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From NATO to EUA (European Union Army)?

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1. The Historical Background

The idea of a united Europe, complete with a united European army, goes back at least as far as Napoleon. Not to mention Charlemagne a thousand years previously. In a certain way, Napoleon did in fact adopt the concept. Though he once boasted that he had an “income” of 100,000 solders a year, the Emperor was always short of manpower. Over the years the number of non-French troops who served with him ran into the hundreds of thousands. Among them were Dutchmen—the Netherlands were ruled by the Emperor’s brother, Louis, and later annexed to France—Belgians—even though, at that time, a country by that name did not yet exist—Italians, Germans, Swiss, and Poles.

Some of the men served as individuals, as the famous Swiss staff officer and military author Antoine-Henri Jomini did. Others formed units under their own officers. Some, the Poles in particular, did very well indeed. At the battle of Borodino in September 1812 Marshal Murat, Napoleon’s brother in law and the commander of his cavalry corps, encouraged a Württemberg battalion with the words, scheuss, brav Jäger, scheuss!

The spread of nationalism after 1815 made a pan-European Army all but inconceivable. Attempts to set it up had to wait until the establishment and expansion of the Waffen SS during World War II. There were some differences between Hitler, who focused on German interests, and Himmler, an incurable romantic who tended to think in terms of a Nordic race. The longer the war, though, the more both were united in the need for more and more manpower, origin and nationality be damned.

The outcome was entire divisions made of citizens of countries that were either occupied by Germany or allied with it. Including Scandinavians, Dutch, Walloons, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, and Croats. Even Muslim Bosnians were welcomed, and some arrangements made to provide them with their own halal food and Imams! Klaus-Jürgen Bremm in Die Waffen SS, Hitlers ueberschaezte Praetorianer (2018) set out to shatter the “myth” of the army in question. With limited success; in March-April 1945 the last remaining defenders of Berlin were French soldiers of the Waffen SS division Charlemagne.

The war over, some former Waffen SS soldiers, both German and foreign, with nowhere to go joined the French Foreign Legion. “The White SS,” as one of its veterans told me, not without pride, as he and his comrades called it. Another force that has long represented a European army and, in its own peculiar way, does so still.

2.Putin ante Portas

Almost seventy-five years after the end of World War II, and thirty years after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, the idea of a united European Army is back in the air. In part, that is because of the changing balance of forces. Back in 2000, with the failure to put down the Chechen rebellion of 1994-95 still fresh in people’s minds, the Russian armed forces were in a sorry state. Their equipment was out of date, so much so that some of their fighter aircraft were used to fly tourists as a means for attracting foreign currency. Their morale was as low as your living room rug, and their command structure corrupt from top to bottom.

Since then those forces, like Baron von Münchhausen, have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. The resulting change is nothing short of dramatic. Modern tanks, modern aircraft, modern missiles, modern warships and submarines, and, above all, modern electronics have been coming off the assembly lines in growing numbers. In 2014 when Russia invaded the Ukraine and occupied the Crimea, the world got a foretaste of what these forces could do (these words were written before the latest incidents at the Kerch Peninsula). Russia has also re-established its pre-1989 presence in the Mediterranean where it uses the facilities of the Syrian port of Latakia. In October 2018 the Russians mustered 300,000 men to hold the largest military maneuvers of any country since the end of the Cold War. In response, all NATO was able to do was to concentrate 50,000 troops in Norway. As President Putin himself put it, quite correctly, now that Russia has a military again no one any more thinks they can ignore its interests. As they did, for example, when the countries of Eastern Europe started joining NATO from 1999 on.

While Russia has been making a comeback American commitment to NATO has been weakening. Even at the height of the Cold War there was always the question whether Big Brother in Washington would really put New York, and of course their own hide, at risk simply to save Hamburg and Munich. After 1989 the question went into abeyance; only to re-emerge twenty- something years later. The more so because, to counter what it sees as a growing threat, the U.S has been withdrawing troops from Europe and the Middle East and transferring them to East Asia. And the more so because it now has a president who has openly expressed his contempt for Europe as well as his determination to put his own country first.
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That Europe can muster what it takes to build powerful armed forces is beyond question. Even after BREXIT the EU has a population of 440 million, about three times that of Russia. It also has a GDP of about $ 16 trillion. By comparison, Russia’s GDP of about $ 1.6 trillion appears positively beggarly. As someone said, at bottom Russia really is nothing more than a gigantic Saudi Arabia with an arms industry. The scientific, technical, logistic, administrative and military expertise is also easily available. With Putin ante portas, all that is lacking is the will.

3. Obstacles

The first, and most serious of all, obstacle is the question as to who the most dangerous opponent is. For the East Europeans, the Scandinavians and Germany it is Russia. However, for Spain and Italy it is the south; whereas for Greece it is Turkey which itself is a NATO member. Whether these fundamental differences can be overcome remains to be seen.

Second, leadership. As long as the Cold War lasted, it used to be said that the real purpose of NATO was to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. This may have displeased some people; but at any rate it meant that, thanks to their vast preponderance of force over every other individual members and, by some measures, even all of them combined, the Americans were always there to tell the rest where to go and what to do.

