Essays

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

“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.

Discount War – How The ATGM Changed Everything

Michael Cessna July 28, 2023

When the tank appeared on the battlefields of World War One, it sparked terror among armies, who had no answer to it at first. The Germans attempted to counter it with new artillery tactics and later, new artillery weapons to destroy the armored beasts, followed by their first attempt to copy the British behemoths. After World War One ended, all of the militaries involved (the professional ones, at least) reviewed their activities during the war, trying to learn what had gone right, and – more importantly – what had gone wrong.

Regarding the tank, it was found to be useful, certainly, but it suffered from all the ills of any prototype concept, being ridiculously unreliable, too large, too slow, and poorly armored by the end of the war. The next two decades saw continual developments in all of the nations who felt that they might well be on the front line of the next war which – platitudes and wishful thinking about the “war to end all wars” aside – knew was coming.

World War two proved to be the watershed in tank design that most militaries expected. Designs were refined, weapons were improved, and tactics were evolved by force. In general, the things that didn’t work were ruthlessly cast aside, in favor of what worked. This cycle, of course, worked in both directions.

Tanks have severe weaknesses. For the crews, the most important weakness was a painfully limited view. Sticking one’s head outside a tank in the middle of a fight was not conducive to long life, and the visions blocks inside the tank had severely limited fields of view (and still do), limiting the crews’ ability to see anything outside of their steel box. For this reason, specially trained infantry had to escort the tanks across the battlefield to protect them long enough to make it into contact with the enemy…whose infantry could be expected to be armed with whatever anti-tank weapons they had access to, usually in large quantities.

The infantry forces of the world were not about to concede the battlefield to the metal beasts, however.

From the beginning, in WW1, non-armored forces struggled to find countermeasures against the tank. By 1946, dedicated anti-tank artillery had been joined (albeit briefly) by anti-tank rifles. During the “interwar period”, anti-tank hand grenades were developed; while effective, the grenades were really desperation weapons, given how they had to be used. Another weapon was the anti-tank landmine. A very effective class of weapon, they are strictly defensive in nature, and could be problematic in use, as the mines themselves could not be easily re-positioned at need.

Then came the “bazooka”.

A combination of simple rocket technology pushing a small warhead based on the “Monroe Effect”, the first crude “bazookas” deployed by the US Army proved to be highly effective tools for the infantry. Their only real downside was their very short range, compared to tank cannons. Still it was a major advance.

*Soldier holding an M1 “Bazooka”, 1943. US Army photo. Public Domain.*

The American bazooka was copied directly by the Germans, in their “Panzerschrek” (or, “tank’s bane”), who had jump-started their own research program early in 1943 with their “Panzerfaust” (or, “armor-fist”), a one-shot weapon much like a conventional hand grenade. Both weapon concepts continue today, in a variety of models.

But, it was quickly recognized early on that a ‘middle ground’ was needed. Where conventional – if specialized – artillery was effective, the materials involved in building the dedicated weapons took away from more conventional artillery fire missions. At the same time, hand-held weapons – while also effective – were quickly being countered with better tank armor, and better coordination between enemy tanks and infantry.

In the aftermath of World War 2, the victorious states quickly divided into two mutually hostile camps, initiating the “Cold War”. And, like their fathers in the interwar period, continued the search for the middle ground.

To a great extent, anti-tank artillery disappeared after WW2, in a concession to realism, because the class of weapons was simply not dynamic enough to keep pace with the speed demands of a modern battlefield. It was here, however, that the next development arrived.

Although very crude versions of the “recoilless rifle” were developed in World War 1, the Second World War would see their mechanical maturity, and the first deployments in combat, in the hands of German paratroopers.

*A U.S. Special Forces soldier fires a Carl Gustav Recoilless Rifle during a training exercise conducted in Basrah, Iraq, May 2, 2009. US Army Photo. Public Domain.*

Resembling a conventional artillery tube, the recoilless rifle barrel is much thinner, for its caliber. Recoilless rifles work, basically, by firing a shell from a specially designed shell casing. This casing is perforated to allow a portion of the ballistic gases to vent to the rear, through a hollow breach. While not completely “recoil-less”, these weapons were a serious threat to tanks, as their warheads were fully capable of destroying a “main battle tank” of the day in one shot. And, while too heavy to be carried by hand, they were still light enough to be mounted in the back of a Jeep or pickup truck.

*Mounted M40 Recoilless Anti-Tank Rifle. Photo credit: Vijay Tiwari. CCA/4.0*

The recoilless rifle, in its turn, was sidelined by improvements to tank armor. Replacing it, however, was the ATGM. The Anti-Tank Guided Missile dawned in the early 1950’s. They were crude by modern standards, were hard to control in flight, and had a limited range, but technology was advancing rapidly, and the weapons improved dramatically in the 1960’s, especially in warhead technology.

The 1970’s dawned, and with it, the ATGM. In 1972, the US Army deployed the TOW Missile System to Vietnam, where it quickly began destroying tanks, being fired from helicopters. But this was just the proverbial ‘opening round’.

On October 6, 1973, the armed forces of Egypt invaded the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula. The furious, three-week long battle that resulted fundamentally changed the landscape of war for the first time since World War 1.

The Israelis had built up a well-deserved reputation for military prowess, one that would hold true in 1973…but not without taking a severe bruising in the process.

When Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal and overran the Israeli defensive line, they halted and set up their own line, waiting for the Israeli counterattack. That should have been the first sign of trouble. Israeli tank commanders, however elected to not wait for more infantry to come up to support them, and attacked directly into the Egyptian line. The result was a bloodbath: the Israelis lost more than sixty tanks in a matter of minutes, as Egyptian ATGM troops cut the unsupported tanks to shreds.

*An Israeli M60 Patton destroyed in the Sinai. Photo credit: Sherif9282. Public Domain.*

The Israelis had met the Malyutka.

The 9M14 Malyutka (NATO Reporting Name : AT-3 ‘Sagger’), first produced by the Soviet Union in 1963, is probably the most-produced ATGM in history, a weapon still in both production and use as of this writing.

*Serbian-made modified Malyutka wire-guided anti-tank missile on display at “Partner 2009” military fair. Photo credit: Kos93. CCA/4.0 Int’l.*

A tiny weapon, the Malyutka/Sagger fits into a briefcase-sized carrier. Assembled at its launch sight, the missile has an effective range of 500-3,000 meters. Its warhead remains potent even today: although no longer effective against most tanks, it remains very effective against buildings and light vehicles. The weapon’s warhead is in the same general category as that of the RPG-7, but has a much longer range.

