Real Time History
Published 4 Aug 2023Since the inception of the nuclear bomb, military strategists have tried to figure out how to use them best. During the Cold War, this led to two very different doctrines but on both sides of the Iron Curtain the military wasn’t sure if you could actually win Nuclear War.
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August 5, 2023
Tempting Armageddon: Soviet vs. NATO Nuclear Strategy
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July 17, 2023
Canada has been one of the biggest freeloaders in NATO for more than 40 years
From the weekend Dispatch from the editors of The Line, some indication that even the American legacy media are tired of Canada’s generations-long peace dividend freeloading at the expense of our allies:
American media doesn’t often notice Canada, and as much as Canadians like to whinge about being ignored, the lack of interest in our affairs from south of the border is usually a good thing. If you’re looking for a rule of thumb here, it’s this: attention from the Americans is almost always negative.
A case in point this week was an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, headlined “Canada is a military free-rider in NATO”. The subhed was “Ottawa still spends only a pathetic 1.38% of GDP on defense”. The editorial makes a number of points almost all of which will be familiar to readers of the Line, which are all variations of: Canada shirks its NATO commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence, while engaging in relentless virtue signalling and moral preening, both domestically and to its allies. It treats national defence as social project, while doing little to nothing in the way of actually projecting the power that is needed to defend the values it purports to advance.
There are some absolutely killer lines in the editorial, beginning with the lede: “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in Lithuania this week for the annual NATO summit, but it’s too bad there wasn’t a junior table where he could sit.” A few paragraphs later: “Last week Ottawa put in its two cents against cluster munitions. But asking its citizens to meet their actual obligations to the cause of freedom is apparently too much to ask.” And then: “Nowadays Ottawa can be counted on to ‘fight’ for human rights, which is to say that it talks a lot about them.”
Again, for anyone paying attention here in Canada, these are not new arguments. But the editorial does add one twist at the end, suggesting that if Canada can’t be bothered keeping its NATO commitments, then perhaps it should be kicked out of the G7 and replaced by a country willing to play a leadership role. They suggest Poland as a possibility.
Reaction in Canada has been surprisingly muted. On our own social media feeds, we noted a lot of rather sad attempts at dismissing the editorial — the paper is a Rupert Murdoch owned rag; this is Trumpist nonsense; Europeans juice their defence spending through useless mandatory service requirements. But curiously, we didn’t see anyone try to pull a Julie Dzerowicz and argue that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Canada is actually punching above its weight in NATO.
Look, some of us here at The Line have been reading harsh editorials on Canada’s defence spending for decades. (We’ve written a few, too!) And we’ve never seen anything remotely this harsh from an American outlet. This is absolutely devastating stuff, and it can’t be simply shrugged off because of the source.
A bit of history: In 1995, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial calling Canada “an honorary member of the Third World” in an editorial that also referred to the Canadian dollar as the “northern peso”. This was in response to Canada’s national debt and tax rates hitting unsustainable levels. We were an economic basket case, and the Americans were starting to notice.
Lots of Canadian commentators dismissed the editorial on the grounds that the WSJ was just pushing the supposedly-discredited Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney “neoliberal” agenda. But later that year the Chrétien government, with Paul Martin as finance minister, introduced one of the most significant budgets in Canadian history. They slashed federal spending in ways not seen since the end of the Second World War, slashed the public service, gutted the department of defence. But three years later they had balanced the budget, inaugurating an extended period of federal fiscal responsibility that lasted until the election of the Trudeau Liberals in 2015.
The point is not that there’s a cause and effect here — Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin didn’t sit down and go “oh shit, the Journal has weighed in, we have to do something”. It’s that when serious American media get around to noticing stuff about Canada, it is usually because the stuff they are noticing has become such a problem for other countries that our national Emperor’s New Clothes routine is no longer tenable. It is a sign that things have to change, and quickly.
Remember, the Liberal government doesn’t deny that Canada is a NATO laggard and a free rider on defence. Justin Trudeau has admitted as much, both publicly and privately. But up till now, his attitude has been to sort of smirk at the Americans, give his usually smarmy shrug, and say “what are you going to do about it?”
What the Wall Street Journal editorial does is suggest that there could be real consequences for our professed indigence. It is one thing to be left out of AUKUS, which the Liberals continue to falsely characterize as a submarine procurement deal. Getting kicked out of the G7 would something else entirely — it’s the sort of thing the sorts of people who vote Liberal tend to care about.
Canada’s current attitude to collective defence is not sustainable. Our allies have noticed. Either we change, or our allies will change things for us.
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July 14, 2023
MG-3: Germany Modernizes the Classic MG-42
Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Apr 2023When the Bundeswehr was formed, it chose to simply continue using the MG42 as its standard GPMG. This was initially done by converting older MG42s to 7.62x51mm NATO as the MG1 (adopted in 1958), but progressed to production of a brand new version of the gun by Rheinmetall (adopted in 1968). The MG3 included improvements to the belt feed system, added integral antiaircraft sights, and allowed a rate of fire between 700 and 1300 rpm depending on the choice in bolt, buffer and booster. It was the standard German MG until finally being replaced by the MG5 in 2012 — and it is/was in use by nearly 4 dozen other countries as well. Today we are going to compare this transferrable, C&R MG3 to an original MG42 to see the improvements that were made.
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July 13, 2023
“… if Ukraine were to join NATO in the middle of a war, then congrats – most of Europe and North America are at war”
As I’ve said several times, I have great sympathy for ordinary Ukrainians caught up in a war not of their making, but I’m not a fan of the awesomely corrupt Ukrainian government. NATO nations providing weapons, ammunition, and training is fine, but in no way is Ukraine ready to become a member of the alliance and will not be until after this war is over and they conduct a very significant set of anti-corruption reforms in their national government. CDR Salamander points out the insanity of western pundits demanding that NATO add Ukraine to the alliance in the middle of a major war:
I understand the desire for Ukraine — and others for that matter — to be part of NATO. I also understand why the frontline states in Central Europe such as the Baltics republics and Visegrad Group would like Ukraine in as well. Defense in depth and long fronts are a thing.