Now that the Americans are getting out, more or less, the problem of who will lead the hypothetical European army will become acute. Both because of its geographical position and because it is the most powerful country of all, the natural candidate is Germany. Germany, however, still has the memory of World War II to cope with. As became clear, once again, when Greece and Poland said they wanted Berlin to compensate them for their suffering during that conflict. Besides, as Marx once pointed out, when French members of the First International (1864-76) addressed the meeting they insisted on doing so in French. The rise, in many EU countries, of the “extreme” Right will not make it any easier to find a solution.

Third, it will be necessary to set up a unified command structure that will serve all the countries involved rather than each one separately. Back in World War II Germany and Italy failed to do anything of the kind, badly handicapping their conduct of the war in the Mediterranean. The Western Allies did better; in his post as commander of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force), Eisenhower once said that he did not mind anyone calling anyone a son of a bitch. What he would not tolerate was anyone calling anyone else a British son of a bitch. And the other way around, of course. Today, should the European army get off the ground, there will be entire crowds of sonofabitches, each with an ego as big as the Titanic, to cope it. Can it be done? Perhaps. Certainly it won’t be easy.

Fourth, it will be necessary to mount an effort to standardize equipment, set up a unified logistic structure, and adopt common methods and procedures of every kind. The cost will certainly run into the tens of billions, perhaps more. The following will illustrate how important, and how difficult, the problem is. Invading Russia back in 1941, the Wehrmacht used equipment, especially tanks and motor trucks, scavenged from all over Europe (mainly France and Czechoslovakia). The foreign armies fighting at the Wehrmacht’s side, including Fins, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians and Italians, also made heavy use of French and Italian equipment. Under these conditions keeping the forces supplied and operational was a nightmare. It has been estimated that, had all the forces that invaded the USSR been entirely German in terms of personnel, equipment, and supply, their fighting power would have gone up by as much as 20-25 percent. Overcoming these obstacles may well take a generation or so. Assuming, that is, they can be overcome at all.

4. Conclusion

The American Empire is folding. Between 1990 and 2018 the number of troops it maintains in Europe, Britain included, went down from about 300,000 to 65,000. The clock is ticking, the hour for setting up a European Army has struck. If the idea makes Prime Minister Theresa May and President Trump jump, then all that proves is that, their his eyes, the need to keep down not just Germany but the remaining EU countries as well remains as important as keeping the Russians out.

All the more reason to go ahead. But will the Europeans be able to gird their loins and do what has to be done? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

The Good, the Bad, and the Befuddled

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Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, New York, NY, Tim Duggan, 2018

First, the story. If the author a well-known American historian with several other books to his credit, is to be believed, there are three kinds of people in the world. At the top of the heap are the Ukrainians. No one, perhaps not even the Jews, have suffered more! First, in 1914-17, they were occupied by the Germans as part of World War I. Next came the Civil War, which was fought in Iarge part on their territory. Next came Stalin’s war on the “kulaks” which resulted in millions starving to death. Next came the horrors of another German occupation about which nothing more need to be said.

Yet somehow, amidst all this, the Ukrainians managed to preserve their pristine virtues. A nation ancient and proud, for all the tremendous losses they took they never ceased hankering for democracy, socio-economic equality, and the rule of law. And ties with the West, of course. It was this people which, faced with a Russian invasion in 2014, threw aside any existing internal divisions between Ukrainian- and Russian speakers. Like one man they rose, defending their rights. True, the small Ukrainian Army was no match for the Russian one. The good Ukrainians did, however, manage to stave off the worst. While Russia’s wicked legions, firing at women and children, did tear off and overrun the Crimea and some of their southeastern provinces, their resistance, including several months’ worth of demonstrations at Kiev’s (which Snyder consistently spells, Kyiv) man square, sufficed to convince the bad people in Moscow that, in trying to re-absorb the country, they had taken on more than they could swallow.

Next, the Russians. Snyder has comparatively little to say about the people as such; instead he focuses on their leader, Vladimir Putin, who emerges as a diabolic figure with few equals in history. A sort of Hitler without (so far) the gas chambers, one might say. Originally he was a rather mediocre KGB officer who enjoyed life in East Germany but had no special attainments to his name. Assigned to St Petersburg after the Soviet Union’s fall, somehow he managed both to enrich himself and to have himself appointed Yeltsin’s successor as president. Once in power he set up a kleptocracy that easily made him the richest man in the word (by some accounts, his pile of about $ 200 billion is twice as large as the one figures such as Warren Buffet are sitting on). On the way anyone who resisted got crushed.

Putin’s ambition is to enter history as the savior of his people. Unable to improve the quality of their lives—not only is Russia the most unequal country in the world, but it also has a low standard of living and a low life expectancy—he turned to what Snyder calls “eternity politics.” By this view, whose chief propagator used to be one Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954), it is the Russians who have always been a victim of others. Including, to mention but a few, the Mongols, the Poles, the Swedes, the French, the Germans, and, most recently, the West. The latter, using its wealth and its alleged democratic values as battering rams, has consistently sought to set them against each other and weaken them. Yet in all this it was the Russians who somehow managed to maintain their pristine virtues, including patience, endurance, and sexual purity (which, Snyder says, is why Putin has turned to denouncing and persecuting homosexuals).

