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The Tyranny of Maps and Running Out of Other Peoples’ Money

The Tyranny of Maps and Running Out of Other Peoples’ Money

Michael Cessna December 9, 2023 1

 

 

 

Part 1 – What Does That Smudge Actually Say, Again?

 

Maps are funny things. As an old saying goes,

 

“When in doubt, look at a map – it will always tell you something. It may not be anything you don’t already know, but it will tell you something…”

 

As with most old sayings, though, this particular one is very nuanced in its meaning.

Maps, in a military or geopolitical sense, are usually a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional sphere. Modern computer systems can approximate an accurate 3-D picture of terrain, but those developments are relatively new. For thousands of years, the few maps that existed were very crude, verging into the abstract. Beginning only in the late 18th Century, did maps begin to add more accurate details and consistent distance scales.

Maps, then – as we understand the term – are a surprisingly recent phenomenon. But OH! The power and magic they convey! Depending on your point of view – and your immediate needs – maps can become works of holy writ, exuding an illusion of absolute truth. This is especially important when talking about borders, and where you intend to defend them. And, if you can find an old map whose details you can…“selectively interpret”…those maps can feed visions of military glory…

…Or offer desperate and failing governments a lifeline to motivate (they hope) a depressed and reactionary population.

This was the story in 1982, when the military junta of Argentina, led by General Leopoldo Galtieri, realized that national economies cannot be managed like a military budget, especially when their “security policy” was like some weird nightmare, left over from World War 2. What to do? Galtieri & Co. thought they found an answer in old maps.

There had been an old dispute with the United Kingdom over a group of islands two hundred odd miles east of Argentina, well into the Atlantic Ocean: the Falkland Islands.

The uninhabited, barren and windswept islands had been sort-of settled first by Spain…then England…then Spain again…the Argentina again, until the English returned and made their claim permanent by deporting the few Argentinean colonists back to the mainland, and establishing a colony devoted to sheep herding, maintaining a station for whaling ships, and later, a coaling station for the Royal Navy.

For about one hundred and fifty years, Argentina repeatedly tried to get England into talks to return the islands to them; England was never really interested in talking about anything of the kind, but were too polite to simply tell Argentina to go pound sand – the islands were England’s; English people had settled on the islands and actually developed them; and they had formed a part of England’s military strategies for decades. It just wasn’t going to happen.

But then…Britain’s colonial empire eroded into nothingness, replaced by a loose economic sphere of former colonies, that England didn’t really bother trying to control too closely. Empires, you see, are extremely expensive to create and maintain, and after the hellscapes of World Wars 1 and 2, the people of England more or less lost all interest in spending literal blood and treasure to maintain decisive control over colonies with unhappy and unruly populations, which produced – overall – very little to justify their expense. On top of this, eliminating the ability of people to elevate themselves into higher positions on the social standing tree meant that conquest was just another job that was hard, dangerous, and offered little to show for the effort.

To Galtieri and his junta, this seemed like a great time to “revisit the ownership” of the Falklands – after all, England’s main military and economic focuses were on Europe and the Mediterranean. Surely, they wouldn’t mind be relieved of the burden of paying for less than settlers at the literal opposite end of the earth.

This is the sort of “logic” that desperately unpopular and extremely unworldly people engage in, using the post-operative mantra, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!”

Britain, it turned out, was done with giving away things. And, with the after-image of the Iranian Hostage Crisis in the very recent past, it was not about to give ‘hostile actors’ around the world the notion that the few remaining British territories were up for grabs.

The result – the Falklands War – was a dramatic reminder that even the remnants of empires can be extraordinarily dangerous to provoke. Now, if the Reader thinks that the Falklands War served as a teaching tool to petty dictators to not trust old maps, you would be sadly mistaken.

Cut to the last weeks of 2023.

 

Part 2 – Other People’s Money

The Communist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has finally recognized that the policies begun by his predecessor, Hugo Chavez – policies that Maduro enthusiastically expanded on – have resulted – to borrow the immortal words of Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister who determined that Britain would, indeed, fight for the Falklands – in Maduro “running out of other people’s money.”

Venezuela, which should be a ridiculously wealthy nation due to its vast oil reserves, has had its economy and business sectors so badly managed by the Chavez-Maduro regime, that the country is now one of the poorest nations on the planet. And this comes far ahead of any sanctions placed on the country by the United States or anyone else.

Because of the failing economy he is actively trying to destroy, Maduro has decided to revive an old map dispute on his eastern border. You see, Venezuela’s eastern neighbor – Guyana – is a former colony of Britain, about the size of Idaho, but with only half the population. In 1966, just prior to granting Guyana independence, Britain (speaking for Guyana) and Venezuela both agreed to arbitrate the border dispute in the International Court of Justice (ICA). Neither country really pulled out the stops to press negotiations, however, because there was no real need; like many such disputes, this one just laid around, gathering dust.

But now, the winds are blowing in different directions.

Maduro – like most totalitarian dictators – relies on the illusion of “the democratic process” to stay in power. In this case, no election since the ascension of Chavez has been “legitimate” – it’s an open secret, but as long as Maduro stayed within his own borders, no one outside of Venezuela – including successive Presidential administrations in the United States – really cared.

In 2015, however, oil was discovered off the coast of Guyana – in the area off the shore of the disputed region. And, in September of 2023, Guyana issued drilling licenses to various oil companies, including ExxonMobil (which had several oil facilities in Venezuela nationalized many years ago).

 

Map of Guyana Essequiba. The area lined in orange constitutes the area claimed by Venezuela. Credit: Karl Musser. CCA/3.0.

 

And in November of 2023, Maduro suddenly announced that his government would hold a referendum among the Venezuelan people, to see if they would mind their government annexing the disputed region, and telling the international courts to shove off. Surprising absolutely no one outside of the denizens of upscale café’s in Hollywood and New York – and, of course, Starbucks’ outlets – Venezuelans “voted overwhelmingly”, as in 95% of voters, that yes, their country should absolutely invade and dismember a neighbor that they have never fought a war with.

Now, it would wrong to assume that this situation is about oil, per se. Oil is a component in this situation, but it is actually not that far into Maduro’s wheelhouse. Maduro’s real problem is that he is up for reelection in 2024, and Venezuelans – like Argentineans before them – are getting fed up with the charade…and Maduro’s real fear is that Venezuelans may just “go all Romanian” on him.

That’s not a bingo card entry anyone wants.

Like Galtieri before him, Maduro is hoping that starting a war will make him popular enough at home to easily retain power – that’s known as “not changing horses in midstream.” The problem? Guyana, while it does not have a very large military, is not an island…Guyana and Venezuela share a border in the disputed region with a third nation: Brazil.

Brazil is a massive and powerful nation within the region. Even given the ludicrous and destructive policies of its current ruling party, the Brazilian economy is a powerhouse, regionally. As well, its armed forces are nothing to mess with; the Brazilian military – at all levels – seriously outclasses that of Venezuela. Maduro’s outlandishly comical “referendum” is so divorced from reality, not even a hardened Socialist leader like Lula da Silva can let such an idea go.

