Intentional Consequences – How A Cold War Warning Framed A 21st Century Battleplan

Michael Cessna September 29, 2023

BACKGROUND

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this, that there is something strange happening at the southern border of the United States…even NEWSWEEK magazine is talking about it. No one who claims to watch the news at any level of attention has failed to see the hysterical cries from all levels of society in New York City that the mainstream media bothers to pay attention to, that the “migrant crisis” has finally come home to roost in the self-declared “sanctuary cities”, who are now facing just a fraction of what tiny towns along the US-Mexico border have been dealing with on a weekly basis, and for decades.

But, it is considerably more than that. In fact, it is alarming in the extreme.

In previous decades, a significant proportion of the illegal aliens crossing the US-Mexico border were women and small children; indeed, despite breathless denunciations to the contrary, the phenomenon of the “Anchor Baby” is very real. Prior to 2020, many, if not most, of the illegal crossers were unaccompanied men, actual “economic refugees” from Mexico and other parts of Central & South America, who were coming north to seek work, because even making significantly less than American-born workers, they were still able to make enough to more than fully support their families back home.

However, beginning at some point in 2020, that mixture began to significantly shift.

Beginning, again, in 2020, more and more Africans began to be observed at the border, crossing in illegally. However, like Mexican illegals before them, significant proportions of the flow were women and children.

But, beginning in 2022, the numbers shifted again. Increasingly, unaccompanied men of “fighting ages” (17-45 years old) began to appear – not mixed in with families, but in very large – alarmingly large, in fact – proportions of crossing groups.

What follows is an analysis that may sound “conspiratorial”. Given the current rhetoric from certain organizations – it is most definitely something that needs to be taken seriously.

ACTORS IN PLACE

“Men fleeing their country to take refuge in a foreign land, bring their women and children with them.

Men invading a foreign land – do not.” – Anonymous

Nearly fifty years ago, now, 1974 was a strange time. It was the height of the Cold War; the Vietnam War was grinding to its bloody end; tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were still very frosty, and getting more hostile as the political fallout from Richard M. Nixon’s resignation from the Presidency threw treaties and agreements into doubt.

In the midst of this turmoil, a small, 18-page study was presented to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under contract number RDA-TR-4301-001. Its title?

“A SOVIET PARAMILITARY ATTACK ON U.S. NUCLEAR FORCES – A CONCEPT”

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The paper outlines the feasibility of an “asymmetric” (to borrow a phrase from the modern day) attack on the US’s “nuclear triad” by Soviet special forces teams inserted into the US by slipping them over the border, mixed in with the yearly flow of illegal migrant workers.

When viewed through a more modern lens, this study stands as a stark warning for the current situation at the border, with only minimal editing for the current situation: simply replace “Soviet” with “militant actor groups”, and “nuclear forces” with “civilian soft targets”.

This is not hyperbole – if the numbers remained as small as they once were, this view would, indeed, verge into paranoia. However, with even the low figures hovering around 10,000 people per week, and even being generous in estimating the numbers of actual refugees, that equates to the core cadre of an infantry division entering the United States each week.

BEANS, BULLETS & TRAITORS

Now, the above is a pretty heady statement to make. After all, how would such a hypothetical force be armed and supplied, to what purpose, and by whom?

If you, the Reader, think that we are about to go to a very dark place – you would be correct.

It has long been known that certain elements of the United States government’s apparatus have deliberately tread very carefully, lest they goad the c.100,000,000 private firearms owners in the country into doing something “rather rash”. Frequently, they even try to crack jokes about it – jokes which absolutely no one finds funny.

Those same elements, however, certainly seem hell-bent to inflict demented plans on not simply the US population, but on the populations of the wider world. The United States’ population, though, is unique as it has not simply the highest proportion of private firearms ownership per capita, but also the largest numbers overall…and a significant proportion of that number are military veterans, many with recent combat experience.

In fact, those elements are so concerned about this potential threat to their plans that they have been issuing increasingly strident warning calls about the situation since the mid-1990’s. Yet, for them, the “problem” remains.

But – how to mitigate that problem?

It is clear to these elements that deploying the actual US armed forces, or even police, against the citizens they are sworn to defend through “kinetic action” is not an option: far too many would almost certainly either desert outright, or might actually mutiny, taking their weapons and joining their fellow citizens who are being attacked. And this is all aside from the fact that those “regular” forces, even in concert with law enforcement officers, simply do not have the numbers to make “martial law” a viable option.

But…What if those forces were given an actual, hostile foreign target inside the United States? For that matter, what if those private firearms owners could be induced by circumstance to join the regular armed forces and law enforcement in an action to “defend America” against that force? Stentorian denials from the “right wing” on social media aside, this “Reichstag Fire” scenario would force self-proclaimed “2A supporters” into a Catch-22: Either support the direct defense of the nation – in concert with the armed forces and the police – or suffer consequences far worse than being exposed as fakes.

*FMLN guerrillas, El Salvador, c.1980’s. Photographer Unknown.*

However, as there has been no such credible threat inside the United States – because “Antifa” is not the threat many, including that group’s members, suppose it to be – such a force would have to be “imported”.

Hence: foreign, fighting-age men, flooding into the country in massive numbers – but numbers not sufficient to actually conquer the country, but certainly enough to cause a sufficiently large and alarming threat…a flood actively encouraged, by public policy.

Note that none of either the foregoing, or what follows, is even a possibility without the active collusion of large sections of the government apparatus in Washington, DC.

It is vital to understand that, even assuming that certain reporting, dismissed a decade ago as “deranged conspiracy theories” were to be true, such a potential hostile force cannot successfully seize control of any great portion of the United States – at least, not for any real length of time.

But – why?

Simply put, the potentially hostile forces that would act, would be extremely disjointed and lacking in any more than the most basic of direction, and outside the cities, would find themselves vastly outnumbered, outgunned and over-matched by the local population. Unlike other parts of the world where groups like these operate, the local population in the United States – overall, but most certainly in the more suburban and rural areas – are very well-armed, by current world standards, and are peopled with a high percentage of recent military veterans, most of whom are armed.

This does not mean that such hostile forces would be completely impotent. Indeed, current technology means that these forces could easily arm and equip themselves effectively, simply by raiding firearms dealers (making the publication of the personal information of firearms permit holders over the last few years…“interesting”) not simply for weapons and ammunition, but also for the information on the dealers’ Form 4473’s, as described in the famous scene from the original “Red Dawn” (1984). As well, functional support equipment could be constructed at reasonable speed, allowing this potential hostile force to cause a lot of “hate & discontent”, and all without a great deal of the typical heavy ordnance one would see in most of the conflicts of the last c.25 years…for a time, at least.

In the aftermath – if this strictly hypothetical plan were to be real – the surviving American citizens would be ready to fall in line behind a government professing to have “learned its lesson”, that would revitalize and regularize citizen “militias”…under strict government control and supervision, of course.

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND

Is any of the foregoing true, though?

There are no “smoking gun” documents – that the author is aware of – that detail the above speculative plan as a real, deliberate and ongoing operation…That in no way means that it is impossible.

There is an overused saw in current vogue, to wit, that “history does not repeat – but it does rhyme”. In this case, real, fundamental manipulation of a population to a meaningful purpose they would otherwise not only have no interest in, but would actively oppose if said plan were enacted too quickly, is not a thing that can be achieved overnight. It is a process that takes years to plan and decades to implement.

Once again – 1974 was an odd time. Lot of plans were flitting around the literal swamp that Washington, DC perches in, like a vulture’s nest…Plans like “NSSM 200”.

You, the Reader, should reflect on that link.

*The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To*

Coughing Tiger, Drunken Dragon – The Danger Of Globalization

Michael Cessna September 22, 2023

Amid all the shrill backbiting over continuing to flagellate the dying Ukrainian efforts against Russia, as well as the capering of France trying to stave off the disintegration of its African satrapies, as those states internally realign themselves with Russia and China – by force, when necessary – a specter lurks in the background, the proverbial “elephant in the room”: Communist Chinese insecurity over Taiwan.

In this insecurity, lay the seeds of global economic collapse.

At the end of World War Two, Communist leader Mao Zedong led his “People’s Liberation Army” out of their mountain hideouts, and slid in behind Soviet forces occupying Manchuria, swiftly arming themselves with ex-Japanese military equipment captured from the defeated Imperial Japanese Army. Thus armed, the Communists went on the offensive against the exhausted Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) forces, which had born the brunt of fighting against the Japanese for the preceding eight years (1937-1945).

Despite several billion dollars in US aid, and the poorly though-out deployment of the III Amphibious Corps and elements of the 7^th Fleet, the sheer exhaustion and demoralization of the KMT resulted in a series of worsening defeats on the battlefield, until, in 1949, the surviving KMT military and government units retreated (for the most part) to the island of Formosa (now, Taiwan), and established a government in exile.

That is the situation as it remains, today.

Communist China, throughout its bloody and draconian history from 1950 until today, cannot abide that a recognized province of the country is not under its thumb. This manifests itself in the news of today, as near-continual violations of Taiwan’s declared air and sea boundaries by Communist military forces. The normal response of the United States has been to occasionally deploy aircraft carrier battle groups into the disputed waters as a dare to the Communists to fire on them.

