While
speaking to the US military at Fort Bragg after the official conclusion of US
operations in Iraq in 2011, in what can only be described as an acute case of
myopia and ignorance, President Obama doubled down on a dubious “finest
fighting force in history” claim, assuring all that “we know too well the heavy
cost of that war.” Here was
the problem: America doesn’t.
In
hindsight, a good teacher can positively affect your life years into the future.
When I was a teenager attending a private school in the 1970s, I took a course
on Russian history. I remember my teacher well all these years later, but I
also remember some of what he taught. Americans think of themselves as the
principal cause of the defeat of Nazi Germany, but Russia lost tens of millions
of lives defending against her invasion. And my teacher told me that a way to
understand the existence of the Eastern Bloc, especially the partitioning of
Germany was that Russia decided it would never be invaded at such great human
cost by Germany and its allies ever again; if paranoid, there was a reason for
the paranoia and the decision was less about Russia expanding and taking
territory, which the nation didn’t need, but creating a buffer zone against
possible incursion, hence also the partition of Germany so that she could never
again become a mortal threat. I also recall his stating that Stalin couldn’t
inspire the people to fight and die for Soviet ideals; instead, he returned to
historical themes of saving the Fatherland, their homes, their nation from
destruction and enslavement by a foreign enemy.
I mention my personal
experience because I was reminded of what I learned so long ago in a new book,
currently available on Amazon Kindle and in paper by Andrey Martyanov,
entitled Losing Military Supremacy The Myopia of American Strategic
Planning. Yet the title, although in fact the heart of book,
doesn’t do the book justice because for interested Americans Martyanov explains
the very different cultures, American and Russian. If “culture” is not a
precise word, one should say that both Russia and America have unique
experiences and the experiences of America today put her in great jeopardy.
Let me quote an excerpt from the book that makes this point better than I
can:
While speaking to the US military at Fort Bragg after the official
conclusion of US operations in Iraq in 2011, in what can only be described as
an acute case of myopia and ignorance, President Obama doubled down on a his
dubious “finest fighting force in history” claim, assuring all that “we know
too well the heavy cost of that war.” Here was the problem: America doesn’t.
With the exception of those who fought and died or were wounded in Iraq or
Afghanistan and their immediate families, America, as it was with every
American foreign war, never knew the real costs. Even as bodies of American GIs
started to arrive in coffins into the US from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Americans continued, as if nothing really happened, to go to work, buy lattes
at espresso stands, sell and buy cars, go on vacations, travel around the world
and pay their mortgages. Normal life went on as if nothing of significance
happened. The very phenomenon which was responsible for the United States
emergence as a superpower—war, WWII in particular—was never a factor which had
a real impact on the nation and created no real inhibitors in the political
elites to their often ignorant, boastful and aggressive rhetoric nor created a
necessity to study the subject, which was foundational to American prosperity
and success after WWII. This still hasn’t been done.
The
outcomes, in full accordance to Clausewitz’ dictum that “it is legitimate to
judge an event by its outcome for it is the soundest criterion,” have
accumulated today into a body of overwhelming empirical evidence of a serious
and dangerous dysfunction within America’s decision making process. From the
debacle in Iraq, to the lost war in Afghanistan, to inspiring a slaughterhouse
in Syria, to unleashing, with the help of its NATO Allies, a conflict in Libya,
to finally fomenting a coup and a war in Ukraine—all of that is a disastrous
record of geopolitical, diplomatic, military and intelligence incompetence and
speaks to the failure of American political, military, intelligence and
academic institutions. Moreover, the spectacular failure of several US
Administrations and the US “experts” who supposedly know Russia, to build normal
working relations, and, ironically, their even greater failure in sabotaging
those relations and Russia herself, are a clear indication of an almost
complete ignorance of real Russian history and culture among people who are
responsible for an increasingly irrational US foreign policy. This failure is
more than spectacular—it is spectacularly dangerous. This book addresses some
of the reasons for America’s sad and dangerous state today. The pivot of this
book is war and power and how these two have been abused and misinterpreted by
the American political and military class. Importantly, it is viewed against
the background of Russian-American relations and how Russia, the only country
in the world which can militarily defeat the United States conventionally, has
been reduced to a caricature by the American “Russian Studies” field, so much
so that today it makes any meaningful dialogue between Russia and America’s
politicians virtually impossible. It is also impossible because of a dramatic
difference in cultural attitudes towards war, a gap which policymakers should
at least attempt to narrow.