Starting a thousand or go years ago, Snyder’s Putin story continues, Russians and Ukrainians have always been one people. Hence the first order of business is to restore unity and prevent any more peoples forming part of the Russian Federation from breaking away. Putin’s efforts to achieve this goal have been truly Herculean. He has had his army fire at, and invade, parts of the Ukraine, ruthlessly killing civilian men, women and children on its way. He has engaged in every kind of bribery, corruption and deceit. And he has lied, of course. So much so, in fact, as to construct an entirely imaginary world in words not only mean exactly what he and his henchmen want them to mean but have often lost all link to reality.
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While the Ukrainians are Putin’s first target they are by no means the only one. It is here that Snyder’s third kind of people, meaning those of the West, enter the picture. So far Putin has not waged open war on any Western nation. Using every one of the remaining methods at his disposal, though, he has run any number of campaigns to undermine them all. And he is succeeding, Snyder claims. Not only has Moscow become a Mecca for European “Fascists” and “extreme right wingers”—in Snyder’s view, anyone who does not scrape and bow to the tenets of political correctness is an extreme right winger—but by bombing Syria so as to produce more refugees he has weakened the position of Angela Merkel who was forced to accept them. He has even succeeded in putting his candidate, a failed real estate mogul, into the White House. Quite an achievement, one must admit.

Still following this line of thought, Westerners seem to fall into two categories. On one hand are the scoundrels. With Trump at their head they will do every- and anything to gain power and set up their own version of kleptocratic rule. On the other are hundreds of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic. Law-respecting and generally full of goodwill, they are too innocent and/or befuddled to understand what they are up against. At the time Synder wrote they still put their hope in Hillary Clinton. Clinton, however, went down to defeat. With Trump and his awful Republicans—Snyder does not try to hide his Democratic sympathies—in the saddle and the influence of European “fascist” parties growing almost by the day, things are going downhill fast. Indeed there is a real possibility that, instead of Russia becoming more like the West as many people in the early 1990s hoped, the West will become more like Russia.

Let others decide how credible this thesis is. In particular, let them ponder how good the Ukrainians (many of whom, as Snyder does not say, would have been more than happy to cooperate with Hitler in 1941-45 if only he had allowed them to do so) and how weak and deluded the West, really are. I, however, found the book fascinating in another way. It can be read as a sort of handbook for what is usually called hybrid war, what my friend Bill Lind calls fourth-generation war, and what I myself have long ago called non-trinitarian war.

In particular, the term hybrid war is misleading. As Snyder rightly says, though it may sound like war minus in reality it is war plus. Including, apart from the usual open clashes between regular armies (which, in the Ukraine, only played a relatively minor role) military operations mounted by every sort of militia, identifiable or not; assassinations, subversion, and bribery; cyberattacks aimed at every kind of hostile political organization as well as infrastructure targets such as websites, factories, electricity grids, and power plant; and, above all, propaganda. Partly generated by bots, launched both by way of the social networks and by more traditional means such as TV, that propaganda so massive as to eliminate the distinction between the real and the unreal, truth and falsehood—which, Snyder says, is just how “eternity” politics work. And so massive as to make one wonder how those who design it and spread it are able to retain their sanity among all the lies they themselves invent.

All in all, in spite of my doubts about whether the good are really as good, the bad really as bad (and clever), and the befuddled really as befuddlded, as Snyder makes them out to be, a thought-provoking work.

Bravo, Mr. Trump

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For those of you who have forgotten, it is now almost exactly six years since President Barak Obama, that left-wing, hesitant, weak, and vacillating Obama, launched his cruise missiles at Libya, thereby firing one of the first salvoes in what soon became a French and British air campaign against that country. A few months later Dictator Muammar Gadhafi was captured and killed; not that he had not richly deserved it. Leaving the stage, he took with him the last government Libya has known or is likely to know in the foreseeable future.

As the war expanded it turned into a struggle of all against all. A country whose per capita income had been about $ 11,000, which in “developing world” terms is nothing to sneeze at, literally fell apart. Uncounted thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands more forced to flee from their homes. Taking to any rickety boat they could find they poured across the Mediterranean, hoping that the Italian Navy would pick them up on the way. Sometimes it did, sometimes not. Thank you, US, thank you, France, thank you, the United Kingdom (which is not so United any more, but never mind.) The war whose flames you helped stoke is still going on. And on. And on.

Last week it was the turn of right-wing brave, confident, daring President Donald Trump—he who, unlike presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, had promised not to take the US to an unnecessary and unwinnable war—to resort to cruise missiles. The very weapons, nota bene, of which right-wing brave, confident, daring, President George Bush Jr., and his equally right-wing, brave, confident, daring, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, famously said was that all they could do was to hit a camel in the ass. In doing so Bush was referring to his own predecessor, the left-wing, hesitant, weak and vacillating President Bill Clinton who had used them in Iraq.

Syria being further away, France and Britain, too weak to play any significant role, stood on the sidelines, cheering Trump’s action and egging him on. So, of course, did Israel. The latter’s role in the conflict has been especially contemptible. Hyena-like, for years now it has been trying to push someone, anyone, into doing its dirty work for it and bring down Assad. Never mind that the alternative, namely the total collapse of government in Syria, is even worse.