This is shaping into a potential three-way war, which could include a rarity, for the modern day: and actual naval battle. This is due to the geography of the region, with puts a large amount of the disputed region within range of naval forces’ fire support capabilities on the Caribbean coast, to say nothing of the extensive network of rivers that form the best highways in the interior.

In any shooting war, Venezuelan forces will be at a serious disadvantage if Brazil enters the fray.

This does, however, beg the question: What about the United States?

In the United States, the administration of Joe Biden is giving typically half-hearted and limp-wristed lip service to tell the kids in the south to calm down. The Swamp – or, if you prefer, “Sodom on the Potomac” – is far more concerned with events in Ukraine, Israel, and potentially in the Bab al-Mandeb, at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, to worry about a minor territorial squabble in South America. Functionally, refusing to take decisive action on its proverbial doorstep would be a foreign policy disaster on a scale with Jimmy Carter’s inability to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis.

…So – is there a “wild card” in this mess? Yes, there is: ExxonMobil.

Big Oil is not dead. Far from it. Venezuela long ago parted company with ExxonMobil and other foreign oil producers. And now, from ExxonMobil’s view, Maduro is trying to muscle in on their turf, yet again.

But ExxonMobil is “just a corporation,” right? What could they possibly do? Twenty years ago, that answer would have been simple: suck it up, count your losses, and find somewhere else…But that was twenty years ago, and a lot has happened since then.

There is absolutely nothing stopping ExxonMobil – especially in concert with other corporations – from fielding its own armed forces…including naval and air forces…to insert themselves into a potential Venezuela-Guyana war, if the potential returns are worth the risks. Guyana’s estimated 11 billion barrels (at the low end) is a pretty big incentive.

This last scenario would be no more than an interesting action-adventure story, if the players in Washington, DC, were not so incompetent and self-absorbed.

Happy voting.

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Tropic Thunder: Echoes of Past Wars

Tropic Thunder: Echoes of Past Wars

Michael Cessna December 1, 2023 0

 

 

 

 

Part 1 – In Your Face

 

In mid-November, the South American nation of Guyana appealed for help to both the United Nations and the International Court of Justice, which just handed down a sternly worded finding on 12/1/2023 on the matter. Guyana, which shares its western border with Venezuela, became justifiably alarmed after Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s government scheduled a public referendum for December 3, 2023, “asking” the Venezuelan people if they would be okay with annexing the Essequibo region from Guyana – which comprises some two-thirds of Guyana.

 

Map of Guyana Essequiba. The area lined in orange constitutes the area claimed by Venezuela. Credit: Karl Musser. CCA/3.0

 

So – what’s going on, and why should you care? In reverse order, the reasons you need to care about this are simple.

First, unlike the current wars in Ukraine and Israel, this is on the proverbial doorstep of the United States. Second, is that seemingly tired old problem: oil. Third, the very fact that this has even come up, is yet one more pointed demonstration of the abject and total failures of both the Biden administration, and the neo-con RINO’s desperately clinging to power inside the GOP, best described by GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as “Dick Cheney in three inch heels”.

Venezuela and Guyana form part of the northern coast of South America. Any war in South America is of preeminent importance to the United States, because of the potential to spill onto the United States’ doorstep, in addition to all the other problems spilling over a border that the Biden administration apparently believes not to exist. A Venezuelan attempt to “flex” for imperialist territorial expansion would – and threatens to do so – lead to a much wider war, as Brazil’s territorial integrity is also threatened by Maduro’s actions.

The question is, why? The answer is simple: oil.

Venezuela has been tied into the global petroleum extraction network since the early 1900’s; indeed, the country was the world’s third largest producer of crude oil in 1940, and was the tenth largest producer in 2008. However, beginning in the mid-1970’s, a series of terrible decisions by successive governments nationalized the country’s oil industries. This resulted in the companies whose plants were confiscated politely refusing to continue to perform maintenance and upkeep on the systems…that should not have come as a surprise to anyone, but apparently did. And, as the oil infrastructure fell apart, Venezuela was unable to attract another other foreign companies to invest in their national oil fields, which – again – should have surprised no one.

As a result, the spiraling failures of Maduro’s increasingly socialism-driven economy and government has created a growing and increasingly desperate need to revive the country’s only remaining viable export industry, in his case, by bringing in Iranian technicians to try and get the nation’s oil industry back on its feet…If that sounds like a disturbing idea – Iranians flooding into a country within easy striking distance of the United States – that’s because it is.

So, how does this relate to Guyana?

In 2008, as Venezuela doubled down on excluding foreign companies from its oil industry, ExxonMobil (one of the companies forced out by Venezuela) began exploring the offshore region of Guyana, on the hunch that since the two countries were physical neighbors, there should have been a high likelihood that Guyana should possess exploitable reserves…and, in 2015, Esso (a subsidiary of ExxonMobil) hit paydirt, discovering the first of several rich offshore oil fields off Guyana’s Caribbean coastline. After a series of negotiations, on 19 September of 2023, Guyana authorized several oil companies – including ExxonMobil – to begin drilling in their offshore fields.

An increasingly desperate Maduro, seeing the continuing disaster of his party’s long-discredited Socialist policies, chose this moment to revive an old territorial dispute that Venezuela had chosen not to pursue, which laid a Venezuelan claim to some two-thirds of Guyanese territory…that part, or course, that contains most of the new oil fields.

For those readers of “a certain age”, if this sounds a little like 1981-1982 in the South Atlantic, you are not alone. Forty-odd years ago, another South American dictator sniffed rumors of oil in an area his country had long-claimed, and – with tensions mounting at home over disastrous economic policies and midnight death squads everywhere – Argentinean junta leader General Leopoldo Galtieri decided that the United Kingdom would not fight over the Falkland Islands, if not too much blood was spilled invading them. Turns out, he was very wrong.

Maduro’s “popular” referendum is a clear attempt to justify an invasion, one that is sickeningly lopsided, as the Guyanese military is barely 3% the size of Venezuela’s armed Forces…the ringer being, of course, being Brazil, whose armed forces outmatch Venezuela’s by at least double, if not triple…The possible consequences of a desperate Socialist country sparking a regional war that could disrupt not just oil production but commercial shipping in the Caribbean, in general, are something every American needs to be worried about.

But then, there is the last question: Why does Maduro think that he can get away with Saddam Hussein-levels of bad decisions? In a word – Joe Biden and the Democrat-Neo-Con alliance, which desires a weak United States, one that they think that they can rally to their side like FDR did in 1941.

That they cannot do so, because of the actions they have taken in public – not even bothering to hide it – have so soured their potential recruiting bases, that they cannot meet their manpower needs without reviving the Draft…which even their supporters in the deluded Left are stating a flat, hard-no to.