What
Martyanov also describes in depth is the mindset and experience of the Russian
people, which I also described in an earlier piece, a people who have known war
and the intense suffering that war causes. America has been fortunate never to
have faced war and its catastrophic devastation and mass death—so far—on its
own soil.
In addition to the writing
this book, Martyanov also blogs on this site: Reminiscence
of the Future. He recently provided an excerpt from his
forthcoming book discussing the “Thucydides Trap” pertaining to China but I
believe also might be relevant to America’s perception of Russia:
But
while there are few more-or-less competent and influential people who speak
about [the] fallacy of Allison’s Trap, one has to point
out a simple fact that the Thucydides Trap of
sorts is known to mankind since the very dawn of human civilization, way before
Ancient Greece, and it was observed in [the] animal world, in which aging
leaders of a herd are challenged by younger and more ambitious competitors. It
was and is also observed in human world all the time, enough to consider sports
whose very premise is built on challenging the status quo, be that boxing,
track and field or soccer. In general, Allison’s Thucydides Trap is
known to humanity as competition and not all competitions end up in wars. This
is not to mention the fact that Athens, Sparta and Thucydideshimself
did not operate with the knowledge of nuclear weapons, net-centric warfare,
stand-off high-precision weapons and combined arms operation, which even in
purely conventional form can paralyze and defeat [the] modern nation-state, or
can cause human losses on [an] unimaginable scale. These factors are the ones
which must change any kind of generalizations related to military and war. This
brings us to more important issue—historical parallels.
Drawing
historical parallels is an extremely dangerous business wrought with huge risks
of miscalculation and learning [the] wrong lessons. History, certainly, does
provide some valuable lessons but at this stage the whole term history, as it was understood even fairly recently, does
not reflect an immense complexity of human development and activity for the
last roughly hundred years and those developments cannot be described anymore
within [a] traditional framework because more and more causalities are being
affected not just by human nature but by technology attached to it. Technology
becomes increasingly complex and thus remains beyond the grasp of many
humanities educated historians who lack [the] cognitive apparatus for
understanding and describing it and technology’s effect on the events. Modern
war is highly technological. What used to be [a] few tactical and operational
factors to be considered by a military leader such as Napoleon, Kutuzov or
Grant, today becomes a vast and complex set of variables needed to be
considered by leaders while making a decision. There is a reason why
contemporary military leaders have very strong backgrounds in fundamental
sciences and many of them have serious engineering backgrounds.
While general principles of
warfare and what is called strategy since the times of Clausewitz remained
largely static and generally similar for many modern armies, the approach to
application of those principles grew in complexity exponentially.[vii] In times
of muskets and linear tactics, an officer commanding a company or battalion
would have had little trouble understanding a general plan on the battle or
even campaign. Today, such understanding requires long years of highly
specialized education and very serious background in military technology.
Without this background there is no serious understanding of modern warfare—it
is simply a hard fact of life. This is where drawing historical parallels
becomes a very dangerous business. Many even non-military people understand
this danger and, in fact, some even reflected this danger in the modern art.
A
1980 sci-fi Hollywood flick The Final Countdown, with
Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen starring in it, is an excellent example of such
an awareness. While [the] movie deals with the possible time paradox when
nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is
transported, due to a freaky storm, from 1980 to December 7, 1941, few hours
before Japanese aviation attack on Pearl-Harbor, [the] historic ramifications
of such an event become clear immediately. Even the most unsophisticated
observer could easily arrive to the idea, without understanding even basic
technological principles, that a single US Navy’s nuclear aircraft carrier and
its air wing which included F-14 Tomcat fighters would have very little
difficulty with destroying 360 Japanese piston aircraft due to modern American
carrier advanced electronic sensors and overwhelming advantage modern jet
aircraft had over 1930s-designed combat planes in speed, maneuverability and
weapons. It came down to a complete tactical, operational and technological
mismatch, even if portrayed in a fictional setting.
