The US empire may be history’s
last.
The illusion of control that has sustained the US’s
nominal government and its behind-the scenes power since World War II is fading
both at home and abroad. In many areas the US military is no longer
unquestionably superior and in some is demonstrably inferior. As military
prowess goes so goes the American empire. Amplifying the decline and
compounding its severity are the US’s perilous finances, deteriorating economy,
and mounting political unrest.
That US
military power was never all it was cracked it up to be was apparent to astute
observers after the Korean War, and was obvious after Vietnam. Possible
escalation and humanity’s extinction precluded use of nuclear weapons. However,
in both Korea and Vietnam local populations, with assistance from outside allies,
withstood mind-boggling barrages of conventional bombs and munitions to gain in
Korea a stalemate and in Vietnam a victory.
Vietnam
demonstrated the difficulty for invaders of fighting determined insurgents
using guerrilla tactics—usually labeled terrorism—defending their home
territory. The insurgents know the territory and the language and often enjoy
the covert support of the local, ostensibly non-combatant population. In
Vietnam they also received covert and overt support from China and the USSR.
The
insurgents extracted such a price that eventually the American invaders,
plagued by protests and political opposition back home, decided conquest wasn’t
worth it. Vietnam
illustrated a stark reality, never publicly stated by US military or political
leaders: to win the war would have required genocide—essentially wiping out the
population. Or to paraphrase the saying popular at the time, to save the
country the US would have had to destroy it, inflicting far more damage than
the gruesome toll it actually exacted.
Fiascos
since Vietnam further confirm that guerrilla insurgency remains problematic for
the US military. It stymies one of the US’s main geopolitical
objectives—forcing smaller countries to toe the US line. Fighting the
insurgencies that objective elicits goes hand-in-hand with subversion,
propaganda, intelligence skullduggery, and regime change—whatever’s necessary
to extract compliance.
If the US
can’t defeat insurgents in smaller countries despite its overwhelming
advantages in conventional military power, what would happen in a match with
someone its own size, another superpower? Here the illusion of control is most
deadly.
Nothing is more dangerous
than the belief that the US military is second to none and that it can win
whatever offensive engagements it is assigned while also protecting the US
homeland and its people. Andrei Martyanov demolishes that illusion in his
recently published and highly recommended book, The
(Real) Revolution In Military Affairs.
On March 1
2018, Vladimir Putin announced new Russian weapons that had either been
deployed or were in advanced states of development. Collectively, the new
weapons’ most striking features are hypersonic speeds (ability to travel at
five times the speed of sound, Mach 5, or faster) and nuclear power.
The Kinzhal
missile has a top speed of Mach 10, and the Avangard hypersonic-glide
projectile Mach 20. Both can be conventionally or nuclear armed, and are
maneuverable throughout their flight trajectories, making defense against one
such weapon problematic, a swarm impossible. The Kinzahl has a range of 2000
kilometers (over 1200 miles), while Putin said the Avangard’s range is
“intercontinental.”
Putin
claimed Russia has also developed nuclear-powered underwater drones and cruise
missiles. The drones are faster than any currently deployed surface ship or
submarine, have a range of 10,000 kilometers (over 6,000 miles), are cloaked by
underwater stealth technology, and can carry both conventional and high-yield
nuclear warheads. They can be deployed against surface naval assets like
aircraft carrier groups, or placed in a coastal area, armed with a nuclear warhead,
and detonated, generating a massive, radioactive tsunami wave.
The
nuclear-powered cruise missile can carry conventional and nuclear warheads, is
low-flying and highly maneuverable, and has virtually unlimited range. Like the
Kinzahl and Avangard, stopping one would be problematic, a swarm impossible. If
Putin’s claims about Russia’s nuclear-powered missiles and drones are true,
they have achieved state-of-the-art advances in the miniaturization of nuclear
power.
The US political establishment and its mainstream
punditry, devout believers in American military superiority, either ignored or
dismissed Putin’s announcement. Those that addressed it said he was lying
without specifying their factual basis for saying so.
To its
credit, the US military took the announcement more seriously. From its own
efforts to develop hypersonic weapons it knows that such weapons are possible.
It asked for and received a significant funding increase for programs to
further develop and test hypersonic weapons and defenses against them. While
reportedly not as far along as Russia, China is also developing these
technologies, some of which are already operational. Among serious military
thinkers, Putin’s announcement put a spotlight on the next leg of the arms
race: hypersonic speed and miniaturized nuclear power.
To date, no prominent US
political figure, even those who reluctantly acknowledge that the Russians may
actually have what they claim, has delineated the vital implications of such an arsenal.
Most disturbingly, the US has no effective defenses. Russia can also render
much of the US’s offensive capabilities irrelevant. Martyanov persuasively
makes both cases.
While the
US still has its nuclear arsenal to fall back on, Martyanov argues that in
conventional warfare, the US has deluded itself. The US’s vaunted air power is
increasingly vulnerable to Russian anti-aircraft systems, notably the S-400,
the world’s best. Stealth air technology is overrated, its cloaking ever more
easily penetrated. High-powered communications, computer, and networking
technologies upon which US air power relies are subject to disruption that
would leave missiles and jets figuratively flying blind.
Aircraft carrier groups—along with submarines the
heart of US naval strategy—are floating dinosaurs. While their proponents
claim they can be protected from anti-ship missile clusters, there is no real
world validation and given recent improvements in those missiles’ range,
maneuverability, and power, reason to believe just the opposite. Demonstrations
of antimissile artillery knocking out a single missile on a defined path under
ideal conditions are risibly remote from what would be real world conditions in
a confrontation with another major power: swarms of maneuverable missiles on
random flight paths amidst the general chaos of war. It is foolish to
assume carrier invincibility and to base naval strategy or foreign policy on
that assumption.
Insurgents
have repeatedly battled US forces to a standoff or worse. Two major powers have
weapons that can stymie or destroy significant parts of America’s conventional
offensive capabilities, that can be used offensively with devastating effect,
and for which the US has no defensive countermeasures.
This set of facts is plainly
incompatible with the control the US establishment believes it can and should
exercise around the world. Russia and China appear to have no such hegemonic
aspirations, concentrating their efforts in their own backyards and letting the
US waste its blood and treasure on imperialistic adventures. The US’s unipolar
moment began fading in 1949 when the Soviet Union detonated its own atomic
bomb, but repeated encounters with reality have done little to shake the
illusion of control. Economic, financial, and political developments at home
render the illusion delusional.
This is Part One, Part Two will
be posted next Tuesday.