If this sounds pessimistic – it is. Expect shortages, if Maduro thinks his calculus is correct…which it might be, unlike Saddam’s.

 

Part 2 – Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

 

But, on the other side of the world, another “Rumble in the Jungle” is brewing: Myanmar/Burma’s ruling military clique, the so-called “Tatmadaw”, is collapsing. In this, the only real question is if the radical Socialist junta will go down like the collapse of the Somoza regime of Nicaragua in 1979, and the following multi-sided civil war (encouraged, being fair to history, by the United States) or if it will go the way of Yugoslavia – violent and bloody, but mercifully short, in comparison.

Beginning in late October of 2023, a coalition of formerly rival ethnic/tribal groups in Myanmar united in a virtually unheard of alliance, to launch a massive, coordinated offensive across the country, swiftly overrunning several regime military bases along the Myanmar/Communist China border, and forcing the surrender of several military units in their entirety. This is causing a collapse in morale, both among troops and in their families, who are now being forced to pull security for their deployed husband’s military bases. In fact, the junta has begun mobilizing civil servants and local police as second-line military forces, to try and stem the tsunami of military defeat.

 

Map of Operation 1027, as of 7 November 2023. Credit: Clyde H. Mapping. CCA/4.0

 

Obviously, the Freedomist has been remarking on this situation for some time, mostly in the context of the 3-D printing revolution. The facts are that the world was content – again – to allow a brutal, dictatorial regime to make a mockery of civilized society, because the profit margin is so high.

For Communist China, however, Myanmar is far from a laughing matter. The ruling junta, the “Tatmadaw”, is a vital component in the CCP’s “Belt & Road Initiative”, and if their allies in the junta go the way of Somoza or Yugoslavia, their entire plan is in jeopardy. What Communist China chooses to do about this is anyone’s guess.

 

 

Part 3 – Where Do We Go From Here?

 

Functionally, the moves by Maduro’s Venezuela are far more important to the United States in the immediate short-term. The hopeful collapse of the Myanmar regime, while definitely of regional importance in the Indian Ocean region, is mostly of academic interest for the US. While that may sound harsh and uncaring, it is not. It is simply the recognition of global realities.

The United States – for good or ill – is committed to the support of both Israel and Ukraine. And, as it and its European allies have discovered, neo-con fever dreams mixed with deranged, far-Left utopian word-salad does not equate to valid battle calculus, even in the short term.

The world is racing towards a cliff, and the leaders of the nations most capable of preventing that from happening are too concerned with pet delusions to even start getting a handle on the problem.

2024 is looking pretty grim, at present.

You should take action to protect yourselves, and those you are responsible for, now.

Washington and London certainly aren’t.

 

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Weather War: From Banned Witchery To Military Operations

Weather War: From Banned Witchery To Military Operations

Michael Cessna November 17, 2023 0

 

 

 

 

War is hard. That is an oft-repeated phrase, but it is nonetheless true. People are trying to do violence to you, and to those around you…and frequently, it doesn’t matter if you are wearing a uniform or carrying a weapon or not. There are loud and scary noises, a lot of dirt, mud and bugs (among other unpleasant things), and people screaming in fear. And then, it starts raining…or hailing…or snowing. These things combine to make your life infinitely more miserable and terrifying than it already is.

But – the above are personal things. What about the wider context?

Last week, we discussed the effects of volcanic eruptions on logistics, the field of supplying armed forces. Here, we will look at the wider effects of weather on military operations.

Wars and the battles they are composed of are directly impacted by the weather. Armies, air forces and navies are all at the mercy of the weather. While unexpected “snow days” for civilians may mean an inconvenience in getting to work, and while a levee being breached by heavy rain can be a disaster that destroys towns and homes, for armed forces these events can be catastrophic when they happen unexpectedly. Weather forecasting is so vital to military forces, that multiple manuals are now devoted to it.

Militaries have known this for centuries. But, is in only in roughly the last two hundred years that militaries began to seriously monitor weather conditions across the wider “operational region” versus simply the local battlefield. Indeed, until 1950, meteorologists were not permitted to so much as say the word “tornado”, much less try to predict them before they formed, as this was essentially “career suicide”.

The US Army would not form a weather forecasting service until 1870, with the US Navy joining the program in 1873. The British were no better, not founding a meteorological office until 1854. This very late development was due to the belief dating from at least the Middle Ages that attempting to forecast the weather in any way was a form of witchcraft.

This frequently hamstrung military operations, sometimes in catastrophic ways; Napoleon and Hitler come to mind immediately.

In the context of combat operations, rain is bad, because most land operations are prosecuted off of prepared roads; “cross-country” is the word of the day. Heavy rains will turn normally solid fields into mud pits, quagmires that will swallow vehicles and troops. This is especially true when levees and dams are deliberately destroyed, aside from the sheer destruction inflicted on civilians, and the infrastructure to support them, in the combat area. This us, in fact, the accusation leveled at Russia in June of 2023, when the Kakhovka Dam in the Kherson Oblast of Ukraine was breached and flooded the area.

 

Settlements on the left bank of Dnieper River are underwater after the Kakhovka Dam was breached on 6th June, 2023. CCA/4.0 International. Photo credit: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. 

 

For air forces, severe weather simply grounds flights. But, those force’s airfields are not immune from damage. Clark Air Base, long a center of US military operations in the Far East, was functionally destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991.

 

Remains of Clark Air Force Base, Luzon, Republic of the Philippines, January 1991, following the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. The U.S. National Archives. Public Domain.

 

And neither are naval forces immune. The US Navy maintains a policy of sortieing its ships and aircraft away from port areas threatened by large storms, lest they be wrecked by the storm’s surge and wind effects. And with good reason – although dangerous, getting ships out of port as quickly as possible is usually the safest option…but not always.

In 1944, during WW2 combat operations in the Pacific, the US Navy’s Task Force 38 was struck by a massive typhoon that nudged the scale as a Force Five hurricane on the modern scale, similar to Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew. The storm actually sank three destroyers, damaged nine more warships and killed nearly eight hundred sailors.

 

The U.S. Navy light aircraft carrier USS Langley (CVL-27) rolling heavily during Typhoon Cobra, 18 December 1944. US Navy photo. Public Domain.

 

And, as both Napoleon and Hitler discovered, snow is a terrible force, occasionally freezing troops to death on vast scales. Snow is like rain, but worse. Some forces can thrive in snowy and icy environments, but most people – and troops – cannot.

 

An injured soldier from the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in central Alaska during Exercise Timberline, 1963. Photo Credit: US Army photo by Sp4 Kenneth Puckett. Public Domain.

 

And weather is not limited to hurricanes, ice, or rain. In 2003, as US and Coalition forces advanced north towards Baghdad, they were struck by a massive sandstorm that forced the advancing columns to halt, because visibility was reduced to zero.

