you start getting more and more issues that are becoming security issues all at the same time, it stands to reason you should be even more concerned. That’s why I feel it’s even more cause for worry now due to the fact it feels like more and more issues are all reaching that point simultaneously in recent years.

There’s also the matter of the way in which the issues become intractable or contended, because sometimes it creates the false impression that the problem is no one is “compromising” or finding “middle ground” like “adults” (or at least that’s what braindead columnists in major newspapers are trying to get us to believe). With many of our “controversial” issues today, there often seems like there’s actually a majority of people who are in favor of some kind of progressive change or action. We’ve seen this with gay marriage, abortion rights, gun control, and with multiple other issues that we’re told are “controversial.” The problem is that the minority of those who oppose any positive change on these issues are mostly unwilling to cede any ground what-so-ever; with more and more issues are seen by them as being hills to die on (or kill on). Even mild amounts of change are cause for outrage and screaming bloody murder, as we’ve seen with what it took to pass even lukewarm gun violence legislation in the aftermath of multiple mass shootings this year (and the reactions to said lukewarm legislation from some on the right). Every single political battle becomes one that these reactionaries want to fight to the death over (both figuratively and – increasingly – literally).

And that’s what they are: reactionaries. Don’t let these people fool you into thinking that they’re only “conservatives.” This is not to say that conservatives are necessary “good”, but this just isn’t what they are. A philosophical conservative (on paper) isn’t supposed to necessarily be opposed to all change, but only wants gradual, limited, incremental change (the subtext here for anyone on the left of course, being, that they want that change so that they can “manage” it and maintain power and privileges in the process). But reactionaries want to actively turn the clock back and re-fight past battles that they’ve lost. It’s not just good enough for them to slow down change or even halt change, they want to go back and undo change to fit their own worldview.

The Rachet Effect of Rage

Therein lies another problem, because the deadlock we’re in isn’t really even strictly a deadlock. Movement is certainly possible, but it feels as if the only movement we can achieve lurches us further to the right. You’ve probably heard this described before by people more politics savvy than I am: the idea of the rachet effect; where the design of the political system prevents moving back to the left and only allows movement to the right. It becomes harder and harder to dismiss as you have the Democratic Party – the supposed guardians against the sort of setbacks we’re experiencing (if their campaign literature is to be believed) the party currently in power, failing to do anything to substantively improve our material conditions while continuing to allow the right to drag us further into their corner despite not even supposedly being in power anymore. The Democratic Party seems fundamentally incapable of exercising power once it has notionally achieved it, while the Republican Party has spent the last two to four decades building up power and institutions in such a way that it can continue to wield power even when it is – on paper – still in the opposition.

That brings us to the situation we’re in. Where when we’re not at a standstill, we’re being ratcheted further to the right with various court challenges and other manipulations of the structures of power by the right. Any attempt to move further to the left is blocked or thwarted by the mechanisms developed by the intractable and reactionary right – be it the Republicans or various other far-right groups that have sprung up like mushrooms in the past decade – and aided by the incompetence, unwillingness, or even outright complicity of the liberal establishment. This is a situation that has left many – myself included – feeling disenfranchised and powerless to act on our own or to convince those in power to act positively.

You may not remember, but I’ve written about this sort of thing before in a different context, when I discussed insurgency and counterinsurgency and our failings in understanding it. Insurgencies, rebellions, civil wars – all the various kinds of intrastate violence, start when domestic political grievances become unresolvable by peaceful means. Eventually, at least some of those who are advocating those grievances – after it’s become clear they have no way of affecting change or even negotiating for the possibility of change under the current systems – feel that they are forced to take up arms and use violence in order to do so.

Maybe now, if you weren’t already concerned with the buildup of impotent rage many in this country are feeling at the same time that those on the right seem more than willing to resort to violence to drag us back in time and keep us there, you might start to understand why I am.

As the right dig in deeper with their extreme stances, you have the opposing current of everyone else who want change slamming up against them. While the right stands as a bulwark against change while shoving everyone else backwards, the frustration and the rage of everyone else builds. What happens when you have more and more people who aren’t somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan increasingly feel they have no other way to try and stop it or to improve things the way the system is currently constituted? What happens when they feel voting does nothing, that politicians aren’t willing to engage with them, and where it feels like any other response ends up with them being beaten and tear gassed? You can fill in the blanks. It’s not good.

All is Not Lost

If you know me, you know I don’t like treating the future as written in stone. Time is not, in fact, a flat circle. We do all still have agency. We can still affect things in the world around us. We are not absolutely doomed to a certain large-scale conflagration of civil violence and destruction along with all manner of other misery. We are not completely powerless to stop events. There are reasons for hope. But if things don’t change in a big way, if enough people don’t act and soon, we’re definitely on the road to something bad.