The question for many, however, is – why? After all, the United States famously showed Taiwan the door in 1972, which made the country a diplomatic pariah state…so, why does the United States constantly go “eyeball-to-eyeball” with Communist Beijing over the island? For that matter, why can’t Beijing just let it go?

Two answers: For Beijing – and particularly for Premier Xi Jinping – Taiwan is a gaping sore for the Communists, as the island rapidly prospered under the KMT’s governance, while Communist China wallowed in poverty, famine and induced technological stagnation under the increasingly mentally unstable Mao…and that, in spite of the extreme brutality of the KMT’s actions in securing the island, beginning in the late 1940’s. As prosperous as Communist China has become in the aftermath of the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the Communist state still lags behind Taiwan by a long distance.

Second, the United States knows a fundamental truth that many around the world (and particularly within the United States), a truth that is the basis of this article:

Any Communist attempt to invade and conquer Taiwan – even if it failed – would collapse the global economy overnight.

The reason for this is brutally simple: microchips.

Silicon chips, semiconductors, or integrated circuits as the Reader prefers, are what drive modern technology, from the device you are reading this article on, to the CPU in your car, computer chips drive every object of any consequence in your everyday life.

And Taiwan produces at least fifty percent (50%) of the world’s supply.

Most of Taiwan’s chips are produced by one company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). Unlike other manufacturers like Samsung and Intel (who manufacture chips for internal products), however, TSMC chips are not proprietary to them. Instead, their chips supply manufacturers of computer-driven hardware around the world, companies like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm, to name just three. Other nations around the world currently hover at less than half of TSMC’s production capacity; the United States currently holds about 12% of the global manufacturing capacity.

Invasions, as proven by the Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, are bloody, messy and highly destructive affairs. Any actual Communist Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan would be no different, the severe problems of a combined arms assault on the island equating to a probable Communist failure aside. To say that such an invasion would “disrupt” TSMC’s operations is a laughable understatement, not least because standard military doctrine virtually guarantees direct attacks on the company’s production facilities, to say nothing of worker attrition from “collateral damage”.

*Devastation in Bucha, Ukraine. CC0/1.0, Public Domain.*

What would such a circumstance mean for the global economy? Simply, virtually all generalized computer and electronic device production and repair or upgrades utilizing semiconductors would grind to a halt, as stocks of chips dried up virtually overnight. This is due to the phenomenon of “just-in-time delivery”, an outgrowth of the wave of globalization that has been the norm since the 1990’s.

The Reader may recall the term “supply chain disruption” that became popular during the recent pandemic. Workers at both manufacturing plants, but also – critically – stevedores and loading crane operators stayed home, either terrified of catching the disease, by legal order, or both. This ricocheted throughout the global supply and transport system, and was greatly aggravated by what many considered to be a minor event, namely the grounding of the container ship Ever Given in March of 2021. The effects of these body blows to the global economy continue as of this writing.

*Container Ship ‘Ever Given’ stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt, March 24th, 2021. Copernicus Sential photo. CCA/2.0 Generic*

In regards to a hypothetical – but very possible – Communist invasion of Taiwan, the disruption would be vastly worse, as there is no way for global manufacturers to quickly retool to make up for the loss, even if a ceasefire were quickly closed…And note that this does not address the general disruption of commercial cargo traffic in and out of the Communist nation, in the event of such a war.

But, there is an even greater danger lurking in this very possible scenario: the facts that not only will Taiwan not go quietly, but that they have a plan to take Communist China with them.

Without resorting to nuclear weapons.

The non-Communist Chinese in Taiwan all know full well what a Communist takeover of their country would entail. Given the Communist state’s recent history, to say nothing of its habit of “disappearing” political dissidents and anyone who disagrees with their regime too loudly. Because of this, there lurks a plan that Taipei lets slip every once in a while, to remind Beijing of what the consequences of invasion would be.

*The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, China, 2009. CCA/2.0 Generic*

Taiwan’s “doomsday” plan (YouTube link) would be a series of strikes against the Three Gorges Dam. If concentrated, such a strike package would collapse at least a section of the dam, releasing the force of 39.3 km³ to pour downstream in a massive deluge.

Provisionally, this action could kill up to 400 million people…And this is not an idle threat, as the KMT has done it before. To say that this could result in a nuclear response is a given…with everything else that derives from that.

Right now, Communist China is desperate to appear tough and capable. The chances of bluster turning into an actual invasion are very real, however.

This fact is something that should be taken seriously by anyone reading this.

Unsung Heroes – The CUCV

Michael Cessna September 15, 2023

No, not that! Don’t be juvenile.

Militaries around the world use vehicles. In the 21^st Century, that should be obvious, but the range of the vehicles military forces – and their irregular counterparts – use covers a very wide spectrum. What usually makes the nightly news are vehicles like main battle tanks, various classes of APC’s, and small “tactical” vehicles that all look like they were given massive shots of steroids and testosterone.

More rarely, you may see military cargo trucks, carrying anonymous crates of “military stuff”, vaguely termed “cargo” or “supplies”. If you’re very lucky, you might see some sort of construction vehicle, similar to those you may see working on road repaid during your daily commute, albeit the military vehicles are probably painted in “Army Green”.

But, there is another class of vehicle, rarely spotted (or paid attention to) by news crews, humble little heroes that slog along in the background, mostly ignored because they appear so plain next to their more military-looking cousins…those are the COTS vehicles.

Military ground vehicles have unique requirements that civilian vehicles do not need. Military vehicles require at least some level of armor protection for their crews and passengers, as well as needing to be massively built to absorb both the recoil of heavy weapons and the impacts from bullets and shell fragments. Their drive-trains and suspension systems need to be far heavier and more robust than civilian vehicles, and their electrical systems need to be much larger, the better to handle the much heavier load of electronic equipment that most military vehicles carry – in militaries that plan for electronic and nuclear warfare, the electrical systems also need shielding against Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) – to name just a few.

Clearly civilian vehicles require few, if any, of these very heavy and very expensive systems.

However, military bases (as we have pointed out previously) very much resemble small towns. As a result, in addition to all of the specifically military vehicles needed, there are a host of functions that require vehicles, but not vehicles requiring the heavy and expensive features outlined above.

When a military identifies such a need, the smart move is to turn to the civilian sector. This is concept is called “Commercial, Off-The-Shelf”, or C.O.T.S.

In the early 1970’s, as the Vietnam War ground to its conclusion, it became painfully clear to the United States military that its faithful little warrior, the much-loved “Jeep”, was nearing the end of its service life. Requirements were changing, and the little vehicles were simply no longer equal to the task. Thus, the Pentagon began development of a new light vehicle in 1970 that would eventually become the High Mobility, Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), now known as the “Hummer”.

The problem? The Hummer would not enter service for over a decade…but the M151 Jeeps would not last that long. A new idea was needed – and that idea was a COTS program to buy civilian pickup trucks as a “short-term” solution.

And thus, the CUCV was born.

*Dodge M880 CUCV, 2006. Photo Credit: Mike Davidson. CCA/3.0*

In 1976, the Pentagon began buying a “militarized” version of the Dodge D200 and W200 pickup truck models; eventually, the Pentagon would buy c.44,000 vehicles, designated the M880- (W200) and M890-series (D200); they were termed, in classical military lingo, “Civilian Utility Cargo Vehicles”, hence, “CUCV”. These early batches of vehicles were very basic civilian pickup trucks, essentially car-lot models painted “Army Green”. There were a few minor additions, however.

While most vehicles had a conventional 12-volt electrical system, some models added a 24-volt system to handle an increased electrical draw for more electrical equipment. That 24-volt addition came at a cost, however, because the 24-volt system took up the space needed for a power steering pump, making them rather difficult to drive in rough terrain and snow. Their engines were also gasoline-powered, in a military that ran mostly on diesel.

The M880/890 vehicles, all of them models from 1976 and 1977, have had a long – and continuing – service life, although the vast majority have long since been either scrapped or sold off as surplus, as more and more Hummers came online.

But, that wasn’t the end of the CUCV program. This was because the M880/890 series was so successful, the military wanted to make lightning strike twice…so, beginning in 1983, the Pentagon went to General Motors, and handed them a set of requirements based on its experience with the Dodge vehicles.

The result was the “M10XX”-series vehicles.

*GMC M1009. 2011. Photo Credit: Joost J. Bakker. CCA/2.0 Generic*

Starting with a standard Chevrolet K5 Blazer chassis, the M1008 and its derivatives were all uprated to a 1¼ ton capacity, or higher, and were equipped with the GM 6.2lt J6 Detroit Diesel V8 engine. The main modification, however, was a hybrid 12/24-volt electrical system, running two 12-volt batteries and two 12-volt/100 amp alternators. The vehicles also came equipped with a NATO-standard 24-volt slave cable jumper connection, to provide jumps for 24-volt vehicles. The Pentagon would eventually purchase over 70,000 of the M10XX-series, a vehicle count rivaled only by the M113-series APC.