 

A convoy of U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV) in Northern Iraq, during a sandstorm during Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. Photo Credit: LCpl Andrew P. Roufs, USMC. Public Domain.

 

Planning military operations on a board game is easy. Doing it in real life is seriously hard work. It is only “witchcraft” to the mentally dense.

To quote the great Chinese general, Sun Tzu:

 

“Before doing battle, one calculates in the temple and will win, because many calculations were made; before doing battle, one calculates in the temple but will lose, because few calculations were made.”

 

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Be Careful Of Your Sources

Be Careful Of Your Sources

Michael Cessna November 10, 2023 2

 

 

 

In the last week or so, many people have been sharing images of what they feel are alarming amounts of military air traffic culled from various online tracking websites, purporting to show a “highly unusual” increase in air traffic throughout the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean (a.k.a., “The Levant”).

For those who are exploring a new landscape on the internet, such as aircraft and ship tracking websites, these images can, in fact, look incredible. Most of the online maps are indeed very cluttered, to such an extent that many computers have a hard time keeping up with the running updates, unless a user “drills down” to a very narrow region.

And to be fair, given the recent events within the region, with terrorist massacres in Israel, leading to brutal counterattacks by Israel, and the hysterical responses from throughout not just the region, but the threat of this new “Yom Kippur War” expanding to include most of the region – something that the few sane leaders of the world ‘body politic’ is desperate to prevent – is certainly making many people terrified of anything new and strange, that is presented with either incomplete, or flat-out wrong context, deliberately or otherwise.

The short answer to the “unusual increase” in aircraft activity in the Middle East is that it is a giant “nothingburger.” The long answer is far more mundane…but not so the reason behind it.

The fact is that Israel has severely neglected its defenses, both internal and external, for at least twenty years. Externally, Israel fell into the complacency trap of “Victory Disease” (the laziness and complacency resulting from too many victories), in that it felt that its “Iron Dome” missile defense system was mostly unbeatable, while its more conventional forces could easily handle anything that “Iron Dome” could not.

Internally, this dangerous complacency was compounded by Israel’s disastrous moves, beginning in 2012, to restrict the ability of Israeli citizens not on military or police duty, to owning or possessing military style firearms.

And on October 7, 2023, Israel and its citizens were given a stark wake up call as to why you should never beat your swords into plowshares before the right time.

As a result, Israel suddenly found itself in a desperate, grueling and bloody war against an implacable and bloodthirsty enemy at one end of its country, while facing another potential – and much more dangerous – foe to their north. While this is certainly not an unusual circumstance for Israel, Israel the state, as well as Israeli citizens, now finds itself being rudely forced to reorient its mental perspective on reality.

All-out war, as should be clear to anyone who has read an article on the Russo-Ukrainian War in the last almost two years, consumes people, ammunition, vehicles and supplies at a ferocious rate. While the scale and pace of the war in Israel may not currently be at the same overall scale as what is happening in Ukraine, when adjusted for scale, Israel is not much better off than Ukrainians.

In answer, the United States – long Israel’s only truly reliable ally – has doubled down on US support to Israel in the current conflict, complete with sending two complete carrier battle groups to the region, potentially committing US forces to direct combat in the conflict.

And fears of a widening of the conflict have already been realized, as the USS Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, has shot down multiple missiles launched by Houthi insurgents from their base areas in Yemen.

Obviously, no matter the Reader’s feelings – one way or another – about the current conflict, the United States has to supply Israel with weapons, ammunition and much else, exactly as it has for Ukraine. Normally, such supplies are sent by ship, and then by rail or road. The reason is simple: it is vastly more efficient than air transport.

Sometimes, however, speed is essential. Relatively small and light supplies, like ammunition and medical supplies, can be rushed to a conflict zone relatively quickly, as these are always the most critical supplies that would be needed early on in a conflict. In the case of any sudden uptick of military air traffic, however, there is currently another factor:

Volcanoes.

In 2010, a series of volcanic eruptions from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in April of that year completely shut down all air traffic in Europe outside of Spain and a tiny portion of France. That was, obviously, a very annoying situation for many travelers, as it up-ended flights throughout the world.

Now, however, another Icelandic volcano threatens to erupt: the Blue Lagoon thermal spa, long a popular tourist destination, is threatening to erupt.

Military planners, already struggling to juggle the delivery of supplies to multiple active and potential combat areas, now have no choice but add the potential of a natural disaster shutting down European airspace for an unknown period. The only real option is to start drawing supplies from existing bases in the region, and sending those to Israel…by air.

At the same time, however, those supply bases will need to be restocked, and fast, given the potential for regional escalation. This problem can be solved via a surge in sending war materials and equipment to those bases via conventional shipping…that seems to be happening.

The Ready Reserve Force ship MV Cape Orlando is currently underway from Tacoma, WA, crossing the Pacific Ocean. The Cape Orlando, originally berthed in Oakland, was actually boarded by pro-Palestinian protesters on November 4th, delaying its departure for Tacoma. (The protestors were not charged.)

While the MV Orlando is certainly the most public of the ships potentially carrying supplies to the combat area, it is also certainly not the only one.

What is happening is clear: a giant “shell game” is underway, with supplies being shuffled as quickly as possible, to cover as many holes as have been left open by shockingly poor military policies by the West and its allies over the preceding c.30 years…But such circumstances cannot endure forever.

 

Sun Tzu, Author of Art of War. Photo: Gary Todd, 2008. Public Domain.

 

Because, as the Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote some 2,500 years ago, if you try to defend every point equally, every point will be weak.

 

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
No, They’re Not Drafting People…Yet

No, They’re Not Drafting People…Yet

Michael Cessna November 3, 2023 0

 

 

 

 

A funny thing happened on the first of November of 2023. A few hundred (ultimately, up to eight hundred) Non-Commissioned Officers in the active duty US Army were stunned when they received orders, via email, to report – within a week – to a school none of them were expecting to attend: the Army’s recruiting school at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

This order, coming with no warning, is up-ending hundreds of enlisted families as there is little time to reorder the lives of married NCO’s. Compounding the problem, none of the soldiers ordered to the school knows where they will be assigned, leading to extreme uncertainty on where their new posting will be, as active duty recruiters are spread out across the country. This is guaranteed to strain relationships to the breaking point, compounding an already high divorce rate within the service.

As we reported previously, the harsh realities of the third decade of the 21st Century have caused not only the US Congress, but also the Defense Department, to begin discussing an idea that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago: the reinstatement of conscription, i.e., the Draft – and not simply the draft of the old days, which was male-only, but a draft which would almost certainly apply equally to women.

Needless to say, the sudden nature of the Army’s move has added fuel to the strident denunciations of the very idea by “Gen-Z” and their “Millennial” parents…And the Army’s move on the 1st of November is elevating the hysteria.