I have no idea what that something could potentially be and no one else can be absolutely sure either – so if anyone else tries to give you any prediction other than a series of plausible possibilities, take it with a large grain of salt. I don’t want to get too deeply into those because I don’t want to scare or depress you any more than you absolutely need to be right now. All I will say is it could be anywhere from something as high-key and violent as the Syrian Civil War, to something more on the level of Italy’s “Years of Lead” or the Northern Irish “Troubles.” A lot of that really depends on what happens more in the years to come/years preceding any hypothetical conflict (which again, is not certain to occur). But even if only the “less bad” types of civil conflict break out, it would still be horrific for large swathes of society and the world at large. We shouldn’t want any of that in any shape or form.

Again, I try not to be alarmist or doomsaying – the exact opposite, in fact. What I’m telling you today is not meant to fill you with dread for the sake of dread; it is not meant to black pill you or turn you into a nihilist or a doomer. What I want to do is simply drive home the seriousness of the times we’re in – to reinforce what the last few years have taught us: that this is not just a game, or a temporary phase that will eventually fizzle out on its own. We are, in fact, in a real crisis. We are in a Wikipedia article that has not been written yet – or exists and is going to be retitled sometime in the near-future. How that article will read in the future is on all of us. This is meant to be a drive to action to try and improve this situation and prevent it from spiraling further out of control, not an attempt to get fear clicks and paralyze you with foreboding. We need to channel our fear, our anger, our frustration; channel it into meaningful action.

Part of me isn’t entirely convinced we’re not already well into the early stages of what might be some kind of civil conflict. That with all the mass shootings, street brawls, and other violence, we may already be in some kind of “Years of Lead” or “Troubles” or Weimar Republic-esque disorder. If that’s the case, that only reinforces the call to action to make sure that the conflict we may or may not already be in does not progress to more destructive phases – not only destructive for us as people living in this country, but destructive for the effects it would undoubtedly have on the entire world due to the centrality of the United States in its day-to-day affairs. We owe it to not just ourselves, but to all people everywhere out of solidarity.

What are some of the things we can do now? A lot of the things we need to do are things people have already been telling us to do and that we need to double down and commit more to as we move ahead. Getting to know your neighbors and your community and participating in mutual aid; joining, starting, and supporting progressive organizations be they labor unions, advocacy groups for specific topics or general change, or organizations that help people get resources that they may not be able to usually access; participating in direct action and pressure campaigns when necessary; also, while we’ve learned that voting alone doesn’t bring about change, I’d still say that it’s something we cannot ignore as a too (I’m not going to give you an electoralism lecture because I don’t buy into that myself, but voting isn’t a useless gesture and is critical to prevent more backsliding, with some of the progressive victories we’ve seen this year being proof of that).

I know that last paragraph is a very generalized, non-specific list of suggestions. In my defense, at the end of the day, I am still a national security and international relations professional, not a domestic political animal. There are people out there you can and will give you more specific and helpful advice on this front that I can. I just want to make sure that you’re taking home that there is a real urgency to seek out said advice and guidance and act on it. All is not lost, do not despair; but know that the pressure is real and the need for action is real. I leave you with this: all of our lives have intrinsic value; when something has value, you fight to defend it.

Stay safe out there and keep on keeping on.

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wartakes · 9 months

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Whew.

I'm almost caught up on old essays. Just got one more batch to squeeze out tomorrow and we should be up to speed. Then I just need to think about what I'm gonna write for this quarter's essay but that's a future KD problem (lol).

#war takes #war takes announcement

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wartakes · 9 months

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Some thoughts for today, May 25th, 2022 (OLD ESSAY)

This essay was originally posted on May 25th, 2022 (duh).

This was one of those ones I really struggled on a topic for, so I decided to reflect on the George Floyd uprisings and the state of things in the country through my personal and professional lens.

(Full essay below the cut)

Not gonna lie to you folks, I was really struggling with this one.

I truly had no idea what I was going to write about for this month’s essay – and I’ve been trying to think of a topic since the beginning of the month and been coming up short. Doesn’t help that I’ve been in a bit of a slump. As a warning up front: this may end up being one of my more emotional and wandering pieces, in addition to being less analytically rigorous than they usually are – but I still thought this one was worth writing and sharing with you all today.

I knew I wanted to write about something other than Ukraine. While that war is still very much active and very important, it’s entered a phase where the shift in the frontlines and fortunes of war are simultaneously relatively contained but constantly shifting day to day (I may do a check-in on where things are at in a future piece). I also knew I didn’t feel like doing a new entry in my “What Should it Look Like?” series right at this moment. In general, I’ve been in somewhat of a low ebb with my personal and creative endeavors the last few weeks, due to a variety of reasons – both in my personal life in events at the local, national, and international level. I’ve just felt drained and frustrated – as many of us have, I know.

