The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 6 Jan 2026The year may have changed, familiar faces come and go, but some things remain the same. The POW issue continues to dominate and frustrate armistice talks, the fear of an expanded war in Asia re-emerges, and the snow remains cold. The war found no end and no pause in either 1950 or 1951, but third time’s the charm, surely?
00:00 Intro
00:29 Recap
01:24 Britain and the US
06:49 The US Proposal
10:57 The Slave Trade?
12:12 Summary
13:35 Conclusion
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January 7, 2026
The Korean War Week 81: Ridgway Admits the UN is Little Threat! – January 6, 1952
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January 6, 2026
Considering the Venezuelan operation at D+3
CDR Salamander has some (guarded) thoughts on the recent operation to extract Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, which was accomplished with no significant American casualties (although some reports say a large number of Cuban troops were killed or wounded on the other side):
Image from CDR Salamander
If you didn’t get a chance to listen to Sunday’s Midrats Podcast with Mark and me, give it a listen to hear a broader discussion with some additional detail thrown in. Today is going to be a bit different.
We are still just ~72-hours from the events, so there is an order of magnitude more of what we don’t know than we do, but some items are breaking out from the fog.
On yesterday’s podcast, I briefly mentioned a framework for discussion that I think is helpful to flesh out here — an addendum to my comments on the podcast, so to speak.
As we stand here the Monday after the events of Friday night/Saturday morning, what are some clear items of consideration at the Tactical, Operational, Strategic, and Political levels?
Let’s do Top-3s at D+3:
Tactical:
- No other military on the planet has the Joint/Combined Arms/Interagency capability to successfully execute this mission. None. This is a unique national capability that we should carefully nurture, steward, and improve on.
- The death of rotary wing (RW) aircraft has been greatly exaggerated. As I have written often over the last two decades, one has to examine closely the lessons of small and medium sized wars, as they will inform you what will be needed in the next large war. That is the gold standard … but you have to be careful. Some lessons look to have broader implications, but they may be muted or amplified by the location and venue you are looking at. Yes, flying large groups of RW in the Ukraine theater is a questionable proposition, but that is because they are Ukrainian and Russian RW being flown by Ukrainians and Russians. American RW aircraft have training, equipment, and capabilities that others do not have. It was not by luck that none of our RW operating deep in Venezuela were shot down. Make no mistake, without a diverse, robust, and numerous RW capabilities, the Maduro Raid would not have been possible.
- Unmanned systems are A tool, not THE tool. I agree, the use and utility of unmanned systems in the Russo-Ukrainian War has expanded at an astronomical rate, but in spite of what some may be trying to sell you, the future is not “All U_V All the Time“. Unmanned systems are like aircraft, submarines, and body armor — they get added to the tool box. The more diverse the toolbox, the more capable your military. That last comment refers to a lot more than unmanned systems.
Operational:
- Sovereign Bases Matter: While we have seen other friendly nations let us use their facilities, the reanimation of Roosevelt Roads and the general Guamification of Puerto Rico over the last few months is a wake-up call to everyone. Serious policy makers need to put their accountants in the back of the room where they belong. A global power rides along support structures few see and understand at peace until they are needed at war but gone. Having a wide variety of inefficient and underutilized bases and facilities scattered around is a feature, not a bug. The future is unknown and an impatient lover. Do not test, taunt, or take her for granted. Reactivate more bases. Play hard ball with the UK about Diego Garcia. Pray for peace.
- America Must be the Dominate Maritime & Aerospace Power in Order to be a Global Power: I don’t mind saying, “I told you so“. so I will happily say, I told you so. Yes, we need land power, but most of it should be light, expeditionary and exemplary. The balance of heavy maneuver forces should be based on US territory and the balance in the Reserve and National Guard. Everyone who went feet dry in Venezuela came back home because the U.S.A. dominated the air, electromagnetic spectrum, and the sea to such a degree that any challenge to that dominance was a death sentence to the challenger.
- Few Things are More Useful Than a Large Deck Amphib: Let any person who poo-poos the USMC demanding more amphibious ships, or worse, bleats out how they are obsolete, be tarred, feathered, and run out on a rail. All hail the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7). IYKYK.
Alexander Brown comments on the raid at Without Diminishment:
You can always find a cadre of pro-communist “fellow travellers” in any western nation … we just seem to have more of them than anyone else.