As much as I can sympathize with the above, I also understand the reasons that Ukraine and other nations may never be right for NATO membership, or at best be a decade or two out. Single points of failure triggers to another world war — where every new member state increases the aggregate risk to all members — is not a minor thing to consider.
There is also the very real fact that Ukraine is in a war right now, for her an existential war with Russia. This CNN article is a perfect example of some of the absolutely foolish questions people are even considering right now. I’m not even going to quote from it as there are dozens like it out as the NATO summit is going on. It is a waste of your time.
You don’t need to be an international lawyer to understand that if Ukraine were to join NATO in the middle of a war, then congrats — most of Europe and North America are at war. As history tells us, when Europe and North America goes to war, eventually the world joins in.
For today’s post, I’d like to pull some quotes from a superb Financial Times article, NATO’s dilemma: what to do about Ukraine’s bid to join?
Membership represents the long-term security that Kyiv wants and was promised 15 years ago. But Russia’s war has complicated things
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy strides into Nato’s annual summit in Vilnius on Wednesday, his country will have been fighting a full-scale war of survival against Russia for 503 days.
2008, in the last year of the Bush-43 administration. The year it looked like we had Iraq stabilized yet were already planning to take the keys in Afghanistan back from NATO after the alliance culminated in the summer of 2007.
The year of imperial overreach in denial;
It was over breakfast in Bucharest in 2008 that the seeds of Nato’s current dilemma were sown.
At an early morning meeting on the second day of the alliance’s summit that year, then secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer met with US president George W Bush and his French and German counterparts Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel.
The outcome of that breakfast, and a result of Merkel softening her opposition to Bush’s proposal to offer membership to Ukraine and Georgia, was a statement by the entire Nato alliance.
Both countries “will become members of Nato”, it said, without providing a timeline. That declaration, at the same time both unequivocal and non-committal, was hailed as a major achievement. It has since sunk into infamy.
Amazing how people forget that other nations get a vote. Your actions will cause reactions by those who either think they will benefit from or be endangered by them. Roll that simple context in to the 1,000 year record of people west of the Vistula misreading Russia and you have this;
Four months later Putin’s tanks rolled into northern Georgia. In 2014 his special forces annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Nato, as Putin knew well, refuses to accept new members with “frozen conflict” on their territory. Aside from condemnatory rhetoric, Nato did little to punish Moscow. Putin, who had been present at the Bucharest summit as a guest, had called Nato’s bluff.
Putin was right. No one will join NATO who has border disputes or are best known for their globe-spanning corruption.
NATO and the USA’s natsec “blob” was, again, wrong. Being wrong isn’t the problem. It is an imperfect business where mistakes are going to be made. The important thing is to learn from them and if the same people and institutions are perpetually wrong, you get new people and institutions to help you make decisions. That is the danger. It isn’t that we “remember everything but learn nothing” it is more that we “remember only what confirms our priors and only learn to try harder next time.”
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July 6, 2023
Ursula von der Leyen touted as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s successor
In Spiked, Fraser Myers is amazed at Ursula von der Leyen’s ability to rise above her own failures time after time:
Ursula von der Leyen with German soldiers during a visit to the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks, Augustdorf, 17 July 2014.
Photo by Dirk Vorderstraße via Wikimedia Commons.
The political career of Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has been defined by bungling and incompetence. She is deeply unpopular with voters, distrusted by colleagues and has regularly been mired in scandals. And yet, somehow, she manages to keep rising up the ranks of international politics.
Now von der Leyen has been tipped for another plum job on the global stage. According to reports in the Telegraph this week, US president Joe Biden is pushing for her to be named as secretary-general of NATO. He thinks she is best placed to replace Jens Stoltenberg when he steps down in 2024.
This ought to set off alarm bells. Whatever one thinks of NATO, there could hardly be a worse candidate to lead it than von der Leyen – especially right now, while war wages in Ukraine and NATO faces one of its most serious challenges in its 73-year existence.
Just look at her time leading the EU. She was parachuted into the role in 2019, unelected, over the heads of European citizens. She was a singularly unimpressive candidate. In fact, some argue that this was why she was selected. “When EU leaders picked von der Leyen … they deliberately eschewed candidates with greater experience, charisma or cunning”, according to a Bloomberg report. The European Council apparently wanted a Commission leader that it could easily push around. In the end, despite being the only candidate, she managed to persuade just nine MEPs to back her in the job.
MEPs were right to be sceptical. Her incompetence became all too clear when she faced her first major challenge as president – the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021. While von der Leyen boasted of taking “personal charge” of the EU’s vaccination programme, the rollout was infamously slow, lagging behind the rest of the world. At the time, fellow commissioners, civil servants and other officials were openly venting their distress with her leadership.
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June 22, 2023
CDR Salamander’s proposal to “encourage” NATO countries to meet or exceed their agreed defence targets
Canada has been a notorious defence freeloader since the first Trudeau government took office in 1968. Every Canadian government since then — until the current government started telling our allies we had no intention of meeting our treaty commitments — has made more-or-less sincere noises about getting back to the 2% of GDP minimum defence budget and none have done much to make it happen (we’re around 1.39% at the moment). Several years ago, CDR Salamander proposed a new way to allocate NATO leadership roles according to how close to the minimum each member country has managed to get, and it’s surprising that something of the sort hasn’t already been implemented:
It should bring to the front that NATO can no longer allow unserious nations to play like they are anything but security free-riders. They need to contribute their fair share or pay some consequence. Alliances have benefits and responsibilities. You should not have one without the other.