I will be the first to admit
that I lack Martyanov’s expertise in military history, mathematics, and
capabilities of modern weaponry. However, I would like to point out that Song of Wrath: The Peloponnesian War Begins propounds
a different reason for the origins and escalation of the war as noted by
reviewer Dennis Showalter, Professor of History at Colorado College: “This
provocative and persuasive analysis of the Peloponnesian War’s first ten years
shifts focus from the ‘realist’ aspects of the conflict’s causes and conduct.
Lendon stresses instead the centrality of honor, tîmê, manifested by reciprocal acts of destruction
and revenge. Humiliation, not conquest, was the primary war aim—an aim so vague
it made expanding the war easier than making peace.” This thesis is discussed
on an excellent John Batchelor program where he
interviews the author. My contention is that the current American initiated
conflict with Russia does indeed have aspects that reflect this thesis, thus
the centrality of tîmê to the situation, that is
not treating Russia with respect and considering her interests, notwithstanding
America’s and the United Kingdom’s military and political and financial elites’
ignorance (including of the capabilities of Russian military hardware and the
nature of modern warfare). And this drive for dominance by principally
the Neoconservatives who control American
Foreign policy makes the potential for military confrontation more likely,
despite the potentially dire consequences.
I write this in light of
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent address to the nation. While America
and the West, as usual, portray Russia as the aggressor, this translation by Gilbert Doctorow shows
that Putin seeks that America treat Russia with respect and that it has not
acted honorably but spread falsehoods; some of these concerns are in the below
excerpt in which he addresses Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the INF Treaty:
In closing out the subject of
the unilateral withdrawal of the USA from the INF Treaty, I would like to say
the following. In the past few years, the USA has been conducting towards
Russia a policy which one could hardly call friendly. They ignore the lawful
interests of Russia. They are constantly organizing various kinds of
anti-Russian campaigns which are absolutely unprovoked, and I emphasize this,
from our side. They introduce more and more new sanctions which are illegal
from the standpoint of international law. They are dismantling unilaterally
practically all the treaties and legal basis of international security that
developed over recent decades, and at the same time they just about call Russia
the main threat to the USA.
I will say directly that this
is untrue. Russia wants to have full-bodied, equitable and friendly
relations with the USA. Russia is not threatening anyone. All of our
actions in the sphere of security bear an exclusively reactive, meaning
defensive character. We are not interested in a confrontation and do not want
it, least of all with such a global power as the United States of America. But
it would appear that our partners are not noticing how and with what speed the
world is changing, where it is headed. They continue their destructive and
clearly erroneous policy. It hardly corresponds to the interests of the
USA itself. But that is not for us to decide.
We see that we are dealing
with business-like, very talented people. However, among the ruling class there
are many of those who are excessively captivated by the idea of their
exceptionalism and their superiority over the rest of the world. It stands to
reason that they have the right to think so if they wish. But do they
know how to count? Surely they do. Let them calculate the range and speed of
our upcoming weapons systems. We only ask one thing: let them first do
their calculations, and only after that take decisions which can create serious
threats for our country, understandably leading to actions in response from the
Russian side to reliably ensure our security.
Moreover,
I already spoke about this and want to repeat it: we are ready for
negotiations on disarmament, but we will no longer knock at a closed door. We
will wait until our partners mature, come to understand the need for equitable
dialogue on this subject.
An excerpt of Putin’s speech
with English subtitles can be viewed here. This recent video from Russia’s
Vesti News also explains Russia’s position and how Washington was the one to
violate the INF Treaty: Vladimir Putin’s Presidential
Address Was Sternest in Years! Russia Done “Knocking on Closed Doors!”