All these, and many others besides, were happy to assume the high moral ground. All also willfully overlooked the fact that, when it comes to breaking the laws of war as well as engaging in sheer cruelty, there is little or nothing to choose between the warring parties in Syria. Look at the Net! Assad’s forces, long specialized in dropping dynamite-filled barrels on markets, have now graduated to gassing children as well. However, some of his enemies boast of turning people into human torches, roasting them, and killing them in all kinds of other exotic ways.
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The immediate casualties, of which there seem to have been very few, apart, the two people most affected by the American strike are Assad and Putin. Neither is exactly a kind, liberal guy, as Donald Trump notoriously is. But both have a finger—in Assad’s case, much more than a finger—in the pie. And both are determined to safeguard their interests. Nor, at any rate in Assad’s case, is it a question of interest alone. Should his forces be defeated and his government collapse, then the fate of the Alawite community to which he belongs and which in Syria numbers anything between 1.5 and 3 million people, cannot even be imagined.

For these and other reasons, it is inconceivable that the war will end in a way that will not take account of Putin’s interest, which is to re-build and maintain his country’s presence in the eastern Mediterranean. As for Assad, barring some unforeseen accident he will stay in power for as long as Putin wants him to. Putin’s immediate reaction to the American strike was to terminate military coordination with the Americans, thus making any future operations considerably more difficult. If necessary he could also make Russian troops share the bases of their dear Syrian brethren, thus rendering such operations impossible.

To be sure, Assad and Putin are bad, bad people. Though whether they are really worse than the American heroes who, in December 2016, deliberately (as they themselves say) bombed an Iraqi hospital is another question. However bad they may be, without their cooperation no solution will be found.

So bravo, Mr. Trump. Thanks partly to you, this war too will go on. And on. And on.

“We Shall Win This War, and Then We Shall Get Out.”

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No, this is not Vladimir Putin speaking. This is Winston Churchill, not long after returning to power in 1951. The context? The conflict in Malaysia, which at the time had been ongoing for three years with no end in sight. The immediate outcome? The war came to an end and the Brits left. The ultimate outcome? To this day, whenever anyone suggests that brushfire war, alias guerrilla, alias people’s war, alias low intensity war, alias nontrinitarian war, alias fourth-generation war (currently, thanks to my friend Bill Lind, the most popular term of all) is beyond the ability of modern state-owned armed forces to handle, someone else is bound to ask: but how about the British in Malaysia?

In response, let me suggest that, had Israel agreed to get out of the territories (I wish!) it could have “won” the struggle against Palestinian terrorism in twenty-four hours. But this is not what it pleases me to discuss today. It is, rather the situation in Putin’s own stamping ground, i.e. Syria.

The following is the story of the war, as far as I can make it out. It all started in May 2011 when terrorism against Assad dictatorial regime got under way. At first it was local, sporadic and uncoordinated. Later the opposition coalesced and assumed a more organized character; even so, by last count there are, or have been at one time or another, about ninety different groups fighting the regime. And even this mind-boggling number includes neither Hezbollah, nor Daesh, nor the various Kurdish militias, nor the so-called Baby Al Qaedas.

As in many similar wars (the one in the former Yugoslavia is a good example), some of the militias form coalitions, whereas others spend most of their time and energy combating each other. Some see the whole of Syria as their battlefield, others are local gangs out to keep certain regions or cities in their own power. Some are quite large (though none seems to have more than a few thousand fighters), others very small. Some are secular, others religiously-motivated.

What keeps the militias going are Saudi and Qatari money and weapons. Both the money and the weapons reach them mainly by way of Iraq a country which thanks to the U.S has ceased to be a country at all and is unable to control much of its territory. Earlier in the conflict Jordan too acted as a conduit. Later, though, the Jordanian Government, determined to look after itself first and stay out of the conflict as much as it could, all but closed this route. Bravo, King Abdullah. Well done.

In this war, as in so many other nontrinitarian ones, the largest formation on either side seems to be the reinforced brigade. Most, however, are much smaller. There is some use of tanks and much of artillery; however, on both sides most of the damage is done by lighter weapons. Including light quick-firing artillery (the kind that fires 20-30 millimeter rounds), mortars, machine guns of all calibers, antitank rockets and missiles, grenade launchers, assault rifles, and car bombs.

The most common erectile dysfunction cute-n-tiny.com acquisition de viagra remedies are related to medicines. cheapest cialis without prescription It is developed using potent herbs like khaskhas beeja, jatamansi, jatiphala, kumkuma, gokhshura and so on. Due to all the above benefits male enhancement pills act as the generico viagra on line look at this now best treatment to cure sexual dysfunction. These medicines are taken into consideration to be one of best price for sildenafil the most common issues faced by men of all ages without getting any considerable side effect. Most of Syria being an empty desert, most of the fighting takes place in and around the towns. Airpower, which the militias do not have, is used only by the Syrians and their Russian supporters. The Syrians in particular have specialized in helicopters which they use to drop explosive-filled barrels. As in so other nontrinitarian wars, often little if any distinction is made between combatants and noncombatants. That is why the number of dead is as large as it is: half a million, and counting.

In his famous work on “Protracted War” (not, as Western translations often call it, “guerrilla war”) Mao Zedong, writing from the point of view of the insurgents, divides this kind of struggle into three stages. First comes what we would call terrorism, individual attacks whose main purpose is to destabilize the government and show that it is not in control. Of necessity, such warfare does without any firm territorial base; it is at this stage, above all, that the guerrillas must be like fish swimming in the sea. The second stage is to consolidate some kind of base, usually in remote, difficult terrain that the government forces find it hard to penetrate, where the guerrillas can find refuge, train, and in general consolidate their power. The third stage is the switch to full-scale conventional war, waged against a demoralized opponents and at least partly with the aid of captured weapons and supplies.