It was when I was pacing the room trying to think of something that I really felt motivated to write about, it occurred to me that I was thinking about this all right around an important anniversary. If my timing works out, this essay should be released on May 25th: the day on which George Floyd – an unarmed black man – murdered by Minneapolis Police officers in 2020, kicking off a nation-wide uprising against police violence and impunity. Its also happening close to Memorial Day, and though the reflections I’m offering here aren’t exactly what Memorial Day was intended for, I think they still seem to fit the overall spirit of the idea.

Aside from the obvious reason why George Floyd’s murder and what followed matters to many people, it matters to me because that act and the response to it by so many people in the United States, and the response of the police and the state to them in turn, was what finally opened my eyes to what the country I lived in was really like. It made me come to terms with both that, and my true ideological tilt. It finally forced me to look at things in a new way after years of internal doubts about what I had thought I’d believed up until that point. It compelled me to question all my pre-existing beliefs, discard many, modify others, and double down on some. It was a personal watershed for me, much like it was a national one.

Two years after George Floyd’s death and the uprising that followed, we’ve experienced a LOT more history. The continuing COVID-19 pandemic (and our government’s – and other’s – failure to react to it), the 2020 election’s drama and the January 6th insurrection, systemic efforts to attack trans people, more and more mass shootings, consistently rising inflation and economic strife, and now the looming specter of Roe v. Wade being overturned and millions of women across the country losing their reproductive rights – and those are just all the events going on here in the United States. We’ve also witnessed America’s twenty-year war in Afghanistan end in failure, with the Afghan people themselves suffering immensely on top of all the other suffering they’ve already experienced. We saw Israel’s most recent major attempt to cull the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. Now, we see Russia’s blatant attempts at imperialism in Ukraine flounder – killing and maiming thousands even as its campaign falters.

Obviously, the aforementioned list of events is not all-inclusive – either nationally or internationally – but you get the idea and I don’t want to drown you in even more sorrow. We’ve all been through a great deal the last couple years. It was with that in mind as I sat here with that anniversary approaching, with May 2022 alone being packed with soul crushing news – let alone the rest of the past two years: how do I feel? Two years on from “coming out of the closet” with my ideological beliefs, how do I feel about those beliefs, about the state of my country, about the state of the world, about the future, and more? Do I feel better about everything? Worse? So-so?

This may seem like something of a cop out, but compared to two years ago, I feel simultaneously better and worse about the future. On one hand, I feel more apprehensive about the immediate future and the challenges and horrors it has in store. Yet, when it comes to looking at things in the long run, I still maintain hope. Admittedly, part of this hope is fueled just by wanting to spite doomers and doomerism in general because I absolutely despise that outlook, but I do have some genuine reasons to be hopeful in the long run and I will be sharing those momentarily.

To be brutally honest, in the short term: I’m worried and discouraged. I see forces of reaction continuing to amass power in the United States while the supposed official opposition seems content to wring their hands, clutch their pearls and cry about “the rules” while the right-wing death cult is more than happy to circumvent said rules or outright break them without a second though or suffering consequences. Overseas, I’m also pessimistic. For example: while Ukrainians hold the line in their own country, I feel that Russia’s actions there may create far-reaching shockwaves that will cause additional crisis and conflict in their wake. Even as Russia’s efforts falter, I worry Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may potentially only be the first of a new wave of revanchism and attempts at conquest in the years to come, with existing conflicts still raging on in the background as well.

This is part of why I was struggling to write an essay this month – and also struggling with some of my other creative endeavors as well. It’s simply been hard to imagine a better world, when we’re living in an era of constant crisis, crumbling, and collapse. I frame many of these essays from the perspective of a United States – combined with other allies and partners – that have a more positive, constructive ideological bent. In the past few weeks, between all the events happening here in the United States alone, it’s been very hard to envision a better country, let alone a better world. It’s been next to impossible to contemplate that possibility lately.

But, again, I haven’t given up. As much as I’ve felt my soul has been trodden on in the past weeks, months, and years, I’ve still seen things that give me hope. That despite that constant feeling that we’re being pulverized into dust, people continue to fight for their most basic rights. Workers continuing to fight for their labor rights against mega corporations like Amazon and Starbucks – and winning crucial victories. More Progressive and Leftist voices gaining ground against the moribund establishment. Overseas, we see people fighting for themselves and their neighbors both against fascist invaders in the case of Ukraine, but also against fascist forces that have usurped power in Burma. While it doesn’t mean we can sit on our laurels, seeing these pockets of resistance and hope give us a reason to keep fighting ourselves.