A
recent video on the capabilities of the hypersonic Zircon missile, is here:
Russia
Today’s perspective on the Western response to Putin’s address and his actual
intent are in this video:
Therefore,
Putin’s response is not as Fox News and its Neocon “experts” describe—saber
rattling—but instead he is informing the rulers of the United States that there
will be dire consequences to their actions and explaining once again Russia’s
actions are purely defensive, a response to aggression and not a provocation.
In his blog post after the address, Martyanov
explains, again with technical expertise that I lack:
“Four, Three, Two, One—Experts”!
OK, I am being facetious but
[the] truth is—expect the wave of Western and Russian “military experts” in
full blown damage control mode trying to undo President Putin’s address to
Russia’s Federal Assembly. I didn’t have the chance to review it yet in full
but I am sure many people will do it for all of us shortly. Having said all
that, I couldn’t have missed this:
Translation: Putin specified that this missile (Zircon) is capable of speeds
around M=9 and its range could be in excess of 1,000 kilometers. It is capable
of hitting both sea surface and ground targets.
Well, what can I say: 3.14 x
1000^2=3.14 million square kilometers of potential search area for a single
submarine carrying Zircons. For comparison, 3+ million square kilometers is the
area of India. Good luck coming up with the location probability density
mapping for this one. Putin went further and simply confirmed that any carrier
of Kalibr family missiles is capable of carrying Zircons. OK, the picture of a
modernized (that is Kalibrized) pr. 949A (Oscar II-class) SSGN
carrying somewhere between 20 to 50 Zircons is kinda the stuff of
nightmares for any surface combatants, but it is what it is.
Then
Putin went even further and stated that recent tests in adverse weather
conditions with already deployed Kinzhal demonstrated
its ability to hit a passenger sedan size target from 1,000+ km away. The fact
that Zircon comes along nicely was circumstantially confirmed by India, whose
representatives today confirmed that hyper-sonic Brahmos-2 will be ready by
2024. Putin concluded about the United States:
Obviously Vladimir
Vladimirovich should know that political “scientists,” lawyers [Bolton], ethics
“specialists”, philosophers and other financiers and sociologists constituting
this very ruling class have their calculating abilities limited to calculating
stock options and debit with credit but not what constitutes serious and
complex values defining modern highly technological warfare. As General Latiff
(himself a Ph.D. in Physics) formerly of DARPA and other advanced Pentagon’s
R&D programs noted in his latest book:
In
other words, and that is my position for decades, really—one must be seriously
educated and trained in modern military to even have a remotely competent
point. This education and training is absent in US ruling class of good ol’
boys and girls most of who see the war and military on the TV screen at best
and didn’t serve a day in uniform, forget operational zones. Those people also
have issues with understanding what real American military professionals tell
them due to this ruling class [with] a rather grossly exaggerated intellectual
and cognitive capabilities. As per Poseidon thingy,
I don’t even want to go there—it is still covered with a complete shroud of
mystery and let fanboys deal with it.
