| Thursday,
December 20, 2007
More on pirates:
A good background source of info on the current state
of piracy is:
http://www.cargolaw.com/presentations_pirates.html
Note the dollar value> $16 BILLION a year. We are
talking major crimes with a murder count running around 100 a year.
And this is crime that is usually not even reported
because the cost of keeping the ship in port to handle police paperwork
exceeds the value of the loss. Only about 1 event in 10 reaches the record,
because of costs of increased insurance, or non working ship. A report is
made only if there is a public record from injuries or stolen cargo etc.
And the record of the US government is very poor. We
started out trying to bribe the pirates to leave us alone.
This century we just ignore the problem except when
one of our warships is nearby, after all -- there are almost no US merchant
ships. But even attacks on US Naval ships and planes are ignored in the
interest of peaceful relations -- except when we want to go to war (i.e. the
non attack in Tonkin Gulf or when Reagan wanted to regain a bit of our lost
honor in the Cambodian rescue effort).
Earl
==
Continuing
the discussion begun by Newt Gingrich's speech (part 4)
Subject: Dr. Cochran
Dr. Pournelle,
I had not taken the opportunity to assess Speaker
Gingrich's essay in detail, but (as usual) I cannot allow
Dr. Cochran's comments to go without response.
Unfortunately, it does NOT take 1.1 billion Moslems to
create an existential threat to the existence of the United States. All it
takes is a small but variable number of fanatics (Islamic, Asian
megalomaniac, environmental, name your favorite branch of fanaticism) with
the proper resources, technology, and leverage.
A few properly placed 1 megaton bombs would
effectively leave Western civilization for the taking, without even
disturbing a molecule of dirt. A variant of Pasteurella pestis engineered
for resistance to most modern antibiotics could be deployed worldwide in
less than a day and destroy two-thirds of the world population. Dr. Schmidt
was correct when he said in 1994 that the most logical explanation for
Fermi's paradox was that any society will evolve until one individual (or a
small group of individuals) with the will and resources to destroy that
society can leverage the means to do so, at which point said society must
either devote whatever resources are necessary to counter the threat (and
such niceties as civil liberties be damned), or die.
The fact that the liberals are not only leading a
(metaphorical) lemming-like stampede to cultural suicide, but are getting
behind the stampede and pushing anyone who tries to resist out of the way,
not only doesn't help, it encourages the various fanatics in their fantasies
of cultural superiority.
I remain convinced that Saddam was a nascent threat,
and that Iran is today (nor are they alone in that distinction). Iran may
not yet have the resources to completely destroy Western civilization, but
we're pitting our cultural tools of mass destruction in Iran against their
cultural tools of mass destruction in London (per Mr. Dobbin's article
linked today) and so far they appear to be winning. I have no doubt that if
the Imam's believed they could destroy Israel today without retaliation,
they would do so -- and I am not certain that, presented with a fait
accompli and the (possible) opposition of Russia and China, that the US
would act to remove the Imam's from power if they did so. I don't see
"withdrawal to our shores" as a viable long-term option in a world where the
destruction of civilization can be managed from half a world away in 30
minutes; that is no less true today than it was during the Seventy Years
War; the group of key players who control the resources and make the
decisions is no larger, may even be smaller (if perhaps more prone to
violent infighting) than the Nomenklatura, the political leverage they wield
is larger (since they have devout adherents, something that the basically
atheistic Soviet could never manage), and their population base is more than
three times what the Soviets and the Warsaw Pact could martial at the peak
of their power.
I'm very aware that Saudi Arabian Wahabism is a threat
on par with Iran, but the social and political dynamics remain different
because of the essentially secular House of Saud. A fundamentalist Pakistan
is also a potentially serious threat. But the major concern is the
instability associated with the non-state but international nature the
Islamofascist threat, with the corresponding inability to point fingers
effectively and the concerns about protecting the religious and civil rights
of the majority of Moslems who really do want little to do with the
conflict.
I remain hopeful -- but unconvinced -- that my friends
who believed on 9-12 that this would not end until all of the sand from
Jordan to Pakistan had been converted to green glass were wrong.
Unfortunately, they could also be wrong in the other direction, with the
coming of Eurabia and the North American Continent under Sharia Law.
And if one believes Nostradamus that Armageddon is
coming a short ten years from this week (and why haven't I seen that in the
news?), I'm also aware that the most likely way, within the next decade, to
raise an army of two hundred million to be incited to the fields of Megeddo
is to enlist the devout males of that prospective sea of glass. (The excess
male population created by the World's most populous country's popular
gender selection policies being the second likely source, or the army could
be divided between the two sources.) Not that I'm paranoid or anything.
J.