Armies – and other groups – took note.

Now, there are a wide array of ATGM’s prevalent throughout the world. From the European MILAN launchers mounted to Toyota Hilux pickup trucks in the Chadian desert, to American Javelin missiles destroying invading Russian tanks in Ukraine, lightweight military forces around the world have finally found the balance they need to meet heavier forces equally on the field.

U.S. Army paratrooper engages targets with Javelin shoulder fired anti tank missile during a live-fire exercise as part of Exercise Rock Sokol at Pocek Range in Postojna, Slovenia, March 9, 2016. U.S. Army photo by Paolo Bovo. Public Domain.

The dust these changes have stirred up have not fully settled as of 2023. Tanks remain dangerous actors on the battlefield, pundit declarations to the contrary aside. But, as we increasingly enter a period of “discount war”, high-powered weapons in the hands of light, fast-moving forces with tiny logistical footprints and easy-to-acquire and -operate combat vehicles is forcing a serious rethink of the scope of military action…

…At least, among those who pause long enough to reflect on the question.

Cutlass Rattling – World Powers Face Off Over Commercial Shipping & Grain

Michael Cessna July 21, 2023

Since 2021, there has been a war simmering between the United States and Iran. The US began seizing – via court-based “arrest” orders – ships carrying cargo (mostly oil) –out of Iran, to various nations that the United States has under economic sanction. The nations under US sanctions, such as Venezuela, have no real method to respond to the United States.

Iran, however, is a different matter.

Iran has begun seizing ships in the Persian Gulf by force, and in earnest, in response to the actions by the United States; the number is now up to twenty vessels. Additionally, some firms in the United States have begun to refuse to unload ships seized with Iranian cargo, fearing Iran seizing their vessels in retaliation.

Because of the clear threat presented to the “freedom of the seas”, the United is now responding to Iran by reinforcing its forces in the Persian Gulf with additional destroyers…and a few thousand US Marines.

While the first inclination of many will be to recall that the United States severely damaged the Iranian Navy in 1988’s Operation Praying Mantis – launched in response to an Iranian naval mine severely damaging the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) – that was some thirty-five years ago.

*Iranian frigate IS Sahand (74) burning on 18 April 1988 after being attacked by aircraft of U.S. Navy Carrier Air Wing 11. US Navy photo. Public Domain.*

Iran’s naval capability – while still no match for the US Navy in a direct fight – has significantly improved since their defeat, very likely enough to cause serious damage to United States forces in the process. Such a defeat, were it to happen, would almost certainly spark hysterical screams from within Washington, DC, demanding an all-out invasion.

*LtGen Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (retired), c.1995. LtGen Van Riper led the “opposing force” in the “Millennium Challenge 2002” exercise. USMC official photo. Public Domain.*

This is certainly not a whimsical or marginal threat. There has been a long-standing resistance within the Washington establishment to any rational negotiations with Iran; indeed, this escalated after then-President Donald Trump called off a disproportionate attack in response to Iran shooting down an unmanned US surveillance drone in 2019. In fact, hysterical calls for war with Iran have been a steady feature of US rhetoric for over a decade.

While the reasons for this hysterical behavior by long-serving chickenhawks in the Washington Swamp are unclear, they are nonetheless real. And with the weak, disconnected and floundering administration currently in place in the Swamp, wallowing in failures both domestic and foreign, highly irrational decisions are a serious possibility.

Iran is not Iraq. An irrational and ill-advised war against the current iteration of Ancient Persia – no matter how technically weak it may appear – would be an absolute disaster for the United States in the immediate sense, but also for the wider world, as the impact on the global trade system would not simply be catastrophic, but could swiftly escalate out of control.

For far too long, the people of the United States have bought into the mythology of “American Invincibility”. While this belief was justifiable until about 2010, it is no longer the case. The US Navy currently fields less than 300 vessels; all of the armed services except the Marine Corps have admitted that they expect to fall short of their recruitment targets by at least 20%, if not more. As the Biden administration openly admitted less than two weeks before this writing, US industry has not been able to step up the production of basic artillery ammunition to meet the needs of the administration’s support to Ukraine.

There is nothing left for the United States’ potential need for combat operations, should that happen.

*Munitions Production on the Home Front, 1914-1918. Imperial War Museums. Public Domain.*

And there are painfully few options available, if any still exist at all. Despite some twenty-odd years of near-continuous combat, neither US industry nor the wider population have been mobilized for the possibility of a major war…or wars. In 1941, as the forces of Imperial Japan were attacking Pearl Harbor, the United States had been girding for war for nearly two full years, mobilizing a “command economy” to increase the production of war materiel to support Great Britain in its war against Hitler’s Germany, and instituting the first peacetime military draft in the country’s history, giving all of the armed services of the day time to bring in and train troops in readiness for war.

None of that has been happening in the last 20+ years. And the cold reality is that it is likely not possible, without twenty years, minimum, of corrective measures: Thirty years of globalism’s industrial and business realities have removed the bulk of heavy industrial manufacturing from within the borders of the United States. Likewise, there is virtually no chance of the Draft being reactivated; while it is certainly still on the books as a legal option, the social policies instituted, promoted and encouraged by the Democrat Party in the last fifteen years have poisoned the recruiting well for the military, encouraging the armed service’s core demographics to pointedly not step forward to enlist. Basic training has been eroded to the point where the vast majority of troops with under ten years service are not psychologically prepared for combat at any level.

And yet – the chickenhawks of the Swamp persist, thinking that their actions to please their vote base have had no impact on military readiness – despite facts to the contrary – because they are so disconnected from the real world…

…Now, if the issue were simply Iran and a shortfall for materiel’s shipments to Ukraine, this might not be that large of a problem. A problem, certainly, but not a critical one.

However, as many chickenhawk cheerleaders crow over the recent attack on the Kerch Bridge over the Sea of Azov, Russia’s response was swift and decisive: Russia has abandoned the deal it agreed to previously, which allows the export of Ukrainian grain crops to supply the world’s food needs.

*Satellite picture of Crimea, 05-16-2015, with location of the Kerch Bridge in red. NASA. Public Domain.*

Russia is now actively targeting the port city of Odessa with long-range missile strikes, and is laying naval mines to close off Ukraine’s remaining coastal regions. Moscow has also hinted at the possibility that it will attack commercial vessels attempting to reach Ukraine.

The real danger in this series of moves lies far to the south, where Egypt is critically dependent upon Ukrainian wheat to feed its population. In the face of this loss, Egypt – already struggling with massive unemployment and the irrational and childish dismissal of its concerns over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dame (GERD) project by the government in Addis Ababa.