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way: American regime-change efforts, on occasion, tend to age like oxidized guacamole. The teenage version of this writer remembers well the empty sugar-high of “Shock and Awe”.
A powerful aphrodisiac gets released when Things Actually Happen. To ignore the impacts of tribalism and the potential for another misappropriation of neocon bloodlust would be to ignore another elephant. But enough on the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea.
We may be as cold as Minnesota, with its miniature Horn of Africa engulfed in a real “learing” not “learning” opportunity after years of runaway fraud, but as Canadians, we should surely be looking inward at our own failings on the home front, our lack of leadership in foreign affairs, the hate we allow to fester in our streets, and the cozy relationships we foster with the most dubious of allies. But of course, we’re not.
Nicolas Maduro, one of the world’s great monsters, was “black-bagged” and perp-walked along with his wife yesterday, following a Swiss-watch-precise Delta op that only our neighbours to the south are capable of.
Let us not stand on the false pretence of a violation of “international law”: Maduro’s tenure was defined by a series of widely condemned and fraudulent electoral processes designed to ensure his grip on power. His track record includes a 2018 presidential election, dismissed by the international community as neither free nor fair. He banned major opposition parties and jailed or exiled key opponents.
This pattern escalated during the 2024 presidential election, where, despite independent tallies showing a landslide victory for opposition candidate Edmundo González, the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner without the data to prove it. The 2024 process was further marred by the disqualification of popular leader María Corina Machado, the intimidation of voters by paramilitary “collectives”, and a brutal post-election crackdown, known as “Operation Tun Tun”, that resulted in over 2,000 arrests and dozens of deaths.
And yet, as Hugo Chávez’s mausoleum smoulders, hundreds of thousands continue to flood the streets to celebrate, and the experts of “experts say” journey down from ivory towers to shoot the wounded and feign retroactive understanding of an op that took most by surprise, perhaps nowhere has the oppositional-defiant kvetching been louder than inside Canada’s elite Liberal circles, so much so that you almost have to applaud the utter lack of self-awareness and the sheer selfishness of it all.
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January 5, 2026
QotD: Nitpicking the opening battle in Gladiator (2000)
This week, we’re going to take a close look at arguably the most famous and recognizable Roman battle sequence in film: the iconic opening battle from Gladiator (2000).1 Despite being a relatively short sequence (about ten minutes), there’s actually enough to talk about here that we’re going to split it over two weeks, talking about the setup – the battlefield, army composition, equipment and battle plan – this week and then the actual conduct of the battle next week.
The iconic opening battle, set in the Marcomannic Wars (166-180) during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180) dominates the pop-cultural reference points for the Roman army in battle and you can see its heavy influence in things like how the Total War series presents Roman armies (particularly in trailers and other promotional material). Students and enthusiasts alike will often cite this sequence as the thing which sparked their interest in the Roman army. It is hard to overstate how pervasive its influence is in the public imagination of what the Roman army, particularly of the imperial period, was like, especially as its style is imitated by later pop culture works.
Which is why it is so unfortunate that it is such a deceptive historical mess. This sequence in particular is a banner example of what I’ve termed elsewhere the “perils of historical verisimilitude“, the habit of historically based popular-culture works including what we might think of as fake signifiers of research, things that seem historically grounded rather than being historically grounded, as a way to cheaply cash in on the cachet that an actually grounded representation gets.
Gladiator actually provides a perfect metaphor for this: its main character’s name. Russell Crowe proudly informs us he is, “Maximus Decimus Meridius”, a name that certainly sounds suitably Roman, picking up the three-part name with that standard second declension -us ending. It sounds like it could be a real name – if you didn’t know Latin you would probably assume that it could be a real Roman name. But, as we’ve noted, it isn’t a Roman name and in fact gets nearly all of the Roman naming conventions wrong: Roman names are ordered as praenomen, nomen and cognomen, with the nomen indicating one’s gens (“clan” more or less) and the praenomen selected from just a couple dozen common personal names. Decimus is one of those two-dozen common praenomina (which also means it is never going to show up as the name of a gens), so it ought to go first as it is actually his personal name. Meanwhile Maximus (“the greatest”) is very much not one of those roughly two-dozen praenomina, instead being always cognomen (essentially a nickname). Finally Meridius isn’t a Latin word at all (so it can’t be a praenomen personal name nor a cognomen nickname),2 meaning it has to be the nomen (referencing a fictive gens Meridia). Every part of his name is wrong and it should read Decimus Meridius Maximus.