Saddam was no threat the the US and never
could be, and whatever thugs owned Kuwait wouldn't have made much difference
to the US; it remains the case that for the cost of either Gulf I or Gulf II
we could have gone a long way toward energy independence and brought the
price of oil down to a point where the Arab kingdoms would have no
surpluses: their income would vanish among the squabbling relatives of the
various rules. Corruption can absorb a very great deal of money. If it were
not so, we would not have trillion dollar budgets in the US.
==
Frankly, we'll be finished with Iraq before we finish
with Afghanistan. There are two fundamental reasons for that. One is that in
Afghanistan, we ended up with lots of European help. This causes such issues
as divided chains of command, political meddling in the mission and
objectives (not for the purpose of improving the match between what is being
done and the desired outcome, but for the purpose of working their own
national popularity polls) and the attendant creation of uneven treatment of
the locals, depending on which national force controls the area. This isn't
a good thing, as you strive to teach consistent lessons to said locals.
However, more important than that, Iraq has a more cosmopolitan population
and is simply a better place to work towards modernization. If the goal is
to find a country in the Middle East and bring it into at least the 19th
Century, with the expectation that this might spread some improvement into
the region, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better place, on paper, to do
this than Iraq. Strangely enough, there are those pesky signs of success…
I don't believe for a second that we'd rise up against
the death of a thousand cuts from terrorists, since it didn't happen in the
decade before 911. Every few months there was an assassination, a
kidnapping, a bombing or some other attack on personnel from State, DoD, the
military or even random civilians from some other country who were near a US
embassy. If we make it a real priority, can we stop these sorts of attacks?
Pretty much. Will we be allowed? Of course not. The sorts of treatment we
find acceptable to conduct on our own people are claimed as torture by our
enemies, our press and one of our political parties. Actual torture <http://news.aol.com/story/_a/
torture-center-found-in-northern-iraq/n20071220063109990015> is
ignored, since it might appear to justify our actions. Attempts to secure
our borders, with everyone admitting that terrorists have slipped across
with our "undocumented workers" get bipartisan opposition in DC, and the
funds for the fence have been clobbered again. Congressmen have compared our
military and intelligence personnel to Nazis and Communists with http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/016373.php
<http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/016373.php>
as merely the latest.
Routinely the media reports on massacres which never
took place in Iraq, or at least where nobody other than their locally hired
stringers can ever find them, and no effort is spared to find ways to
compare apples and oranges to make it clear what they expect us to think.
Do I believe that the Islamic Legions will sweep
across the desert and attack my home anytime soon? Of course not. However,
not all existential dangers must be within the next decade, or the next
five. Demographics is the oldest and most effective WMD ever devised, and is
an excellent reason to speak of the "Long War." Compare and contrast the
condition of women in Norway, today and twenty years ago. The place to deal
with such a danger is early on, when it is only a problem elsewhere. We can
look at Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, even Britain to
see what things will look like here if good men do nothing. The next step is
to identify what the alternatives to nothing might be, and which of those
are suitable responses for good men to make. Best to do this before we have
incentive to make a wrong decision in the heat of the moment. We'll want to
act before the bloody revolutions start in Europe.
There is a lot of money in the Arab world now, and
much of it has been invested. If you cut off the addition of new money from
oil, how do you cut off the addition of new money earned by the shares of
businesses and whatnot they own? There are people who joke that there are
only three superpowers, the USA, PRC, and Kuwait. How do we turn energy
independence for the US into energy independence for the whole world,
including nations that hate us and have for many decades? If we don't, all
we've done is slightly reduced the price for oil, and that won't last as
India and China drastically increase their energy uses. I fear the horse is
spectacularly out, and no matter how effective the locks on the barn door,
it solves a different problem. I think energy independence is worth pursuing
for its own sake, but I do not believe we can lay this particular benefit at
its feet.
It seems that Iran has believed they were at war with
us since 1979. However, they only killed government employees and military
types for the most part, so they were ignored. When it threatened other US
interests, the USN was sent to secure the Persian Gulf. Now, they are
fighting US military types in Iraq ( <http://www.longwarjournal.org/
archives/2007/12/iranian_qods_force_s.php> ),
which, you will understand, rather annoys us, and
which, in theory, should bother the US government, and they have a nuclear
program which CIA believes is just to supplement their extensive oil
reserves and which France, Germany, Britain, Israel, and the CIA prior to
the successes of the surge all thought was intended to produce nuclear
weapons. I submit that now that these additional conditions are in effect,
it is quite justifiable to remove Iran from the "circular file" and place
them into the "in box."
I do not believe return of the Old Republic is
possible without some magical means for the public to redesign the election
primary system to take control away from the True Believers, to develop
enough of a shadow media to cripple the constant flow of propaganda in the
guise of "education" ( <http://bookwormroom.wordpress.com/
2007/12/19/the-problem-with-american-education/> )
and "entertainment" <http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20071220.aspx>
)
and let's not forget selected, tactical leaks from CIA
and elsewhere in the government to consistently support one side of the US
political scene. Show me a constitutional way to fight it, and I'm there,
but the only such way requires considerably more of the public to notice the
problem and admit it is a problem than is the case.