*View of a NATO Jumper cable slave receptacle on an M1009 CUCV, 2008. Credit: Wikimedia User CatCube. CCA/3.0*

Beginning in 1987, the US Air Force began buying limited numbers of what became known as the CUCV II. These vehicles were all based on the Chevrolet C/K, Tahoe, and Suburban models, and were “militarized” in a manner similar to the previous M100XX-series. As well, following the adoption of U.S. Army Regulation 750-1, these vehicles all received the Chemical Agent Resistant Coating (CARC) coating, which provided enhanced protection against nuclear, biological and chemical threats; while some of the earlier types of CUCV were repainted with CARC material, most of the older models were surplused before receiving the updated paint.

Although produced from 1987 to 2000, the CUCV II vehicles were never procured in large numbers. Beginning in 2001, another small order was placed for a new CUCV-type program, called the Light Service Support Vehicle (LSSV).

*Canadian Military Police Light Utility Vehicle Wheeled (LUVW)/LSSV truck. Public Domain.*

The LSSV is a GM-built Chevrolet Silverado 1500, Chevrolet Silverado 2500 HD, Chevrolet Tahoe, or Chevrolet Suburban that are powered by a Duramax 6.6 liter turbo diesel engine. In 2005, LSSV production switched to AM General, a unit of MacAndrews and Forbes Holdings.

Like all of the CUCV models, the LSSV is intended for non-combat duties, like base services and maintenance, military police patrol, light cargo and monitoring functions. With the rise of the “combat technical”, however – and especially in light of the US Army’s awful infantry squad vehicle concept – the notion of possibly revisiting the CUCV concept as an active combat vehicle is not as outrageous an idea as it would have been fifteen or twenty years ago.

Sometimes, the dedicated military design process fails. When that happens, innovation will step in, if allowed…and, almost always, in a more cost-effective manner.

African Chess: Russo-Chinese Rise on the Corpse of Neo-Colonialism

Michael Cessna September 13, 2023

By Michael A. Cessna, Military Affairs Correspondent

INTRODUCTION

On July 26th, the Presidential Guard of Niger arrested and detained the country’s President, Mohamed Bazoum, in a palace coup. The Presidential Guard’s move was quickly approved of by the Nigerian military, with General Abdourahmane “Omar” Tchiani being named to head the military junta now ruling the country.

The international response was as swift as it was predictable, with stentorian platitudes about immediately “restoring democratic rule.” However, events swiftly took an equally unexpected turn, which has brought Western Africa to the point of all-out war, not just internally, but with France, and potentially NATO itself.

In brief: Africa is sick of France’s runaway neo-colonialism and is starting to find its legs with a nascent unified front…and Russia is waiting to pick up the pieces.

THE CURRENT SITUATION

As news of the coup spread, Nigerien civilians swept into the streets, in apparent support of the coup. While not unusual in coups, especially in Africa, what made this particular coup immediately different was the number of civilian coup supporters openly waving Russian flags and signs saying “Thank You, Russia!” in French (the country’s official language), accompanied by similar chants, shouts, and “man in the street” interviews.

The response by the wider “world community” was also predictable, with strident calls to release President Bazoum immediately and restore him to power. In doing so, this knee-jerk cheerleading figuratively shot itself in the foot, as it openly demanded restoration of “democratic rule via status quo ante” at all costs, even if the “democratic leadership” in question was openly corrupt.

Whether that is true of Bazoum’s administration is open to question, but there were certainly complaints within the military that Bazoum had a lackadaisical – at best – https://my.bible.com/users/paulcollier/reading-plans/13630-bibleproject-old-testament-in-a-year/subscription/940218825/day/58approach to the ongoing threat of Al Qaeda- and Islamic State-aligned jihadist insurgents threatening the nation.

1. ECOWAS – Again, none of this type of rhetoric – on both sides – is overly unusual, being the common refrain in virtually every coup since World War II. However, the rhetoric quickly took on a completely different tone, as France (the former colonial master of Niger) immediately began threatening the use of direct military force against the junta. The regional ECOWAS coalition (led by neighboring Nigeria) also quickly threatened military intervention to restore Bazoum, something to be taken seriously, as the regional body has done exactly this in the past.

The junta’s response, daring both France and ECOWAS (the regional economic, and now military, interstate body, that has intervened militarily in several West African states in the last twenty-odd years) to attempt to use force against the coup, was almost immediately backed up by the nations of Burkina Faso and Mali, who have declared that any attempted military intervention in Niger will be regarded as a “declaration of war” on them, presumably requiring an equal response.

These acts, by two countries that have both undergone coups in recent years, have effectively broken ECOWAS as a body, as several member states – critically, including the nation of Chad – have expressed their unwillingness to participate in either military action or sanctions. In fact, the Senate of neighboring Nigeria, to the south, is dragging its feet (as of this writing) on authorizing military action, despite the resolute calls of that country’s President for military intervention.

2. FRENCH DEPENDENCE ON NIGER – This seemingly extreme response is easy to understand when viewed in light of uranium extraction: Niger supplies 10-13% of the raw uranium that powers French civil nuclear power. While the loss of Niger’s uranium would be annoying for France, it would not be devastating…unless Niger’s neighbor, Chad, follows suit with the other landlocked uranium suppliers.

But for France and the wider Western “First World,” this is about much more than uranium – it is about both the rapidly collapsing structure of French neo-colonialism (using local proxy governments, propped up by bribery and occasionally French military muscle, to maintain highly unbalanced trade and mining concessions with the former colony), and the loss of strategic partnerships and military basing to the nascent Russia-China alliance that has quietly spread across the African Sahel in the last five years.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY?

The African Sahel – that band of land separating the Sahara-Mediterranean coast from the tropical-temperate southern portion of the continent – has been locked in a desperate battle with a brutal Islamist insurgency for over twenty years. The fighting has been fierce and bloody, especially when viewed in light of the comparatively small populations involved (relative to the physical size of the nations involved.

For example, Niger is approximately twice the size of the US state of Texas, but has a smaller population. While France certainly stepped up a decade ago, and the United States saw a Special Forces team overrun and nearly annihilated in October of 2017, very little has happened since to improve the military situation, despite nearly 3,000 French and American troops being deployed in the country for nearly a decade.

1. THE SAHEL – Adding to this toxic state of affairs is the continued imbalance of remits for mineral extraction rights, not just within Niger, but within the wider arc of former French colonies in the Sahel. In true neo-colonialist fashion (not to be confused with “neo-cons,” although the two are related), the imbalance of remits is theoretically balanced by French and international aid packages to these economically disadvantaged nations; these are, however, demeaning to peoples who want to stand on their own, but are prevented from doing so by “leaders” who are kept in power by “foreign state backing” (read: “bribery”).

Eventually, this led to coups…but the recent spate of coups has taken on a new dimension, in that those executing the military removal of their corrupt and ineffectual, but “duly elected,” governments have seen the local putschists reach out to a new set of foreign backers: Russia and China, forming a kind of “Trans-Asian Pact” (TPA).

2. WAGNER FACTOR – Where China offers the possibility of access to cheap consumer goods provided by its “Belt & Road Initiative.” Russia offers military muscle, not only in the form of weapons, but also in the form of combat support, training, and “direct action” combat missions by its “deniable” mercenary army, the Wagner PMC.

Militarily, despite the abysmal performance of Russia’s main military actor on the continent – the Wagner PMC, formerly headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin – the current policy has worked because the vast majority of the internal conflicts that have been hammering Africa in the last two decades are primarily tribal and/or ethnic in nature, rather than sectarian; for example, Niger’s Bazoum comes from the country’s Arab minority, comprising barely 0.4% of the population. In fact, Wagner troops’ performance in the field has fallen off considerably in the past when opposing the forces of the Islamic State, who – despite their much-reduced size – are far more motivated to stand and fight, like conventional infantry, rather than hit-and-fade, like strictly tribal forces.

One factor about Wagner needs to be kept in the forefront: Wagner is an extension of the Russian government. While it is technically a private corporation and does take contracts not directly associated with Russian foreign policy, it is entirely at the beck and call of Moscow, despite the recent putsch and its reorganization to stage in Belarus.

As well, the source of the corporation’s frequently poor troop performance in the past was tied to the fact that, at present, an estimated 80% of the corporation’s forces were recruited directly from Russian prisons.

While that might have worked 150 years ago, that is no longer a viable or effective recruiting ground for a modern military force.

However, the above facts should not be taken as bookends to define current Wagner troop capabilities. While much is being made of Wagner troops’ poor performance in Mozambique in 2019-2020 and against US Army Special Forces in Syria, as well as its equally poor performance against IS and Al Qaeda forces elsewhere in Africa, the local view among the people of the Sahel region is that Wagner troops are willing to get their hands dirty fighting terrorists, but without the presumption that they are colonizing troops.

Similarly, the Russo-Ukrainian War directly impacts this situation, as veteran Wagner forces realigned to Belarus are being filtered into Africa.