It sounds just right enough to fool your average viewer, while being entirely wrong. It is “truthy” rather than true – verisimilitudinous (like truth), rather than veristic (realistic, true).
In the case of Gladiator‘s opening battle scene, the attention is on creating verisimilitude (without fidelity, as we’ll see) in the visual elements of the sequence and only the visual elements. The visual representation of a Roman army – the equipment in particular – is heavily based on the Column of Trajan (including replicating the Column’s own deceptions) and since that is the one thing a viewer can easily check, that verisimilitude leads a lot of viewers to conclude that the entire sequence is much more historically grounded than it is. They take their cues from the one thing they can judge – “do these fellows wear that strange armor I saw on that picture of a Roman column?” – and assume everything is about as well researched, when in fact none of it is.
Instead, apart from the equipment – which has its own deep flaws – this is a sequence that bears almost no resemblance to the way Roman armies fought and expected to win their battles. The Roman army in this sequence has the wrong composition, is deployed incorrectly, uses the wrong tactics, has the wrong theory of victory and employs the wrong weapons and then employs them incorrectly. Perhaps most importantly the sequence suggests an oddly cavalry-and-archer focused Roman army which is simply not how the Romans in this period expected to win their battles.
Now I want to be clear here that this isn’t a review of the film Gladiator (2000) or my opinion in general on the film. To be honest, unlike the recent sequel, I enjoy Gladiator even though it is historical gibberish. So I am not telling you that you aren’t “allowed” to like Gladiator, but rather simply that, despite appearances, it is historical gibberish, particularly this opening scene, which I often find folks who are aware the rest of the film is historical gibberish nevertheless assume this opening scene is at least somewhat grounded. It is not.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator’s Iconic Opening Battle, Part I”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2025-06-06.
- I’d think its only real rival for prominence would be Spartacus (1960).
- If you are wondering, “but then were does our word “meridian” come from, the answer is from Latin meridies, meaning “midday”.
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January 4, 2026
Venezuela in the news
Tim Worstall explains that despite the usual suspects’ claims that “it’s all about the oil!”, it actually isn’t very much about the oil at all:
Trump taking — kidnapping, arresting, to taste — Maduro and his wife simply isn’t about the oil business. Please note, this also isn’t about whether it’s a good idea or not although I’ll admit to thinking that it’s way damn cool — getting in and out of hostile territory without, so far as we know right now, a single American casualty at all? Damn cool in that military sense.
This is about the shrieking we’re getting from the usual suspects — this is all about the oil! See! Ms. Raisin is one I’ve seen online already, there are those quoting that Counterpunch article with the idiot Michael Hudson and so on.
My point is solely and only about access to that oil.
So, travel back 10 to 15 years.
Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt oil is very “heavy”. Technically it is about viscosity but think about it as “thick”. It’s more like treacle than it is like a free flowing liquid. There are also issues with sulphur but leave that alone here. It is, in the technical parlance, “cheap shit”. So bad that it has to be mixed with much lighter (and usually “sweeter”, which means less sulphur) crude oil from different oil fields so you can pump it through a pipeline or get it into a tanker.
Venezuela used to have — still could have — fields of that light and sweet oil but they ran those fields — during and after Chavez — so badly that production fell over. So, they used to actually import US crude oil to then mix with that heavy crude so they could export. They also price petrol — gasoline — so low that they cannot possibly run refineries to make their own gasoline. So, they would import the US crude, mix it, export the blend to the US and then buy back the gasoline from those US Gulf Coast refineries. This was ridiculous, of course, but you know socialists with prices and economies.
It also meant that those US Gulf Coast refineries were adapted to use that Venezuela mix. You can change the mix a refinery uses but it’s potentially costly. The more the mix changes the more the cost rises. But the important thing to note is that the only refineries within cheap shipping distance that could use the Venezuela crude efficiently were those US Gulf Coast ones. Sure, they’d be pissed if they lost access to their supplies but they could be altered to work with other crude mixes. The reliance was much more of Venezuela upon the refineries than the refineries upon Venezuela — at least, the cost of adaptation to a change was lower for the refineries.