This is important, because if Egypt lashes out against Ethiopia in desperation – using an air force largely reequipped by the US – it could easily spark a much wider war, a war that could easily result in the closing of the Suez Canal…an act that, as was demonstrated by the grounding of a single container ship in 2021 for less than a week, would up-end the world trade system.

Which loops us back to Iran.

If the United States tilts that windmill, it will destroy the International North–South Transport Corridor, the decade-old project by Russia, China, Turkey, India and Iran to build a trade corridor designed to drastically shorten the transit of commercial cargo, bypassing the Suez Canal entirely.

This is a hair-trigger environment that is capable of sparking World War 3. This is not hyperbole, in any way.

It is solely the construct of the Swamp – a body that imagines itself as completely immune to anyone it deems “lesser”…which term includes you and I.

Let that sink in.

House of Cards – Victory Disease, Unhinged Greed and the Pentagon’s Darkest Fear

Michael Cessna July 15, 2023

‘MERICA

There is a perception in the world, a perception with solid reasoning behind it, that the United States of America is the most powerful nation in the recorded history of the world. In fact, the world system of the early 21^st Century is hinged on that very concept.

But – is it true?

Economically, the United States is certainly a powerhouse. As measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) the US economy is almost larger than the next three economies in the world. However, in GDP per Capita the US is seventh, and in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) (a measure of the ratio of the price of a “basket of goods” in different countries, that is used to compare the absolute purchasing power of national currencies), the US is in 10^th place. In exports, the US is in second place to China, and even then, the vast bulk of US exports are limited to petroleum, aircraft, pharmaceuticals and medical instruments, due primarily to the high costs of US labor. Dangerously, the imbalance of imports shows that the US is reliant on the willingness of the rest of the world for a vast amount of its real goods, like industrial machinery.

We could talk about how reporting on the quality of education in the US is “cooked”, but we’ll let the World Population Review discuss that.

But really – that’s not why you’re reading this, right? After all, if the Reader has been reading the Freedomist for any length of time, you are fully aware what my focus is. So, let’s go there.

Militarily, the United States Armed Forces possess a set of demonstrated structures that maximize its global reach and power projection…in theory. The state of the US military – and, critically, its supporting industrial base and capacity – is abysmal. This is not a question solely of culture or corruption, although those things are certainly major factors. The issue to keep in mind, here, is that the United States military is an apolitical and a-cultural bellwether for the nation – if the military works, the nation’s political and cultural problems are not insurmountable; conversely, if the military isn’t working, metaphorically speaking, the nation is in danger…How much danger, we will look into below.

Why is the military in the poor state that it is? On the surface, the issues started to became public, albeit in a very quiet way, in 2001…not with the 9/11 attacks, but with the release of the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. The 2001 QDR – one of a series of documents issued every 4 years from 1997 to 2017 by and for the Washington, DC bureaucratic swamp that describes a “4-year plan” (…) – was the first to explicitly state the plan to replace the notion of “strategy” (in the historical sense) with “capabilities-based planning”.

Basically, “strategy” was too hard to do effectively in an “asymmetric environment”, where hostile actors could erupt anywhere, at any time, and act in unpredictable ways. So…it followed that traditional strategic planning model no longer functioned. The solution – “capabilities-based planning” – posited the notion that if an issue arose, a “basket” of units with various capabilities appropriate to the nation, region and operational environment could be quickly assembled, and thrown into action, until the problem went away.

Given what should have been the obvious disaster in the making with such a childish idea, it should be no surprise that it failed, miserably, utterly and completely, almost from its first use.

But the problem is much deep than this.

JUNGLE GHOSTS

The United State Armed Forces were badly scarred, in a psychological and cultural sense, by the collapse of the Western effort in the Vietnam War. This is well known. What is not so well known, at least among the general public, is the US military’s responses to the defeat.

*South Vietnamese refugees aboard a U.S. Navy vessel during Operation Frequent Wind, the final evacuation of Saigon, Republic of Vietnam. April 29, 1975. US Department of Defense. Public Domain.*

The US military, as a group, essentially abandoned “counterinsurgency” in the aftermath of the Vietnam defeat. It had deployed massive forces, conventional and special, which had uniformly fought hard, in a confusing and frustrating environment. And it had failed. In the bizarre world of guerrilla warfare, while US and Allied units won every engagement above the level of the infantry company, they had still lost the war, because South Vietnam had ultimately fallen, seemingly rendering the efforts moot.

The reasons for South Vietnam’s collapse are many, and not the subject for this article. But, the reaction by the US military was to refocus all of its efforts towards very likely fights with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, in effect, “World War 3”, ala, “World War 2, but with lots more nukes.”

To do this, the US military – primarily the Army – had to rethink its concept of strategy, following the failure of its “Pentomic Army” experiment. The answer seemed to arrive in 1976, when John Boyd, Colonel, USAF (ret.) first presented his “Patterns of Conflict” work, that outlined what is now known as the “OODA Loop”. The OODA concept took the US military establishment by storm in the mid-1970’s, and resulted in two things: the revitalization of the Opposition Force (OPFOR) concept, and in a new battle strategy for winning the conventional side of World War 3 – “AirLand Battle”.

The US military had maintained the idea of an “opposing force” as a training model since 1946; in fact, the Freedomist covered this unique and seminal organization in May of this year. In the late 1970’s, the program was completely overhauled, and centered on a then state of the art training facility at Ft. Irwin, CA, and later at Ft Polk, LA (now renamed as Ft. Johnson), which focused on counterinsurgency as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan shifted in focus, in concert with the US Marine Corps’ facility at 29 Palms, CA. The concept has been maintained and updated over the years. The concept created the most realistic combat training facility ever established, that trained a generation of primarily US Army armor officers and troops in how to fight and win on an armored battlefield. The armored warfare training program fell out of extensive use during the Global War on Terror, as there was little need for massed armored formations after the successful invasion and conquest of Iraq in 2003.

Coupled to the success of the AirLand Battle concept in 1991, it seemed that the US military had recovered from Vietnam, and was back in the dominant position it had seemingly enjoyed since the end of World War 2.

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

COLLAPSE?

But, lurking beneath the surface, there was a palpable, unsettled feeling – something just didn’t…“feel right”. There was suspicion, whispered in private, that we were actually training potential combat leaders how to “win the battle, but not the war”. Those concerns, however, were mostly forgotten as “bumps in the road” and “just bad luck”, as Iraq and Afghanistan metastasized into the quagmires they became.