In some of my darker moments over the past few years, I’ve openly wished I still had political blinders on, or that I could put them back on. That I was still ensconced in a snug, warm social liberal cocoon, inside of which I would maintain my blind faith that the system as it was would eventually right itself and everything would go “back to normal” and we’d all live happily ever after. A world that works just like it does on the West Wing or in Marvel movies (oh God, that made me think of an Aaron Sorkin Marvel movie and that is truly a cursed thought. Jesus).

But that’s impossible. Even if I really truly wanted to go back to living a lie (and I don’t think I do), Pandora’s Box has been opened in my brain and the brain of many others. I’ve been cursed with knowledge and now I must live with it; there’s no putting it back where it came from. But more importantly, that wouldn’t solve or help anything. Reverting back to my previous stage of delusion and denial as fascists continue to consolidate power both at home and abroad would be about as useful as being a doomer and just accepting that everything is written in stone and there is nothing we can do to stop it. So, much like with doomerism, even if I could wipe my brain clean and go back to my previous ignorance, I refuse to do so if only on principal.

The drawback to the world not being set in stone as doomers try to convince it is, is that we can never really know where its headed or what may happen next. We can make educated guesses, and sometimes we may even be right (even when we’d rather be wrong), but the only thing we can be sure of is that nothing is sure. This reality comes with its benefits and drawbacks: it is liberating that history is not actually written in stone because it means we still have the means to influence it and try and make a better world for ourselves, but also terrifying in that this means things could get even worse than they might already be if it was written in stone.

Being stuck in this tenuous position is also an exhausting one, physically and mentally. We are constantly trying to maintain that hope for the future and take inspiration and solace from the victories we do achieve, all while remaining on guard for the next bullshit that may come our way. All of this, of course, occurs as we’ve being battered (sometimes quite literally) by whatever bullshit has been dumped on us this particular day. I’ve seen friends and loved ones struggle to keep their heads above the proverbial water while dealing with life under these circumstances. I’ve struggled myself. We all have to various degrees and we all will continue to.

But (to bring you up from that previous, dour note), even as we struggle, we’re still here. We are still here, and we are still fighting, and so are billions of others across the world. One major thing that gives me hope is despite being worn down, despite being tired, anxious, and depressed on many days, I still feel a fire in my belly. I still feel anger: anger that it has to be this way. Anger that so many people I care about, that so many people in general, have to struggle just to exist in this day and age. I still feel anger at the inaction the powers that be exhibit in dealing with these issues, or anger at them actively working to prevent any change for the better. Despite everything, I still feel a drive to do something. I still want things to be different. That hasn’t been crushed out of me yet, nor has it been crushed out of others, and that gives me hope. The fact that despite being given so many reasons to, we all haven’t given up, gives me renewed hope.

We’re only just approaching the half-way point in 2022 and I feel we’re going to have a lot more bullshit to deal with here and abroad. I don’t have any specific or particular advice to give you on how to deal with everything going on (I wish I did), but I do have some general advice that I hope does something. First, make sure you’re taking care of yourself and those you immediately depend on. Do what you have to in order to make sure you’re as safe and secure as possible in regards to your basic needs and safety. Obviously, you absolutely should help your broader community as you’re able to do so, but make sure that you take care of yourself and keep on existing. Do that because A.) your life matters and you matter to people; and B.) because you’re no good to others who depend on you otherwise. This includes taking occasional breaks to “unplug” from the news and current events (something I’m trying to be better at). Obviously, you shouldn’t completely disconnect and go into grillpilled mode, but know when you need to log off for a bit and just not think about the world for a while and do it when necessary.

Second piece of broad advice: just do what you can, with the understanding that it may not always be a lot but that it still contributes in some fashion. Whether its dealing with the threat of Roe v. Wade being overturned here at home, or its Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine what we can do to affect these things. There are things we can do, however small they might be, to help in some way. Do what you can to help but try not to beat yourself up over not being able to do more. Take a realistic view of your role in current events. Don’t let yourself succumb to despair thinking that there’s nothing you can do. If anything, harness any feelings of impotent rage to motivate yourself to do the things are you able of, and when you feel frustrated that there’s not more you can do, remember that we’re all in this for the long haul and that another chance will come for you to act. This will be a long war with many battles.