While percentage of GDP is an imperfect measure of contribution, it is better than all the other ones. It is as simple benchmark of national effort.
As these are the best numbers we have, let’s look at 2021 and then forward.
It is amazing that after all Russia has shown Western Europe — both of its nature and the nature of modern warfare — that so many of our NATO allies continue to slow walk defense spending, doing the very minimum to be a full and fair partner in the alliance.
Russian victory — however they define it — or Russian defeat — however Ukraine defines it – will not change the geography or nature of Russia. She is not going anywhere.
[…]
There is so much deferred spending from our free-riding European allies.
Between 1999 and 2021, EU combined defence spending increased by 20%, according to reports by the European Defence Agency. That compares with a 66% increase by the US, and 292% by Russia and 592% by China, over the same period.
“Out years” are where dragons live, so anyone not on guide-slope to 2%+ by the end of 2023 — when one way or another the Russo-Ukrainian War should be over — will find someway to not get there in a wave of excuses and bluffing.
We should call their bluff.
As such, and this is generous, we need to finally pursue PLAN SALAMANDER for NATO “Flags-to-Post” that I first proposed almost six years ago.
In NATO, General and Flag Officer billets are distributed amongst nations in a rather complicated way, but this formula is controlled by NATO – and as such – can be changed.
Entering argument: take the present formula for “fair distribution” and multiply by .75 any nation that spends 1.5% to 1.99% GDP on defense. Multiply by .5 any nation that spends between 1.25% to 1.499%. Multiply by .25 1.0% to 1.240%. If you fall below 1%, you get nothing and your OF5 (Col./Capt) billets are halved.
1.25x for 2.01%-2.25%. 1.5X for 2.26%-2.75%; 1.75x for 2.76% -3.0%. 2x for +3.01%.
The math gets funky when a lot of people get over 2%, but we can refine it later. Doesn’t cost a penny and will unquestionably get the attention of those nations. Trust me on this. By January 1st, 2024 no more excuses. A small and symbolic punishment, but a good start that may be all that is needed. This is not the second half of the 20th Century any more.
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May 24, 2023
The American flagship of Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2)
CDR Salamander has thoughts on the state of the current flagship of Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2), USS James E. Williams … unhappy thoughts:
One of the most high profile alliance units is Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2).
Consisting of a half dozen or so destroyers and frigates from assorted alliance members, it cruises about refining how we work together, conducting exercises, and showing the flag around the Mediterranean and Atlantic as time and livers allow. It is also an opportunity for nations to show their allies their professionalism.
Really, for a Sailor of any nation, it is some of the best duty you can find this side of BALTOPS … but I digress. We’ll return to BALTOPS at the bottom of the post.
Because of its high profile and extended operations with alliance nations, the ships we assign to SNMG2 don’t just represent the USA as any warship that “shows the flag” does, but it imprints on the mind of military and civilian leaders in Europe the quality of the US Navy and by extension, the nation it serves.
Our opponents in the world will also see it as an indication of our general health, morale, and the respect we show our friends.
I had an interesting seat as a junior officer. A little more than a month after reporting to my first sea duty command, I found myself with a front row seat to not just Desert Shield/Storm, but to the last year or so of the Soviet Union. I then watched from the Mediterranean and Atlantic the slow decay of the now Russian naval forces through the 1990s. A common refrain was as we got a close look at them was, “Did you see the condition they’re in?”
Looks matter. With ships, even more than people, the external manifestations of poor condition are a warning of significant problems inside the skin of the ship
The Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA guided missile destroyer USS James E. Williams (DDG 95) as it was leaving Toulon, France, May 22, 2023. Yes, the ship named after a Boatswain’s Mate First Class looks like that. I am sorry BM1, we tried.
Photo from https://twitter.com/WarshipCam/status/1660740976942501893.
SNMG2 decided to honor the United States Navy by having one of its destroyers be its flagship. That’s right kiddies; that rusting eyesore is the flagship of SNMG2.
The US Navy decided that this was the warship they wanted to represent the US Navy and the nation it serves. This was an act of commission – of intent – as conscious of an act as that which ensured that in the last few years that warship was not manned, trained, equipped, or maintained at a level which would allow for basic maintenance. Even as she got ready to get underway, no one stopped her. No one tried a last minute fix. The whole evolution has an ambiance of, “Who cares. Send her.”
Don’t think the insult isn’t properly understood, if not to Congress and the American people, but to our friends and competitors. Don’t think this isn’t the talk of allied wardrooms.
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April 24, 2023
Canada won’t meet its defence spending targets, and Trudeau is totally fine saying this to our allies, if not to the public
Canadian defence freeloading has been a hallmark of Canadian government policy since 1968, and as The Line confirms in their weekend dispatch, it should be no surprise that Justin Trudeau is okay continuing his father’s basic policies:
A story we’ve been watching in recent weeks was the remarkable leak of sensitive U.S. national security documents onto the dark web, and from there, widely across social media. A young member of the Air National Guard has been arrested and now faces serious charges. News reports suggest that he had access to classified material at work and began sharing it privately with a small group of online friends, apparently simply to impress and inform them, with no broader political agenda. Some of those friends, in turn, appear to have leaked the documents further afield. It took months before anyone noticed, but once picked up by several individuals with large followings — including some who are none-too-friendly to the U.S. and Western alliance — the story exploded and the full scope of the leak was finally discovered.
This is, for the U.S., a huge embarrassment and a diplomatic nightmare. For us, it was simply a fascinating story. This week, though, we suddenly had the coveted Canadian Angle: the Washington Post claims to have reviewed one of the leaked documents, apparently prepared for the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, that assesses Canada’s military serious military deficiencies, and also reports that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has privately told fellow NATO leaders that Canada isn’t going to hit NATO’s two-per-cent-of-GDP spending target.
To wit:
“Widespread defense shortfalls hinder Canadian capabilities,” the document says, “while straining partner relationships and alliance contributions.”