For the troops, it’s not so much that the recruiting school itself is overly difficult. It is the fact that most recruiters only volunteer for the duty reluctantly, as their usual alternative is a tour as a drill instructor, something that many NCO’s dread. This is because there has always been a stigma to the duty, dating from at least the official end of the draft in 1973, in that failing to meet assigned quotas of recruits can seriously damage the continuing career prospects of the recruiter. Recruiters are usually long serving NCO’s, with ten to twelve years in the service when they enter the recruiting school; this means that they have seriously committed to the idea of twenty to twenty-five years of service, in order to retire with a reasonable pension. That continued career, however, could be seriously damaged by a failed tour as a recruiter.

The reality, despite Gen-Z’s hysteria, is that the Army’s move has come – officially – as an unexpected result of recruiters and possible recruiter candidates leaving the service at an unexpectedly high rate. Functionally, sending an emergency draft of NCO’s to school to become recruiters – whether they want to be or not – is not a preparation for a reinstatement of conscription.

As we discussed previously, the military’s recruiting woes, where all of the military services except the Marine Corps and the Space Force, are missing their recruiting targets, are made worse when taking into account the comparatively small size of the Marine Corps and Space Force in contrast to the other services. The effects of badly managed “forever wars” and conflicts for over twenty years, coupled to other astoundingly bad decisions, have left the majority of the US population severely disinclined to support enlistment in general.

Obviously, the resulting falling recruitment numbers have left the US military, as a whole, in a dangerous situation, as mounting threats – from Ukraine and Israel, to Iran and China – equate to the likelihood that the United States may well find itself in a very large war – or two…or three – sooner than later. And, after spending some twenty years laser focused (albeit with a very smudged lens) on fighting insurgencies, the armed forces got a stark wake-up call from the Russo-Ukrainian War on casualty rates in large scale combat, to the point that the Army is desperately trying to relearn the flawed strategies of the 1970’s and 80’s, all while missing the mark in spectacularly catastrophic ways, that would be funny, if their effects were negligible…which they are not.

 

105th Medical Battalion Aid Station (30th Inf Div), Mortain, France, August 1944. US Army Photo.

 

Having stated the above, while the Army’s sudden orders are not a herald of a return to conscription in and of themselves, there is are a pair of outlying possibilities, that it could signal a middle ground” move, neutralizing a flawed medical screening system that has slashed the number of recruits by upwards of 25%. The return of medical waivers for volunteers for minor conditions dating from as long as a decade prior, would be seen as a solid move to increase recruit intakes. Of course, such a move would also open the way to waive medical issues for potential draftees.

Secondly, this move could signal actual preparation for renewed conscription laws, where recruiters could be assigned secondary duties to process a new wave of draftees. As we implied previously, a reintroduction of a Draft for Gen-Z and/or some Millennial’s would almost certainly spark a wave of draft dodging and draft riots on a scale that would make those of the Civil War era pale in comparison.

 

An illustration in The Illustrated London News depicting armed rioters clashing with Union Army soldiers in New York City, July 1863. The Illustrated London News, 1863. Public Domain.

 

And, of course, a third possibility is hanging in the air, namely, the idea of offering bounties and legal amnesty via recruitment to those “military age males” currently flooding across the southern border of the United States…

…However, considering how armed forces frequently act in their countries origin, this may well be more of a curse than a benefit.

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
The American Foreign Legion – Revisited

The American Foreign Legion – Revisited

Michael Cessna October 27, 2023 2

 

 

 

Over a year ago, we discussed the possibility of an “American Foreign Legion”. This was a hypothetical idea, based on most of the US Armed Forces’ continual failure to meet their recruitment targets. Tangentially, about a month prior to this article, we discussed a possible “deep plan” (an idea that, admittedly, verged into raw “conspiracy theory”) that the disaster at the border, specifically in allowing ‘unfettered’ access to the nation for tens of thousands of “military-age males”, potentially allowing in a hostile army, an army that could be used for nefarious purposes against Americans in general, not simply that percentage of the population that is armed and very unhappy with the status quo in Washington, DC.

But – what if there is something else going on?

In writing that article this past September, there was a wrinkle that kept bothering this author, namely, that while the numbers of unaccompanied males entering the country was indeed dangerously large, it was not large enough to actually be a significant threat to the supposed target, that being those unhappy gun owners.

Something, some other point, was missing.

But then, a funny thing happened: Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, and the most likely contender for the Republican nomination for President in 2024, stated “categorically” that he would round up and deport every person currently being allowed over the border…

However, this doesn’t make a great deal of sense: how could such a thing be accomplished? Leaving aside the fact that such a program would certainly be fought tooth and nail at every step in Congress and the Courts, the problem is similar to “confiscating guns”: With no registry of firearms, police officers would have to raid and search every single building in the United States, to effectively “confiscate” privately-held firearms. Even assuming that absolutely no resistance to such a thing would occur – a notion that is, quite literally, “whistling past the graveyard” – there are simply not enough law enforcement officers available to conduct those searches. The idea is ludicrous.

But not when it comes to the flood of “migrants” crossing the border. The reason is that those crossing the line, while largely vanishing into the masses of large cities, are in fact on the radar of various agencies of the Federal government, not least because the governors of Texas and Florida are not doing all of the busing of those migrants to cities like Chicago and New York City. And this is over and above the “CBP One” app those migrants carrying smartphones are encouraged to place onto their phones. Those carrying such apps on their devices are loading tracking software that gives them a level of legitimacy to then file for status as refugees entitled to economic support with state and local agencies.

Assuming that Donald Trump were to win in 2024, and would attempt to make good on his campaign promise to deport illegal migrants, and, given the certain resistance to such an attempt, if presented with an option to “negotiate a middle ground”, would Donald Trump do so?

Given both the nature of his character, and factors we will look at below, such a negotiation is almost a given.

What is this “middle ground” approach? Simply put – join an “American Foreign Legion”, or face immediate arrest and deportation.

This is not idle speculation. In Issue 3 of Volume 53 of Parameters, the magazine of the US Army War College, there is an article from August of 2023, “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force”, discussing the need to seriously rethink the Draft. Strident calls from the mainstream press’ gatekeepers to the contrary, this article is blunt, to the point that it is worth quoting:

 

“…These numbers cannot fill the existing gaps in the active force, let alone
any casualty replacement or expansion during a large-scale combat operation.
The implication is that the 1970s concept of an all-volunteer force has outlived
its shelf life and does not align with the current operating environment.
The technological revolution described below suggests this force has reached
obsolescence. Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well
require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and
a move toward partial conscription.16…”

 

It is that superscript note that presents an issue, as at press-time, the referenced article, “Was Fifty Years Long Enough? The All-Volunteer Force in an Era of Large-Scale Combat Operations”, by Kent Park, is not available for review.

This is a direct and pointed statement that the US Armed Forces need to consider the likelihood that the government will have to resort to a new Draft to meet it’s operations needs.

But – why?