Note that for the record, a ten destroyer navy would
be incapable of defeating piracy in Brazil, much less world-wide.
Serving Officer
The answer to foreign ownership of US vital
interests is known as confiscation; are we not at war? If we took this war
seriously, the Alien Property Custodian would have much work to do, as
indeed was done in 1918 and 1942. (Which is why there are American Bayer and
Bosch Arma firms.)
The propaganda system that had replaced
public education is of course the major threat to the entire notion of a
republic. Reducing the citizenry tro debtors works its magic as well.
I have always been in favor of restoring
the Republic. I am not sure it cannot be done. I am quite certain that we
know how to manage a competent Empire, and empire can be quite beneficial to
the citizens, as witness the Parthenon.
Or can we? See next letter:
==
Republics and Empires
Sir'
In all this Republic and Empire debate I always see
the USA cast as Rome, either as the Late Imperial Rome of the Fourth Century
A.D. or the Post Third Punic War Rome of the late Republican. (Nice
photoshop of you as Emperor by the way).
I think that is a flawed analogy. If anything the
United States is not Rome, (either Imperial or Republican) but Odoacer’s
Ostrogoths, or perhaps (if we are lucky) Byzantium or the Carolingian
Franks.
One of the dirty little secrets we no longer learn in
school is that USA was originally designed to be a client state of the
British Empire. Our interests were close enough to the British that we could
trust the Royal Navy to hang pirates, ensure safe and free the sea lanes
etc. while America’s upper class concentrated on getting rich off of
speculation in western lands, railroads, the industrial revolution, and low
taxes. It wasn't till the Spanish American War that we started thinking
about an overseas Empire, as opposed to simply expanding the Republic
westward.
The problem came when (I believe it was under FDR,
perhaps Wilson) we decided that breaking up the British Empire should be one
of our major foreign policy goals. The Brits used their Empire as a free
trade union, and we viewed this with a certain amount of envy. We wanted to
expand the de facto Empire we had in Latin America ( a co-operative venture
between United Fruit Co.and the USMC) into the territory ruled by the
British. Two World Wars gave us economic leverage over England and the break
up of their Empire was the price they paid to us for victory over Germany;
as Suez made clear in 1956.
The problem with disassembling the British Empire is
that this forced the U.S. to take over all the dirty, expensive and
thankless jobs that SOMEBODY has to do to keep the world working. This means
that our society is slowly being transformed (and not necessarily for the
better) as we warp it to create the institutions our job as THE Imperial
Power requires. But since we want to maintain the fiction that we are NOT an
Imperial Power we tend to do many of these Imperial jobs pretty badly....
but we are stuck because we are the ONLY ones that can do them.
Hence the Odoacer analogy. We aren’t an Empire, we
don’t want all the dirty, expensive, unrewarded work involved with being an
Empire, but General Powell’s "Pottery Barn" rule applies. We broke the
British Empire, (as well as the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Imperial German,
Nazi, Japanese, Fascist Italian, and Soviet Empires) and now we have to buy
it.
Why can’t we just refuse? Most people would say WMD's,
force us into the Imperial role, in that no Empire means nobody to keep
WMD's out of irresponsible, and likely angry, hands. However even more
important than the WMDs are the Blueberries. I can go into Kroger and buy my
daughter a half pint of fresh blueberries on a Tuesday night in middle of
December for $5.00. You are old enough to remember when you could only buy
fruit in season, so you can appreciate what a miracle it is to have berries
flown up from South America in bulk; and that this miracle is the product of
an amazing integrated economic machine. Without an Imperial "grown up"
keeping that machine functioning it will quickly grind to a halt. No Empire
means no blueberries in December, no cheap clothes from Asia, no cars and
electronics from Japan, etc. Trade comes to a halt, and as the original
Odoacer and his successors discovered, at that point VERY bad things begin
to happen.
For a while it looked like we could do the necessary
dirty Imperial deeds covertly, and via proxy, while keeping our shiny
Republic facade up for the public. Then came the Senator Church hearings,
the Pentagon Papers, the fall of Saigon and the Shah, etc. The willingness
of the New York Times to print any document, no matter how secret, if it
serves their political agenda (and the criminal unwillingness of the
Government to do anything about it) has put that option off the board for
the foreseeable future. We are currently seeing if new Mercenary Free
Companies are a viable solution.
Expanding the Republic can’t be done. Unlike the
Territories of the Old West, cultural and economic concerns prevent those
various places best referred to as "Fubaristan" from being incorporated into
the Republic, even if they were willing to be so incorporated, (and they are
not). The Brits don't want the Empire back; it was EXPENSIVE and they would
rather be spending their money on National Health Insurance and BBC Comedy
shows than harbors in Singapore, clinics in Zimbabwe and giant battleships
to rule the waves.