OK, so that was the old situation.
Over this past decade and a bit the US — under both Trump and Biden — has been saying, well, you know, we don’t think much of the Venezuelan Government. We also know the only money they get is from crude oil sales, so, if we refused to take that for those Gulf Coast refineries then we could screw with Maduro. Which is what happened — sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports which, most obviously, apply to people shipping into the US and so obeying US law.
Other people who do not, or don’t have to, obey US law haven’t, wholly, been abiding by those sanctions. OK. Maybe that’s all a good idea and maybe it isn’t — not my point here at all.
We should also note that the oil fields in Venezuela actually owned/managed by Chevron, a US company, have still been allowed to ship to the US and elsewhere under US law.
One more little fact. The US is now — as a result of fracking — a net oil exporter. This is also something done under Trump I, the lifting of the ban on crude oil exports. It can still be true that maybe buying in some Venezuelan oil — or Mexican, Canadian, whatever — meets either geographic or blend desires. We’d like some really heavy sludge, for example, or maybe Canadian oil works for Wyoming (not real examples, just ideas). But in terms of total oil production and usage the US produces more than it uses now. So any decision to import is about those marginal issues of location and blend, not urgent necessity for simple crude oil. Fracking works, d’ye see?
Shaded relief map of Venezuela, 1993 (via Wikimedia Commons)
On the other hand another bunch of the usual suspects are screaming about this as a violation of international law. ESR comments on the social media site formerly known as Twitter:
Since there’s a lot of screaming about the legality of black-bagging Nicolas Maduro going on, let’s talk about the game theory of international law.
Before I do that, though, I’m going to acknowledge that the Trump administration’s legal posture doesn’t even implicate international law significantly. Their theory is that Maduro stole an election, is not the legitimate head of state of Venezuela, and is a criminal drug-cartel leader; universal jurisdiction applies.
This is why a photograph of Maduro restrained by a soldier wearing a DEA patch was released.
I’m not here to state a position on whether that legal posture is valid; I want to instead outline a game theory of the “rules-based international order”, which people are complaining has been violated because the US black-bagged a head of state.
There are two different ways to establish a framework of governing law. Most people only understand one of them, which is the imposition of law by a ruler or coalition with force dominance. I’ll call this “unitary law”.
The other mechanism is mostly only understood by a handful of libertarians; it is law as a violence-minimizing equilibrium among a number of roughly equal agents playing an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game. In such settings, cooperation evolves naturally and doesn’t have to be handed down by a single ruler or coalition. I’ll call this “IPD law”.
“International law” is enforced by an uneasy combination of both mechanisms. This is more difficult to see than it should be because there’s also a lot of air and bullshit around “international law”, bullshit consisting mostly of wordcels trying to cast magic spells on people with guns.
The air and bullshit is why it’s common to say that international law is a mirage, or a fraud that only serves the interests of the strongest powers. This isn’t true: what is true is that if an international norm is not sustained by being a stable strategy in an IPD game, only force majeure by a dominant power or coalition can uphold it.
Here’s an example of a moral good that was established by unitary law of nations: the general abolition of chattel slavery, which happened because a dominant coalition of Western nations said “Fuck your sovereignty, we’re no longer tolerating this anywhere our militaries can reach.”
Here’s an example of a moral good that was accomplished by IPD law of nations: generally humane treatment of prisoners of war in armed conflicts. This didn’t develop because great powers unilaterally said “stop doing that”, it happened because even a great power at war with a minor one is exposed to effective tit-for-tat retaliation if it abuses POWs.
If you want to understand “international law”, you need to be able to disentangle three different things that claim to be international law: unitary law imposed by great powers, IPD law enforced by the threat of pain-inducing defections in an international tit-for-tat game, and wordcel bullshit.
