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Czar Wars
I don’t mean to ruin anyone’s morale, but I’m going to, anyway. I understand that some of you may be thinking, “Why not let Putin fight ISIS? Better him than us, wouldn’t you say? Especially since all we seem to be able to do is make more of them. Right?”
Well, sure, if that’s what he were doing. But it’s not.
MiG-31 Foxhound interceptor fighter jets, Su-30 fighters, Su-25 attack planes, Su-24 bombers, Su-34 bombers, Su-27 Flanker interceptor fighter jets, an Il-20 spy plane, armored vehicles, and SA-15 and SA-22 surface-to-air missiles? As David Axe puts it (understatedly) that’s “not really optimal for attacking lightly armed insurgent fighters.” And as he further notes, correctly, “Surface-to-air missiles are only good for destroying enemy aircraft, which Syrian rebels do not possess. And the Su-30s are best suited for tangling with other high-tech forces.”
In other words, folks, Putin’s there to wage war on us, not ISIS. Get it?
Or at the very least, he’s there to make sure there won’t be a safe zone along the border from Jarablus to Azaz. Sending interceptor fighter jets to Syria makes no sense unless you’re planning to intercept jets. ISIS, Nusra, and Ahrar al-Sham don’t have jets to intercept. QED.
It gets worse. David Ropkoth is right about this:
When Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, met with journalists in New York last Friday, he took pains to note that Iran and Russia were not joining together in a “coalition” in Syria. They were sharing intelligence. They were discussing strategy. They were in constant communication. But a coalition? No.
Two days later, the Iraqi government announced it too was sharing intelligence with Russia, Iran, and Syria. So perhaps Rouhani was being literal in a different way when he disavowed being in a coalition with Russia — because what he was actually involved in was a coalition with Russia, Iraq, and Syria.
And it gets worse still if you imagine what logically comes next. What if Iran decides to openly sprint for a Bomb? What if they just throw off all pretense of compliance and go for it? And why wouldn’t they, given that Putin’s now declared himself Czar and Protector of the Shia axis? Think even the next president would try to stop that? Direct conflict with Iran and Russia? As Trump might say, “I’m the most militaristic person there is” — but that wouldn’t be militaristic, that would be stupid. And suicidal.
And also by the way, that above-linked DHS report is full of cheering news:
Despite a year of U.S. and allied airstrikes, the group has held most of its territory and continues to replenish its ranks with outside recruits. Military officials estimate airstrikes have killed around 10,000 extremists, but new foreign fighters replace them almost as quickly as they are killed. ISIS has also grown from a single terrorist sanctuary to having a direct presence, affiliates, or groups pledging support in 18 countries. The organization is believed to have inspired or directed nearly 60 terrorist plots or attacks against Western countries, including 15 in the United States. Some of these were masterminded by foreign fighters based in Syria, while others were carried out by returnees themselves or homegrown extremists. … When the strikes began, counterterrorism officials estimated the total number of extremists was around 15,000. .. Today the figure stands at 25,000-plus foreign fighters.
Also, as you’ve probably heard, Kunduz fell to the Taliban. First provincial capital to fall to them since 2001.
And sorry to be just a complete Daisy Downer, but it gets even worse. Because Congress can’t pass a budget. (You had one job.) So the military might have to operate under last year’s spending plan.
According to Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook, “hope remains that lawmakers will strike a deal to fund the government when the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.” He “insisted the situation was not yet dire enough to warn defense employees of the potential fallout.” Well, that’s what he should say, we hardly want him shrieking hysterically for the whole world to hear, but we can read between the lines, I reckon:
… So, Mr. President, kind of looks to me like we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed. … Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks. …
If you think I’m being unduly pessimistic, feel free to correct me. I’d love to feel better about this, but I just can’t see why I should.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Military
Not the point, Fred. You rail against America for even attempting to manage its borders. You seem to approve of Russia annexing parts off of another country.
I don’t think that the Japanese bombing Pearl harbor was a net gain, but I’m not going to poo-poo criticism of Japanese fascist imperialism on that basis.
Since they still have Crimea you might want to change your verb tenses – Thus, Crimea is a net gain for Russia.
No wait, the complete opposite of that, given your preferred outcomes.
What’s my preferred outcome?
This – points toward your preferred outcome.
I’m going to unfollow this. Y’all have fun.
From Jan 16, 2013 Regarding that whole preferred outcome thingy.
Fred Cole
Over the long term, percentage of GDP is definitely the correct metric to use. The bigger the GDP, the more we can afford, and the more value we have to protect.