In all this, the really critical step is finding the right moment to make the shift from the second stage to the third. Wait too long, and watch your forces becoming demoralized and perhaps disintegrating. Move too early, and you put everything you have achieved at risk. This, for example, was the error General Giap committed back in 1972. Switching from guerrilla to conventional warfare, twice he tried to launch a massive invasion of the south. On both occasions doing so left his forces exposed to US airpower which pulverized them.

Back to Syria. Until the spring of 2015 the various militias did very well. Encouraged by their success, they got to the point where they made the transition, assuming control over much of Syria in the process. By doing so, however, they changed their character and became more and more like their regular opponents. Becoming like their regular opponents, they exposed themselves to those opponents’ firepower, now directed at them not only from the ground (by the Syrian Army) but also from the air (by the Russians). Subjected to a combined conventional offensive, as at Aleppo, the various militias fought but, in the end, lost.

The recent ill-observed cease fire notwithstanding, that does not mean the struggle is over. Too many different parties are involved, of which many have not yet achieved their objectives and remain full of fight. With Assad’s forces on the upswing at the moment, fhe most likely outcome is a regression from Mao’s stage 3 back to stage 2, perhaps even stage 1. Precisely the kind of war which, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, gave the Americans as much trouble as it did.

And Putin? He seems be following Churchill, first proclaiming victory and then getting out. In other words, he knows where to stop. Isn’t that more than the Americans can say?

Guest Article: China and Iran

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by William S Lind*

President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for cabinet positions have reassured his supporters that change will be real. However, for his presidency to begin successfully, there are two countries where change is needed in his approach. Those two countries are China and Iran.

As always, to see how we should relate to any state we must begin with our own grand strategic goals. The most important of those goals should be forming an alliance of all states to confront the threat Fourth Generation war presents to the state system itself. Obviously, we want that alliance to include China and Iran; all states means precisely that. China is one of three genuine Great Powers (Britain and France have that title by courtesy). An alliance of all states is possible only if it begins with an alliance of the Great Powers. Otherwise, Great Power rivalry will undermine it from the outset. Iran is an important regional power whose cooperation against 4GW elements in the Mideast is important. At present, Iran is playing a central role in upholding the state in Syria.

This grand strategy reminds us that in any situation, the worst possible outcome for our interests is the disintegration of another state and its replacement by a stateless nursery for more 4GW elements. The U.S. foreign policy Establishment has given us that outcome in Iraq, in Libya, and, in part, in Syria. A Trump administration should do its utmost not to add to that list of failures.

In this context, Mr. Trump’s initial actions vis-a-vis China, including receiving a congratulatory phone call from the leader of Taiwan, do serve to strengthen his bargaining position with Beijing. But it is important he accept the “one China” policy, with which both the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang agree. Taiwan is an existential issue for China because of China’s history of centrifugal movements. If one province can become independent, so can others, and China would be heading back to a situation of “warring states”. That is the nightmare of every Chinese.

Because any movement of Taiwan toward independence has this implication for China, Taiwan has the highest potential for bringing about a war between China and the U.S. Such a conflict would be a disaster for both parties. But from the United States’ standpoint, it would be a lose-lose scenario. In the unlikely event the U.S. lost the war, our Great Power status would be called into question. If China lost, the result could be even worse. A defeat might destroy the legitimacy of the current Beijing government and with it the Chinese state. China could disintegrate into warring states in a huge victory for 4GW elements. We need China to be a center and source of order in the world. A defeat followed by disintegration would turn China into a vast source of disorder.

Symptoms http://robertrobb.com/mccain-and-flake-logroll-for-copper/ sildenafil pill of myofascial dysfunction include: Deep ache, tightness or tenderness in muscles Reduced range of motion of muscles and joints devoid of over-straining. Many drugs have been launched in market to deal with erectile cheapest cialis soft dysfunction. viagra cipla 20mg However, with this product, men can achieve longer erection when they use. Nevertheless, sexual activity is also expected to show fewer side-effects than the products of robertrobb.com levitra sale brand. As China resumes her historical Great Power status, we should not merely allow but encourage her to take over the job of preserving peace, order, and commerce in a growing portion of the world. China must agree that is her role, but Chinese culture puts high value on order and harmony so that should not be too difficult. In that context, if China wishes to take over the job of protecting freedom of the seas in the South China Sea and is able to do so, we should welcome it. We should have no desire to be the world’s policeman. China, like Russia and the U.S., should have her sphere of influence, again and always in the context of upholding order and the state system.

Much the same is true of Iran on a regional basis. If the U.S. and Iran were to go to war–and Mr. Trump was elected in part because he opposed avoidable wars in the Middle East–an Iranian defeat might lead to the break-up of Iran, where the Persians are not a majority of the population. As has been the case in Iraq and Libya (thank you, Hillary), a disintegration of Iran into stateless disorder would be far worse for our interests than is the present Iranian state.

From this perspective, we should accept the Iran deal negotiated by the Obama administration. It may not be ideal in its terms, but if we tear it up, we will be on course either to accept a nuclear Iran in the near future or go to war with Iran, with all the dangers therein described above. Of these three alternatives, the present deal is clearly the least bad.