But, hey – counterinsurgency is hard and messy, right? It’s comparatively a lot harder than the good, old-fashioned smash of the armored fist into the bad guy’s face.

Right?

But then – Russia formally invaded Ukraine. (The war had actually been going on for some eight years by 2022, but no one wants to talk about that.) And, after a year of intense combat – the very type of “main-force” combat Western combat leaders thought AirLand Battle was designed to fight – the Ukrainians launched a counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, using troops given a “quickie” training course in US/NATO AirLand Battle concepts, and fortified with deliveries of US M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and German Leopard 2 main battle tanks…..the results were as dismal as they were alarming.

*A Ukrainian Leopard 2 tank and several Bradley fighting vehicles destroyed by the Russian forces in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, June 2023. Photo: Mil.ru. CCA/4.0*

The US military, as well as the armed forces of the wider NATO Alliance, is getting a ringside to the live practice of the war they planned to fight…and it doesn’t look good.

The reality is that the AirLand Battle concept was never designed as an “attack” strategy, like its predecessor, the misnamed “Blitzkrieg” – it was always implicitly a defensive strategy. While people in the higher levels of the Army and the wider Pentagon establish speak confidently and relentlessly about “combined arms” and “maneuver warfare”, the cold fact is that their operational plans remain rooted in Airland Battle doctrine, a doctrine that does not play well on the offense…unless, of course, your opponent is a badly-trained, badly-equipped and demoralized rabble, who hate their leaders so much, they are willing to allow a foreign invader to enter and conquer their nation, wholesale.

The situation with Ukraine and Russia is spiraling out of control. What began as a craven attempt to restart the Cold War for “fun and profit” has now grown, until it is beginning to run off of the rails. This naked corruption, coupled to unsustainable recruiting numbers in the armies facing Russia – and soon, perhaps, those of Belarus and the People’s Republic of China – and an exhausted and flagging industrial base that cannot keep up with the vast needs for munitions and weapons – and not simply advanced weapons, but even basic arms – has led the White House to the highly unusual (and frankly rather alarming) decision to activate individuals within the “Inactive Ready Reserve” for immediate deployment to the European Combatant Command.

In 1941, as the Japanese launched their attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had spent well over a year building up its military forces in the first peacetime military draft call-up in the nation’s history. As well, war industry production had been steadily increasing since 1939; Lend-Lease would be formalized in early 1941, vastly increasing the production of war materials.

That is most emphatically not the case, as of July of 2023.

Neither the United States nor its allies have been able to increase production of basic military supplies like artillery ammunition. No one willing to support Ukraine seems to be able increase its production rates to serious war levels, even after some eighteen months of fighting. Western defense firms do, indeed, produce very high quality weapons…but that quality comes at an equally high price, in that those weapons frequently require special materials and/or complex components, all of which cost a lot of money.

And, just as there is no desire in the West to “gear down” to use simpler weapons and equipment, there is no desire to implement a peacetime draft to flesh out military numbers; in fact, a peacetime draft may be impossible, not only in the US, but in most of Western Europe…

And meanwhile – Russian industry is working multiple shifts, not simply producing war material for Ukraine, but fulfilling foreign orders as well. China is expanding its influence in resource-rich Africa, while securing “back door” supply chains to support Russia through its “Belt & Road” corridors in Asia.

The outlook is grim. For far too long irrational, incompetent and openly corrupt corporations and politicians have been inventing ways to sustain the “Great Green Machine”. For twenty-odd years, “Achmed the Goat-Herder” was touted as an existential threat to Western Civilization. When that failed – not simply because the general public realized that presentation for the lie that it is, but because using a $100million+ fighter plane to bomb Achmed is stupid and wasteful in the extreme – it was decided to push Russia into a “cold” conflict, to boost sales numbers.

And now…the incompetents in charge have no way out. They think that they do – but they do not. They are playing at a craps table, where failure will lead to a nuclear exchange.

And that exchange is aimed at you and me.

Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes, Part 2 – Is the PMC Era Coming To An End?

Michael Cessna July 8, 2023

Mercenaries have been around for a very long time; so long, in fact, that working as a “sell sword” is regarded as a prime candidate for the title, “The Second Oldest Profession”; the Freedomist even covered this previously. During the Italian Renaissance, the sometimes substantial forces of various condottieri mercenary captains had a noted and significant impart on Western History. In the modern day, from 2003 onwards, this has been exemplified by the rise of the “Private Military Company” (PMC).

While some people may think that mercenaries are a relatively recent phenomena, having been largely eliminated after the Napoleonic Wars, the truth is that the profession has continued on up to the present day, albeit on a more individual level, more than massed units like the hired Hessian troops of the American War of Independence.

(An important note is that those to whom the 19^th Century term “filibusters”, as related to military activity, applied were not ‘mercenaries’ in the traditional sense, as military filibustering was rarely done at the behest of any internal faction in a country. Military filibusters were essentially well-armed bandits with political aspirations.)

Many military figures of world history were mercenaries at one time or another, figures like the Athenian general and historian Xenophon, author of The Anabasis, which chronicles the withdrawal of some ten thousand mostly-Greek mercenaries from the Achemenid Empire, to Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian professional soldier who joined George Washington’s army, and had such an impact on it, that he is regarded as one of the ‘founding fathers’ of the United States Army.

*Baron Frederick William von Steuben, c.1780. Painted by artist Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827). Public Domain.*

In the aftermath of the overthrow and ultimate execution of French king Louis XVI, France instituted what we would now refer to as “national mobilization”, the vast size of the armies the revolutionary government was able to field proved so attractive to nations everywhere, notions of unique national character were deliberately reinforced. As a result, it came to be considered odd – if not more than a little dirty – to serve in the armed forces of another state.

And yet such service, primarily for money, continued. The French Foreign Legion, established in 1831, was created to place foreigners who had previously served as mercenaries in French royal service, into the French Army for service outside of France. Smaller such units appeared from time to time, but after about 1820 or so, the “Soldier of Fortune” phase began in earnest, first with the Filibusters, but soon incorporating many individuals, mostly former soldiers but also a few pure amateurs, who were what we would now call “adrenaline junkies”, following reports of wars breaking out in various places around the world, where formal military education and technical abilities were scarce. The advanced education and experience of many of these individuals often proved invaluable to their employers. As just one example, British Royal Navy Captain (later Rear-Admiral) Thomas Cochrane, 10^th Earl of Dundonald, was instrumental in creating the revolutionary navies of Brazil, Chile and Peru, in the 1820’s and 30’s.