Alright, I think I’ve rambled about enough. I promise for the next essay I’ll try to do something that’s closer to my usual bread and butter of analysis on IR and war, but this was just something I felt compelled to write and get off my chest (especially as I was struggling for motivation on any other ideas currently). I hope maybe these thoughts and reflections are of some use to anyone who reads them. The last few years have been rough, but in a lot of ways I’m also very proud of myself and others for how we’ve dealt with it and that too gives me hope for the future. With that, before I talk too much more and find a reason to be a downer, I will leave you for now. Stay safe and stay motivated. One day, someday, we will make things better. I haven’t given up on that dream yet and I really hope you haven’t either.

#essay #War Takes #War Takes essay #socialism #leftism #democratic socialism #far-right #authoritarianism #anti-authoritarianism #george floyd #george floyd uprising #george floyd uprisings #george floyd protests

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wartakes · 9 months

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“What Should It Look Like?” Part III: The Navy (OLD ESSAY)

This essay was originally posted on April 20th, 2022, and is a continuation of the "What Should It Look Like?" series of essays.

In this entry in the series, I go after the Navy - which I think in an Armed Forces of shitshows, is by far the biggest shitshow currently. However, in modern warfare, a navy is still crucially important, so I try to wrap my head around how to make it suck less in service of a foreign policy that also sucks less.

(Full essay below the cut).

Thought I forgot about this series, didn’t you?

Well, I didn’t forget about it. But in case you hadn’t noticed, global events over the past few months had distracted me some. While the war in Ukraine is by no means over and we should still pay close attention to it, I think I at least have sufficient breathing room right now to write about something else for a bit (I don’t want to become a single-issue commentator anyway). So, now seems as good a time as any to return to imagining how I would restructure the U.S. military in a hypothetical future where it was being used to more appropriate ends (if you’re new to this, I’d suggest starting back at part one and working your way up to this).

We’ve already talked about everyone’s favorite green machine, the U.S. Army. Now it’s time to take to the waves and try to unfuck what is currently the most fucked of all the services: the U.S. Navy. Oh, don’t get me wrong: all branches of the military are fucked up, but to put an Orwellian spin on it: some are more fucked up than others (and the some in this case is the Navy). So, anchors aweigh and full speed ahead: let’s kick this pig.

The U.S. Navy: America’s Floating Disaster Factory

Oh, U.S. Navy. You’re such a glorious trainwreck of an armed service. Whether you’re driving your ships into other ships, getting embroiled in massive and now infamous corruption scandals, or engineering procurement boondoggles that would make all the other services blush by comparison, you really are leading the pack when it comes to being the problem child of the Armed Forces. Add in the fact that out of all the services, you’re the one that’s gone the longest (since the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944) without actually fighting anyone who can give you a run for your money, and you’re just a recipe for disaster (beyond the minor ones you cause just by existing).

While it may seem tempting to throw the baby out with the bathwater, in a world where wars do unfortunately need to be fought and your military needs to move vast distances in order to fight them, a Navy is essential. In the event of a large scale war, the vast majority of the military’s heavy equipment and supplies will have to be moved by ship – as does the vast majority of the world’s trade in general. While air travel may be good for rapid deploying light forces and some equipment, moving an entire force by air is highly inefficient in terms of time, energy, efficiency, and more. As long as you’re going to need to move most of your forces and supplies by sea, and most of what keeps the world running moves by sea, you’ll need forces to control the sea and do battle on and from it as needed.

With that requirement laid out pretty clearly, how do you solve a problem like the U.S. Navy? I’ll give you a bottom-line up front on that now: cutting back in some areas and doubling down on others in terms of types of ships, and adopting a completely different strategic mindset.

The Carrier is Dead; Long Live the Carrier

I’m going to tell you right now: if you’re a big fan of aircraft carriers and carrier aviation, you’re probably not going to like what I have to say next.

However, I will give anyone of that disposition some small reassurance now: I don’t think aircraft carriers are obsolete, per say. I think they still have a use case. However, I think that use case has become – and will continue to become – far more limited as new capabilities and concepts in warfare are developed (and I’ll get more into why I think that in a few paragraphs).

The aircraft carrier was a game changer when it first saw combat in World War II, after having been developed between the two World Wars. It quickly rendered the battleship – the previous capital ship of naval warfare – all but obsolete and has dominated the high seas ever since. But now, crucial developments in military technology threaten to knock the carrier off its throne.

This is not to say that carriers have always been invincible. A quick peek at all the carriers lost in combat by all participants in World War II will show you that was never the case and that the carrier has always had threats. But those threats have evolved significantly to a point where the push and pull of advantage between the carrier and its counters is shifting in the latter’s favor.