This is not something to be discounted – these troops have recent experience in a type of all-out combat not often seen in Africa, and the extensive combined arms operational doctrines associated with that type of warfare. While many, if not most, of the armies in Africa pay lip service at best to this type of warfare, they are mainly focused on operations more tied to counterinsurgency.

In this environment, it is entirely likely that Wagner’s poor performances of past years are no longer, and counting on the PMC to deploy poorly motivated and inept forces is likely a very bad idea.

THE BATTLESPACE

The fighting area is the African “Sahel” region, the “ecological/environmental buffer zone” dividing the Mediterranean-Saharan Desert region of northern Africa from the temperate-tropical “Sub-Saharan” regions to the south.

Broadly speaking, this region extends in an unbroken line from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.

The resource base of the countries in this region is vast and commercially exploitable, security concerns aside.

Given the regional political situation, France would have to enter several states to get at Niger, states that will either engage them directly and immediately, or whose populations will not exactly receive them with open arms.

Next, even a cursory examination of events in the preceding decade shows the clear nature of the Russo-Chinese Trans-Asia Pact’s “soft penetration”: there have been a steady string of “invitational interventions” by Wagner forces across the Sahel, as well as a steady string of coups (many successful) in the same nations.

On the larger map, this shows the clear scope of the Trans-Asian Pact’s operations, as local power elites across the entire Sahel region have either staged – or at least attempted – coups with support (either direct or implied) from Wagner…and thus, from Russia.

The sole exception, as of early August 2023, is the nation of Chad – which announced on August 3^rd that it would not participate in any military intervention against the Niger junta.

1. WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

The Trans-Asia Pact’s goals are clear and easily understandable: Supporting the coup groups in the African “Sahel” region weakens the West’s control over those African states and impedes the strategic capability reach of Western powers.

In a minor sense, while this appears to imply a type of “mercantilist” plan – i.e., extracting local mineral resources in trade for pittance-level remunerations in cash and cheap goods – the trade balance is far more equal (at present) than those Sahel states’ situations with the West in general, and France in particular.

2. COUP WAVE – The wave of coups against openly corrupt governments, which are then replaced by Trans-Asia Pact-friendly juntas, makes possible a continent-spanning trade corridor.

3. TRADE, NOT SOCIAL ENGINEERING – Russia and China have quietly developed a mirror image of the Western colonial/mercantilist model of transactional relationships, but one with a fundamental difference: Neither Russia nor China make any pretensions to a “civilizing mission” in Africa – they are open about seeking strictly transactional relationships with local power elites; there is no presumption that either state cares about “helping to raise up” the populations of their local partners…and neither is there a presumption of imposing democracy on states that are ill-suited to the concept.

The current situation is most emphatically not the same as the “proxy wars” of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s: There is no pretension of “fighting the capitalist-imperialist-colonialist diktat for the greater liberation of the Proletarian Workers according to the principles of Marx, Lenin, and Mao.” This is strictly about economics and tangentially about military basing.

4. MILITARY REALITY – Militarily speaking, the West is confronted by two potentially insurmountable issues in Africa: First, aside from Wagner PMC forces, there are no apparent plans to attempt to deploy Russian or Chinese national forces to the Sahel, aside from Chinese warships already deployed to Djibouti as part of the international anti-piracy naval task force, and a pre-existing Russian basing agreement with Sudan.

This is extremely important, as it eliminates claims of “colonial garrisons” in the partner nations.

The other problem is the growing military professionalism among African militaries. Western nations have gone to great lengths to bring officers from Third World national militaries to Western military academies and professional staff schools, in addition to the training teams of special forces deployed to their countries.

This has been coupled with the easy availability of weapons and support equipment at parity with Western nations…and, significantly, the ability and willingness to use that equipment. While the military forces of a Niger or a Burkina Faso are certainly no match for French or American forces in an antiseptic, “one-on-one” contest, the reality is that France cannot invade the region like it was the 19^th Century…and for completely different reasons; no US administration is willing to endure the firestorm of masses of mostly-Caucasian infantry doing more in Africa than training local forces or defending themselves.

It is a situation predicted over eighty years ago in “The Small Wars Manual (1940),” a semi-official “war-fighting” manual written by the United States Marine Corps at the dawn of World War II. The manual points out that its recommended tactics did work at that time, but that the more developed insurgent forces became, and the more they were able to source modern weapons and equipment, the less effective the book’s tactics would become.

Two much more worrying factors for the West are Algeria and the Great Rift Valley. Algeria, also a former French colony, has angrily denounced French threats of military intervention in Niger. Having watched the 2011 NATO destruction of its eastern neighbor, Libya – by NATO forces led by France and Italy, and the earthshaking instability that resulted – it is not about to stand to see it happen on its already-threatened southern frontier. And Algeria has both the economic and military muscle to back that up, as it controls many of the oil pipeline heads supplying Europe with African crude.

5. GREAT RIFT INSTABILITY – The other issue is the continual instability in the Great Rift Valley, in Eastern Africa. This mineral-rich region has been kept as undeveloped and disorganized as possible, as it produces sky-high profit margins for the vital minerals that keep the West’s high-tech industries running…at the cost of what amounts to slave labor, strip mines, and continual banditry and insurgencies.

6. CULTURE WARS – In light of ongoing events, including the recent move of insanity by the World Bank to shut out the nation of Uganda from any further loans because of their passage of openly anti-LGBTQ laws, it is no feat of clairvoyance to see that many states in the region may reach out to the Russia-China TPA, and its associated partners in BRICS, to obtain cash loans against their mineralogical outputs. While still disadvantageous to the African countries, such deals would still likely be better deals than what they currently get from the West.

PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS

Over a period of thirty-odd years, the West figuratively built a massive stone wall – then promptly ran into it, face-first, and at full speed. This construct was built from a combination of Victory Disease–inspired arrogance after the end of the Cold War, abject greed, and a not-small amount of paternalistic “plantation” racism.

The result has been the West resting on its laurels, assuming that the Third World peasants it has deliberately kept in an undeveloped state to maximize corporate profits were too stupid and brutalized to take any meaningful action against them and their money-generating interests.

In fact, the near-constant state of war in Africa has created the ultimate Darwinian laboratory, where only the most cunning and ruthless leaders and forces survive…with leaders who are far more intelligent and crafty than anyone in the leadership echelons in Western Europe or the US.

Africa is now at the point where, while perhaps unable to fully operate on their own, they are more than capable of ditching their neo-colonial masters for others who, while also not caring about them in any functional way, are at least open and honest with them about what their intentions are.

And, unlike during the “proxy war” period of the 1960s–1980s, the grotesque incompetence of the Western Powers – especially the United States – has resulted in a state where the West is unable to take meaningful action against a Third World regional bloc. Western militaries and defense industries are incapable, as of 2023-2024, of doing more than chasing the occasional goat herder – the Western powers who goaded Ukraine into a no-win war with Russia did so without the ability to back up their saber-rattling…And now, not only are they unable to back their Ukrainian gambit, they cannot intimidate a Third World bloc unwilling to bend the knee, if that bloc keeps its spine straight.

Military action by France against the Niger junta is impossible, even with US support. As stated above, this will never happen, as no administration inside the DC Beltway will risk the image of masses of white American troops doing more in Africa than defending themselves, if that.

Added to the possible north-south advance of Wagner into the Great Rift Valley (where Western tech firms get the critical materials for their technologies), a possible axis of advance helped in no small part by the deranged response of the United States to Uganda’s recent anti-LGBT legislation, this means that the long-dreaded, fundamental shift in economic balance is now visible on the horizon:

Africa is on the verge of entering the world commodities market as a single negotiating bloc, capable of executing “most-favored-nation status” trade agreements as a continent, with any and all other countries.

This will fundamentally undo the current economic paradigm of globalism that has clamped onto the jugular and carotid arteries of the world for thirty odd years.

The end results will not be pretty.

FURTHR RESEARCH

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: Shadow of Terror over The Sahel, from 2007 – Al Venter

Small Wars Manual – Department of Defense

Fiasco – Thomas Ricks

How To Make War, 4^th Edition – James F. Dunnigan

Why Armies?

Michael Cessna September 8, 2023

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.” – Sun Tzu, Chinese general and strategist, c.500B.C.

There are some questions floating out there, which are generally considered as “no-brainers” – questions that appear so basic, that everyone just assumes that they know the answer, when in fact their understanding of the question is merely superficial, at best. Questions such as “Why is the sky blue?” for example – the correct answer is simple, but many people are unable to formulate the correct response.

Which brings us to the title of this article.

Why do armies (military forces, really) exist? At first glance, the possible answers appear to be self-evident. For many people, their nations create and maintain military forces to defend the country and its peoples. However, their neighbors may see the same nation’s military forces as everything from brutal police enforcers to mercenary enforcers for large business interests.

In fact, that last idea formed part of a statement from Smedley D. Butler, Major General, USMC (ret.), in a speech he gave in 1933. Butler had, in fact, seen monumental levels of corruption in 33-odd years of military service in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. He had fought in numerous wars and interventions during those 3+ decades, from Mexico to Central America and the Caribbean, to France in World War One, and in the Far East.