The foreign policy opposite of the neo-con/Jacobin “idealism” of Hillary and President Obama is realism. It is reasonable for those of us who supported Mr. Trump to expect realism will be the basis of his foreign policy. Realism often means accepting arrangements that are less than ideal. Realists do accept them because the other plausible alternatives are worse.

In the 21st century, the worst outcome of all will be destroying another state. Whenever and wherever the question of war against a state comes up, our thinking must begin with the realization that “victory” may, indeed is likely to, yield that outcome. We, and China and Russia and Iran and all other states face real enemies in the form of non-state opponents. Let us join together in confronting those enemies rather than pursue obsolete conflicts with each other.

 

* William (“Bill”) Lind is author of the Fourth Generation Warfare Handbook. This article has been previously posted on his website, The View from Olympus.

What Should Really Worry Putin

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ppl4Have you ever been to Moscow? I have, a couple of times. What I remember best are not the great landmarks. It is the duty-free at Domodedovo airport. West-European jewelry, luxury articles, clothes, wines, and spirits. Japanese and Korean electronics. Very posh. But practically nothing made in Russia itself. About the only exceptions are matroshkas, the painted wooden dolls that fit into each other, and vodka. Lots and lots of it.

There is nothing new about this. There was a time when, throughout the world, all non-agricultural products had to be manufactured by hand. Next, at some time in the seventeenth century, industry, driven first by water, then by steam, started taking over. Once this happened the Russians, for some obscure reason that has never been explained to my satisfaction, were no longer able keep up. Enlisting foreign experts, they succeeded in building up an arms industry. Its products were often crude, but they did the job. As, for example, the World War II Yak-9 fighter and T-34 tank did. And as the Kalashnikov assault rifle famously does to the present day.

The situation with non-military Russian industrial products the situation was just the opposite. Though serviceable, more or less, they tended to be crude. As a result, they never commanded much of a foreign market. Whoever has seen an item marked, “made in Russia”? Until 1917 at any rate the Russians enjoyed an agricultural surplus, mainly wheat, which they sold in Western Europe. Come Communism, though, and that trade disappeared. Not even the collapse of the Soviet Union could repair the damage. Currently Russian agricultural imports are four times as large as its exports. This, in spite of the fact that 9 percent of the workforce is employed in agriculture and fully 25 percent of the population lives on the land. Almost the only commodities Russia produces that foreigners want to buy are oil and gas. As someone has said, first the Soviet Union and then Russia turned into a “Saudi Arabia with an arms industry.”

In terms of its armed forces, the Soviet Union during the last two decades of its existence was probably the second most powerful country on earth. By some calculations it may have been the first. These forces fed on what, at the time, was supposed to be the second or third largest GDP. But things have changed. In terms of GDP Russia now ranks tenth in the world, behind not only the old-established industrial powers but China, Brazil, and India as well. However, its armed forces are still ranked as the second or, at worst, third most powerful. That is hardly a situation that can be sustained for very long.

Particularly enlightening is the comparison with China. Starting in the 17th century Russia, when dealing with China, always did so from a position of strength, enabling it to tear off and annex huge stretches of territory. This remained true even as late as the 1970s when the Chinese, perfectly aware of their weakness, prepared to meet a possible Soviet invasion by waging a “people’s war.” Since then, by contrast, so enormous has Chinese growth been, and so weak has Russia become, that the latter is in real danger of becoming a mere appendage to the former.

Worst of all is the demographic situation. Back in 1914 every tenth person on earth was governed from the Kremlin. Russia’s population exceeded that of the United States, let alone that of every European country. That is why people talked of “the Russian steamroller.” Even as late as 1990 just over one in twenty persons was Soviet and the Soviet population exceeded that of the US 270,000,000 to 240,000,000. Since then things have changed. Currently Russia’s population is just over 140,000,000, rather less than half that of the US. Only about one in fifty persons on earth is Russian.

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Behind the decline are two World Wars in which Russia suffered greater casualties than any other country. Also, of course, Stalin’s purges which took the lives of millions, though probably not 20,000,000 as one author suggests. But there has also been at work another factor which, though it is mentioned much less often, may have been the most important of all, especially after 1945. What I mean is the Communist version of feminism.

The way Karl Marx’s friend Friedrich Engels, and, above all, the German Social-Democrat August Bebel saw it, no woman was truly free unless she worked outside the home and earned her own living. To this was added Lenin’s idea that the only way to pull the war- and revolution devastated Soviet Union of his day out of its misery was to have women work like men. Come Stalin, and millions of Russian women entered the factories (and the universities, where the Tsar did not admit them). Women drove tractors and trains. Women operated heavy mechanical equipment. Women did construction work and worked in the mines. During World War II the Soviet Union had the dubious distinction of being the only country in history where female workers formed a majority even among those employed underground. No wonder they died like flies. In return they got the rights of men and the wages of men (but only if they were as high as men in the hierarchy, which seldom happened. Neither of which, in a country like the Soviet Union, amounted to much.

The outcome was predictable. Early in the twentieth century the women of the Russian empire, 90 percent of whom lived in the countryside, were the most fertile in the world, having 6-8 children on the average. Though many children died, there still remained room for healthy demographic growth. With Lenin, Stalin and their female colleagues Nadezha Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife) and Alexandra Kollontai breathing down their necks, things changed. As women found employment outside the home, the birthrate dropped. The more so because of bad housing conditions in the cities which often forced families to share flats. The typical urban Soviet family became smaller and smaller until most counted just four persons: father, mother, child, and a live-in babushka.