*Admiral Lord Cochrane, portrait of James Ramsay, c.1830. Public Domain*

By the 1890’s, “freebooters” and soldiers of fortune were seemingly everywhere, fighting for almost all sides in world conflict zones. With the advent of weapons such as practical machine guns and quick-firing artillery, coupled to a highly permissive “cash-n-carry” environment for buying weapons, meant that those individual’s technical skills were often absolutely decisive in conflicts in remote areas.

Following World War’s 1 & 2, however, the world saw the return of mass national mobilization, and a reinforcement of the perceived uniqueness of national character. As a result, aside from long-established units like the French Foreign Legion, “mercenary work” mostly vanished completely, for about fifteen years. As the tensions of the Cold War increased, however, the decolonization of Africa initiated a series of “proxy wars”, which would define much of the following thirty years. In 1961, mercenaries returned to the world’s consciousness in force – both literally and figuratively.

In 1961, Thomas Michael Hoare (who would come to be known as “Mad Mike”), a former officer in the British Army and veteran of the Burma Campaign in the Second World War, was hired by Moïse Tshombe, the leader of the nascent breakaway province of Katanga, to form the core of an army to secure the state’s independence.

Although that effort was ultimately unsuccessful, Tshombe – in the absolutely wild world of Congolese politics (YouTube link; language warning) – was recalled to become the country’s fifth Prime Minister in mid-1964, to deal with the so-called “Simba Uprising”, a massive and extremely bloody rebellion in the vast state’s northeastern regions. Tshombe, in turn, recalled Hoare to recruit a force of mercenaries to act as a spearhead to the wavering Congolese Army. Hoare promptly recruited mercenaries through newspaper advertisements in South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and formed his unit as “5 Commando, ANC”.

*Troops of the mercenary-led 5 Commando, ANC, during Operation ‘Dragon Rouge’, 1964. US Army Photo. Public Domain.*

Although the force got off to a rocky start, it was quickly whipped into shape (mostly by enforcing a regimen of discipline that western armies had long ago abandoned.) Hoare quickly began rolling up the Simba’s, in a series of operations that resulted in the liberation of Stanleyville (now Kisangani). In traditional mercenary fashion, Hoare’s c.300 mercenary troops and their Congolese allies happily sacked the city in the aftermath, blasting open bank vaults and looting anything not nailed down. Atrocities – although nowhere near the levels committed by the Simba’s – were rampant. Hoare’s unit would ultimately be disbanded in 1967, after some six years of mostly-successful operations. A few other pseudo-units of (mostly White) mercenaries came and went in the Congo during the 1960’s, contributing to actions that would leave the Congo devastated into the modern day.

Mercenary activity simmered for another twenty years, with Western mercenaries – usually, but not always, former soldiers – taking part in many, possibly a majority, of the conflicts of the 1970’s and 80’s. In the aftermath of the rise and fall of “Executive Outcomes” (defunct in 1998, but recently reestablished), the prototype for the modern PMC, the United Nations passed a frankly idiotic and laughably unenforceable prohibition against mercenaries, “formally” outlawing the practice and denying them status as prisoners of war under the increasingly irrelevant Geneva Conventions…which were rarely, if ever, extended to captured mercenaries, in any case.

The September 11^th, 2001 attacks are what ultimately rode to the rescue of the mercenary profession. The reason was painfully simple: With the end of the Cold War in 1991, most of the nations of the world severely trimmed their massive military establishments, leaving their capability to deploy military force critically short. As there were no national mobilizations after the attacks, and the dawning of the “Global War on Terror” mostly took the form of actions by small units of superbly (and expensively) trained special forces units, backed up by comparatively small numbers of conventional troops, the military landscape seemed to have changed.

A Special Forces company commander meets with village elders and members of the 1st Kandak, 209th Afghan National Army Corps April 10, 2007. Photo Credit: Specialist Daniel Love, U.S. Army. Public Domain.

However, this change was actually a mirage, an image warped by a declining lack of military knowledge among the general population. In fact, the cuts in manpower during the 1990’s had been so deep, across the globe, that military forces – including those of the United States – were left completely incapable of operating for any length of time in a war zone. With the various wars and military actions abroad becoming increasingly unpopular “back home”, there was no interest in trying to expand the manpower numbers of western military forces (which is an entirely different story on its own), a solution had to be found, and quickly.

This is what led to the rise of the 21^st Century PMC.

Private Military Companies are a polite legal fiction, designed to hide their status as mercenaries (thus avoiding legalistic maneuvers by nations of the UN) by usually referring to them as “security contractors”, who insist that they take no active role in military actions, merely defending themselves. It’s a paper-thin dodge, and one no one with any concept of self-decency ever really believed.

As of the beginning of 2022, however, the world’s military calculus has begun to shift once again. With military actions such as the Tigray War and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the return of mass warfare (long thought vanished as a realistic possibility) has returned, with a vengeance.

Massed wars – “main force conflicts”, if one prefers – like these in the modern era are inimical to most flavors of PMCs. Fighting insurgents armed with individual small arms and a few light weapons is one thing – contesting a battlefield against a first-tier military state is another matter, entirely. To borrow the words of author Thomas Ricks, few “contractors” within any PMC has a dog in any fight like that.

While PMC’s will continue to be employed in the short term, it is a virtual certainty that the non-state supported, independent PMC will vanish within ten years.

…Assuming, of course, that Western States can fix their broken military forces.

Let that sink in.

Lies, Damned Lies And Deceptions

Michael Cessna June 30, 2023

A Highly Unofficial Military Assessment of the UAP Threat

We need to talk. It’s time for “that” discussion.

On April 27^th of 2020, the Department of Defense officially released three videos of “anomalous objects” or “unidentified aerial phenomena” (along with some even more shocking revelations in 2022). These videos, recorded as “gun camera” footage by F/A-18 fighters of the US Navy in 2004 and 2015, were leaked in 2007 and 2017, respectively, sparking off furious speculation as to what the objects recorded actually were. For its part, the Navy and the DoD admitted publicly that they had no idea what the origin or nature of these objects actually were.

While that might true for the people issuing the public statements, it is yet another bald-faced lie by the government. If that sounds harsh, or even histrionic, it isn’t – it is an objective truth, as we will show below.

Let’s talk about the videos, first.

Exotic Craft

While the videos may seem pretty mundane at first glance, they are most certainly not…especially when one begins to read more deeply into the situations behind the videos in question. The short answer, based on the testimony of skilled, veteran pilots – people trained in air-to-air combat – is that these craft are performing maneuvers that are not possible within the currently accepted realm of physics.