The assessment, which bears the seal of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, says Germany is concerned about whether the Canadian Armed Forces can continue to aid Ukraine while meeting its NATO pledges. Turkey is “disappointed” by the Canadian military’s “refusal” to support the transport of humanitarian aid after February’s deadly earthquake there, the document says, and Haiti is “frustrated” by Ottawa’s reluctance to lead a multinational security mission to that crisis-racked nation.
Your Line editors just sort of sighed heavily and rubbed their temples when they read that. It was, to us, nothing we didn’t know already. It was actually almost some kind of a relief to know that the PM will at least say privately what he won’t admit publicly: we aren’t living up to our pledge, and don’t plan to.
The Post says that Trudeau told NATO that there won’t be much more military spending in this country until the political situation here changes. We aren’t sure if he meant the priorities of the voters or the composition of our parliament. It doesn’t matter — it’s true either way. We are disappointed, but again, in no way surprised, to see Trudeau seeing this as an issue that he’ll just accept as-is, as opposed to attempting the hard work of showing actual leadership. He’s always been more about the easy path of demonstrative gestures instead of working hard to achieve real change.
But hey. In this, he has a lot of company. The Tories under Harper were marginally better on defence, but not nearly good enough. We have little faith — next to none, really — that PM Poilievre would do any better on defence. What bums us out the most about this issue is that we recognize and even agree that the choice to neglect defence and shovel those dollars instead into other, more popular vote-buying files does indeed make political sense. It’s what the voters want. We wish it were otherwise. We’ve spent big chunks of our careers trying to change their minds. Our record to date is one of total, utter failure.
Still, never say die, right? So we’ll make this point: we understand and accept the criticism sometimes made by Canadian commentators, who argue that the two-per-cent-of-GDP target is arbitrary and somewhat meaningless. We don’t entirely agree — targets are useful, and two per cent seems reasonable. But we’d be open to an argument that Canada could still punch above its weight in the alliance, even while spending less, if we could deliver key capabilities.
But … we can’t. We probably could, once upon a time, but we can’t even do that now. The air force is a mess. The navy is a mess. The army is a disaster, and couldn’t even send Nova Scotia all the help it asked for after Hurricane Fiona. Sending a token plane or ship on a quick foreign jaunt is symbolism, not above-weight-punching. And the symbolism taps us out.
So we have to pick what we’re doing here, fellow Canucks. We can meet the two-per-cent target. We can find other ways to meaningfully contribute. Or we can do neither of those things, and admit it, but only in private. Right now, alas, we’ve chosen that third option. We see no sign that’ll be changing any time soon.
Pierre Trudeau discovered that Canadian voters are all too willing to accept “peace dividends” in the form of shorting defence spending to goose non-military spending, and few prime ministers since then have done much more than gesture vaguely at changing it. Worse, it’s also quite accepted practice for defence procurement to prioritize “regional economic benefits” over any actual military requirement, which often means Canada buys fewer items (ships, planes, helicopters, tanks, trucks, etc.) at significantly higher prices as long as there’s a shiny new plant in Quebec or New Brunswick that can be the backdrop for government ministers and party MPs to use as a backdrop during the next election campaign. Military capability barely scrapes into the bottom of the priority list on the few occasions that the government feels obligated to spend new money on the Canadian Armed Forces.
Worse, every penny of “new” spending on the military gets announced many times over before any actual cheques are issued, which helps to disguise the fact that it’s the same thing all over again — sometimes for periods stretching out into years. The Canadian military has a well-deserved reputation for keeping ancient equipment up and running for years (or decades) after all our peer nations have moved on to newer kit. It’s a tribute to the technical and maintenance skills of the units involved, but it probably absorbs far more resources to do it over replacing the stuff when it begins to wear out, and it reduces the number available to, and the combat effectiveness of, the front-line troops when they are needed.
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April 19, 2023
Time to remove US nuclear weapons from Europe?
CDR Salamander has long advocated getting the final few American “tactical” nuclear weapons off European soil and makes the case for doing it now:
It may seem like a strange thing to propose while there is the largest land war in Europe since 1945 going on, but as it is something I’ve been a supporter of for a few decades I might as well be consistent: we are long overdue to remove American nuclear weapons from Europe.
It is 2023. Just look at this map.
[…]
The Soviet Union stopped existing over three decades ago.
Even though we’ve decreased from 7,000 warheads down to 100 … there really is no reason to keep what remains in Europe.
- Gravity bombs on continental Europe – that require tactical aircraft to deliver them – are the least survivable, reliable, or timely way to deliver a nuclear weapon.
- There is no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. I don’t care what some theorist proposes to defend their pet theories, you lob one nuke an order of magnitude larger than the Hiroshima bomb and only a foolish nation would let their strategic nuclear forces stay unused and in danger.
- Gravity bombs are not a first strike weapon and are a poor second strike weapon. As such, you have to consider that the the time gap from approval to flash-boom would be so long the war would be over before your F-XX pickled their nuke over their target – even if the aircraft made it off the ground.
- If they are NATO weapons, you not only have to get NATO to approve their use, but host nation to as well … in addition to the USA. Do you really think the Russians would not leverage their influence with the useful idiots in the Euro-Green parties, former communists, and general black-block anti-nuke activists to politically of physically stop the use of the nukes, especially in BEL, NLD, DEU, and ITA? Add that to point 3 above.
- Especially with the weapons in Turkey – the risk of these bombs having a bad day due to human or natural causes is non-zero. In the days of mutually assured destruction, those non-zero odds were manageable, but there is no reasonable person in the third decade of the 21st Century who can with a straight face explain to you why any tactical, operational, or strategic use justify their presence. They deter no enemy, but puts every friend in danger.
- Look again at the map above. Exactly what target set are you going to “service” at that range (non-refueled)?