There is another factor to
take into account when taking into consideration America’s delusion of
exceptionalism and will to dominate:
that despite Neocons
delusional thinking, America is an Empire in an extreme state of decline. I
recently started reading Christopher Hedges book, America: The Farewell Tour, and in
it he details the advanced state of decay the nation is undergoing; while his
thesis is the “financialization” of the economy has led to parasitism and its
devastation may be challenged, his descriptions of people without hope, the
suffering and despair resulting in tens of thousands of overdose deaths from
heroin, the lack of work and poverty with record numbers of suicides, sexual
sadism where inflicting pain and humiliation are the goal (especially difficult
to read), and racial hatred and prejudice (although his depiction I find
one-sided and imbued with his ideology) are compelling. Nevertheless, in the
anecdotes told the America he depicts is very far from the “exceptional nation”
mantra repeated mindlessly by its leaders, from Obama to members of the Trump
administration. But even if Hedge’s book didn’t exist, I think by honest
observation from one’s surroundings, the average American can see that the
country has changed drastically, and not for the better. Even Martyanov who
lives in America has blogged with sympathy on this topic, based on his
observations of where he lives and works. He also writes that despite the
trillions and potentially more trillions to be spent in the Trump agenda,
America will not have the technology to match what Russia has and will develop;
its industrial heartland is crippled and lacks the capabilities and capacity to
do what Russia has done at a fraction of the cost. There is the potential
for plasma defensive weaponry; Russia is highly advanced in that area. See this
video of rocket technology under development that America hasn’t even
contemplated on a drawing board:
Another Russia expatriate,
living in America, Dmitri Orlov, wrote about America leaving the INF treaty and
its implications, without the military technical depth of Martyanov, but he
comments on the state of America today in his post RIP INF Treaty: Russia’s Victory, America’s Waterloo:
Not
only has the US lost its ability to attack, it has also lost its ability to
threaten…
Without the shackles of the
INF treaty, Russia will be able to fully neutralize the already obsolete and
useless NATO and to absorb all of Europe into its security sphere. European
politicians are quite malleable and will soon learn to appreciate the fact that
good relations with Russia and China are an asset while any dependence on the
US, moving forward, is a huge liability. Many of them already understand which
way the wind is blowing.
It won’t be a difficult
decision for Europe’s leaders to make. On the one pan of the scale there is the
prospect of a peaceful and prosperous Greater Eurasia, from Lisbon to
Vladivostok and from Murmansk to Mumbai, safe under Russia’s nuclear umbrella
and tied together with China’s One Belt One Road.
On the other pan of the scale
there is a certain obscure former colony lost in the wilds of North America,
imbued with an unshakeable faith in its own exceptionalism even as it grows
ever weaker, more internally conflicted and more chaotic, but still dangerous,
though mostly to itself, and run by a bloviating buffoon who can’t tell the
difference between a nuclear arms treaty and a real estate deal. It needs to be
quietly and peacefully relegated to the outskirts of civilization, and then to
the margins of history.
Trump
should keep his own company in his “big, beautiful room,” and avoid doing
anything even more tragically stupid, while saner minds quietly negotiate the
terms for an honorable capitulation.
Tom Holland in his book Persian Fire describes “lunatic behavior” and
the Greek word for it, hubris. He quotes
Aristotle’s Rhetoric: “For this is the crime
committed by any man who gains his thrills by trampling on other people, and
feeling, as he does, that he is proving himself pre-eminent.”
If
that isn’t a pitch perfect depiction of how the ruling elites view America, the
“exceptional nation” I don’t know what is.
Russian blogger and author
The Saker wrote about how Americans generally like war so long as they “win”
and are oblivious to the fact that wars of aggression are war crimes in his
post Thanking Vets for Their “Service” – Why?
Now Augustine of Hippo and
Thomas Aquinas are hardly heroes of mine, but they are considered as very
authoritative in western philosophical thought. Yet, when checked against this
list of criteria, all the wars fought by the US are clearly and self-evidently
totally unjust: all of them fail on several criteria, and most of them
(including the attack on Iraq and Afghanistan) fail on all of them!
But there is no need to go
far back into the centuries to find authoritative western thinkers who clearly
denounce unjust wars. Did you know that the ultimate crime under international
law is not genocide or crimes against humanity?
Nope, the supreme crime under
international law is the crime of aggression. In the words of the chief
American prosecutor at Nuremberg and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of
the United States, Robert
H. Jackson, the crime of aggression is the supreme crime
because “it contains within itself the accumulated evil” of
all the other war crimes. He wrote: “To initiate a war of
aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme
international crime differing only from other war
crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
The Saker also interviewed
Orlov and wrote about the collapse of America in Placing the USA on a Collapse Continuum with Dmitry Orlov
At
this point it is important to explain what exactly a “final collapse” looks
like. Some people are under the very mistaken assumption that a collapsed
society or country looks like a Mad Max world. This is not so. The Ukraine has
been a failed state for several years already, but it still exists on the map.