For you, the Reader, your choice is simple: you can believe the testimony of professional officers and pilots, trained to engage with hostile aircraft, or you can believe the hysterical denials of wholly unqualified rando’s on the interwebz trying to sell you a website membership, a book or a magazine subscription.

Choose one.

The other issue at hand is the number of craft being sighted. In the now-famous “Tic-Tac” video, described in detail (Spotify link) by retired US Navy Commander David Fravor on the Joe Rogan Podcast in 2020, the additional details of the story – not discussed on Rogan’s show – were laid out (YouTube link) by whistleblower Luis Elizondo in 2019. In short, radar and air defense operators aboard the USS Princeton (CG-59) reported tracking up to one hundred objects at once, over the course of the week prior to the intercept by Commander Fravor. According to the operators from the Princeton, these craft dropped down from 80,000 feet, essentially out of nowhere.

Ok…So what?

Seeing a single object doing extraordinary things can be written off as either a mistake or a hoax. Seeing a hundred such objects is neither. The United States Navy – inter-service rivalry jabs aside – is not in the habit of re-tasking extremely-expensive-to-operate aircraft to investigate hoaxes and jokes. It is simply not done in the real world.

Given that reality, why is the number of targets spotted on radar important?

Right now, if the Reader has the money, you can order a “kit car” online. In a couple of weeks, a truck will arrive with several large boxes of components, and you can assemble a fully functional and road-legal automobile in your garage. Doing so, however, does not make one an “automobile manufacturer”. The same is true for aircraft.

According to Cmdr. Fravor’s description, the object he and his flight of F/A-18’s intercepted was about the size of his fighter. Presuming – a loaded term, to be sure – that the other radar tracks were similar in size to the intercepted unknown, a number of craft equivalent in number to the entire complement of a modern aircraft carrier, appeared to descend from orbit, within the engagement envelope of an aircraft carrier battle group, essentially with no warning.

*F-18 Hornet of the US Marine Corps. Photo Credit: Pixabay.com Public Domain.*

Clearly, if these claims are true – refer to the above comment – the US Navy (at the operational level, at least) has no idea what these craft are, nor who they belong to.

That’s a problem.

The other problem is: Like a kit car or plane, making a one-off craft with a breakthrough propulsion system in your barn is not “manufacturing” said craft. Making a hundred – is. In the “biz”, that is called “serial production”.

So…If the United States is not making these – as the government insists that they are not – then who is? It isn’t the Russians. Nor is it the Chinese. There is simply no nation or organization on Planet Earth that can do so, because (“conspiracy theorists” aside – who have had a pretty good track record over the last few years) no one has the technology displayed by the recorded craft.

The reason this can be stated so conclusively, is that any craft with this range of performance characteristics is a dominating advance – a leap in technology so decisive, any nation on Earth that can place such craft into serial production can and will dominate every other nation on Earth. Yet…no one has done so.

And recall: the first of these videos were recorded in 2004, some nineteen years ago, at this writing.

Prepping the Battlefield

So – if no one on Earth is producing these craft, who is? What are they doing here? Why aren’t they landing in Washington, New York, London, Moscow or Beijing, popping their hatches and say, “Take me to your leader”?

If these sightings are neither hoaxes, drug-addled ramblings, mistaken identities, “ball lightning”, “swamp gas”, “lenticular cloud formations”, “extremely slow-moving meteors that change direction” (my personal favorite) or craft from terrestrial nations…the only other alternative is that they are from “elsewhere”. That is the presumption we will work from in this article, going forward.

“Prepping the Battlefield” is military slang for a directed and wide-reaching survey of a potential battlefield. The purpose is to identify the terrain and nature of the potential opposition, in order to refine a potential battle plan.

*US Marines on reconnaissance exercise, 2003. USMC Photo. Public Domain.*

Now, there are a large number of people, with…unfortunate…critical thinking skills, who will insist that any species capable of crossing the vast gulfs of space at presumably faster-than-light speeds would have no trouble soundly defeating “puny humans” like us.

People with such tangled thought processes are why there are safety warnings on Pop-Tarts.

History is replete with examples of technologically advanced groups being soundly defeated by peoples well behind them in technology, but that is not the issue here. The issue is that technology is not linear in development. The ability to build a typewriter does not equate to the ability to build a computer. Industrial or mechanical abilities can only define possible technologies; they do not guarantee the existence of technologies.

So – presuming that “aliens” are coming here from outside the solar system, and are neither invading, nor formally contacting us as the “Galactic Brotherhood”…why are they here?

Aside from a few hazy reports from so long ago that most of the witnesses are now long dead, the modern “UFO” milieu began in 1947, with the Roswell Crash.

*Roswell Daily Record from July 9, 1947 detailing the Roswell UFO incident. Public Domain.*

What is not often discussed, however, is the fact that Roswell was not the only incident in 1947. In fact, there were multiple incidents that year, incidents that led to the United States Air Force to launch not one, but two formal investigations of what was going on in United States airspaces because, to paraphrase the words of former UK Ministry of Defense investigator Nick Pope, countries do not fail to pay attention to uncorrelated targets in their airspace.

Not surprisingly, this pair of investigations, spanning the period from 1948 to 1951, concluded that there was nothing to see, that virtually all of the reported sightings – including those from professional and military aviators – were uniformly either mistaken identity, outright hoaxes, or any number of unusual but natural phenomena, because clouds always look like aircraft, apparently.

So adamantly and rigidly did the US Air Force adhere to this stance that as late as the late-1990’s, that organization issued no less than two separate reports on the Roswell incident directly, both of which did not simply lie and demean the general public, as well as its own officers, but that openly claimed that its own records of major projects were completely mislabeled as happening at least a decade earlier than they did.

…But – why? Why all the secrecy and deception, especially after it became painfully clear to the public that the military and the government were proverbial lying through their teeth? There are two reasons. In reverse order: first, because once you defend a secret as vigorously and for as long as the government has regarding “UFO’s”, you are going to commit more than a few crimes along the way (YouTube link).

Second was the desperate attempt to avoid widespread public panic. One basic mistake made by most “UFOlogists” in the modern day is to equate the attitudes and perceptions of today, to the late-1940’s; this is comparing apples to hydraulic jacks.