The biggest threat to the carrier – and warships in general today – are anti-ship missiles (AShMs). These aren’t exactly new and have been a threat for a long time, but to be a true threat meant getting a platform carrying them – be it a ship, an aircraft, or a land-based launcher – close enough to fire and then getting the missile past all the carrier’s defenses (such as the AEGIS Combat System or Close-In Weapons Systems gatling guns). But missiles have increased dramatically in sophistication in recent years, extending their range and their precision. When you compare the range of the U.S. Navy’s standard anti-ship missile for the past forty years – the Harpoon – to the YJ-18 of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, the Harpoon is rapidly becoming outclassed (which is part of why the Navy has been working feverishly to deploy an anti-ship variant of the longer-ranged Tomahawk cruise missile to the fleet in recent years). There’s also the unfortunate fact that, whatever defenses you have – or are building – they could always be saturated by more missiles.

But extended range models of standard anti-ship missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) aren’t the only worry on the high seas. Now you also have to contend with a burgeoning new class of anti-ship missile: the anti-ship ballistic missile – like China’s DF-21D with a potential range of over 1300 miles. While ASCMs like the YJ-18 and Maritime Strike Tomahawk already have generous ranges, a ASBM puts an ASCM to shame with its range. An adversary with ASBMs on mobile launchers could position them all along its coastline – or even further inland depending on how extensive its range is – and fire on targets thousands of miles out at sea. And if you deployed an ASBM onboard a surface ship or submarine – as China reportedly may be planning on? Then you’d have even fewer places to hide that were out of range.

Obviously, these weapons aren’t infallible or invincible – no weapon is. Even if you have a fancy missile with a long range, you still need to find and fix your target before you can engage it, and the oceans are vast. But technology is improving on that front as well, especially when it comes to space-based sensors. What this all adds up to is a much harder time for large surface fleets in a major war at sea. While war on the ocean’s surface isn’t going anywhere, its certainly undergoing a rethink.

The carrier requires the biggest rethink in light of these changes, seeing that for any nation that possesses them (like the United States which possesses eleven – more than any other carrier possessing country), is going to be the largest and most conspicuous target on the water. If you do lose one, you stand to lose – in the case of a Nimitz-class – upwards of over 5000 officers and crew and as many as ninety aircraft and helicopters on top of the nearly 10 billion USD carrier itself. While the carrier will still have defenses both on board and in its accompanying battle group, as mentioned before those defenses are less certain in the face of technological developments and also potentially with sheer numbers. An AEGIS missile-defense system may be good, but if you keep firing enough relatively cheap anti-ship missiles at a group of ships, sooner or later one will get through (or the defender will just potentially run out of ammo first).

Again, carriers aren’t completely obsolete. Having a mobile platform capable of launching and retrieving both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft at sea is still useful. Not every potential adversary in the future will have the advanced anti-ship capabilities that some of the most sophisticated militaries in the world are developing or even marketing. There’s still a number of countries around the world that see value in having carriers – including China, which has a third on the way with a fourth possibly in the works. However, maybe like how most other countries in the world that have carriers only have one, two, or at most a handful, we don’t need ten or twelve. It’s an asset that is useful in some situations, but not in all situations. I can’t say for sure how many carriers we should have, but I can say we definitely don’t need as many as we have now and that the final number should ultimately be based on the scenarios we see as most likely and the carrier’s actual role in them.

The few carriers that you’ll hang onto don’t have to be as big as a massive Nimitz or Ford-class “supercarrier” either. Take for example the French Charles de Gaulle-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier – the only other currently operational conventional “flattop” carrier not in U.S. Navy service. Though at full load it is less than half the tonnage of a Nimitz class carrier, it still carries an air wing of up to 40 aircraft, including multirole fighters, support helicopters, airborne early warning and control aircraft, and more. It does all this with less than half the compliment of a Nimitz class. In a much-reduced role for carriers for the U.S. Navy, several of this size would still go a long way. And this is before we even go down the rabbit hole of STOBAR and STOL carriers – which most other countries have, but I just don’t have time to get into right now. Basically, you got proven options to go smaller and fewer with.

The bottom line for carriers is that they are not obsolete, but their application will become more limited and focused. One way or another, they’re going to have to operate in more permissive environments – either in warzones where extensive anti-ship threats are less pervasive, or in warzones where the anti-ship threat from all domains has been degraded enough to allow them to come in and support the forces that are already doing battle. Carriers still have a use, but more and bigger is not the way forward. The way forward is fewer, smaller, and more smartly used.

“Haha Missile Go ‘Woosh’”

The Navy doesn’t appear to be blind to the changing landscape in maritime warfare, which is why it’s been pushing its concept of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO). As with most military concepts, a lot of it is pedantic and inscrutable, but the basic idea of DMO is to spread ships out further rather than concentrating them in easier to find and target groups – keeping them connected and coordinated as they do so. The idea is to create targeting problems for an enemy with a large – but not infinite – number of long-range missiles of various types; to make it harder to find and fix targets and make it more difficult for them to choose where to utilize finite resources and munitions.