But going from 4.4% to 4.7%, in a period when there has been very little growth in per capita GDP, isn’t much of an explosion. More like gaining a little weight.
No. The correct metric is need. And need is based on the world situation and our own. If we had no enemies then we still wouldn’t need to spend on the military.
We’re close to that now. There’s no Soviet Union, there’s no Nazi Germany, there’s no Imperial Japan and we trade with China.
We don’t need to spend nearly 5% of GDP to be able to drop bombs on guys in caves. We don’t need a dozen carriers. We don’t need a military presence.
Instead we do things like defend countries that either have no threats or can defend themselves or both.
Well, if you want it then you can damn well pay for it.
You and I have a different view of how geopolitical power politics are played. Expansion doesn’t have to mean invasion, and rarely does. Expansion means expanding influence. It means being able to project power, to have the ability to make your rivals feel pain, and to be able to build far-flung alliances.
Don’t think Afghanistan – think Cuba. The Soviet Union created a puppet state with Castro, and Cuba carried out a lot of destructive mischief in central and south America on behalf of the Soviets. And of course, they tried to be a host to Soviet nuclear missiles which would have completely destabilized the cold war.
If Syria becomes Russia’s Cuba in the Middle East, Russia can use it to thwart American interests – it can use arms sales to make inroads into the military and intelligence communities of neighbor countries. It can make promises of security in exchange for political support. It has a base from which it can threaten countries that refuse to do its bidding, and so it goes.
The next time there’s a terror attack in the U.S. that comes from a country in the ME, what happens if the U.S. tries to strike back and Russia says, “No, you don’t. That’s OUR ally you’re messing with. They are under our protection, and that includes the use of nuclear weapons as a last resort if you don’t back off.”
What happens if Iran starts trying to build a caliphate by threatening/harming its Sunni neighbors, and Russia tells the U.S. to stay out of it or risk starting a global war? What if Iran brazenly violates this idiotic nuclear treaty, and U.S. attempts to do something about it are met with Russian resistance?
A world with Russia parked in the heart of the Middle East is much more dangerous.
You would think. But what happens to ISIS in this future you imagine? Doesn’t seem like it can coexist with the Assad/Iran/Russian-backed state. Does the latter demolish the former entity? If so, this future we are faced with may have much to commend it. Very much the same might result if Russia just mixes up the quagmire a bit, and Sunnis and Shia just go at it for years. Russia could be setting itself up for failure as it did in Afghanistan, couldn’t it?
The U.S. military budget is high because the U.S. is isolated and therefore to project power requires the maintenance of very expensive carrier groups, large bases in allied countries, etc.
You may think that this is all unnecessary, but you’d be wrong. Threats can come from many places, sometimes simultaneously. And military alliances require significant overseas activity.
Also, in an era where it takes decades and billions of dollars to build a new weapons system, you can not plan for just the threats you face today – you have to plan for the threats you may have to face tomorrow, and twenty years from now. A tough task. Since the future is unpredictable, the only real way to do that is to make sure you are matching the weapons systems of even your friends and allies, and planning to counter new weapons systems that potential rivals are building today.
At the start of WWII, the U.S. was caught napping with outdated aircraft and tanks, and with so few infantry weapons that the first soldiers were trained with wooden guns. The result was that the Americans got their asses handed to them in their first few encounters with the enemy.
Luckily, it was an era where a front-line fighter or main battle tank could be designed and built in months, not years or decades, so the U.S. rapidly caught up once its manufacturing advantage came online. Today, that would not happen. If the U.S. gets caught with obsolete weaponry at the start of the next conflict, it will never be able to catch up.
First, I’m not convinced that Russia is going to take out ISIS. It may just help Assad push ISIS out of Syria and into some other country. It may get away with that out of sheer brutality. The Russians are willing to do things we would never do, such as flatten an entire village just because a terrorist lived in it. The old Soviet Union didn’t face many terror attacks for that reason. And it probably would have managed to stay in Afghanistan if the U.S. hadn’t armed the Mujahadeen with advanced weaponry.
Second, I’m not so sure that having Syria as a Russian puppet-state is worth the trade even if they did squash ISIS in Syria. You now have a hostile power sitting in the middle of the Middle East with thousands of nuclear weapons at its command and a leader who seems almost reckless in his grasping for power. That’s a very dangerous combination.