Simply put, both “Millennial’s” and “Gen-Z” have little interest in volunteering for military, despite eye-watering bonuses of up to $75,000, over and above issues such as chronic obesity and a medical screening process that eliminates up to 25% of potential recruits who do volunteer. Bland platitudes from military managers wearing stars to the contrary, this is situation is very likely to persist.

And yet – for good or ill, the United States needs to keep recruits flowing into its units…And a “negotiated solution” to the illegal immigrant crisis is a very attractive answer.

Speaking strictly hypothetically, such a force would be easily and quickly fielded. All that would be necessary would be deploying fingerprint scanners to recruiting offices, to verify whether the illegal immigrant had been arrested while in the United States before that point. If not, the illegal immigrant could be offered a minimal cash bounty for enlisting, considerably less than those currently being offered to citizens born here, along with a guarantee of amnesty and legitimized citizenship after a minimum of four years’ service.

This is a very attractive prospect to someone coming from a culture that respects and/or fears soldiers, and which neatly sidesteps the problem of a large percentage of bitter and bluntly un-patriotic teens and twenty-something’s who would absolutely not report to a Draft board if faced with the prospect…

…It’s almost as if it were a planned operation.

“Five-D Chess”, indeed.

 

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
The New Pulse of the Neo-Con Forever War

The New Pulse of the Neo-Con Forever War

Michael Cessna October 20, 2023 0

 

 

 

 

What follows is an “estimate of the situation”, concerning what may well become known as the “Guns of October”. This is a strategic assessment of the current situation in the Levant, and what the deeper plan[s] may be. Nothing in this article is based on “classified information” or “anonymous sources”, but sober estimates based on training, experience, intuition and “informed speculation”.

Around the world, October 7th stunned many people. Even after over twenty years of continuous warfare, the scenes of slaughter coming out of Israel were stunning, both in their daring, but even moreso for their brutality and savagery. Inevitably, perhaps, some people have began to promote an idea that the Israeli High Command was operating in full knowledge of what Hamas was going to do, because there was “no way” that the vaunted Israeli intelligence agencies could have missed Hamas’ preparations.

The fact is, people are always people, and people make mistakes – often, those mistakes boggle the imagination with their stupidity. There is no real evidence of anything like an intentional conspiracy on the part of the Israeli High Command’s part happening.

In this case, however, there are parties throughout the world, who have been desperate for a crisis like Yom Kippur 2.0 to restore their flagging efforts. This group has been pushing an endless series of wars since the 1990’s, and while their influence is, indeed great, they are masters of the notion espoused by one-time White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s quip, “… you never want a serious crisis to go to waste…”

The people in power, or hanging on to the tailings of power, who espouse such ideas, are known as “neo-cons”…But – what is a “neo-con”?

Foreign Policy Magazine accurately describes neo-cons as “liberal imperialists on steroids”. They are firm believers in the notion of a highly totalitarian vision of the so-called “Pax Americana”, a series of policies that have produced a national debt in excess of an eye-watering $33 trillion, as of 10/18/2023. These beliefs – and the people behind them – also led to the roiling disasters in Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and most of the rest of the Middle East.

Another key descriptor of the neo-cons is that they have no political party, beyond that which is most expedient for them at the moment. Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928 – 2017), one-time National Security Advisor to Democrat party President Jimmy Carter, laid out the neo-con strategy and thought in his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard”. His criticisms of Republican President George W. Bush’s handling of the post-9/11 wars were not one of actual opposition, but complaining about their mis-handling.

Neo-Con thinking is also at the core of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in February of 2022. No matter what side of that conflict the Reader may fall on, the fact is that – like Japan attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941 – the West, led by the United States, goaded Russia into its attempt to dismember the Ukrainian state. Why? Because the neo-cons desperately wanted to initiate Cold War 2.0, because Islamic jihadi’s were simply not working as an existential threat to Western society that justified obscenely massive military spending; terrorists are annoying, but they will never seriously threaten the Western social order.

Russia and China, on the other hand…

In early-to-mid 2022, there was a point where the world held its breath, as it seemed that the major powers of the world might actually enter into direct, large-scale combat with each other, something that has not been seen since 1945. While that danger still looms, the important takeaway, is that these situations have sparked increasingly strident calls to revamp western military establishments, to something resembling “the old days”.

But – how does this relate to the “Guns of October”?

In the aftermath of the seeming failure of neo-con ambitions as the “Global War On Terror” sputtered out in the mid-20-teens, despite the flare-up provided by the so-called “Arab Spring”, the neo-con movement became increasingly desperate for something to revive their plans to continue their series of planned wars, the exhaustion and disgust of the people’s of the West – and Russia – over the never-ending series of wars at the dawn of what should have been a “golden century” for humanity.

The clearest example of the desperation of the neo-cons, including their abject hatred of US President Donald Trump, came when Trump rejected their plans to strike three targets in Iran in response to the 2019 downing of an unmanned US drone. Trump canceled the retaliatory attacks when he was informed that the attacks were expected to kill at least 150 Iranians; Trump did not feel that level of retaliation to be a “proportionate” response to shooting down an unmanned drone.

But now, with a reimposition of sanctions against Russia in April of 2021, leading to a near-war with that state, the neo-cons within Washington DC and allies in several European governments have been awaiting a crisis of an appropriate scale to move the world back into the realm of “forever wars”.

Enter October 7th, of 2023.

With increasing calls in the West to end the open and naked barbarity of Hamas – barbarity that organization happily live-streamed, until it realized how bad the optics were – coupled to the deranged bleatings of the Communist mullahs in control of Iran – handed the neo-cons the golden crisis they have desperately needed to galvanize Western governments into continuing the wars: the United States – even under an “anti-Israel” establishment – cannot oppose Israel in assaulting Gaza, nor in hammering the Iranian-back Hezbollah organization in southern Lebanon, especially in the face of Hamas’ barbarity, without suffering catastrophic political consequences. Similarly, the Western European “street” is fed up with their government’s policies of accommodation and appeasement of “refugees” who spare no expense to tell the world how much they hate their “hosts”, who spared little expense to give them shelter and sanctuary.

Caught in the middle, are the Muslim governments of the region, none of whom want anything to do with this war, but who have enough internal problems that they cannot be seen by their populations to be completely abandoning the Palestinians. But, with more and more US Navy warships being deployed to the region at speed, the possibility of an “incident” occurring that “required” a military response against Iran – one that would make the Iraq war look like a training exercise – is an increasingly likely possibility.

Why is this important? Put simply, the United States does not have the manpower to fight the wars the neo-cons want the West to fight. As has been pointed out previously at the Freedomist, two decades of no-victory wars – as well as policies to insult and demean the US military’s primary recruiting pool – have turned a generation of potential recruits firmly against military service…so much so, that there has been a quietly increasing spate of military officers “speaking truth to power”, pointing out that the current world strategic will eventually force the United States to return to conscription, the dreaded “D-word”, that has been anathema to both the political and military spheres alike, for fifty years, since peacetime conscription was ended in the US by President Richard M. Nixon in 1973.