This is a good first step, but the Navy is doing this while still clinging to the concept of the carrier as it continues to forge ahead with the new Ford-class to replace the Nimitz (which is just as large and has been rife with problems throughout development as all recent Navy ships have been). Meanwhile, the Navy continues to debate with itself and Congress just how many ships it should have (or how many it can really afford instead of giving us all health care and forgiving my student loans – FORGIVE MY FUCKING STUDENT LOANS, JOE).

This brings us to the second half of why fewer and smaller carriers are better – aside from them just becoming more vulnerable targets that offer an adversary a lot of gain from their destruction while offering their operator less and less utility. By having fewer and smaller carriers, you free up a vast amount of resources to put into areas where you get more bang for your naval buck (or send some of that money back to us peasants to build roads, schools, hospitals, etc. but what do I know I’m just a dumb socialist).

Basically, if modern naval warfare is a glorified missile duel, you’re going to want more missile slingers, and right now carriers are taking up resources that could not only be freed up for missile-launching ships but would get more value per ship if you chose to focus on that. You could buy a larger number of smaller ships like frigates and destroyers that present a harder to find target but still have considerable firepower. This applies not just to surface ships, but also missile submarines that could fire land-attack missiles and AShMs as well as torpedoes, and are even more difficult to find in the open ocean (I could go on a whole thing here about anti-submarine warfare but just rest assured that even under the best of conditions ASW is extremely difficult to do; oh, and seeing how ASW is hard to do, maybe if carriers weren’t sucking up so much manpower and resources you could focus on more ASW ships and aircraft)

The aircraft are another part of the equation on why cutting back on carriers gets you more, because not only do you no longer have to worry about the carrier but then also about supporting the numerous aircraft that it carries with munitions, fuel, maintenance, etc. Again, that’s resources you can divert elsewhere for more effectiveness (or again, back to actually trying to improve civil society somewhat). If your carrier is so vulnerable that moving close enough to an operational area to deploy its aircraft poses too much of a risk to the carrier, then maybe you’re better off hitting whatever you would have hit with aircraft with missiles delivered by ship, land-based launchers, or long-range bombers and other aircraft that can carry missiles to a stand-off distance and then fire them and turn right back around. Maybe the aircrews and maintenance crews might be better used in another capacity rather than sailing around on an airstrip that is only useful if it risks making itself a gigantic target.

Also, while I’m always the guy who cautions people not to make Skynet real, this is an area where unmanned vehicles could play a critical role. While I’m very much against making drones that can think and operate on their own, I think a more sensible road forward in this area for all domains is “manned-machine teaming,” where you have several unmanned vehicles that respond to the orders of a human or humans in a manned system and share information between the systems. In this case, instead of having a surface action group of three manned warships, you could have one where there’s one manned warship acting as the command ship, with a handful of unmanned ships essentially acting as floating, self-propelled missile launchers. Not only does not having to have crew on board those ships help you cut back on numerous costs and feel the potential loss of a ship less, but you could also send an unmanned ship into areas that would be more of a risk for a ship with personnel on board. I’m never in favor of creating weapons that operate without any human control, but this is an area where they can act as a force multiplier.

Putting An End to “Everywhere and Nowhere”

I don’t want anyone to be under the illusion that if you just got rid of most of the Navy’s carriers and bought a bunch of ships that just fired missiles that everything would be peachy keen with the service. While that would go a long way in pushing the Navy towards what it ought to be, it is only one part of the equation. There are obviously many other issues that the Navy – as the military as a whole – struggles with. I can’t go into all of them here, but I can go into one big issue that has led the Navy to where it is today and that’s it’s the idea at the core of how it currently operates: the obsession with presence.

At the end of the Cold War with the “peace dividend” that was bought and the cutbacks and drawdowns that ensued, the Navy was faced with a difficult choice with how it would structure itself and operate going forward in the post-Cold War world. For a myriad of reasons, the choice that it ultimately made was to prioritize a global presence above all else, rather than an actual ability to fight a war at sea. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work lays this out in a piece for the U.S. Naval Institute (and while he immediately loses credibility in my book for referencing Samuel Huntington, he does make some good points). In a more ideologically aware reading of Work’s analysis, presence was seen as critical to demonstrating the Navy’s worth in a post-Cold War world without a major adversary, preserving American influence around the world by constantly being a reminder of American military might, and also potentially even deterring wars from breaking out through the constant presence of substantial military power.