The fact that contraceptives were hard to obtain and abortion the most important method of birth control only made things worse. The downward trend was not evenly distributed. Partly because they were less urbanized, partly because of social and cultural factors, the decline among the empire’s non-Slav populations was much smaller than among the ethnic Russians. By the 1980s, well over one third of the Soviet population consisted of Moslems. Finally realizing what they had done, the authorities started paddling back. Some changes were made to make the lives of working women easier. Party hacks suddenly discovered the virtues of the “traditional” Russian kitchen as a place to relax, socialize, and gossip. Too little, too late. When the War in Afghanistan essentially left the Kremlin without an army able and willing to enforce its wishes the endgame, in the form of Soviet disintegration, got under way.

Today Putin, commanding armed forces that he has succeeded in modernizing during the last fifteen years, is trying to show that his country is still a world power. A part of this effort he has stirred up trouble in the Ukraine and the Middle East (though whether his support of Assad is really more ill-advised than Obama’s attempts to topple the Syrian president is moot). He has even succeeded in raising the birth rate a little bit. But there still can be no question of reversing the overall demographic decline. Let alone of addressing the most important problem of all, i.e Russia’s chronic inability to produce industrial goods anyone wants to buy.

By all historical logic Russia, or the Russian Federation as it pleases to call itself, is doomed. The disintegration may well start with the thirty percent of the population who are not Russian. Against this historical trend, not even Putin’s attempts to shore up his country by flexing its military muscle is likely to be of much avail.

Reining in the Macho

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640px-Margot_Wahlstrom_Sveriges_EU-kommissionarIn a recent speech, Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström expressed the hope that, by adopting a “feminist foreign policy, Sweden would help rein in Mr. Putin’s “macho aggression.” It is, however, much more likely that the opposite will happen. Directly or indirectly, Putin’s macho aggression will put an end to feminism. In Sweden and abroad, the least it will do is to prevent it from spreading its tentacles more than it already Feminism is, and always has been, a peacetime luxury. Come war, or even the threat of war, and it disappears like raindrops off the back of a duck.

There are several reasons for this. It is not for nothing that, with some rare exceptions most of which merely prove the rule, women have never worn armor or uniform. Physically they are just not suitable for the task. In terms of strength (especially upper-body strength), robustness, aerobic capacity, running speed, endurance, and the ability to throw things only a few of the strongest women can keep up even with the weakest of men. To this must be added the fact that, for obvious anatomical reasons, men’s bodies are much better adapted for leading rough, filthy, unwashed lives in the field.

Here and there attempts have been made to ignore these facts by making women train as hard as men do. The outcome has been a rate of injuries much higher than that which men undergoing similar training sustained. Quite some of the injuries damaged the women’s ability to have children more or less permanently. A few proved deadly.

Partly as a result of this weakness, partly because somebody must look after hearth and children (or else waging war would be pointless to begin with), historically whenever war broke out women have remained at home. Or, else, in case the enemy was near and the opportunity still offered itself, they were evacuated as were the Athenian women in front of the Persian invasion. Staying at home, the last thing they had on their minds was feminism, here understood—and the number of different definitions is as large as, if not greater than, that of feminists—to mean the idea that women should be independent of men.

Again, there are a number of reasons for this. First, women were kept too busy doing all kinds of heavy, dirty, and sometimes dangerous work men normally do to get all kinds of ideas into their heads. Second, with the enemy ante portas even the dullest, man-hating women understood well enough that only men could protect them against conquest, subjugation, and rape (sometimes said, in my view wrongly, to be “a fate worse than death”). Third, with the men gone to the front, some never to return, women did much as they pleased in any case.

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Surely it is no accident that Sparta, the most militaristic Greek city-state of all, was also the one where women enjoyed greater freedom and more rights than in any other. Indeed this freedom and those rights may not have been altogether unconnected to the famous Spartan woman order to her son, “come back with your shield of on it.” After all, the more Spartan men were killed in action the richer Spartan women became. Aristotle claims that women ended up by owning most of Sparta’s land. Enough said.

Too, the inverse link between the occurrence of war on one hand and the spread of feminism on the other has other implications. It helps explain why women apparently enjoyed greater rights in the large, massive Hellenistic monarchies than they did during the classical period when all city-states were constantly fighting all the rest. It also explains why the shift from republic to empire was accompanied by an improvement in the status of Roman women. It is no accident that Sweden, as perhaps the world’s leading feminist state, has not engaged in even one war for the last two hundred years.

And the future? Nobody knows. Currently, in spite of intensive efforts to recruit more, only about five percent of Sweden’s uniformed personnel are female. That is considerably less than is the case in the U.K (9 percent), Russia (said to be 10 percent, though the real number may be smaller), and the U.S (15-6 percent). It is much less than the Israeli figure which, counting conscripts only, stands around 25-30 percent. Even some countries where feminism is notoriously weak, such as China (7.5 percent) have more women in their armed forces than Sweden does. From Ms. Wallström down, Swedish women seem to be more inclined to claim their “equality” and “rights” than to defend their country, and of course the rights themselves, weapon in hand, against a “macho” enemy.