Bottom line is we aren’t Rome. We are now, as we were
in 1776, rebellious English foederati, nothing more. Only now, we stand amid
the ruins of great Empire that gave us birth, staring at the ruined remains
of the massive edifices we pulled down, realizing we have little idea of if,
or even how, to repair them; while messengers inform us that the Roman Mob
still needs to be provided it’s circuses and bread, that the Huns and the
Saxons still have to be dealt with, and that ambassadors from the Far East
have arrived wishing to speak to whoever is now in charge.
Lets hope we can do better than the Goths and the
Vandals did.
Take care
Brendan Kelly
"One of the paradoxes of our times is that the more
that formal political life is emptied of meaning, the more that fairly
trivial areas of life become politicised." Frank Furedi
"When will politicians realise that George Orwell's
1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual?'- Derek Clark, Member,
European Parliament.
I presume you have read Experiment in World
Order.
=========
> your view of the intentions of the Muslim
world are not entirely consistent with history. The fundamental message
of the Koran is that there is the House of Islam and the House of War,
and there can be only truce, never peace, between those. Of course
truces can last a long time. Some of the Muslim world has experienced
something similar to the Enlightenment in Europe. Much of it has not.
Your view of the optimum size of the Navy
is not mine.
If we need a big navy, it isn't because of piracy.
There isn't much piracy. Right now our margin over potential hostile navies
is bigger, I think, than than the Brits had after the Napoleonic wars. A lot
bigger: most of the Russian navy is crumbling and there's no one else close.
As for all that about the House of War: give me a
break. Jihadism means that if someone actually invades a Moslem country for
no reason at all - you know, like the Soviets did in Afghanistan, or we did
in Iraq, the rest of the Moslem world can, with a favorable wind, scrape up
~1000 incompetent light-armed resisters per year.
Gregory Cochran
You keep shifting ground. I had thought my
remarks were in answer to your statements about Muslim intentions, not their
potential.
I will leave it to others to discuss the
optimum size of the US Navy, but I will say I consider the Navy our
contribution to World Order and it ought to be structured as such. Not the
Army.
===========
Fred Reed says:
Subject: Legions
Jerry,
On your blog you say that the Legions in Iraq do not
want to be withdrawn, or so I understand you to say.
I am not nearly as plugged into the military as I was
during the thrity years when I covered it. Still, I question the idea.
Do you mean that if the troops, some on their fourth
or fifth tours I believe, were given the choice of flying home permanently
tomorrow, they would instead choose to stay? Maybe soldiers have changed.
When I was in Nam, the Marines I knew wanted to go home alive, with all
their parts, and as soon as possible. Almost nobody voounteered for a second
tour.
I'm speaking of enlisted men. Officers I didn't know
at the time, but they are far more ideological and more likely, almost
certain, to favor what they are supposed to favor.
Merry Christmas,
Fred
I replied:
I have no special insights but I
do get a lot of mail. I gather that no one wants to cut and run and
leave the people they made promises to.
We were long out of Viet Nam in
1975. It would have taken only air support and good logistics for ARVN
to defeat the invasion by the armored corps; they had done it in 1973.
We'd have had to bomb hell out of North Viet Nam and provide close air
support in the field. In 1973 for the year there were about 500 US
casualties and in that year we defeated an invasion by 150,000 NVA.
Do you really believe that the Air
Force and Marines wouldn't have been able to find enough volunteers to
defeat the 1975 NVA invasion? It wasn't an insurgency. It was pure and
simple an armored corps invasion.
My concerns with Iraq are the
bloodbath that will follow, and the reactions of the troops to what will
happen. I could easily be wrong.
May I publish your letter? This is
more or less the reply I will make.
Merry Christmas
Publish away.
Fighter pilots are a separate breed and I suspect
would happily have bombed whoever was deemed in need of bombing. I was
talking about Marines in 1967. They were not demoralized, at least in my
amtrac outfit, but neither were they very interested in what happened to
Viet Nam, disliked the Vietnamese, had no conception of the history of the
country, and got cautious as they got short. And these were volunteers.
Fred
Fred also intimates that he may be sent on
a journalistic assignment to Mesopotamia. I hope he goes. I'm a bit old to
take up anyone on that offer (I've had a couple).
In Viet Nam we had won the insurgency and
the war; we won a second war in 1972-73; and we would have had no problem
winning in 1975 if it hadn't been for Watergate. Congress smelled blood in
the DC waters and couldn't be bothered to safeguard a bunch of gooks in
South East Asia just because America had promised them we'd help them, and
poured in blood and treasure. The dominoes accordingly fell.
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