Obviously, this did not work out. Countless wars have broken out since the end of the Cold War (some of them by our own doing) that were not deterred by constant U.S. Navy presence. Likewise, the degree to which the United States holds influence over the world compared to its fleeting moment of hyperpower in the 1990s is debatable. All the Navy has to show for it in return is a service pushed to the limit. A service that, despite being among the largest and best equipped navies in the world, many times seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, jumping back and forth between places like a 90s sitcom character trying to be with two dates at the same restaurant. A service that, despite having several hundred thousand personnel, runs them ragged to the point they’re crashing ships into one another out of exhaustion and poor training. The U.S. Navy may not be to the point of the Russian Navy (yet), but on a long enough timeline without serious change it’s not hard to imagine it getting there.

One of my oft returned to concepts is the idea that empire is actually toxic to a military. Maintaining empire by necessity requires putting pressure and stress on a military that continuously erodes its effectiveness, professional culture, morale, equipment, and more. You see this in the case of the Navy’s focus on presence in the post-Cold War era, scattering its ships to the four corners of the globe, often with a mission no more specific than “to be there.” Now, even as it’s faced with a potentially serious challenger in the form of the ever-growing Chinese PLAN, the Navy still has this presence mindset that hinders it from returning to that original purpose of fighting a war at and from the sea. It just further reinforces that not having an imperial mindset and approach to the rest of the world is not only betters for the soul ideologically, but also sound military sense if you want a more healthy and capable force.

If you’re not constantly focused on having a ship in every single potential crisis zone or place you have an interest throughout the world, when the shit hits the fan and a crisis becomes serious enough to risk escalating into a war, you may actually have ships available with crews that might actually be well rested and know how to do their jobs that can respond to that crisis and be ready to fight. If you’re not focused on presence for the sake of influence, when an ally or partner comes under attack by an aggressor and requests help, you’ll actually have a naval force that is in good enough shape to assist them. Maybe its overly simplistic to me as someone who’s never served in uniform or taken a class at the Naval War College, but maybe also its just hard to wrap your head around these ideas when you’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid your entire career.

As much as I’m sure many on the Naval staff would love a return to the 600 ship Navy of the Cold War, that’s never going to happen even with the most generous of defense budgets under the current system – let alone under the system we’d rather have in place. Accepting that, then the Navy needs to step back from the obsession of being everywhere at once if it wants to be in one or two places when its really needed and then be able to actually engage in combat to a useful end. It needs to accept that it cannot on its own act as a deterrent and that at the end of the day its role is to fight a war when it is called upon to do so.

Semper Fortis (but for real this time)

A navy will remain a crucial component of the military even under a democratic socialist system, if we want to carry out the strategy I outlined in part one and actually military exercise solidarity with other peoples around the globe. A navy is necessary not only to keep hostile forces from the controlling the seas, but to support forces operating on land and in the air. An effective navy carrying out our strategy not only needs to divest of less useful systems and invest in more practical, efficient, and effective ones, but needs to completely reconceptualize what its purpose is. It needs to not only refocus on fighting a war at sea, but rethink the entire reason its fighting a war at sea to begin with. It needs to understand it is doing so not for the sake of its own influence or the influence of a particular country or flag, but to do so in order to play its part in protecting others that are in danger when war erupts. To ensure that the supplies necessary not only to fighting war but maintaining peace and life are able to flow freely.

For centuries, Navies have been seen by empires as critical to guarding the lifelines of capital and imperial power. For ensuring that an unbroken connection was maintained between the imperial core and its various markets and dependencies. That perception must be broken and replaced with a different concept of lifelines. That the Navy is instead responsible for guarding the lifelines that link together working peoples that are dedicated to building freer and more just societies for all who live in them. Lifelines that allow peoples and nations that are working to create a better world for themselves and others to defend one another from forces of reaction and authoritarianism. In this hypothetical better world that I imagine to keep myself from going batshit crazy, navies must play the role of helping to keep empire and fascism at bay, not working as an active agent to facilitate their spread. As with our perception of war in general as leftists, we have to flip the narrative on the Navy. We have to make sure that when warships put to sea, they’re doing so to defend others, not to facilitate their oppression.

Ok, alright, I’m dipping into the purple prose a bit too much now so I think it’s time to wrap this one up as I’m already over 4000 words (constantly setting new personal “bests” with these). In our next installment in this series, we’ll be looking at the Navy’s own private Army – the United States Marine Corps, and hoo boy I hope you’re not too attached to them because I have plans (don’t worry Marines, the plans I have for you are much like my plans for carriers; you’ll still be around, there’ll just be much, MUCH fewer of you). Also, if you thought I forget about amphibious assault ships in my rant on carriers – that’s where I’m gonna cover them. For now, though, anchors aweigh on my end. Until next time, stay safe out there, folks.

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