“It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.” – Smedley D. Butler, 1933

He was not incorrect.

Likewise, many people point to the opposite extreme, best exemplified in the South American nations of Argentina and Chile, from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, where those nation’s armies were used primarily as heavy muscle to back up the nominally anti-Communist actions of brutal and irretrievably corrupt military junta’s.

Throughout history, from the time of the savagery of the Assyrians, to the rationalizations for the 1990-91 looting expedition of Saddam Hussein (some of which, if we are being honest, were valid), and beyond, military forces have been used to grab everything from gold, crops and women, to industrial plant equipment and raw materials, despite that inevitably becoming an ultimately losing proposition.

And it is no secret that military forces are extremely expensive, even when military leadership, governments and economists manage to carefully balance military budgets (an almost unheard of event, on a par with finding an actual herd of unicorns). This is because – for the reasons just outlined above, among others – military forces are a net drain on their parent economies, as they can never produce enough economic output to balance the expenditure necessary to create, organize, equip, train and maintain them.

“Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State. The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways. As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.” – Sun Tzu

And yet, the rule remains: military forces are necessary for a society to maintain, because whatever other uses militaries are put to, there is always someone on the other side of the river/mountain/ocean that wants a piece of what you have, and is not willing to negotiate for it.

There is, however, a trap inherent in all military forces, that being the breathtaking feel of the power and majesty of command. That is not hyperbole – it is very frighteningly real. “Drunk on power” is not an empty statement. The knowledge of having the ability to wield the power of literal life and death over hundreds, thousands, millions – or more – people can be more intoxicating than any mere chemical action.

People with that particular failing also believe that they are smart enough to disregard Sun Tzu.

“To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” – Sun Tzu

That is not “paranoia” – that is history…and History does not care whether you believe it or not.

So, where does this leave us?

“We, the People” – of whatever nation – need military forces. Despite the dangers of armed forces having the monopoly of violence within their borders (which, ignorant arguments to the contrary, is the entire purpose of the US Constitution’s Second Amendment), the People, as a whole, need an organized, well-trained and well-equipped force to protect them. Like any tool in a home, like any kind of vehicle, device or machine, the object itself is just an object – it is inanimate, and has no mind of its own. The “good” or “evil” actions that tool is used for, is solely the responsibility of those putting it to use.

It is responsibility of the citizens of a nation to hold their governments accountable when their military forces are misused…because if they don’t try, they have no right to complain: You, the Citizen, are paying for your military forces. Even if you have never been in a military force, if you think you have a say in how your country operates, you need to inform yourself about “things military”, in general, and your country’s military in particular.

That’s part of what is known as “adulting”.

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” – George Washington, First Annual Address to Both Houses of Congress, Friday, January 8, 1790

You Never Go Full ‘Don Quixote’ – Or, When ‘Crazy Eddie’ Throws Pasta

Michael Cessna September 1, 2023

In 1974, authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, writing in their seminal science fiction novel “The Mote In God’s Eye”, coined a character concept called “Crazy Eddie”, a concept-figure who would appear in a society’s mindset at time of extreme social stress, and take the most insane and contradictory actions possible, which usually resulted in accelerating the collapse of a society or civilization.

The world is in a remarkable state of tumult as of September 1 of 2023. The war in Ukraine is well into its second year. In Africa, a wave of military coups is obliterating France’s sixty-plus year old “totally-not-an-empire”, sending the region and the wider world into a frenzy of impotent rage, as no one wants to wade into a quagmire against black nations standing up to imperialist and corporate interests. Russia and China, aside from rattling military sabers to whet the appetite of the ravenous bloodlust of the Western media and entertainment spheres, are quietly marching towards an economic checkmate against the West, in a move that will not simply destroy the Western business models, but will smash Western economies flat, potentially reducing many Western European economies to a state no scene since the post-World War 2 recovery, and the Marshall Plan…only there won’t be a Marshall Plan this time. Maybe a Putin-Xi Plan, but not a Marshall Plan.

Pretty heavy for an opening bit, eh?

Amid all of the current tumult in the United States – the possible return of Covid lockdown restrictions not least among those – there is a quietly increasing crescendo calling for actual military intervention – meaning, “invasion” – of Mexico, in order to “deal” with the flow of illegal drugs.

I wish I were joking.

The current power bloc in Washington, DC – supported by their cohorts in The City of London, Paris, and Brussels – had goaded Russia into what they thought would be a “warm-n-fuzzy” kind of “Cold War, 2.0”; what they got was a full-on invasion. Although there initial, hysterical screams to “go to war” with Russia, both from within the power blocs and from those in the general public who should probably be on emotional-management medications, it soon dawned on most people that “going to war” with Russia would almost certainly mean a “nuclear” war, that no one would “win”.

Then came Africa: Beginning in 2017 (YouTube link), people seemed to suddenly remember that there were still islamist jihadi’s out in the world, burning, looting, raping and killing people in order to serve the warped vision of religion espoused by a tortured political prisoner. However, murderous religious maniacs were “so three years ago”, and virtually no one on the “Western Street” considered barely-literate bandits hiding under the cloak of religious fervor to be an existential threat to Western civilization. Likewise, the recent wave of coups – not coming at the behest of Western governments and corporations – aren’t exactly revving the martial engines of Western populations being crushed under rancid economies and continual political scandals.

Something else was needed…And in the United States that answer is, increasingly, the illicit drug problem.

And it is a problem: tens of thousands of Americans die every year from drug overdoses, a large percentage involving the drug fentanyl. Unlike the normal cries for “Bayonets UP!”, however, this group of calls comes from the opposite side of the aisle: instead of Democrats leading the charge for military intervention, this time, the main thrust is coming from the Republican side of the fence.

This should not be a surprise, given the GOP’s continuous cries against illicit drugs. After all, it was no less a figure than Richard Nixon, who authorized the placing of cannabis (aka, “marijuana”) on the list of drugs as a Schedule 1 compound, right next to heroin – a position it retains to this writing – in 1970. And, like the vigorously enforced alcohol raids of the Prohibition Era – also enforced by successive Republican administrations – the GOP’s “war on drugs” has directly sparked the explosive growth of massive, high-revenue and well-armed and frighteningly well-equipped drug cartels, who have an international reach, and who have now diversified into human trafficking.

Given the abject inability of the US military to deal with the opium trade in Afghanistan during its twenty-year long occupation of the country – which saw opium poppy fields expand five-fold – the idea that a smaller military, struggling with recruiting efforts, and quietly speaking the dreaded “D-Word” out loud, can deal with the various drug cartels is not a matter for political or military debate, but a matter to be dealt with by mental health counselors.

The US military is having trouble recruiting people with bonuses exceeding $50,000 to sign up. As Mexico itself has discovered, military recruiters have a hard time competing with their counterparts in the Cartels, especially if the Cartel recruiters can use Mafia-like threats against potential recruits’ families. Likewise, the Cartels not only pay what regular forces term “combat pay”, but offer bounties against specific targets.

As well, with revenues between US$20 billion and US$60 billion per year (minimum), and far less overhead than conventional corporations and nation states, the Cartels have plenty of cash left over for high-intensity R&D: the wave of combat footage coming out of Ukraine, showing drones – from both sides – dropping small bomblets into trenches and bunkers are merely the current state of a technology pioneered by the Cartels, and refined in Syria in the aftermath of the rise of ISIL.

Much worse, from both a tactical and an operational standpoint, is the ability of Cartel members to blend into the general population. While islamist jihadis are comparatively easy to target, as they belong to a very narrow slice of the US population, Cartel members are a subset of the largest minority group in the United States. Where – to get rather “ugly” about it – potential jihadists tend to limit themselves to Muslim mosques, Cartel soldiers are largely Catholic, and are thus able to circulate freely among the Catholic population, the fastest-growing Christian denomination in the world.

The Cartel’s leadership echelons are not idiots. In fact, a distressing number began as military professionals, as is clear from their ability to organize a military-style logistics system. They are watching the rhetoric coming from within Washington, DC and various other organs, both from within the government, and from government-adjacent groups – nothing presented here is new to the Cartels.

Decades of neglect of border security, up to and including the recent encouragement of millions of desperate economic refugees to cross the southern border of the United States illegally – an action which helps to fuel the cartels’ diversified revenue structure, to say nothing of the very real physical dangers of the northern Mexican deserts and the human trafficking predations of the “coyotes” – has fueled an massive surge in drug-related deaths across the United States. Communist China is certainly complicit in this, as they are the Cartels’ prime suppliers of fentanyl precursor drugs…something they have no issue supplying, as Beijing sees this as “payback” for the Opium Wars…but that is a whole other story.

With the hyperventilating actions of people who should know better, calling for a Presidential authorization to use military force against the Cartels, alongside equally breathless and stentorian calls to designate the Cartels as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTO’s), and coupled to a military establishment that has seemingly lost its way, to the point where it is quietly considering a return to a military Draft, the notion of an all-out “hot” war on the southern border of the United States is the height of lunacy, a lunacy driven by both sides of increasingly incompetent power blocs.