I just would like the naysayers to be a little less emotional and more analytical. I do not say you are wrong, only that you haven’t really thought through what the future will look like. If ISIS gets pushed out of Syria it locates in Northwestern Iraq (almost surely). Then Sunnis have a government (probably financed by Sunni Saudi Arabia and Gulf states) to counterbalance the majority Shia population in the South and Iran is dragged into long war of attrition. Not a bad outcome necessarily.
Also, Syria has always had close relations with Russia. What’s so different about this new episode? Downgrading ISIS, by itself, would be most welcome.
I would still maintain that the most proper course would be for the U.S. to throw the FSA and other Syrian Rebels to the curb. And to also scrap our sham alliance with Turkey.
Let us throw our weight exclusively behind the Kurds and Assyrians in northern Iraq and Syria. These are secular, non-Islamist people fiercely opposed to ISIS and desperate for international support. And they are pro-western, not just less insane versions of the jihadists we’re fighting.
Recognize an independent Kurdistan and Assyria in what’s left of the decaying husks of Iraq and Syria. In this way we could not only create a counterbalance to ISIS and the Iran/Russia axis, but create a safe haven for the persecuted minorities who we entirely ignored since 2003.
Are these actually mutually exclusive? I like to think of myself as quite amenable to reason, but when I contemplate where this is going — analytically and rationally — I do get emotional. We’re talking about at the very least a higher level of direct superpower conflict. How much higher? We can’t say. No one can. But at the very least we’ve now got a “higher level of risk x,” x being unknown, of accident, miscommunication, or lunatic miscalculation. Such things have happened before in history. Indeed, they’ve happened in a catastrophic way twice in the past century.
So say risk x — let’s be very conservative — is now five percent greater. (My gut says this is far too low, but that’s just “Claire’s gut,” so it’s fine if you say that’s worthless. But would you really think it’s less than that?) The problem is that given the kind of world-destroying firepower we’re talking about, a five-percent higher risk of direct superpower conflict is worth getting emotional about — unless you’re a psychopath who’s incapable of getting emotional about anything. It’s not worth it to get hysterical about a five-percent higher chance of catching a cold or being late to a meeting, but direct superpower conflict? The potential scale of the catastrophe is so great that any significant amount of higher risk — no less this amount — is something about which normal people who aren’t in total denial would feel emotional.
We’re also — unquestionably — talking about the even greater immiseration of Syrian civilians, who have been of late been the most tortured people on the earth. Worth getting emotional about? You’ve got to be unemotional in a way that isn’t admirable, in my view, to be unaffected by that.
We’re also talking about a world that’s seen very clearly that the Pax Americana is dead and gone. Worth getting emotional about that? Those were the best 70 years in human history, and no one has any clue what will come next. Worth getting a little nervous about that? You’ve got to be one hell of an optimist to assume that one’s going to work itself out nicely.
We’re also talking about an obviously emboldened Iran — pouring troops into Syria even as I type — that’s on a pathway to nuclear weapons and has a declared aim of wiping out half of the world’s remaining Jews. And frankly, Israel at least stands a chance: Sunni civilians in the path of the IRC don’t. They will be the victims of yet another genocide.
We’re also talking about an Iran that is now — clearly — under the protection of a Russia that has abandoned all pretense of enthusiasm for a liberal, democratic world order. While I’m well aware that Russia’s got massive demographic and economic problems, it also has 7,700 nuclear warheads. How much did the risk of miscalculation in the Middle East resulting in a nuclear exchange just rise? Incalculable — there’s no formula for figuring this out. There’s too much we can’t know and too much inscrutable human agency involved — but clearly, it rose. Worth getting emotional about?
And we’re also talking about a refugee crisis — one unprecedented since the Second World War — that is now going to get even worse, with, again, immeasurable and unpredictable consequences for the stability and security of all of Syria’s neighbors and indeed for European stability, the achievement of which was the United States’ greatest foreign policy triumph — one for which we sacrificed immeasurable blood and treasure. How much has the risk risen? No one can say with precision, but certainly, the risk is now higher. Worth getting emotional about?
I would say that yes, this is analytically different from the Cold War. Russia is not an ideological power in the same sense (although Iran is). The more relevant historical comparison is to the Great Game. But the even more relevant comparison — and the one that has me all womanish and emotional — is the run-up to the First World War. The parallels are far too close to comfort.
No, the situation isn’t perfectly, one-to-one identical, but how close do we have to get before it makes sense to be worried — or, in other words, “emotional?”
A potential for an incident between Russia and the U.S. has increased -maybe by accident, maybe designed to further cow Obama? But even with a precipitated incident, would Obama respond other than surrender.