- If things go nuclear in Europe then the right weapons are either British, French, and if they must be American are sitting in a silo in CONUS, a SSBN in the Atlantic, or a B-2 in Missouri.
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March 14, 2023
Turkey has always been the awkward ally in NATO, but for how much longer?
In Strategika, Zafiris Rossidis examines the shift of Turkish sentiment away from its longstanding role in the NATO alliance and toward a more Russian-friendly and more independent stance in international affairs:
Turkish flag.
Photo by Burak Su via Wikimedia Commons.
A poll conducted in December 2022 by the Turkish company Gezici found that 72.8% of Turkish citizens polled were in favor of good relations with Russia. By comparison, nearly 90% perceive the United States as a hostile country. It also revealed that 24.2% of citizens believe that Russia is hostile, while 62.6% believe that Russia is a friendly country. Similarly, more than 60% of respondents said that Russia contributes positively to the Turkish economy.
Turkey began to distance itself from the United States as early as 2003, when it refused the passage of American troops to Iraq. In 2010, it destroyed the U.S.–Israel–Turkey triangle, breaking up with Israel. In 2011, Turkey implemented a policy in Syria that was hardly in line with U.S. interests. The final distancing took place in 2016, with the July coup, for which Turkey blamed the United States.
Turkey considers itself very important to the United States but declares that Ankara can live without Washington. This concept has become the point of departure for Turkey in its quest to reconstitute the Ottoman Empire. Minister of the Interior Süleyman Soylu declares that the Turkish government will design the new world order with the help of Allah, and Western powers will eat the dust behind almighty Turkey (December 8, 2022).
According to a RAND Corporation volume on Turkey, there are four scenarios for the future of Turkish strategic orientation: 1) Turkey will remain a difficult partner for the United States; 2) Turkey will become democratic and unite with the West; 3) Turkey will be between East and West, but have better relations with powers such as China, Iran, and Russia, than with the U.S. and the EU; and 4) Turkey will completely abandon the West.
From the evidence in the case of the Russian–Ukrainian war, Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran justify the Russian invasion since NATO and the EU have designs on their neighborhood. Above all, they are united by a common hatred for the West. They are frenemies and they know it: on the contrary, the U.S. tends to invest in frenemies as if they were true friends.
The U.S. observed the rapprochement of Turkey and Russia without renouncing the traditional alliance with Turkey, which today has no longer such importance. Turkey was useful when it was an “enemy” of the USSR and the U.S. made far too many concessions for the sake of this useful enmity. In short, there is some inertia in the modification of the principle “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, as of course “the friend of a friend is my friend”. Turkey’s role in NATO worries the U.S., as Ankara–Moscow relations have acquired some shared strategic characteristics.
?he attraction between the two countries lies in their equally authoritarian governance models and the fact that their strategic culture and operational codes bear similarities: Both countries are revisionist, aggressive, and assertive in their regions; both countries claim to be encircled, which they use as a pretext for their unilateral actions; and both countries have militarized their foreign policy, waging hybrid warfare, resorting to proxy warfare, and blackmailing countries that offer resistance. Russia and Turkey cooperate on natural gas and oil pipelines; Russia has sold weapons such as the S-400 missile system to Turkey; Russia has provided technical assistance in the construction of Turkey’s nuclear plants; the two nations have collaborated in Central Asia (i.e., Azerbaijan); they import and export each other’s commodities; and Turkey has illegally transported Russian fuel to China and Iran, thereby bypassing sanctions on Russia, to mention only a few.
But the big issue for U.S.–Turkey relations against the backdrop of the Russian–Ukrainian war has four strands: First, the issue of the important role Turkey plays in the grain export agreement, which if cancelled will create a food crisis in Africa. Second, Turkey’s blackmailing of the NATO candidacies of Sweden and Finland. Third, the Turkish application to purchase the F-16 and the possible conflict between Congress and the Biden administration over the administration’s request to grant Turkey the license to do so. Finally, Turkey’s non-adoption of NATO sanctions against Russia. The possibility of Erdoğan using a strategy of tensions with Greece (e.g., multiple violations of Greek airspace, aggressiveness in the Aegean, weaponization of immigration, threats of bombing Athens with the new “Tayfun” short-range ballistic missile) to rally the electorate around his party and detach it from any opposition — all recent polls have AKP trailing the opposition — prior to the June election is one explanation for Turkey’s behavior that is being considered by the U.S., which nonetheless is angered that Turkey is the only NATO country that has not adopted the sanctions against Russia.
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March 9, 2023
Look at Life – The Cherry Pickers (1965)
PauliosVids
Published 20 Nov 2018Following the 11th Hussars from Hanover to Coburg.
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February 25, 2023
One year into Vladimir Putin’s “Three-Day War”
Tsar Vlad launched his short, victorious war a full year ago, expecting to have the troops home by spring if not sooner. It hasn’t worked out to his timetable at all. Ukraine still stands, although it’s taken one hell of a battering in the process and drawn in more and more vocal support in the west, which has belatedly been followed by actual military supplies and equipment to replace those expended holding back the Russian forces. CDR Salamander follows up his predictions from last year on how things looked to him at that moment in time:
On the day the war started I made 7-points. Let’s review them and see how I did back on 24 FEB 22.
1. The remaining delusions about the post-Cold War security arrangements in Europe should be firmly buried. History is back and she has her Festivus pole front and center. She has some issues with us, and we’re going to hear about it.
This continues to get firmer and displayed in stark relief. All the “offsets” and “transformations” and “war is new” snake oil sold the last few decades really should not be allowed to have any public space besides to say, “I was wrong.” Rest assured, that won’t stop them — but the issues we raised over the almost 18-yrs of this blog and 14-yrs of the Midrats Podcast remain true. From the shallow magazines to the fact you never have enough large caliber guns to no war is short … we — and a lot of other people tut-tut’d for years — were correct.