The thing to bear in mind is just because there’s a lot of wordcel bullshit going around in “international law” doesn’t mean there isn’t a reality underneath.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer rushes to distance himself from Trump’s action, for fear that someone might possibly mistake him for a vertebrate:
Leave it to the Babylon Bee to find the appropriate framing for a news story:
Update, 6 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
January 3, 2026
Britain’s government – a modern-day Ship of Fools
On his Substack, Dr. Robert Lyman takes a break from discussing events in India and Burma during the Second World War to consider the current British government:
The 1519 title page of Sebastian Brant‘s 1494 satirical book Ship of Fools
I began life as a medievalist and often find myself instinctively going back to old texts when contemplating today’s problems. I have been forced to think much in recent days about the incompetence of our current governing class in respect of their understanding of defence and its value. More especially, their failure to understand how to use the military instruments of defence to uphold our national interest. The Ship of Fools, which first appeared in Plato’s Republic but was resurrected in Europe in the late 1400s as a metaphor for desperately poor leadership, is the perfect allegory for me. It tells a simple story that resonates with thoughtful people in every age who look on in wonderment at the idiots governing them. The story is of a ship with a crew who talk (and drink) a lot, but with their cloth ears make all the wrong decisions. The result is chaos. In the 1480s the ship in question was the Church of Rome, but the allegory is easily transportable to Britain in the early days of 2026. What on earth is going on in defence in the UK as we enter 2026? I can only surmise that in the UK at least, we are in a ship governed by fools.
I was going to start this piece by complaining that our government simply doesn’t understand Clausewitz, but I thought that this might be a little too obtuse for most politicians. But one of Clausewitz’s points about the use of military power is pertinent to our age. When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 he did so not because he had an existential hatred of Slavs, or of the Tsar. Indeed, Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I had a remarkably friendly relationship. He did it because the practice of friendly diplomacy between the two leaders had failed. Napoleon had attempted to persuade the Tsar to refuse the British trading rights in Russia’s ports. Alexander I had demurred, so Napoleon considered that the only thing left to him in his tool kit of levers to persuade Alexander to change his mind, was force. So, he marched on Moscow. We know the story and its outcome well, so I won’t rehearse it now. Using this as an example, Clausewitz was simply saying that in the hurly burly of diplomacy, war is one of the tools available to a national leader to persuade an opponent to change course. Hence, we get the oft misquoted Clausewitzian maxim that “War is the continuation of policy with other means”.
Clausewitz was correct, of course. Yet we in Britain have forgotten this, if politicians over the past three decades have really understood it. Since 1990 I am not sure we’ve had any politicians who’ve truly understood it, despite the fine words we get from successive Secretaries of State about the first priority of government being to protect its citizens, etc. This, without action to demonstrate any understanding of how to achieve the protection of our citizens, is merely St Paul’s clanging cymbal. Put frankly, we no longer have an Army, Navy or Air Force able seriously to achieve any form of influence on the European stage — let alone deter an enemy or fight a serious war — and the state of the Continuous At Sea Deterrent (CASD) is abysmal I’m told, though you wouldn’t know this from the hollow rhetoric regularly emanating from No 10. We are deluding ourselves if we think we can exercise real influence in Europe or anywhere else for that matter if we don’t have the practical means to do so.
The truth is that the cupboard is bare.
How have we got to where we are? The primary reason over the years has been the saving of money for politicians who have simply not valued investment in the hard practice of defence, unless it is in a shipyard in their constituency. The end of the Iron Curtain in 1989/90 meant, to many people in the corridors of power, that we no longer needed to bear the burden of spending 5% of GDP on defence.
But a second problem is only becoming clear to me. I hope I am wrong, but I can only conclude that we now have a government that actively hates the idea of defence, and while it will never admit it, is determined to remove it as one of its levers or instruments of power. I came across this in a meeting recently. Why do we need defence, the argument seemed to go, when we should be encouraging the international community to regulate itself by means of adherence to international laws and norms of behaviour? Should not our effort as a country be in building up these international systems and structures of law and governance (many based on the United Nations as an idea and a regulator) and rely on these to reduce the potentiality for war? Surely, building up arms simply makes war more likely, not less?
Update, 4 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
January 2, 2026
How did Ancient Romans build their roads?
Metatron
Published 2 Sept 2025Roman road construction was a marvel of ancient engineering that began in earnest around 312 BC with the famous Appian Way. The Romans developed a systematic approach that would serve their empire for centuries, creating over 250,000 miles of roads by 200 AD.