No doubt an early Putin goal is to rescue Asaad, but is that his real strategic purpose? Doesn’t it seem more likely that after all factions challenging Asaad, including ISIS, have been destroyed or house broken Russia then dominates Syria, Iraq and all of the Gulf States and takes de facto control of oil production in the region, with the probable exception of Iran?
You don’t even have to think back to Cuba. You can just think about this as of today:
Hope may spring eternal, but that doesn’t make it a strategy. Hoping that the Russians get their butts caught in a crack is what Luxembourg might do because that is about all they can do. We aren’t quite at that point yet, but we are getting there.
Dude, I was quoting Fred Cole from 16 Jan 2013 (amid pointing out his preferred set of outcomes.) You left that part out.
Actually, it took many years. The key was our ability to quickly ramp up production of what were largely pre-war designs.
The ability to ramp up production is something we have lost.
This what I am talking about. Can you explain to me how the Russian’s getting involved causes an “even greater immiseration” than there is now? (PS. I had to look that word up, I hope you know). So Russian planes will bomb the $&*#@ out of ISIS (eventually – after they take out the FSA contingent we sort of aid.) Uh, how did you expect we would take out ISIS, had we decided to really try do so? Not with a team of conflict resolution specialists from the State Department, (to be supercilious for once in my life). We might use more surgical strikes than the Russians I grant you, but there is going to have to be a lot of killing before ISIS gets seriously weakened. You have a major power now throwing in its weight to the effort – ordinarily a big plus – with the strings attached that Assad has to be allowed to take back suzerainty (see, I can throw big words around too – ah, did it fit?) of Syria – a big minus.
This need not be the end of the world. We didn’t seem to have our heart in really deposing Assad, because that would mean ISIS would prevail. Let us reflect on how meager were our choices because of the existence of ISIS.
Another interpretation: Shows how desperate Russia is to be relieved of our economic sanctions. They must really be hurting and trying every which way they can to leverage some relief. We can inform Mr. Putin, privately, we will turn the screws even tighter if we want and we don’t appreciate his initiatives in Cuba. If we don’t imagine the Russians to be 10 feet tall (as many did during the Cold War, incidentally), we can see the world a bit more clearly.
The good news is we have those abandoned factories in Detroit. The bad news is that they are in Detroit.
The firepower isn’t ‘world destroying’ anymore. Thanks to SALT and START.
First, let’s concede the obvious — right now we’re in a propaganda war as well as a real one, so it’s not clear which sources can be trusted. But I do trust Western ones more than Russian and Iranian ones — especially because this is the kind of lunatic propaganda the Russians are putting out, and the Iranians make them sound sane by comparison.
There seems to be unanimity among Western defense ministers that Russia’s not targeting ISIS:
It’s premature to say this, but it tentatively looks to me as if they’re specifically targeting everyone with whom we’ve allied. Why? I’m just guessing — I can’t know — but it probably isn’t to tell us, “Enjoy your humiliation and by the way, we’ve penetrated your intelligence agencies completely” — although that’s a bonus and obviously true. It’s probably to reduce Syria to nothing more than Assad’s forces and ISIS — and then to say, “Well, here’s your choice.” Upon which the world will have to say, “Assad.”
But this isn’t going to work unless you kill everyone in Syria who will never at this point accept Assad — and that means killing, probably, 80 percent of them.
Remember that Assad hasn’t been targeting ISIS, either. Assad finds ISIS very useful: They justify his argument that he’s the only alternative to ISIS. (That’s why he let the jihadis out of prison, after all.) I surely don’t believe he meant the ISIS business to get as out of hand as it has, but Assad and ISIS do need each other. Assad’s existence is ISIS’s chief recruiting tool; ISIS is Assad’s justification for killing 200,000 Syrians and displacing half the country’s population.
What’s more, the initial evidence coming out suggests the Russians are not dropping precision-guided munitions. They’re deploying old-fashioned dumb bombs, including cluster munitions — much more likely to kill civilians. This strategy — which we might call Assad-plus — is apt to be just as much of a recruiting drive for ISIS (if not more) than Assad’s.
And the Russians aren’t planning to send (that many) of their own ground troops in — they’re planning to send in the Iranians. That means a non-zero chance (I cannot say how high, no one can) of Iran-Iraq war level conflict. Now imagine — as it is plausible to imagine — that Iran (rather than Russia) gets sucked into the proverbial quagmire and starts taking Iran-Iraq war level casualties.
Now remember that Iran’s a threshold nuclear state.