2. NATO has a German problem. While all the “right people” will not shut up about how wonderful former Chancellor Angela Merkle was, people need to be very clear eyed about what a complete disaster she and the German political class have been over the last two decades. They have starved what should be continental European NATO’s most potent military into irrelevance. Her disastrous feel-good, ethno-masochistic immigration policy weakened European cohesion and fed the worst parts of European political subcultures. Yes, she made a lot of well meaning Germans feel good about themselves, but it was a sugar-high that rotted the teeth and poisoned the national metabolism. While willing to defend Europe to the last Pole and Germany to the last American, she decided to preen in her neo-pagan EuroGreen superiority onomastic politics by ditching clean nuclear power and through the complete corruption of her elite, shacked herself to Russian energy oligarchs and thus the Kremlin. Germany needs to fix herself, and NATO needs to work around her and punish her until she starts to behave like a constructive 21st Century security partner.
Germany has made great progress, but is being dragged kicking and screaming in to the 21st Century.
3. As our friend Jerry Hendrix pointed out yesterday, the moral leaders in NATO right now are the Baltic Republics and I would add Visegrad nations. You can throw Romania in there too. France will go hot and cold as she fights her desire to do the right thing for European security while at the same time nurse her 1,000 year old drive to be the premier leader of Western Europe. Serious but weaker nations will lean on a reluctant USA and limited United Kingdom … simply because — to be frank — much of the rest of the alliance is not that capable.
I think this graph tells that story well;
The front-line nations are putting their money where their existential threat is.
4. In line with #1 above, it is time for Finland at least, and probably Sweden, to join NATO. They both have a long and bloody history with the Russians and should see clearly what time it is.
Another check.
5. Ukraine waited too long to rearm. Weakened and distracted by a corrupt elite, the good parts of her nation could not get ready fast enough. After the first Russo-Ukraine war of 2014 she should have modeled the armed neutrality of Switzerland with a civilian populace trained and armed to the teeth. As we’ve discussed here before with the former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact nations, every village needs a few ATGM militia teams trained to slow any advance through their patch of land. If Ukraine can, in whole or part, survive without vassalhood, perhaps they could get there. They can only get there if they build a nation people are willing to fight and die for.
Everyone is rediscovering the utility of a good military-industrial complex that can quickly grow to scale. Amazing what the green-eye-shade accounts forced those who actually are supposed to study war to believe.
A few days ago, Dominic Sandbrook explained that the Ukraine-Russia conflict “is not complicated”:
A year ago, as Vladimir Putin launched his so-called “special military operation” to seize the Ukrainian capital, kill Volodymyr Zelenskyy and wipe much of the latter’s country from the map of Europe, who’d have imagined that the third week of February 2023 would begin with Joe Biden strolling around the streets of Kyiv in sunglasses? For that matter, who would have predicted that Mr Zelenskyy, only recently returned from his own trip to London, would be at his side — still the president of a free country, and still very much alive?
Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong. Like many, probably most Western observers, I held out little hope for Ukraine once the drums of war began to beat in earnest. A couple of days after Mr Putin’s brutal invasion began, I wrote a bullish essay looking back at Ukraine’s history of suffering and resilience. But even as I was agonising over my prose, the bleak news continued to pour in. “Now, while I have been writing, Russian tanks are rolling into the suburbs,” I wrote at one stage. Did I think they would be driven back? I didn’t. “Kyiv will rise again,” I wrote at the end. Stirring words, or so I hoped. But the person I was really trying to persuade was myself, and I didn’t succeed.
In truth, I underestimated the Ukrainian people’s resilience, their courage, their love of country. And I was wrong, too, about the Western alliance. After more than a decade of drift and inaction, from the shameful failure to respond to the seizure of Crimea to the near-criminal indifference to the suffering in Syria, I doubted whether any major Western leader would make more than a token protest about the first full-scale European invasion since the Forties. I never expected to see Finland and Sweden jump off the fence and apply for Nato membership. Nor did I imagine that Joe Biden would be so unswerving in his commitment, or so generous with US military aid. Above all, I never anticipated that Kyiv would hold out, that Kharkiv would stand or that Kherson would be retaken. As I say, it’s nice to be wrong.
It’s often said that the war in Ukraine feels like a throwback, returning us to an age when nationalistic strongmen nursed atavistic dreams of conquest, sending thousands of men to die so that they might scratch new frontiers into the soil of Europe. For all the drones and social media gimmicks, the fighting certainly feels old-fashioned: reading David Patrikarakos’s harrowing dispatch from the front line in Bakhmut, it’s impossible not to think of Passchendaele or Verdun. But for a child of the Seventies, perhaps the most old-fashioned thing of all is the spectacle of a genuinely clear-cut conflict, an unambiguous clash of right and wrong, that feels closer in spirit to the struggle against Hitler’s Germany than to most of the wars in my lifetime.
Andrew Sullivan is convinced that the war is just, but worries whether it is prudent — and he calls it not Ukraine’s but “the West’s defensive war against Russia”:
It is right and just to defend a sovereign country from attack by a much larger neighbor; to fight back against an occupying force committing war crimes on a massive scale; to oppose the logic of dictatorships and defend the foundations of democracy; to uphold a post-Cold War international order which forbids the redrawing of borders by force; to unite democratic countries in Europe against a resurgence of imperial Russia; to defang and defeat a poisonous chauvinism that despises modern freedoms for women and gay people.
It is indeed right and just. But is it prudent?
That’s the question I’m still grappling with, in a week which saw the conflict deepen and the two sides entrench their positions further. President Biden’s trip to Kyiv and his speech in Poland have heightened the stakes, turning this into a more obvious proxy war between the United States and Russia … edging gingerly but relentlessly toward something more direct.