Such being the case, not a person in the world, perhaps not even Ms. Wallström herself, knows what a feminist foreign policy could mean. In her speech, all she did was utter some vague phrases about the need to adopt a “soft” foreign policy and put more women in charge of it. Whether doing so will greatly impress Mr. Putin with his 850,000 active troops, ballistic missiles capable of turning much of the world into a radioactive desert, and, last not least, black judo belt, is, to say the least, a little doubtful.

Personally I can only imagine one kind of Swedish feminist foreign policy: it is called appeasement. Not to use less polite terms. I wish it much success.

The First Casualty—But Not the Last

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The first casualty of war, it has been said, is always the truth. At no time was this more true that in the Ukraine right now. In the eastern districts of the country a civil war has broken out. Stories and images that deal with it, many of them of dubious origins and contradictory, are being flashed around the world. The one certain thing is that Ukrainian government troops are involved, not too successfully if one judges by the number of helicopters that have been shot down (assuming the reports are true). Whom they are fighting is anything but clear. Judging by media reports there is more than one “separatist” militia. That in fact, is what one would expect in such a situation. But just how they differ and how they relate to each other may be unclear not only to the outside world but even to many of their own leaders.

Nor does the confusion end at this point. Russian volunteers may, or may not, be taking part in the fighting. Russia may, or may not, have withdrawn its troops from Ukraine’s frontiers (even if it did, it could easily put them back). It may or may not be providing the “separatists” with weapons and other equipment. The head of the CIA may or may not have visited Kiev. If he did, then presumably in an attempt to find out what kind of assistance the U.S can provide to the government there. “Heavily armed” American mercenaries may or may not be assisting the Ukrainian troops. Chechenian militias are said to have entered the Ukraine, presumably in an attempt to avenge themselves on the Russians who brutally suppressed their own country’s bid for independence. Yet war is an expensive business. Supposing the story is true, who pays the militiamen is another mystery—is it Iran, is it Saudi Arabia?

With the situation as confused as it is, making predictions is extremely difficult. Still, a few things may perhaps be said. First, unless some miracle happens, this is going to be a long and bloody war. There will be no end to civilian casualties, rapes, destruction, economic deprivation, and, perhaps, ethnic cleansing. Second, the war will be fought primarily on the ground rather than at sea—given the geographical facts, that is a matter of course—and in the air. One may also safely predict that the newfangled forms of war which so preoccupy American analysts in particular, such as space war and cyberwar, will only play a very minor role, if any.

Two recent examples, Syria and the former Yugoslavia, provide useful analogies. The Syrian Civil War has now lasted for over three years. As in the Ukraine, the beginnings were small. Since then the number of dead is said to have risen to 160,000, though in truth nobody knows. On one side are President Assad’s armed forces which get their equipment and perhaps other things from Moscow and Tehran. At one point they were assisted by Hezbollah troops coming from Lebanon, though whether the latter are still involved on any scale is not clear. Arrayed against them are any number of militias, some “liberal”—supposing that term can be applied to any Arab group or country—others Islamic. The latter are joined by volunteers originating not only in the Arab world but in Islamic communities resident in various Western countries. British Moslems, or Moslem Brits, are said to have a particularly ferocious reputation. Many militiamen—there seem to be practically no women among the fighters—keep butchering each other even as they clash with Assad’s army. All are said to be assisted by Saudi money and American weapons reaching them by way of Jordan. How it will end, if it will end, only Allah knows.

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Another close analogy is the war in the former Yugoslavia. The war there has often been presented as if it were a question of nation—Serbs, Croats, Christian Bosnians, Moslem Bosnians, and others—fighting nation. It was that, of course, but just like the Syrian civil war it was many other things as well. Local politicians, many of them veterans of Tito’s Communist regime, fought other local politicians. Private armies fought other private armies. Gangs fought other gangs. Many did so with a strong admixture of criminal elements with no other objective in mind than to enrich themselves by murder, kidnapping, ransom, robbery, and smuggling. Most wars are supposed to be directed from the top down; it is governments which give the orders, armies that fight, kill and die, and civilian population that pay and suffer. Not so these two. To use a useful phrase coined by a British veteran of another such war, the one in Afghanistan, they were driven, to a considerable extent, from the ground up.

Bristling with atrocities as they did and do, both wars cast doubt on the idea that the better angels are on the march. Both were and are catastrophic to the countries in which they were fought. In the end, the Yugoslav war was resolved without spilling over into other countries. In spite of some attacks by anti-Assad forces on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, so far the same applies to Syria. It is here that the situation in the Ukraine may develop in a different way. Should ethnic Russians in the Ukraine start dying in large numbers, then Mr. Putin may have no choice but to intervene even against his will. His forces, which are far stronger than any the Ukraine can mount, should be able to overrun the disputed provinces in a matter of weeks, perhaps less. The question is, what comes next? If they succeed in imposing peace and setting up some puppet government, well and good. If not, then just as the War in Afghanistan helped bring about the collapse of the former Soviet Union so the one in the Ukraine may bring about that of the Russian Federation.

That Federation in turn already contains about 32 million non-Russian people not all of whom are happy to be governed from Moscow. Should some of them try to use the opportunity to liberate themselves, then the first casualty would hardly be the last. In this connection it is worth recalling that rarely has an empire collapsed without massive bloodshed. However much many people in Moscow may detest Mr. Gorbachev, the former Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party, his ability to avoid such bloodshed is one achievement history will remember him for.

The question is, will Mr. Putin be able to follow in his footsteps?