Their construction process started with careful surveying using tools called groma and chorobates to ensure straight lines and proper gradients. Roman engineers would then excavate a roadbed typically 14 to 16 feet wide, digging down 3 to 5 feet deep depending on local conditions and expected traffic. The foundation layer, called the statumen, consisted of large flat stones carefully fitted together. Above this came the rudus, a layer of crushed stone and mortar about 9 inches thick, followed by the nucleus, a finer mixture of gravel and mortar. The top surface, known as the summum dorsum, was made of large polygonal stone blocks called silex, fitted so precisely that no mortar was needed between them. These roads were built with a slight crown in the center to promote drainage, and ditches were dug alongside to carry away rainwater.
Roman construction crews, often composed of soldiers, would work in organized teams with specialized roles for quarrying stone, mixing mortar, laying foundations, and fitting the surface blocks. The entire process could take months or even years for major routes, but the result was a road surface so durable that many Roman roads remained in use well into the medieval period and beyond. Quality control was maintained through strict military discipline and the personal responsibility of engineers who literally put their names on milestone markers. By 117 AD, at the height of the empire, this road network connected Britain to the Middle East and North Africa to the Rhine frontier, facilitating trade, communication, and military movement across the known world.
#romanempire #ancientrome #romanroads
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December 31, 2025
The Royal Canadian Navy … a terrorist organization according to Iran
An unexpected post from True North Strategic Review, as Noah shares the details of a new announcement from the Islamic Republic of Iran about that well-known terrorist group known as His Majesty King Charles’s Royal Canadian Navy (RCN):
Statement from the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, via True North Strategic Review
Welp. Sometimes you wake up to the most random things imaginable. This is certainly one of them in my books.
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released a statement today officially designating the Royal Canadian Navy as a Terrorist Entity under the “Tit-for-Tat” trigger outlined in Article 7 of the Reciprocal Action Against the Declaration of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Terrorist Organization by the United States Act.
Here is the translated statement for those curious:
Since the Canadian government has declared the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is recognized as one of the pillars of the country’s official armed forces, a terrorist organization, contrary to the fundamental principles of international law, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on the principle of reciprocity and based on Article 7 of the “Reciprocal Action Against the Declaration of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Terrorist Organization by the United States” Act passed in 2019, which stipulates that “all countries that in any way comply with or support the decision of the United States of America to declare the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization shall be subject to reciprocity,” considers the Royal Canadian Navy to be subject to the aforementioned Act and its provisions, and therefore, within the framework of reciprocity, identifies and declares it as a terrorist organization.
For a bit of context, under the Reciprocal Action Against the Declaration of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Terrorist Organization by the United States Act, the Iranian government includes a clause stating that any country that supports or complies with the U.S. decision to label the IRGC as terrorists is also subject to reciprocity.
This retaliation clause is in direct response to the Canadian government’s decision last June to declare the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity. Although quite late to respond, the decision to designate the Royal Canadian Navy specifically is a curious one.
The likely scenario is that the choice was made based on operational proximity. The Royal Canadian Navy is the branch of the Canadian military most likely to physically encounter Iranian forces. They’re really the only branch that maintains a tangible, visible presence near Iranian territory. By designating the Navy specifically, Iran is creating a legal pretext to harass or target Canadian vessels in these international waters under the guise of Counter-Terrorism operations.
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The Korean War Week 80: Empty Lines and Guerrillas: X-mas ’51 in Korea! – December 30, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 30 Dec 2025It’s Christmas, 1951, and though peace on earth and goodwill to all men might have a general appeal, peace seems as far away as ever in Korea. There are, though, no large scale offensives being planned at the moment, as the frozen winter grips Korea and the peace talks drag on and on. However, just because the war between armies is quiet, doesn’t mean Korea is; anti-guerrilla operations claim lives by the thousands, and the general drudgery of the war also takes thousands of lives on both sides each and every month. Christmas in Korea is grim.
00:00 Intro
00:27 Recap
00:49 POW Lists
02:25 New Offensive
05:29 Fighting the Guerrillas
07:20 Casualty Numbers
09:04 Boatner and the 23rd
11:54 Inspections and China
13:27 Summary
13:59 Conclusion
(more…)
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Baker Pattern 1800 Rifle for Napoleonic Wars Sharpshooters
Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Aug 2025The British military decided to organize their disparate small units of riflemen into a single standardized group in 1800. The 95th Regiment – the British Rifle Corps – was founded and it was equipped with a pattern of rifle designed by one Ezekiel Baker. This was a .625 caliber rifle with a 30” long barrel and a remarkably slow 1:120” rifling twist. That rifling was deliberately chosen to balance rifle accuracy with ease of loading and it worked quite well as a compromise solution. The Baker was considered effective on individual targets to 200 yards (300 with a particular skilled marksman) and area targets out to 500 yards.