He’s all in now: declaring that Ukraine “must triumph” and that Russia cannot win a war that the Russian leader deems existential. NATO armaments are pouring into Ukraine at an accelerating rate. The training of Ukrainian troops is happening across the Continent. Germany is sending tanks. Pressure is building on Britain to send fighter jets.
The US is ratcheting up arms production as fast as it can, while seriously depleting our own Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 155mm howitzers and ammunition, and Javelin anti-tank missile systems. These are good times for arms producers:
The Army is planning a 500% increase in artillery shell production, from 15,000 a month to 70,000, according to Army acquisition chief Doug Bush … and intends to double the production of Javelin anti-tank missiles, make roughly 33% more Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems surface-to-surface medium-range missiles a year, and produce each month a minimum of 60 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles — which were “almost not in production at all”, according to Bush.
When Ukraine’s effective military is made up almost entirely of NATO equipment, and trained by NATO forces, there surely comes a point at which claiming NATO is not actually at war with Russia gets fuzzy.
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December 1, 2022
Crisis? Which crisis?
In The Line, Matt Gurney makes the case that was NATO (and western governments in general) needs is something called “deliverology”:
I couldn’t have asked for a more topical example of exactly what I’m talking about here: the lull between realization and reaction. There were no problems with “expectations” at the top of the federal government in February [during the Freedom Convoy 2022 protests]. Everyone in a position of authority was seized with the urgency of the situation and the need for rapid action. There wasn’t any denial, doubt or incomprehension, which are the usual enemies when I write about our expectations being a problem.
February was an example of a different issue: realizing there was a crisis but not really knowing what to do about it, or whose job it was to do it, and wasting a lot of precious time trying to figure it all out. When days and even hours count, governments can’t spend weeks or months figuring out what to do. But that’s what happened during the convoys, and during COVID, and other incidents I could rattle off. Does anyone think it won’t happen again next time, whatever that threat may be?
And some version of that concern came up over and over in Halifax [at the Halifax International Security Forum]. And not just among Canadians. The world is changing very quickly and even when we recognize a problem, we aren’t moving fast enough to keep up. So on top of our expectations, we’ve got another challenge: response times. They’re just too damned long.
I hope the readers will forgive me for being a little vague in this next section; some of the conversations I’m thinking of here were in off-the-record sessions. Rather than trying to splice together any specific quote or anecdote, I’ll just wrap it all up under the theme of “There are things we should be doing now that we weren’t, and things we should have been doing a long time ago that we only started on way too late.”
An obvious example? The rush to get Europe off of Russian fossil fuels and on to either locally generated renewables or energy imports from allies and friendly nations. (If only there was a “business case” for Canada doing more. Sigh.) Another fascinating example that came up was air defences. Two decades of post-Cold-War-style thinking among the allies has led to widespread neglect among the NATO countries of air-defence weapons. Why bother? The Taliban didn’t have an air force, right?
Most countries have fighter jets and inventories of air-to-air missiles suitable for their planes. However, across the alliance, there are very few ground-based air-defence systems suited to shooting down not just attacking aircraft, but incoming cruise missiles and drones.
Drones pose a particular challenge. They fly slow and low and are highly manoeuvrable, plus they are so cheap that they can be a true asymmetrical weapon: you’ll go broke real quick firing million-dollar missiles at a drone that costs your enemy $50,000 or so. And your enemy may send a few hundred at once in a swarm that simply overwhelms your defences. It’s not that drones are unbeatable. The opposite is true: drones are easily destroyed, if you have the right defences available.
We don’t, though. Oops.
The NATO powers actually had a preview of this element of the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia during the 2020 conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, where drones were used to devastating effect. Every military affairs watcher I know sat up a bit straighter after watching what the Azeris did to Armenia, with shocking speed. Swarms of drones first killed Armenia’s air defences and then went to work on Armenian ground forces. The U.S. and NATO allies have been studying that conflict, and considering how to adapt our own strategies, for both offence and defence. But right now, nine months into the Ukraine war and two years after the conflict in the Caucasus, there still aren’t enough NATO systems available even for our own needs, let alone to share with Ukraine. Russia keeps hammering away at critical Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and the Ukrainians keep begging for help, but we have nothing to send. To be clear, a few systems have been sent to Ukraine, which include not just the weapons but the radars and computers necessary to detect and engage targets. But they can only be delivered as fast as they can be built. There is no real production pipeline here, and certainly no pre-stocked inventories in NATO armouries.
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November 29, 2022
In a dangerous and insecure world, the EU appears to feel that the greatest enemy is on the other side of the Atlantic
CDR Salamander on how the EU’s movers and shakers (i.e., mostly not democratically elected leaders) seem to have decided that their one true enemy is the United States:
If you are an American who lived on the European Continent, specifically Western Europe, you’re very familiar with an exceptionally sharp strain of anti-Americanism that resides in a significant percentage of their ruling elite – an adult version of the middle school mean girls. Though present in all nations to one degree to another, it is especially acute in Germany and France for slightly different reasons but are all working towards the same goal; degrade American influence in Europe.
The best way for this political and corporate anti-Americanism to find a lever of power is through the the trans-national and anti-democratic modern iteration of the European Union – made even more problematic with the departure of Great Britain who once played a balancing role between the Continental powers as she has for centuries.
Why primarily France and Germany? To start with, this is part of the sibling rivalry between the children of Charlemagne for primacy in Europe that has churned Europe over the last thousand years. The Anglo-Saxons on both sides of the Atlantic kept getting in the way of their return to the struggle.
Their armies under various blood-soaked leaders moved across Iberia to Moscow and back for centuries in order to be THE driver of power in influence on the continent. The European Union, once the “trade association” nose was in the tent, is now seen – fairly – as a mechanism to centralize power so The Smartest People in the Room™ no longer have pesky minor powers and – Buddha forgive – voters getting in their way. Without checks, power only seeks more power for itself. The morphing of the EU is just the latest example.