“We, the People” have allowed our “elected” leaders to paint us into a corner, a corner from which there is no real way out, except through the use of extreme levels of violence.

Kind of like Africa in the last few months.

When ‘Forever Wars’ Fail – Delusions vs Realities

Michael Cessna August 26, 2023

On July 26 of 2023, a military coup unseated the president of the West African nation of Niger; details of this situation and its wider implications are the subject of a Freedomist monthly, subscription-only article, set to go to press as this article is being written. While coups d’état are not unusual in post-1960 Africa, what made this one unusual was that it was the sixth since 2020, and was only the latest in a string of some twelve coups in the region, beginning in 2008. Another unique feature in Niger is the open public praise of Russia, complete with homemade Russian flags.

And this is aside from the absolutely remarkable statements from both the US State Department and the Pentagon’s AFRICOM command that they have no idea and no way to track what happens to the Third World military officers (some of whom earn Master’s degrees in US and British military universities) that they train.

These coups are not complex events to understand – not that the various “think tanks” advising policy makers around the world seem to understand them. At all. In fact, the tone-deaf mewlings of people overly impressed by the letters after their own names begs inquiry as to whether or not they are using word-salad AI Chatbots to write their papers.

Additionally, the non-military sphere is heating up as well, as the BRICS Group has just extended invitations for membership to six states: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. This is no small thing…again, however, not that the US, British of Western European foreign policy, military and financial power structures seem to care.

And this is also separate from the catastrophically embarrassing failures of the same nation’s attempts at training Second- and Third World military forces to something approaching a Western military standard. From the nation of Georgia in 2008, to the collapse of the Iraqi Army in 2014, that of the Afghan National Army in 2021 and the abysmal performance of the “retrained” Ukrainian Army in 2022-23, Western – meaning, United States and NATO countries – military training programs have consistently failed (and failed miserably) to train up effective forces. Given that the current US Secretary of Defense, retired General Lloyd Austin, testified before Congress (YouTube link) on the spectacular $500 million failure to train more than a handful of “friendly” anti-regime forces in Syria, it would seem obvious that rather penetrating questions should have been asked, on numerous occasions.

But, I digress…Back to the original question: Why is it so hard to understand what is happening in world affairs?

There are only three realistic possibilities: incompetence, delusion and/or corruption.

Incompetence at this level, while alarming to the uninitiated, is depressingly common in areas of higher education. Classroom theories about lofty and obtuse notions of “democracy”, finance, resource management and social equity fail instantly and completely when confronted with the stark realities of the real world – as education widens in the population base, the “common folk” begin to learn just how badly they are being screwed…and eventually, they will stop taking it, rise up, and either stand on their own, or at least look for a new partner that isn’t insultingly paternalistic and slimy.

That, in a nutshell, is what just happened in Niger, as the population is fed up with France acting as the glowering, judgmental schoolmaster, desperately trying to hold on to a zombified economic dominion over its former “colonies.” Russia – while certainly no saint – has no real colonial history in Africa, and is remembered by many as a reasonably friendly power from the Cold War era.

Turning to the possibility of delusion, that is also an easy, if depressing, possibility to grasp. The sad fact is that Western institutions of education have spent at least forty-odd years hammering at the nail of “democracy”, as if it were a panacea to all of the world’s ills. This is done despite the bald facts that “democracy” is extremely fickle, and fails abjectly when forcibly introduced into a populace who has little, if any, history or inclination to properly use what is a notoriously clunky system, a system that encourages discrimination at virtually every level if not carefully carried out. Countries and peoples that have political systems imposed on them with little education or even training quickly spiral into internal unrest, if not civil war. This is the historical record, from Sri Lanka to Iraq, to Niger; where exceptions appear, those simply ‘prove the rule.’

Corruption, too, is a distinct possibility. The Western “establishment” deeply fears an Africa whose national peoples – even though their “nations” are, for the most part, wholly artificial constructs with boarders drawn by distant colonial powers with delusions of adequacy – might someday agree to set aside their differences, overthrow their corrupt “leaders”, and tell the West that their free lunch is over…and lest you, the Reader, dismiss this as an empty threat, you would be wise to remember that cheap African minerals are why you were able to afford the computer, tablet and/or smartphone you are reading this article on.

In contrast to the incoherent bleatings of people with more letters after their names than actual experience, critical thinking and/or “plain common sense,” the issue at hand is not that the United States, France and other Western powers are somehow deliberately scheming to topple governments with whom they are already friendly (because they stage-managed the elections that put those governments in power), using officers trained in their own advanced schools of military education, in order to install governments antithetical to those Western states’ views and desires while aligning themselves with said Western states’ semi- (if not full-on) hostile opponents (read that again, if you need to; I did)…it is far more a matter of “keeping the pot simmering,” to keep the local “partner nations” off-balanced, and in dire need of “friendly support”…the notion that local military officers, professionally trained by Western militaries, might go home, look at the rank corruption and incompetence of their “democratically elected” governments, and decide that “drastic measures” are required to save the country, is apparently unfathomable inside the air conditioned think tanks of Washington, DC, London, Paris and Brussels.

No word on how the Western troops at the sharp end feel about this. (YouTube link)

There is, however, another dimension to this situation: Grand Strategy.

*African countries that have had coups between 2020 and 2023 (July 2023). Credit: **Discombobulates**. CCA/4.0*

The BRICS Group, led by Communist China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, has used the wave of coups across the African Sahel region – the so-called “Coup Belt” – to their distinct advantage. When zooming out to a wider Africa map, it is clear that the pattern of coups in the African Sahel region stretch in a near-unbroken line from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean…and every coup in those states in the last fifteen odd years has been done with at least tacit Russian or Chinese support. With the BRICS Group inviting in new members, this opens the possibility of a revival of a British idea from their imperial days in Africa: instead of a “Cairo to Cape Town Railway”, the wave of Russia-friendly governments produced by the wave of recent coups opens the possibility of a “Port Sudan to Dakar Railway”, cutting across the breadth of the continent, causing a vast and violent shift in global commerce, as it would allow a transshipment route for cargoes that would bypass the Suez Canal…All that is needed for such a project is money (see: Saudi Arabia joining BRICS, above), and a much-improved security situation, neutralizing both “islamist insurgents” and general banditry. This would also open the possibility of reviving the “Cairo to Cape Town” route, as well as additional north-south spur lines. Russia is well-versed in the impacts of a continent-spanning rail line, as their more-than-a-century-old Trans-Siberian Railway remains a vital economic artery for the Russian state.

Another dimension, is the neutralizing of ECOWAS, the “Economic Community of West African States”, an economic cooperation sphere which has been increasingly flexing its military muscles, intervening in several member states over the years, for a variety of reasons. In Niger, however ECOWAS’s immediate order to the coup’s ruling junta to immediately return the deposed Nigerien president to power, was met with a blunt refusal – a refusal that has now been formally backed up by the nations of Burkina Faso and Mali, both of whom are currently led by military junta’s who also succeeded in their own recent coups. And in the broader ECOWAS nations, there is very little support for the idea of a military intervention, especially in light of increasing attacks by AQIM and Boko Haram in recent months.

On top of this, the Organization of African Unity (the “OAU”) has also taken action that is not being well received on the “African Street”. These unpopular actions in recent weeks hold the possibility of seriously fragmenting both organizations.

Which, to return to the corruption angle, also brings up an ugly possibility, one verging into full-on “Conspiracy-Theory Land” (a place that is increasingly “Conspiracy-Fact Land”): that Western militaries are being deliberately hamstrung in fighting islamist insurgencies – not simply in Africa, but around the world.

This is in no way the fault of the Western troops at the “pointy end of the spear” – major policy theories and decisions are presented to troops detailed to execute them far less often than they are presented to the general public, regardless of country. But there is a clear pattern in the preceding thirty or so years: Western forces are sent into a state which – although theoretically rich in natural resources – is almost hopelessly backward, and kept that way by Western interests who want both cheap resources, no matter the cost, and “strategic positioning,” also no matter the cost.

Military force has its limits. The problem with Georges Clemenceau’s tired saw, that “war is too important to be left to the generals”, is that politicians – and the “political” generals advising them – are almost always in a far worse position to be making military decisions than their generals.

This is as true in Africa as it is in Ukraine. In the latter case, the hysterical incompetence and base greed of “corporate donation”-driven politicians has brought the world closer to open nuclear conflict than at any time since at least 1983. (YouTube link)

But in Africa, this hysterical incompetence actually presents a far greater danger to the West: African states with enough military competence to make it difficult to invade them all, who can form a solid negotiating bloc – especially one with support from Russia and Communist China – can up-end Western technology and transport infrastructures to the point of collapse, without firing a shot. Those directing affairs in Washington, London, Paris and Brussels believe that they can “manage” these coming “adjustments”; they cannot, but that is not stopping them from proceeding with their plans, plans driven by arrogance, hubris, and not a little racism.

The people running things in the West are playing a game by rules that they think that wrote, and which they assume cannot be changed unless they want to.