In 1947, World War 2 had only been over, in an official sense, for barely a year. In many cases, the military and political leaders at the “sharp end” of this wave of sightings had seen friends, and sometimes family members, killed, seriously wounded or possibly even severely reprimanded and forcibly retired. Additionally, the panic caused by Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast was only nine years in the past. Going on-air, nationwide, and admitting that the government had no idea what or who were responsible for the extraordinary things in the sky would have caused an immediate, worldwide panic.

Given all of the above, we return to the core question: Assuming that these craft are a) real, b) are from and operated by entities that are not native to the Earth – What are “they” doing?

An Unofficial Military Assessment

- - UFO’s, UAP’s, “flying saucers”, etc., are here. They are not contacting us, at least publicly. Many people – in the tens of thousands – have reported seeing the craft. Some people have claimed various types of contact with the crews of the craft.

- - Beginning from at least 1947, there has been an intense series of what can only be described as “surveillance flights” began to be observed over the Earth, primarily in the United States, but quickly spreading outside the country. These flights were concentrated in regions near military bases, government centers, “high tech” laboratories, and production and refining facilities relating to the production of both missile systems and nuclear materials.

- - It is a fact that the first known atomic weapons were detonated in 1945, barely two years prior to the wave of sightings in 1947. (NB: There were scattered reports (YouTube link) of “Foo Fighters” among Allied pilots during World War 2, indicating a possible early phase of surveillance.)

- - With clear interest in terrestrial states’ development of atomic weaponry, it is equally clear from the pattern of observable surveillance that this was a major factor of interest. The implication is that these “visitors” view such systems as a threat.

- - If that is true, the lack of outright physical attack in the 1947-1950 period makes little sense, assuming that a) the “command authority” of the reconnaissance elements conducting the surveillance viewed such developments as a threat to themselves, and b) that this alien society was significantly advanced technologically over that of post-World War 2 Earth.

Functionally speaking, these points are contradictory, as logical threat response would dictate that some level of direct intervention – the proverbial “landing on the Capital Mall”, if not actual military invasion – would be necessary. Indeed, in 1947-1950, the nations of the Earth were in absolutely no position to effectively resist any such action.

Or…were we?

A Dangerous Place

Referring back to the technology discussion above and considering – with trepidation – the “Ancient Aliens Hypothesis” [sic] in concert with this, it is entirely possible that these alien visitors did not develop weapons technologies in sync with us…And specifically, as regarding firearms.

The “Ancient Aliens Hypothesis” presumes that non-human aliens have been “visiting” Earth – “interfering” is not too strong a term for that hypothesis’ view – for thousands of years. Yet, when one looks back through verifiably ancient works of art, there are no personal weapons identifiable other than swords, spears, slings, and bows and arrows. Certain implications contained in Indian Vedas do indicate the possibility of high-technology weapons – potentially atomic weapons – there is no representation of identifiable firearm-type weapons.

*Mesopotamian god. Pixabay.com Public Domain.*

Eschatologically and religiously, there are non-Abrahamic scriptural and textual descriptions implying “magical” instruments being wielded by “the gods” that could be taken as various types of directed-energy weapons. Presuming that aliens did visit Earth in the remote past, a non-human alien deploying a laser-type weapon – or even a taser-equivalent – could easily be seen as “godlike”, even leaving aside “miracles” like instant communication, advanced medicine and “talking boxes” (i.e., computers). This is even more true, when handheld weapons such as simple clubs and crude swords would appear helpless in the face of aliens.

This is important, because the vast majority of credible contactee reports indicate that the alien crews are physically far smaller and weaker than the average human. This syncs up with the timing of credible reported contacts, the vast majority of which occur at night. Humans are ‘diurnal’, in nature, meaning that humans operate best in daylight and typically sleep at night, as opposed to nocturnal creatures, which are active at night, and generally sleep during the day.

The implication is that, all other things being equal, the alien ship crews as physically described would likely faire poorly in hand-to-hand/unarmed combat against an aroused and angry human who is unimpressed or unaffected by their high-tech weapons.

However, consider individual firearms. The firearm, as such, is a comparatively ‘brand new’ development in human history, being barely nine hundred years old. And modern firearms – shooting high-velocity, aerodynamically stabilized projectiles – are another matter, entirely over the simple ‘black powder’ muskets of barely two hundred years ago.

While seemingly counter-intuitive, it is entirely possible that the alien race[s] behind the sudden “visitation” campaign that came to public prominence in 1947 never developed firearms, simply because firearms are a unique development in technology, having no relation to any other relational sphere.

There are, however, other possibilities for non-engagement:

1. 1. One factor to consider is a demographic one – maybe the aliens from Zeta Reticuli have a comparatively low population, or are loathe to losing a good chunk of it in an all-out, D-Day style invasion of Earth.
  2. There may also be logistical concerns: perhaps, while being able to travel interstellar distances, the technology to do so is complicated and expensive in some way, limiting the number, capacity and/or size of ships that can be sent.
  3. Another potential factor could be a ‘near-peer’ threat closer to the alien’s home area, leaving them unable to divert sufficient forces for security reasons.

While there are numerous possible reasons for the non-engagement, at least publicly, there is another intriguing possibility: treaty violations.

Much has been made in the fringe areas of UFOlogy about the “Galactic Brotherhood” or the “Galactic Federation”, concepts dating at least to the 1950’s. More sober and mainstream UFO researchers have uniformly dismissed the very idea, but that may have been hasty.

In recent years, Dr. Joseph P. Farrell, PhD (Oxford) has presented a theory (YouTube link), based on translations (YouTube link) of the Assyrian “Epic of Ninurta”, postulating that a war was fought across the Solar System in the extremely distant past, and that the peace treaty that resulted from the end of that war is still in force at some level. If such a treaty does exist, that would almost certainly be a limiting factor, per Option #3, above.

In support of such an idea, research conducted (YouTube link) by Dr. John Brandenburg, PhD (UC Davis) indicates the distinct possibility that the planet Mars was once bombarded by nuclear weapons at a scale that make the current arsenals of Earth look like firecrackers in comparison.

“Disclosure”, at last…?

Assuming that the above points are even plausible – and especially if they are true – then, what actions would military and political leaders have taken in the period of 1947 and onward?

First, a dedicated study would need to be conducted, both of any recovered objects (biological, as well as technological) as well as a detailed look back through history (“classical education” used to involve far more than simply Greco-Roman writers). The behaviors of alien craft would need to studied, at far more depth than in this article, in order to try to guess at the focus of their reconnaissance, while a deception campaign would need to be deployed to try and confuse the aliens about what our level of knowledge actually was. All of this would have to be coordinated in such a manner, that the operation’s progress would be difficult to impossible to intercept.