The Baker was used throughout the Napoleonic Wars and only replaced in 1838 by the Brunswick rifle. This example is one of the original 1800 pattern, modified in 1815 to replace its distinctive bayonet bar (used to fit the large short sword bayonet made for the Baker) with a typical socket bayonet lug.
BritishMuzzleLoaders playlist on the Baker: • The 1800 Baker Rifle: Two (Very) Frequent…
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December 27, 2025
QotD: The US Department of War does “The Twelve Days of Christmas”
Status of acquisitions follows:
Day 1 – Partridge in a Pear Tree:
The Army and Air Force are in the process of deciding whose area of responsibility Day 1 falls under.
Since the partridge is a bird, Air Force believes it should have the lead. Army, however, feels trees are part of the land component command’s area of responsibility.After three months of discussion and repeated OpsDeps tank sessions, a $1M study has been commissioned to decide who should lead this joint program.
Day 2 – Two Turtle Doves:
Since doves are birds, the Air Force claims responsibility. However, turtles are amphibious, so the Navy-Marine Corps team feel they should take the lead. Initial studies show that turtles and doves may have interoperability problems.Terms of reference are being coordinated for a four-year, $10M DARPA study.
Day 3 – Three French Hens:
At State Department instigation, the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs has blocked off-shore purchase of hens, from the French or anyone else.A $6M program is being developed to find an acceptable domestic alternative.
Day 4 – Four Calling Birds:
Source selection has been completed, with the contract awarded to AT&T.However, the award is being challenged by a small disadvantaged business.
Day 5 – Five Golden Rings:
No available rings meet MILSPEC for gold plating.A three-year, $5M accelerated development program has been initiated.
Day 6 – Six Geese a-Laying:
Six geese have been acquired.However, the shells of their eggs seem to be very fragile. It might have been a mistake to build the production facility on a nuclear waste dump at former Air Force base closed under BRAC.
Day 7 – Seven Swans a-Swimming:
Fourteen swans have been killed trying to get through the Navy SEAL training program.The program has been put on hold while the training procedures are reviewed to determine why the washout rate is so high.
Day 8 – Eight Maids a-Milking:
The entire class of maids a-milking training program at Aberdeen is involved in a sexual harassment suit against the Army.The program has been put on hold pending resolution of the lawsuit.
Day 9 – Nine Ladies Dancing:
Recruitment of Ladies has been halted by a lawsuit from the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Association”.Members claim they have a right to dance and wear women’s clothing as long as they’re off duty.
Day 10 – Ten Lords a-Leaping:
The ten lords have been abducted by terrorists. Congress has approved $2M in funding to conduct a rescue operation.Army Special Forces and a USMC MEU(SOC) are conducting a “NEO-off” competition for the right to rescue.
Day 11 – Eleven Pipers Piping:
The pipe contractor delivered the pipes on time. However, he thought DoD wanted smoking pipes. DoD lost the claim due to defective specifications.A $22M dollar retrofit program is in process to bring the pipes into spec.
Day 12 – Twelve Drummers Drumming:
Due to cutbacks, only six billets are available for drumming drummers. DoD is in the process of coordinating an RFP to obtain the six additional drummers by outsourcing. However, funds will not be available until FY 26.As a result of the above-mentioned programmatic delays, due to a high OPTEMPO that requires diversion of modernization funds to support current readiness, Christmas is hereby postponed until further notice.
“Old NFO Retired”, from social media courtesy of Moses Lambert.