People live there, work, most people still have electricity (albeit not 24/7),
a government exists, and, at least officially, law and order is maintained.
This kind of collapsed society can go on for years, maybe decades, but it is in
a state of collapse nonetheless, as it has reached all the 5 Stages of Collapse
as defined by Dmitry Orlov in his seminal book “The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors’ Toolkit”
where he mentions the following five stages of collapse:
- Stage
1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost.
- Stage
2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost.
- Stage
3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you”
is lost.
- Stage
4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is
lost.
- Stage
5: Cultural collapse. Faith in “the goodness of humanity” is lost.
Hedges book argues that we
have well into Stage Five (in many geographic areas, irrespective of race); The
Saker believes that Stage 5 has begun. But how is a nation in such a state of
decline capable to fight a war with Russia, or China for that matter? From
Daisy Luther’s piece, Depravity, Frivolity, and Dissent: Are We Watching the
End of an Empire?
where she discussed Sir John
Glubb’s essay, The Fate of Empires and The Search for Survival,
and included this video, The 7 Signs Of An Empire In
Decline it’s clear America will never be as it was decades ago:
However, I am concerned that
the faceless ruling classes of the West, whose servants are the political class
like Bolton, are quite unhinged and incapable of rational thinking; see
this report of this New Year’s Eve event. The
propaganda arm of the elites, Hollywood, has made a fetish of Apocalyptic films that have continued
unabated over the years. Would they relish a nuclear exchange that they think
they can manage? Southfront investigated who owns the Military-Industrial complex,
which appears to be investment funds that own each other. We don’t know who or
what the real power in the shadows is. But as Professor Stephen Cohen writes in
his book, War with Russia:
The title is a warning—akin
to what the late Gore Vidal termed “a journalistic alert-system”—not a
prediction. Hence the question mark. I cannot foresee the future. The book’s
overarching theme is informed by past and current facts, not by any political
agenda, ideological commitment, or magical prescience.
To
restate that theme: The new US-Russian Cold War is more dangerous than was its
40-year predecessor, which the world survived. The chances are even greater, as
I hope readers already understand, that this one could result, inadvertently or
intentionally, in actual war between the two nuclear superpowers. Herein lies
another ominous indication. During the preceding Cold War, the possibility of
nuclear catastrophe was in the forefront of American mainstream political and
media discussion, and of policy-making. During the new one, it rarely seems to
be even a concern.
If
minority rights and opinions are center stage in the legacy media, let them
consider a new minority; the minority that believes there is nothing to be
gained by war with Russia (or China, for that matter) and everything to lose.
Let them realize that the patriots are the ones wanting to spare their nation
the evils of war. I see no other alternative. A spiritual renewal does not
appear in the offing; quite the contrary. And time is growing short. Yes, we
should follow the work and writings of Professor Cohen, The Saker and Andrei
Martyanov. But we should also make our voices heard. After all, our rulers
number only in the thousands. But time is growing short.
In any event, our illiterate
“elites” forget the salient point Tom Holland made regarding hubris: where
there is hubris, Nemesis is not far behind. And not only
Chris Hedges’ but I think if we were to confess honestly our own observations
of our surroundings—at least those of us not in gated communities—we see that
she is just beginning.
Links
for future reference:
https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/ (Orlov’s
Blog)
http://thesaker.is/ (The
Saker’s site)
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/ (Martyanov’s Blog)
https://eastwestaccord.com/ (Professor
Cohen’s site)
Yvonne
Lorenzo [send
her mail] makes her home in New England in a house full to bursting
with books, including works on classical Greece and by Mises, Rothbard, Tom
Woods, Joseph Sobran, and Lew Rockwell. Her interests include mythology,
ancient history, plasma cosmology and classical music, especially the
compositions of Handel, Mozart, Bach, and the Bel Canto repertoire. She is the
author Son of Thunder and The Cloak of Freya.