The Universe will only tolerate a certain amount of stupidity. When that limit is passed, the Universe has a habit of collapsing things, in any of a number of way – none of them good.

To quote the Athenian scholar and general, Thucydides, “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”

Prepare accordingly.

“The Other Guys” – The Unsung Heroes of Military Vehicles

Michael Cessna August 18, 2023

Let’s face it – tanks are sexy. So are “combat vehicles.” We’ve all seen them on television for years: big, brutalist vehicles, racing around a course, firing monstrous cannons, or grinding their way across the desert. Massive engines of war, practically defining the idea of the “warrior ethos.”

*A Brigade of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division masses for the invasion of Iraq during the Gulf War, February 1991. US Army photo. Public Domain.*

Or, perhaps, they are carrying infantry, dramatically exiting their vehicle, perhaps under fire. These kinds of vehicles fulfill another part of the “warrior ethos” equation, with warriors heading into violent, close-range, face-to-face battle with a dogged opponent. Very Audie Murphy.

*US Army soldiers from 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, dismount from a Stryker APC, Mosul, Iraq, 2005. US Army Photo. Credit: SPC Jory C. Randall, US Army.*

The idea of “sex” selling military equipment is alive and well, as can be seen by the marketing at any international arms show.

But this, of course, begs the question: Is this all there is? Of course, there are other aspects of “militarydom” that news media outlets and “infotainment” channels talk about relentlessly, as long as the public expresses interest in “things war-like.” These include paratroops, Rangers, or commandos, or special forces either stealthily creeping through enemy territory, or storming a “bad guy” hideout to neutralize said bad guys, or to rescue the hostages in dramatic fashion, especially if news cameras are present. Again – we’ve all seen these images and videos repeatedly, either on the news or in popular entertainment…and, for the most part, these all definitely deliver and validate that sort of drama, courage and honor.

*The SAS storm the Iranian embassy’s burning windows, 5 May 1980. ©Crown Copywrite.* *Combined Military Services Museum, Maldon, Essex, 1980.*

This, of course, brings us once again to the question: it that it? In a word – no. Not by a long shot.

Combat troops require support. While combat troops are certainly capable of improvising, they are far better at executing their combat missions when the “non-combat” troops are relentlessly driving food, fuel, ammunition and spare parts forward, and doing the jobs that the combat units do not need to expend time and energy to learn: maintenance, medicine above the 1^st Aid level, building (or destroying) structures – occasionally under fire – all of which are things that the combat forces need, but are too busy to spend time doing.

In “the biz,” this is expressed as the “tooth-to-tail ratio”, or, the proportion of combat to support troops. This is a very dense subject to get into, and there are a wide array of opinions on the subject, most of which disagree at one level or another with all of the other opinions. The point, however, is that any group with pretensions to military force is going to have more support troops who are unlikely to see actual fighting, than combat forces intended for straight up combat.

And those support forces need equipment – a LOT of equipment – and the unique supplies and spare parts to keep those running. And a main component of that equipment is armored support vehicles.

Lurking in the background, seldom photographed, and even less talked about or reported on, are the “combat support vehicles.”

These vehicles are not cargo trucks, but the sort of vehicles you can see on your daily commute when passing a construction site – everything from road graders to backhoes, bulldozers. These vehicles frequently have a coat of “military green” paint slapped onto them; hopefully, they have slats of armor plate welded onto them to protect the operator. They are then sent out to build anything from roads, to towns and camps for refugees, to large airfields.

A United States Navy Seabee uses a grader to construct a parking lot during the combined US/Honduran training operation “AHUAS TAR” (BIG PINE), 1983. Photo Credit: TSGT Ken Hammond. US National Archives. Public Domain.

But these vehicles also include highly specialized vehicles, such as minefield breachers and high-speed trenching machines, like the Soviet BTM-3. The BTM, in particular, has made a resurgence in the Ukraine war (YouTube link), as both Russia and Ukraine quickly turned to trench warfare, as the war bogged down into a bloody stalemate. With trench systems resembling those of World War 1, the BTM and its later derivatives and cousins have worked frantically to construct vast trench systems far faster and more efficiently than individual soldiers can. After a trencher slices through the area, troops need to do no more than to expand the position, “filling in” the parts that the trencher vehicle cannot easily do.

This is what “force multiplication” is all about.

*Bosnian BTM-3 trenching vehicle. Bosnia, c.1999. Author Unknown.*

Unfortunately, since these vehicles, as highly effective and vital as they are, are rarely given any kind of real consideration…because they are not “sexy.” And, disappointingly, the leaders of most countries have little interest in these vehicles (because they are not “sexy”), so the vehicles sit, rarely used or considered when discussions of “militarydom” occurs…until, of course, tensions suddenly escalate into actual war, and those vehicles – many times, barely running – become a decisive combat multiplier, usually outweighing actual “combat vehicles” in value.

And that’s before we talk about trucks.

If you’ve read this far, I will offer you the following advice: The next time your elected officials start talking about the “defense budget,” spend some time, and look into what they actually want to spend your money on. It’s your tax money, after all, that is spent to “defend” you.

You might want to look into how it is being spent.

Improvised Sharks – A New Face of Shoestring Warfare

Michael Cessna August 12, 2023

The genesis of this article came from a completely different angle, namely, the deployment of laser weapons to the battlefield. However, as things frequently go, that initial idea led to something of much more immediate interest.

Previously, the Freedomist has covered some aspects of “improvised warfare” that some seem to take as James Bond-like fantasy. Yet, as we progress through the third decade of the 21^st Century, remotely controlled drones – available in most countries through their local Amazon store – capable of both conducting tactical combat surveillance, as well as tactical air support by dropping small fragmentation grenades, are serious and maturing battlefield threats, threats that military and security forces are struggling to counter.

“Improvised warfare” has been around since the first caveman grabbed the jawbone of his last dinner to bash in the noggin of another caveman trying to muscle in on the first one’s turf. Throughout military history, outside of the heroically vast and sweeping battles of storied yore, there has always lurked the “PBI” – the “Poor, Bloody Infantry” – struggling to make do with usually-substandard weapons and equipment, improvising on the fly, on the idea that “if it looks stupid, but works – it isn’t stupid.”

This is also true in naval warfare. “Suicide boats,” in the form of “fire ships”, go back to at least the 3^rd Century AD in China, and the 5^th Century AD in the Mediterranean, and those dates are only the earliest we have on record. The use of fire ships in combat has always been problematic, as controlling the vessels after the skeleton crews abandoned them was impossible, and the abandoned vessels could easily come back on the attackers.

*Chinese fire ships used by the navy as floating incendiaries, from the Wujing Zongyao military manuscript written in the year 1044 during the Song Dynasty. Public Domain.*

As naval technology advanced however, fire ships, as such, disappeared, replaced by explosive-laden boats propelled by early steam engines. These boats had some advantages, not being as subject to winds as the old ships, and their explosive warheads were much more capable of inflicting serious, if not fatal, damage to large warships. Still, the inability to steer the boats remotely left their utility still strictly limited.

As with so many things in the military sphere, during World War 2, everything changed. The intersection of technologies with mass production and sincere desperation, allowed the first tactically useful guided weapons, not simply on land and in the air, but at sea, human control was still the primary aiming method until the last moment.

Post-WW2, the use of explosive motorboats continued, eventually evolving into actual “suicide boats”, where the crews rode the craft directly into their targets. While this was always a danger for the operators of these boats, very few navies outside of WW2 Japan set out with this as their operating profile. Beginning in the 1980’s, this began to change, first with the LTTE in Sri Lanka and with Iran in its “WW1, 2.0” war with Iraq. This is, in fact, what happened to the USS Cole (DDG 67) when it was attacked at anchor in October of 2000, as the suicide crew happily “saluted” the American crew before detonating their massive charge, nearly destroying the ship.

And then – another “sea change” (no pun intended) happened.

As the Soviet Union collapsed, and Communist China finally figured out how mix capitalism with a brutal, totalitarian governmental system, the West welcomed the Communist remnants into a burgeoning world trade system with open arms. As the global economy shifted and changed, the technology sector exploded in its own form of “business as war.” Technology once reserved only to the “Great Powers” became ‘democratized’, available at reasonable prices to the general public. While major nations certainly had far better and more capable – and much more expensive – systems, smaller states (and groups) suddenly had access to technology and manufacturing bases that significantly increased their capabilities versus local opponents (including their own citizens, but that’s another conversation, entirely).

*Container port in operation. Credit: Piqsels.com. Public Domain.*

All that was waiting was another spate of desperation to drive improvisation.

As the “Global War on Terror” (the “GWOT”) drove on in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the many small, localized wars it spawned drove desperate innovation, once again. Various ethnic and religious factions around the world desperately sought some sort of advantage. This has led to everything from “homemade tanks”, to artillery, to ‘sci-fi’ weapons manufacture.

But now, desperation-induced technological innovation has caught up with the navies of the world.

On January 30, 2017, the Saudi Arabian frigate RSN Al Madinah (FG 702) was struck and seriously damaged by an explosive-laden speedboat. Initially, it was believed that the craft was a piloted suicide boat deployed by the Shi’a Islam Houthi rebels of Yemen, which country has been in its most recent civil war since 2014. Soon, though, it became apparent that the attack craft was actually a remotely- controlled craft.