Update, 29 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
December 26, 2025
Allied Bombing 1944 – Distraction and Destruction before Dresden
HardThrasher
Published 25 Dec 2025Hello my little Christmas puddings; today’s film covers the strategic bombing forces in WW2, what they did to support Operation Overlord, the aerial war across France and into Germany during 1944, taking out enemy formations, V1 and V2 sites, and breaking up the Nazi oil fields in the process. But all did not go according to plan … this is the inbetweeny bit from June – December 1944 and the part everyone forgets before the Bulge, Dresden and all that …
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:12 – A Word From Our Sponsor
00:03:25 – A Few Notes For New Viewers
00:04:02 – How End A War
00:06:25 – A 90 second (well 6 minutes) Recap of the story so far
00:12:15 – On With The Show
00:18:40 – The Key Players
00:20:10 – Enter Trafford Leigh-Mallory
00:24:05 – Trafford in Charge At the AEAF
00:26:15 – The Strategic Bombers Role In D-Day
00:27:29 – The Bombers As Part Of The Deception Plans
00:28:18 – Cutting Off Normandy
00:29:41 – The V1s, Poison Gas and Biological Warfare
00:37:31 – The One True Raid To End The War
00:41:50 – Self Harm in Normandy (It’s Trafford Time Again)
00:52:04 – Focus On Oil – Why, How and What Happened in 1944
01:05:00 – And on to Dresden
01:05:25 – Survivor’s Club
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The US-Mexican border
An amusing exchange on the social media site formerly known as Twitter:
Ordnance Jay Packard Esq. @OrdnancePackard
Hey @LineGoesDown, interesting your little map includes the Comancheria, a vast section of that northern green area that Mexico never set foot in because they’d get their shit pushed in by the Comanche.
It was only after the Mexican-American war that the United States put a stop to the Comanche using Mexico like an ATM.
It’s actually even funnier than that.
The reason Mexicans kept getting their shit pushed in by the Comancheria was gun control.
No, seriously. It was Spanish colonial policy to keep the population disarmed and rely entirely on deployment of the military to keep order and prevent Indian incursions. Mexico inherited this.
This was impossible. The land was vast. State capacity and the military were overstretched. The Comanches were too mobile. Result: misery and massacre.
Americans, inheriting the British colonial policy of everybody bring your own guns and form militias, didn’t suffer as badly. Raiders more often went where the soft targets were, and that meant the disarmed ones in the Mexican zone.
This is also why Alta California was so sparsely settled that Spanish and Mexican control over it was at best nominal. Anglo settlers were culturally and politically much better equipped to hold the territory, making the Mexican session eventually inevitable.
ESR, The social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2025-12-25.
Update, 28 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
December 24, 2025
The Korean War Week 79: Soviet Technology Surpasses the USA – December 23, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 23 Dec 2025Both sides finally release POW information to each other, as required by the Geneva Convention, but neither side is happy with the information, charging it either wildly incomplete or grossly mischaracterized. The Communists also refuse to allow the Red Cross in and the UN doesn’t want compulsory repatriation of POWs, but both are required under Geneva. And away from the truce tables, the Communist air power menace continues to grow, but should there be an armistice will they be allowed to rebuild air bases in North Korea?
00:00 Intro
00:38 Recap
00:58 POW Lists
05:02 Repatriation
07:52 Geoje-Do
09:01 Ambush Program
09:54 Airfields or Armistice
12:00 Communist Air Power
13:23 Summary
13:32 Conclusion
14:50 Call to Action
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December 23, 2025
How Black WWII Veterans Ignited the Civil Rights Movement – W2W 058
TimeGhost History
Published 22 Dec 2025Decades before the words Black Lives Matter existed, Black American veterans were already fighting the same battle at home. After World War II, hundreds of thousands of Black soldiers returned from the frontlines of Europe and Asia believing they had earned the rights they had defended abroad. Instead, they were met with segregation, voter suppression, police violence, and terror under Jim Crow laws.
This episode explores how Black WWII veterans became a driving force behind the early Civil Rights Movement — joining the NAACP, challenging segregation in court, organizing protests, and refusing to accept second-class citizenship in the nation they had fought to protect.
From the brutal blinding of veteran Isaac Woodard Jr., to landmark legal battles led by Thurgood Marshall, from the Journey of Reconciliation to Brown v. Board of Education, this is the story of how the fight for freedom moved from foreign battlefields to American streets, courtrooms, buses, and classrooms.
We follow the rise of mass nonviolent resistance through figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the creation of the SCLC — while also confronting the violent backlash, political resistance, and human cost that defined the struggle.
This is not just the history of civil rights legislation. It is the story of veterans who refused to stop fighting — and a reminder that equality in the United States has never been automatic, inevitable, or finished.
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