The neo-cons have painted themselves into a corner: They have relentlessly pursued aggressive policies that have burned off most of any good will built up by the United States over the past four decades, in pursuit of a strategy of continual conflict that requires a level of military recruitment that is a pale memory. At the same time, their actions have severely damaged the US economy, because markets not under a regimen of centralized planning respond poorly to toxic cycles of borrowing money, then borrowing more money to simply pay the interest, all while expanding the pool of currency by running the printing presses at high speed.

Likewise, the manufacture of basic war materials has been so neglected the West is finding it difficult to supply a single large war, much less multiple wars.

With much of the potential military recruit-base firmly rejecting staggering enlistment bonuses of over $50,000, there will come a point where the United States will be forced to attempt to revive the Draft for 18-to-30 year-olds…and there has been legislation language already draft, that was repeatedly submitted for some thirteen years.

By Democrat Party apparatchiks.

Needless to say, a Democrat administration reviving the Draft for 18-to-30 year-olds will be “interesting”, to say the least.

The bottom line?

Be careful what you wish for – especially if you have children.

 

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Hamas And The Dangers Of Wargaming As Military Training

Hamas And The Dangers Of Wargaming As Military Training

Michael Cessna October 16, 2023 0

 

 

 

 

 

 

SYNOPSIS

 

Let us start off by addressing the proverbial elephant in the room.

On October 7th, 2023, the forces of Hamas – the Palestinian terror group with such delusions of legitimacy that they haven’t bothered with elections since attaining power – launched a short, sharp and brutal assault into southern Israel. For the first time since the rise of ISIL in 2011, the world was “treated” to a level of sadistic brutality that beggars the imagination. The acts of savagery – including the live-streamed slaughter, brutalization and kidnapping of mostly under-30 year olds at a literal “peace festival” – stunned the “polite” world as much as the apparent failure of some of the most vaunted intelligence services in the world.

The resulting war, on the fifty-year anniversary of the first “Yom Kippur War”, is now being termed “Israel’s 9/11”.

 

This article will not go any further into the political situation. Likewise, “sides” are not our purpose, here. This is strictly an examination of Hamas’ military operations, based on published reports and “informed supposition”, from October 7 to October 14, 2023. A much more in-depth examination of the situation will be available to our subscribers towards the end of the month.

  

 

OVERVIEW

 

In the early dawn hours of October 7, Hamas combat units launched a “broad spectrum” attack from its sanctuaries in the Gaza Strip. The assault opened with a massive and concentrated barrage of rocket artillery. The artillery assault was large enough and concentrated enough that it overwhelmed the “Iron Dome” anti-missile system that Israel has relied on for over a decade to defend itself from such attacks.

As the rocket attacks opened, mobile combat groups – some dressed in Israeli Defense Force (IDF) uniforms – infiltrated border checkpoints and massacred or captured the troops within, most of whom seem to have still been asleep. Simultaneously, other units conducted combat breaching operations at several points along the border, using a variety of techniques, ranging from simple RPG-7 rocket, to dedicated breaching charges, to using civilian construction equipment to batter holes in the security fences. Mobil combat groups, mounted on “technicals” and small motorcycles, quickly swarmed through the breaches, and fanned out to assault small town and villages, ultimately capturing and holding these urban areas for up to four days, a circumstance that has not happened since Israel’s War of Independence in 1948.

 

A map of the Gaza Strip showing key towns and neighbouring countries, 2009. Credit: Wikimedia User: Gringer. CCA/3.0

 

Perhaps most spectacularly, an airborne element assaulted the aforementioned peace festival using “paragliders” to insert a raiding force into the festival grounds, timed to strike shortly before the arrival a relief convoy mounted in technicals.

In both cases, at the peace festival and in Israeli urban settlements, Hamas forces deliberately massacred civilians, and captured as many as possible, carting them off to Gaza to be explicitly used as hostages and human shields against the expected Israeli counterattack. This has resulted in the largest number of Jewish lives lost in a single weekend since the Holocaust of World War Two.

While some Hamas forces held out for as long as four or five days in places, the bulk of surviving Hamas units had retreated into Gaza within seventy-two hours.

 

 

ANALYSIS

 

Hamas’ attack, on the purely tactical level, stands as a masterclass in operational deception, tactical ingenuity, flexibility and maximizing limited supplies on a shoestring budget.

It was also a complete and abject failure.

Way back in 2022, we discussed the emerging phenomenon of small-scale, targeted, and focused military training that was available to the general public around the world with nothing more than an internet connection. And that remains true – anyone who is at least moderately intelligent and educated can learn a very great deal by searching out real military informational guides via the internet.

The unspoken cautionary warning in the last paragraph is that such information, if not presented in a coherent manner, will most certainly not convey the level of competence necessary to fight and win.

Case in point – Hamas.

While Hamas demonstrated a surprisingly level of competence at the commando/light infantry level of warfare, its forces were absolutely no match for their enemy, once that enemy roused itself, and organized a coordinated counterattack. While Hamas’ leadership seems to have understood this, in a strictly tactical sense, it completely failed to tie tactical acumen to a realistic operational or strategic plan.

There was no possibility that Hamas was going to “win” against Israel in a conventional military sense. Hamas could – and did – certainly bloody Israel’s nose, exposing staggering complacency within the IDF, while also demonstrating the stark reminder that unarmed civilians are nothing but targets in a combat environment. As a result, as of this writing (October 16th 2023), the IDF has eliminated all Hamas forces that remained within Israel after the initial assault…and the IDF is now girding for an all-out assault into the Gaza Strip to put an end to Hamas, once and for all, world opinion be damned.

This also demonstrated the defective strategic thinking of Hamas, as the avowed purpose of taking hostages, to be used as human shields – and joyously live-streaming it via the internet – is something that they allowed themselves to believe would be a viable tool of negotiation with Israel…The problem being, this is not an “intifada” – Hamas’ very success is the agent of their coming destruction, because the State of Israel will now stop at nothing to destroy them.

Put more prosaically, Hamas’ combination of tactical acumen with idiotic and outdated strategic thinking, is effectively the strategy for a “live action” first-person shooter video game, like a combination of “Call of Duty” with “Grand Theft Auto”, where the player gets more rewards for being more ruthless and savage, a view that is being reinforced daily, with the gleeful cheering on of troops in combat zones operating drone that drop grenades on enemy forces…just like in a video game – and if a war crime is committed in the process, that is worth double-XP.

Video games, however, are not real life. They are nothing more than a pale and warped reflection of reality – and basing your military plans on visions of video game victory is not simply a poor strategy, it is a strategy of suicide.

Yours.

Write that on your hand, if you need to.