I’m not on the ground; I’m not receiving the intelligence reports; we’re at war; everyone’s lying — but I think it’s fair to say, “The risks here are high.” (Here are a few more nightmare thoughts to consider — none of them unreasonable.)
I wouldn’t tempt fate by asking how much worse it can get.
True. Their hardware worked very well, but their doctrine of employment was more geared to preventing defections and mutiny then actually warfighting.
The line back in the day was; When we test their aircraft (against our own) with their tactics, we win. When we use their aircraft with our tactics, they win.
Here is a longer discussion.
First, wonderful link.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-us-allies-short-on-options-as-russia-iran-flex-muscle-in-syria-2015-10?r=US&IR=T
I second your recommendation. Let me quote some from it:
“That risks turning all Sunni factions against Russia, while Putin is already nervous about the presence of large numbers of Chechens on the ground in Syria and about IS ambitions to build up its presence in the northern Caucasus.
Sarkis Naoum, a leading Lebanese commentator on Syria, said that if Russia decided to launch a wide-scale operation in the north, it would lead to a “war on an international scale.”
If on the other hand, Iran confined its military role to shoring up and fortifying an Assad-held north-western coastal enclave and the capital, Damascus, and avoided mainstream rebel-held territory close to the Jordanian and Turkish borders, the conflict would probably not escalate much more widely.
“This step (attacking rebels in the north) opens the door to an open-ended war in the region and a declared (Sunni-Shi’ite) sectarian war which could in the long term transform to a second Afghanistan for the Russians, and they won’t be able to win it,” Naoum said….”
(continued…)
(continued…)
[from: http://uk.businessinsider.com/r-us-allies-short-on-options-as-russia-iran-flex-muscle-in-syria-2015-10?r=US&IR=T]
“Moscow’s critics as well as non-IS rebels say the Russian and Iranian intervention will draw more Sunni foreign fighters and jihadis into Syria.
“What will Putin do then?” asked Naoum. “If this battle takes place then Putin would drag himself and the world into a predicament whose beginning is known but whose end is not.””
So, the Sunnis and Shias are going to grind at each other for the next 5 years. Russia and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Turkey and the Gulf States will join a pact of collective suicide in this recrudescence of killing (Russel Kirk’s inimitable phrase). Islam at its finest. I feel really bad for the (mostly) Muslim civilians, really bad, but I can’t wait for a ringside seat at this spectacle. Russia is going the make the US look mighty good here in the next couple of years, I expect. Muslim countries are going to be crying out for US intervention. If we are smart, we should sit this one out (maybe orchestrate the affair as we did for the Iran/Iraq war).
VOA has comments similar to the Reuters link CB cited above. Their coda is a bit disturbing though:
“U.S. officials worry that, on a broad scale, the impact of carrying out such airstrikes could be far-reaching.
“Russian interventions may result in extending [Bashar al-]Assad’s reign by imposing pacification on certain regions in the country,” an intelligence official told VOA on condition of anonymity.
“The greater impact, however, will be to increase the number of dead and the flow of refugees,” the official warned. “It will also likely turn this conflict into a factory for a new generation of extremists, just as the Afghanistan war did in the ’80s.”
http://www.voanews.com/content/syria-air-campaign-raises-questions-about-russian-capabilities/2989478.html
There’s too much thinking about Russia’s strategic goals from the U.S. viewpoint. Destroying ISIS is not their strategic goal, it’s a step towards their strategic goal. Russia just initiated a 150K man draft. The purpose of the draft is not because they need additional troops to take the rest of Ukraine. Russia is not going to set up the board inside Syria and Iraq and then invite the U.S. or the West in to fight ISIS. Iran and Hezbolla are providing ground forces – a lot?, majority?, most? Why would Russia take military actions to tweak the noses of the West -Putin has already humiliated Obama. The most likely explanation of their actions is it serves a military purpose.
If you are Putin what’s your strategic goal in the Middle East, control of the Gulf States oil production. Russia is adding 150K of new man power, they have ground forces from Iran and Hezbolla, and in the future probably Iraqi ground forces. They are not going to organize the battlefield and then invite the U.S. back into Iraq.
Sure it is. I’m not saying all of them — or any of them — would be used, but if all 14,800 nuclear warheads were used — average power of each devices some 33,500 kilotons — and if the users were reasonably thoughtful about detonation locations, we might be able to kill off a significant percentage of humanity, if we include radiation and fallout poisoning. Although the structural integrity of planet earth is probably relatively safe. Perhaps you’d prefer the a more positive locution, though, such as “a challenging situation?”
Very cool link. Thanks.