Speculation immediately turned to Iran. Iran, in addition to being co-religionists to the Houthis, was already supplying the rebels with short-range ballistic missiles and combat drones. In this regard, Iran differs from Ukraine only in that they supply their craft externally.

*Ukrainian naval drones, c.2022. Unknown author.*

Given the rapid advances in remote-operations technology, it would be no great task to re-engineer common pleasure boats to function as drone attack craft; as well, the issue of a simplified, “standard issue” refit kit (similar in theory to an aircraft JDAM unit) is virtually guaranteed.

But ultimately – what does all this actually mean, in the grand scheme of things?

Simply, insurgents and guerrillas are now much more capable than they were in the past, as they are now capable to extend remote-controlled warfare into the nautical dimension. With the democratization of military training, this opens the ugly possibility of radical forces being capable of enforcing localized (if not regional) combined-arms dominance over all the most capable of national militaries.

The fact that this is an operational possibility worthy of consideration is not something that should alarm only strategic planners – it is something that average citizen needs to seriously consider.

Act accordingly.

God’s Battalions – The Holy See’s Hidden Military Potential

Michael Cessna August 5, 2023

Unless a person is a member of the Catholic faith, most people don’t give a great deal of thought to what they think of as “the Vatican”, unless there is some noteworthy story concerning the Church. Most historians (both professionals and amateurs) are well versed, in varying degrees, about the Church’s history. Historians know that the Holy See – the actual leadership of the complex structure that is Catholicism – is an independent and sovereign nation, a condition settled by the Lateran Pacts of 1929, after seventy years of upheaval. But really – it’s not like the Catholic Church is actually a nation, right?

Right?

Well, no, actually. That is not the case, at all. And while it of course is a matter of immediate impact to the 1.3 billion-odd Catholics in the world, it is also a major concern – or should be – for non-Catholics, including non-Christians, throughout the world.

The Catholic Church – the strictly religious organization – has certainly existed in some form for over two thousand years; in fact, our formal dating system (i.e., “2023AD”, where ‘AD’ means “Anno Domini”, or, literally, “in the Year of our Lord”) is based on the Church’s established interpretation of the historical timeline.

During those twenty-odd centuries the temporal authority of the Holy See has waxed and waned. Where it once held immediate and direct sway over the secular affairs of much of the Christian world, in the minds of most people – even of most Catholics – the notion of the Pope as a secular leader is somewhat bizarre. In 1870, when Italy was finally united, the Holy See was stripped of its “Papal States”, although the Pope of the day, Pius IX, flatly refused to recognize the “Law of Guarantees” imposed on his rule, and referred to his rule, as well as that of his successors, as the “Prisoner in the Vatican” era.

This was the situation that remained in force until the signing of the aforementioned Lateran Pacts in 1929 by Pope Pius XI, which created the modern division between the Holy See, and the Vatican as a sovereign city-state, albeit a tiny one, only holding some 108 acres within the city of Rome. However, these remain technical differences. Among those differences is that Vatican City the City-State retains its own military forces…whose “commander in chief” (to use the modern term) is the Pope.

And it is here, that we reach the subject of this article.

Unlike most of the articles like this at the Freedomist, this is not a historical piece. Instead, we will consider the Vatican’s potential to impact current affairs through creating and applying military action.

While the Holy See is no stranger to maintaining military forces – some of which still exist – it has not had “operationally deployable forces” (again, to borrow the modern vernacular) since 1870. It does retain military and police forces, specifically the Pontifical Swiss Guard and the less-well known Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State.

While the Swiss Guard, famous for their Renaissance-period ceremonial armor and uniforms, directly protects the Pope (or the College of Cardinals, when they gather to elect a new Bishop of Rome), the Gendarmerie conducts more police-like duties within Vatican City, mostly managing tourist traffic. The Swiss Guard has significantly improved their protective training in the decades since the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Still, these two forces comprise barely two hundred and fifty troops, and are only armed with the lightest of small arms.

*Swiss guards after a celebration inside St. Peter Dome, 29 June 2006. Photo credit: Alberto Luccaroni. CCA/3.0*

Additionally, of the Church’s remaining military orders, only the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) is really “military” in any way: SMOM maintains a military medical detachment, providing medical support to the Italian Armed Forces.

*Troops of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, during an army parade in Italy, 2007. Photo Credit: Utente:Jollyroger. CCA/2.5*

Should the Holy See decide to expand its secular military, finances are not an issue, should the Vatican decide to reform an operational military arm. Accusations of certain fiscal shenanigans aside, the Holy See is fully capable of mobilizing all of the vast capital (much of it not easily tracked down) that it controls. At the same time, a program soliciting remittance-like donations (even tithes) from Catholics would provide a significant boost to the Holy See’s income stream. Spent wisely, Vatican finances are more than sufficient to field a very large force, and very quickly, as the world is awash in arms and equipment.

But surely, this is all hypothetical. It’s not like the Vatican is going to suddenly militarize. Right?

States have a habit of changing their nature quickly, and sometimes functionally overnight; take modern Iran as one example. How would such a thing happen to the Holy See?

While the current leadership of the Holy See and Vatican City are well known for “liberal” policies that could easily change. Granted, it would have to be an extraordinary circumstance, but a change to a staunchly conservative, even reactionary, leadership within the Church is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. In such a circumstance, assuming that a reactionary Pope ascended to the Throne of St. Peter, and decided to field a functional military, how would that take shape?

First, the reactionary Pope would need to define a mission for the expanding Papal forces. Given the nature of the modern era, this could easily begin with a revival of the Papacy’s long-disbanded Papal State forces, including its navy.

One of the curiosities of the Covid pandemic was that many cruise lines retired their older cruise ships, selling them off for scrap, using the suspension of cruise travel to purchase new ships. Many of the ships that were scrapped were still usable, and could have been converted into hospital ships, with a land component to handle the more delicate surgeries at dockside. This is completely in line with the current mission of SMOM, and could be presented as an expansion of the Order’s mission…Of course, the docked vessels would need armed guards.

A French Georges Leygues-class destroyer moored alongside a cruise ship and other military vessels at a pier in Bahrain, following Operation Desert Storm. TSGT Paul J. Page, USAF, March 19, 1991. USAF Photo. Public Domain

An expansion of this mission is where things start to get dicey. With the active persecution of Catholics and other Christians (to say nothing of other religious groups) by terror groups like ISIL, it would be entirely plausible to see Papal “peacekeeping forces” inserting into conflict zones to defend refugee camps from attack. As has been painfully learned in the last two decades, such defense measures require serious weapons and training. That requires an army, an army with equipment…and bases.

This is not an implausible thought exercise. The Holy See maintains diplomatic relations with some one hundred and eighty nations, giving it all the diplomatic ‘in’ it needs to open a dialogue with a potential host nation. Likewise, there are many Third World states that would welcome a Vatican military base inside their borders, even with limited extraterritoriality.

*World map of the foreign relations of the Holy See; dark green: diplomatic relations, light green: other relations, gray: no official relations. Credit: Muso, 2011. CCA/3.0*

But – where would all the necessary military talent come from? It’s not like this is the Renaissance, with large number of experienced troops and officers available for hire at short notice, even given the vast numbers of PMC’s available for hire. The answer is unsettlingly simple.

With an estimated worldwide population of 1.3 billion Catholics – many of them, from many countries, being former soldiers and officers, many with recent combat experience – the Holy See has no shortage of potential recruits to recruit from, including many officers and long-serving enlisted personnel with all the necessary skills to train a force that would resemble the French Foreign Legion in character, given the disparate origins of its recruits.

Numbers-wise, it should be remembered that India – with a population similar in size to the Catholic Church – currently fields a force of around 2.5 million troops, counting reverses. The Holy See would not need anything approaching that number…at least, not initially. However, given the money and space to house and train troops, it could easily assemble a comparable force.

…Now, all of the preceding is speculation. There is no sign that the Catholic Church is going to suddenly “arm up”, drawing in hundreds of thousands of Catholics from around the world to join a massive military force, and no indication that it is even thinking about it.

But it is possible…And possibilities offer options.

Deus Vult, indeed.

Michael Cessna

Intentional Consequences – How A Cold War Warning Framed A 21st Century Battleplan

BACKGROUND

ACTORS IN PLACE

BEANS, BULLETS & TRAITORS

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND

Coughing Tiger, Drunken Dragon – The Danger Of Globalization

Unsung Heroes – The CUCV

African Chess: Russo-Chinese Rise on the Corpse of Neo-Colonialism

Why Armies?

You Never Go Full ‘Don Quixote’ – Or, When ‘Crazy Eddie’ Throws Pasta

When ‘Forever Wars’ Fail – Delusions vs Realities

“The Other Guys” – The Unsung Heroes of Military Vehicles

Improvised Sharks – A New Face of Shoestring Warfare

God’s Battalions – The Holy See’s Hidden Military Potential

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IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND

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