In that last regard, the Earth establishments of 1947 had a distinct advantage over their descendants of today, since the use of human couriers carrying locked briefcases was far more common than it is, today. Such a communications method would force the aliens to physically intercept every single person with a briefcase, something they simply would not be able to do. In the modern day, virtually every communication passes through some form of digital interface – and as anyone who has had their computer hacked knows well, attacking a digital signal is almost comically easy. Hand-carried information? Vastly harder.

As the decades passed, information and technologies would be gleaned and exploited, albeit slowly. But, if the deception operations against the aliens were successful, the nations of Earth could eventually reach a level where it was not viable to actually invade or even attrit human capacity with a “main force” attack, by making direct military action too expensive to contemplate.

But.

In the world of terra firma, maintaining such a dire body of secrets means that governments and agencies are going to do a lot of highly illegal things (YouTube link) to wholly and completely innocent – even patriotic – people. The people who carry out these kinds of operations have a vested interest in keeping these secrets for as long as possible, because if the secrets are released without ironclad guarantees of legal immunity to those who willingly carried them out, those people will be lucky to spend the rest of their lives in prison, if they are not lynched, first.

Is the United States government finally admitting, “we are not alone”? Given both the official recognition of leaked gun-camera footage, and the recent “whistleblower” testimony of USAF intelligence officer David Grusch, it seems that an admission may – after over seventy years – be coming…

…Because at some point, the big secrets have to come out.

RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR UPDATE: Move Along – Nothing To See Here

Michael Cessna June 26, 2023

Well, then. The Apocalypse has been rescheduled.

As we reported previously, on June 23, troops of the Wagner “Private Military Company” (PMC) – at the orders of their leader, hot dog vendor-turned mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin – apparently abandoned their positions in southern Ukraine in an apparent mutiny; there were scattered reports of regular Russian Army units engaging in firefights with the mercenary troops, many (if not most) of whom have been recruited directly from prisons.

As the hours wore on, more reports came in: Wagner troops captured the city of Rostov-On-Don, Russia’s primary regional headquarters tactically controlling the ongoing battles in the breakaway Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donbas; there were reports of army commanders “defecting” to Wagner; there were reports of scattered attacks by the Russian Air Force on columns of Wagner troops advancing north along the M4 highway, eventually reaching the critical junction of the city of Voronezh, in an apparent bid to storm the Russian capital city of Moscow, with attendant reports of loyalist forces frantically fortifying sections of the city, as well as mutinies at some military bases around the capital. Russian leader Vladimir Putin was reported to have fled the capital as did, apparently, many of the business “oligarchs” who control the Russian economy, leading to many Western governments and sophomoric, desperate-for-news pundits to chortle at Putin’s seeming demise…

…And then – it was over.

Late on June 24, the story suddenly flipped: Alexander Lukashenko, long-time dictator of the nation of Belarus and a staunch Putin ally, apparently negotiated an agreement between Putin and Prigozhin that saw the mercenary leader “exiled” to Belarus, in trade for ordering his prison-mercs to reverse course, and return to their original cantonments on the front lines of Southern Ukraine.

The world – and especially Western intelligence services – were dumbfounded…ourselves, included.

After careful analysis, the staff at FreedomistMIA has reached a general conclusion as to what we think has happened.

As we remarked in our article from June 23, our second point of analysis was the possibility that Prigozhin had actually launched his “putsch” at the direct order of Putin, in a bid to strengthen Putin’s position inside Russia. While we considered this to be unlikely at that time, that is what now seems to be the case.

At issue, firstly, was Prigozhin’s demonstrated fanatical loyalty to Putin (who had made Prigozhin his personal chef at one point, and then made him the head of the already-established Wagner PMC). Second, were Prigozhin’s, frankly bizarre and inconsistent (bordering on the incoherent) statements on various social media platforms, ranting (not too strong of a term) about the Russian Ministry of Defence not simply hamstringing his forces by deliberately denying them supplies and other critical combat support, but of actively bombarding them, in their forward bases, killing large numbers of the mercenaries…none of which made any sense, at all.

In response, Putin addressed the Russian nation and the world early on the 24^th (US time), calling Prigozhin and any Wagner troops supporting him rebels and traitors, and calling on the Wagner mercenaries to detain Prigozhin and/or return to the Ukrainian front. Shortly after that address, Lukashenko “brokered” an end to the “fighting”.

So…where does this leave us, as of the afternoon (US time) on June 26?

The putsch is over. Wagner forces are returning to southern Ukraine. Prigozhin’s whereabouts are unclear. What has the result been, overall?

First, Putin’s hold on power – despite the desperate ravings of certain sections of the popular media – has been greatly strengthened: the abortive putsch saw many anti-Putin oligarchs and lower-level military commanders and officials either ‘sit pat’, or actively try to ingratiate themselves to Prigozhin. Where their loyalties to the Putin regime may have been questionable before the putsch, their stances are now out in the open, for all to see.
Second, there has apparently been no significant disruption in the logistical throughput passing through Rostov-On-Don, meaning that the Russian and mercenary forces on that front have suffered no real interruption to the flow of personnel, supplies, or equipment. Likewise, tactically speaking, there has been no opportunity for Ukraine to exploit “disruptions” in Russian ranks.
Third, is the interplay between Russia, Belarus and Wagner. With Prigozhin “exiled” to Belarus – to date, a ‘silent partner’ to Russia, allowing significant Russian forces to be based in their country – there is the significant possibility that Progozhin will take many of his Wagner troops with him (the idea of Russia allowing all Wagner troops to go to Belarus is a non-starter, as the mercenaries are too vital as shock troops). Those troops, likely under a different corporate name, would both strengthen the Russian units now in Belarus, while also providing vital training services for Belarusian forces, who have no combat experience to speak of. This could be enhanced, due to reports during the “not-a-putsch”, of Wagner units opening prisons, arming the freed inmates and adding them to their forces, something Wagner has done in the past, with official sanction. Where Wagner was suspected to have fielded approximately 50,000 troops worldwide, with some 25,000 fighting in Ukraine, that figure may have been significantly increased.

Overall, it would appear that Putin has staged a solid deception operation that has measurably strengthened his power base, added forces to his army prosecuting his war in Ukraine, and greatly shored up a close ally, an ally which may well need a “loyal” force of battle-hardened mercenaries to secure his regime, as Lukashenko is reportedly in ill health.

As a result, the world collectively has a lot of egg on its face, to Putin’s benefit.

And that, as it lowers the Western public’s opinions of their governments and news media in general, bodes ill.