Not unlike their American counterparts who would like the USA to extract itself from foreign entanglements (NB: as I have written through the years, I am sympathetic/supportive of these efforts), many of the strongest proponents of the EU just want the USA to go home.
The Europeans, while benefiting from the WWII/Cold War leftover presence of the USA, want it to end and the influence that comes with it. If any opportunity to push back against the USA appears, they have their talking points ready to dirty up the reputation and standing of the USA. If that can be done while blaming Eurocrat failures on the USA as well, even better.
You know the Americans, citizens of that mongrel nation whose gene pool is full of religious zealots, failed revolutionaries, slaves, economic refugees, grasping second sons, criminals, and their descendants – spoiled with a continent overflowing with food, water, minerals, forests and open land they don’t even appreciate.
Loud. Fat. Pushy. Americans.
The usual snarled insults cobbled together by smug people who get much of their opinions of the USA by reading The Washington Post or The New York Times. “I know America, I read your newspapers.” That is right after, “I’ve been to America. I spent a week in DC/NYC/Boston/Chicago. I studied a semester at Brown.”
[…]
The smaller European nations don’t trust France and Germany all that much, for good historical reasons. Most of the Europeans in the “new territories” in the east like the USA. They see the Americans as a more reliable guarantee of safety from hostile powers in the East, having a few centuries of experience of the Western European Frankish tribes carving them up for fun and profit – irrespective of local desires. Collectively these nations are not that large in GDP or population – not much more than Italy (for now), but that’s OK. They have the correct geography.
If we shape this relationship correctly, we don’t have to permanently garrison this part of Europe. Poland is already establishing a new paradigm of proper levels of security investment. Once NATO’s eastern front calms down a bit, we can rotate through forces for exercises and training. Perhaps even create some combined training and logistics bases ready to scale up in case of trouble in Mordor. A template we should have put in place in Western Europe decades ago.
Reward positive behavior and let the French and Germans continue their millennium-length struggle – peaceful this time – in the west; keep them frothing in Brussels and Strasbourg while the forward-looking nations try to set up the next thousand years of Western progress in a positive direction.
Perhaps.
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November 20, 2022
Cold War echoes on the Polish-Ukrainian border
In The Line, what Matt Gurney calls a “surprise fire drill” for a potential nuclear war:
Those with any memory of the Cold War probably got a bit of a cardio workout even if they were sitting still earlier this week when Polish news sources, which were quickly matched by American ones, reported that a Russian missile had landed in Poland, killing two civilians. An armed attack by Russia, in other words, on a NATO member state, even if a likely accidental one — Russia was bombing targets in Ukraine at the time and the site of the Polish blast was quite near the border with its embattled neighbour.
Still. Oops.
It didn’t take long before doubt emerged. At present, the official theory offered by Poland and accepted by NATO is that the missile that killed the two unfortunate Poles was actually a Ukrainian air-defence missile that was fired at incoming Russian missiles in self-defence. It somehow malfunctioned and landed in Poland. The Ukrainians themselves seem unconvinced and there are certainly those wondering if a wayward Ukrainian missile is a cover story to de-escalate a Russian mistake. Personally, I’d guess no. It probably was a Ukrainian missile. And if it is all a cover story in the cause of keeping tension between Moscow and the West at a low-sweat stage, I can live with that, for now.
The point isn’t for me to pretend I’m a munitions expert, capable of instantly solving the case with only the briefest glance at photos of a fragment of twisted missile debris. It’s more to consider what this event felt like, and what it easily could have been: one of the scarier scenarios Western officials and analysts have been worried since this war began nine months ago — accident kicking off a conflict neither side wanted but neither will back down from once it’s begun.
This isn’t a new fear. It was a fear during the Cold War. And a justified one. At several points during that long standoff, technical malfunctions or political miscalculations raised the danger of a nuclear war to horrifying levels. On a few occasions American defense commanders wrongly believed that the Soviets were launching an attack; luckily for everyone, the Americans had redundancies and were well trained and cooler heads always prevailed. In 1983, Soviet satellites reported the Americans were firing ballistic missiles at the Soviet Union. Tensions were high at the time and the Soviets had decided to launch a full strike on the West as soon as any NATO launches were detected. But Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, a relatively low-ranked Soviet officer working the night shift, concluded that the warnings were probably a glitch — it didn’t make sense to him that America would open a surprise attack with a handful of missiles instead of the full arsenal. Rather than pass on a warning that would have triggered Soviet launches against NATO, he reported that the launch detections were a technical malfunction in the Soviet equipment. He did that again when further launches were detected. Lt. Col. Petrov then spent a few long and anxious minutes waiting to see if any NATO nuclear weapons exploded over targets in the Soviet Union. Waiting to see what happened was the only way the colonel could know if he’d made the right call, or a very, very bad one.
He was right, of course. It was a glitch. New Soviet satellites were being tricked by sunlight bouncing off clouds at high altitude. But for a few minutes, the fate of the world hung on one mid-ranked Soviet officer’s middle-of-the-night judgment call.
These real-life examples are horrifying. But learning of them never hit me quite as hard as the fictional scenario portrayed in the 1962 film Fail-Safe. Released around the same time as the more famous Doctor Strangelove, Fail-Safe, adapted from the novel Red Alert, was a grimly serious counterpart to Kubrick’s dark comedy. With an all-star cast that includes Walter Matthau and Henry Fonda, Fail-Safe depicts a series of small accidents that result in a group of American bomber pilots concluding that they have been ordered to conduct a retaliatory strike on the Soviet Union. There is no war. It’s entirely a misunderstanding, a fluke of American technological glitches and Soviet jamming. But the American pilots, trained to expect Soviet tricks and lies and to accept no order to abort (as such an order could be faked) relentlessly bore in on their targets, truly believing that they are avenging a Soviet strike on America.
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