 

 

For a more detailed look at this conflict, subscribe to the FREEDOMIST today for exclusive content

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
The Forgotten Cold Warrior – The MAS 49/56

The Forgotten Cold Warrior – The MAS 49/56

Michael Cessna October 6, 2023 0

 

 

 

 

Unless you are a “gun person”, it is very likely that the reader has never heard of the MAS 49, much less its final iteration, the “49/56”…which is not surprising. However, this little-known weapon had a huge impact on world, not least because it remains in action on the world’s battlegrounds, into the current day.

 

The MAS  (Manufacture d’Armes de Saint-Étienne, formerly one of the weapons makers for the government of France) series of rifles were the result of the French military and government trying to learn from their (many) mistakes made during World War One.

During that war, France – like most nations, being fair – had found itself woefully unprepared for the conflict. One of the main lessons learned by all of the combatant nations was the sheer scale of wastage of all categories of weapons and equipment, especially small arms. As casualties began to quickly mount, national military establishments found it nearly impossible to keep ahead of the need for weapons to both arm new troops, and to rearm troops whose weapons had been lost, destroyed or worn out.

This proved a windfall for arms manufacturers in the rest of the world, who were uninvolved in the fighting. Indeed, Great Britain found itself in such dire need of small arms that its Royal Navy had to turn in its standard-issue SMLE’s, and rearm themselves with everything from Winchester level-action rifles to Japanese Arisaka’s. Even Imperial Russia bought extensively from anyone they could, including Winchester.

In the aftermath of the war, France found itself with literal piles of small arms of all descriptions, from countries and manufacturers from around the world, all using different ammunition and parts, most of which wasn’t made in France, and which could not be easily (nor cheaply) licensed for manufacture. As well, the standard French rifle and machinegun cartridge, the venerable 8mm Lebel, was not a very good cartridge, and needed to be replaced. As the 1920’s dawned, France seemed to have placed itself on the path to rearmament, with a realistic and well-thought out program to develop a broad spectrum of small arms and light infantry weapons for its armed forces.

The execution of that program, however, was an entirely different matter.

While the Chatellerault M1924/29 light machinegun and the MAS 36 rifle were both excellent weapons that worked very well, and were mostly on time in their development, France failed to get the weapons into production in enough numbers to completely rearm its forces. It would not be until World War 2 was almost upon Europe that France saw the danger, and began to ramp up production in earnest. Of course, it would be too little, too late.

The reasons for this are not difficult to understand. France, like most of the “winners” of the ‘war to end all wars’, was in financial ruin after the end of the war. With the advent of the Great Depression on the world, money for military-anything was in short supply, and for France, especially, having lost the better part of an entire generation of young men during 1914-1918, was spending much of what little money it had for defense on an alternative plan.

After France was overrun in 1940, the Various French arsenals were in German hands. While the Nazi forces kept some of the factories working to produce ammunition for captured weapons (“beutewaffe”), as German industrial capacity was simply incapable of meeting Hitler’s war needs, very little new work was done on the incomplete French designs, until the country was liberated in 1944.

Almost as soon as the Germans had been driven out of the various French state arsenals, their workers flooded back in, retrieved blueprints and designs that had been hidden for four years, and immediately got back to work, completing production on the MAS 36, quickly finalizing the first MAS 44 semiautomatic rifles and getting those first guns into production just as the war was ending.

The MAS 44, like most prototype designs, had a lot of issues. Although the design had been in its final stage of development when France was overrun, it had not been perfected, and was rushed into production primarily to show the resilience of French industry.  One critical flaw in the design – a flaw never corrected – was the rifle’s detachable magazine.

In the rush to complete the design, the decision was made to use tooling for the rifle receivers that was originally made for the bolt-action MAS 36. All that was modified for the MAS 44 was to remove the floorplate of the MAS 36’s fixed, five-shot magazine. The “magazine catch”, which locks a detachable magazine in place, was simply a ledge-shaped shelf milled into the outer-right side of the receiver. The rifle’s ten-round magazines were all fitted with a thumb latch on the magazine’s exterior, making it very awkward to try to fit two magazines into a pouch. For reasons unknown – but likely related to the magazine’s inability to safely hold the weight of additional ammunition – the magazines would remain at their ten-round limit throughout the rifle’s service life. However, the semiautomatic rifles would still retain their ability to be loaded via five-round strip-clips.

 

French rifle MAS 49. Photo Credit: Joe Loong. CCA/2.0

 

By 1949, enough lessons had been learned from the -44 that a new model began to make it out to the troops. The MAS 49 corrected several internal reliability issues (but not the magazine, nor the silly “spike” bayonet that the French arms industry was fascinated with), streamlined some aspects of the rifle to make it cheaper and faster to produce, and added a method to add a rifle grenade launcher, something the French infantry establishment had a long-standing love affair with.

It was this rifle that France would sell to many of its colonies (resulting in the so-called “Syrian Contract” rifles) and take into battle in Indochina, Algeria, and the Suez Crisis, all of which – in time-honored tradition – revealed where yet more improvements to the rifle could be made.

The result, developed in 1956 and deployed in 1957, was the rifle’s final form, as the “MAS 49/56”.

While retaining the overall look, feel and handling (and the magazine, still) as its predecessors, the stock was significantly changed, as was the rifle grenade system. As France had joined NATO, it was attempting bring its weapons in line with early NATO standards. The rifle grenade system was altered to use the NATO-standard 22mm grenades, which required the installation of a gas cut-off, to prevent damage to the rifle. This also resulted in a better sighting system for firing the grenades, as the grenade sight had to be raised, in order to disengage the gas system. Most importantly, this system was installed on all MAS 49/56 rifles. Another significant improvement was the incorporation of a scope mount milled into the left side of the rifle’s receiver, a feature also incorporated into every 49/56. And, because of the redesign, the rifle lost the spike bayonet, and received a proper knife-type pig-sticker.

 

MAS49-56 with APX Scope and Bayonet from personal collection of Wikimedia User TL-Wiz63. CCA/4.0

 

Despite some lingering problems, the matured design continued in service as France’s standard infantry rifle until 1979, when it was replaced by the FAMAS rifle), and remained in combat action until its complete replacement. The MAS semiautomatic rifles were mostly sent as aid to many armies in the newly-free states resulting from France’s abandonment of empire. Many of those rifles remain in combat as of this writing.

In an interesting twist to the end of this story, a good number of MAS 49 and 49/56 rifles are on the surplus market in the United States. Many rifles were sold into the American surplus market, beginning in the late 1980s. Some versions were modified to take 7.62x51mm, instead of the 7.5x54mm French round. As a word of warning, if those conversions were done in France, they most likely work well, but the ones converted in the US are known for gas-cycling issues.

Look into older firearms – they tend to have very long lives.

 

 

The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Intentional Consequences – How A Cold War Warning Framed A 21st Century Battleplan

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

Michael Cessna September 29, 2023 1

 

 

 

 

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”

 

(HTML) (PDF)

 

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.

 

World Economic Forum Logo, 2008. CCA/3.0

 

 

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

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